It is a law that cultivated people can keep languages apart, and in their purity, better than persons who have not habits of intellectual analysis. When I lived in Scotland three languages were spoken in my house all day long, and a housemaid came to us from the Lowlands who spoke nothing but Lowland Scotch. She used to ask what was the French for this thing or that, and then what was the Gaelic for it. Having been answered, she invariably asked the farther question which of the three words, French, Gaelic, or English, was the right word. She remained, to the last, entirely incapable of conceiving how all the three could be right. Had she learned another language, it must have been by substitution for her own. This is exactly the natural process which takes place in the brains of children who are transferred from one country to another. My eldest boy spoke English in childhood as well as any other English child of his age. He was taken to the south of France, and in three months he replaced his English with Provençal, which he learned from the servants about him. There were two ladies in the house who spoke English well, and did all in their power, in compliance with my urgent entreaties, to preserve the boy’s native language; but the substitution took place too rapidly, and was beyond control. He began by an unwillingness to use English words whenever he could use Provençal instead, and in a remarkably short time this unwillingness was succeeded by inability. The native language was as completely taken out of his brain as a violin is taken out of its case: nothing remained, nothing, not one word, not any echo of an accent. And as a violinist may put a new instrument into the case from which he has removed the old one, so the new language occupied the whole space which had been occupied by English. When I saw the child again, there was no means of communication between us.
After that, he was removed to the north of France, and the same process began again. As Provençal had pushed out English, so French began to push out Provençal. The process was wonderfully rapid. The child heard people speak French, and he began to speak French like them without any formal teaching. He spoke the language as he breathed the air. In a few weeks he did not retain the least remnant of his Provençal; it was gone after his English into the limbo of the utterly forgotten.
Novelists have occasionally made use of cases similar to this, but they speak of the forgotten language as being forgotten in the manner that Scott forgot the manuscript of “Waverley,” which he found afterwards in the drawers of an old writing-desk when he was seeking for fishing-tackle. They assume (conveniently for the purposes of their art) that the first language we learn is never really lost, but may be as it were under certain circumstances mislaid, to be found again at some future period. Now, although something of this kind may be possible when the first language has been spoken in rather advanced boyhood, I am convinced that in childhood a considerable number of languages might succeed each other without leaving any trace whatever. I might have remarked that in addition to English, Provençal, and French, my boy had understood Gaelic in his infancy, at least to some extent, though he did not speak it. The languages in his case succeeded each other without any cost of effort, and without any appreciable effect on health. The pronunciation of each language was quite faultless so far as foreign accent went; the child had the defects of children, but of children born in the different countries where he lived.
As we grow older this facility of acquisition gradually leaves us. M. Philarète Chasles says that it is quite impossible for any adult to learn German: an adult may learn German as Dr. Arnold did for purposes of erudition, for which it is enough to know a language as we know Latin, but this is not mastery. You have met with many foreign residents in England, who after staying in the country for many years can barely make themselves intelligible, and must certainly be incapable of appreciating those beauties of our literature which are dependent upon arrangements of sound. The resisting power of the adult brain is quite as remarkable as the assimilating power of the immature brain. A child hears a sound, and repeats it with perfect accuracy; a man hears a sound, and by way of imitation utters something altogether different, being nevertheless persuaded that it is at least a close and satisfactory approximation. Children imitate well, but adults badly, and the acquisition of languages depends mainly on imitation. The resisting power of adults is often seen very remarkably in international marriages. In those classes of society where there is not much culture, or leisure or disposition for culture, the one will not learn the other’s language from opportunity or from affection, but only under absolute necessity. It seems as if two people living always together would gain each other’s languages as a matter of course, but the fact is that they do not. French people who marry foreigners do not usually acquire the foreign language if the pair remain in France; English people under similar conditions make the attempt more frequently, but they rest contented with imperfect attainment.
If the power of resistance is so great in people who being wedded together for life have peculiarly strong inducements for learning each other’s languages, it need surprise us little to find a like power of resistance in cases where motives of affection are altogether absent. Englishmen who go to France as adults, and settle there, frequently remain for many years in a state of half-knowledge which, though it may carry them through the little difficulties of life at railway stations and restaurants, is for any intellectual purpose of no conceivable utility. I knew a retired English officer, a bachelor, who for many years had lived in Paris without any intention of returning to England. His French just barely carried him through the small transactions of his daily life, but was so limited and so incorrect that he could not maintain a conversation. His vocabulary was very meagre; his genders were all wrong, and he did not know one single verb, literally not one. His pronunciation was so foreign as to be very nearly unintelligible, and he hesitated so much that it was painful to have to listen to him. I could mention a celebrated German, who has lived in or near Paris for the last twenty years, and who can neither speak nor write the language with any approach to accuracy. Another German, who settled in France as a master of languages, wrote French tolerably, but spoke it intolerably. There are Germans in London, who have lived there long enough to have families and make fortunes, yet who continue to repeat the ordinary German faults of pronunciation, the same faults which they committed years ago, when first they landed on our shores.
The child hears and repeats the true sound, the adult misleads himself by the spelling. Seldom indeed can the adult recover the innocence of the ear. It is like the innocence of the eye, which has to be recovered before we can paint from nature, and which belongs only to infancy and to art.
Let me observe, in conclusion, that although to know a foreign language perfectly is a most valuable aid to the intellectual life, I have never known an instance of very imperfect attainment which seemed to enrich the student intellectually. Until you can really feel the refinements of a language, your mental culture can get little help or furtherance from it of any kind, nothing but an interminable series of misunderstandings. I think that in the education of our boys too many languages are attempted, and that their minds would profit more by the perfect acquisition of a single language in addition to the native tongue. This, of course, is looking at the matter simply from the intellectual point of view. There may be practical reasons for knowing several languages imperfectly. It may be of use to many men in commercial situations to know a little of several languages, even a few words and phrases are valuable to a traveller, but all intellectual labor of the higher kind requires much more than that. It is of use to society that there should be polyglot waiters who can tell us when the train starts in four or five languages; but the polyglot waiters themselves are not intellectually advanced by their accomplishment; for, after all, the facts of the railway time-table are always the same small facts, in however many languages they may be announced. True culture ought to strengthen the faculty of thinking, and to provide the material upon which that noble faculty may operate. An accomplishment which does neither of these two things for us is useless for our culture, though it may be of considerable practical convenience in the affairs of ordinary life. It is right to add, however, that there is sometimes an indirect intellectual benefit from such accomplishments. To be able to order dinner in Spanish is not in itself an intellectual advantage; but if the dinner, when you have eaten it, enables you to visit a cathedral whose architecture you are qualified to appreciate, there is a clear intellectual gain, though an indirect one.