SHALL ENGLISH BECOME A DEAD LANGUAGE ?
SHALL English become a dead language ? We fear that if the proposals made by Mr. Stead in the current number of the Review of Reviews were to be taken up in earnest, and put into operation, they could have only one result, —that of turning English into a dead language. Mr. Stead and those who think with him are alarmed at the notion of the Eng- lish language being split into a number of dialects which will grow yearly more and more different in character and scope. He pictures one language being spoken in London, another in Chicago, and a third in Melbourne, and the users of these dialects being mutually unintelligible. That this is a most disagreeable and disheartening prospect we readily admit. The future of the English race is undoubtedly bound up with the future of its language. If we cannot have unity of speech we shall never have any other form of unity. The notion of the men of our stock being unable to understand each other unless they happen to live in the same geographical unit is one which cannot but be most depressing to those who feel pride in and care for the English kin. Personally, we do not believe that there is the very slightest danger of our race being struck with the curse of Babel; but, for the moment, let us assume that the danger feared by Mr. Stead does really exist. We will give later on our reasons for disbelieving in its reality.
Assuming the danger, what is Mr. Stead's remedy P It is to form a sort of Academy—apparently of editors—who are to keep the language true, and to make our words and phrases keep line. How they are to enforce their behests is not sug- gested, but at any rate they are to consider verbal innovations, to allow them or to disallow them, and thus to form a canon of the English tongue. English is to be the language licensed by this Academy, and those who wish to keep the language pure and united are, we presume, to refuse to use any word which is not in the Academy's dictionary, or any idiom which has not received their assent. Now, bad as we think the disease would be if it really existed, we venture to say that the remedy would be even worse. We would rather see the English language grow so disunited that it would cease to be a single language than see it perish by being confined in an academic strait-waistcoat. The beauty of the English language—nay, of any language—is its freedom and adapt- ability, its power to reflect the life, the spirit, and the ever- changing emotions of those who use it. When it does this it is a living thing. When it ceases to do this, and when it has become fixed and rigid, it is dead. Once put arbitrary bounds upon a language, bounds other than those which individual good taste and the sense of euphony and appropriateness require, and a language is certain to become dead, and, what is more, a new language dull and servile is certain to grow up in the shadow of the dead trunk. Kill the tree, and parasitical plants and fungi will soon spring upon and around it. Let it live, and its free life will tend to keep the morbid growths in check. But perhaps it will be said that the Academy of editors and men of letters will not do anything so foolish as we have suggested, and that they will only do what we admit the individual must do,—use his taste and good sense to reject words which the language is better without. We venture to assert that, however excellent their intentions, there does not exist, and never will exist, a body of men capable of doing this. No Committee can tell whether a word is a good word or a bad word, or whether it is wanted or not. Old-fashioned people will always tell you that a new word is not wanted, and that there are plenty of exact equivalents for it already in the language. This seems conclusive, yet experience often Troves that they were wrong, and that there was a shade of meaning which they did not perceive, but which was never- theless pressing eagerly for expression. Thousands of words which we now consider absolutely essential to the language were, when they were first introduced, described as quite un- necessary, and the mere surplusage of pedantry or affecta- tion. Let any one turn to that most humorous of Elizabethan plays The Poetaster, and read the scene in which the poet (Marston is the subject of the satire) is given an emetic, and made to bring up all the new - fangled words which he has used in his works. The character who is watching the results keeps on calling out that such and such a monstrosity has newly come up.' This was thought a brilliant piece of satire at the time, and yet now half the -condemned words are admitted by all readers and writers. In truth there can be no censorship in literature. The only possible plan is to give every word its chance and allow the • fittest to survive. It was in this sense that Dryden declared that he proposed new words, and if the public approved, "the Bill passed," and the word became law. Instead of a writer being on the look-out to throttle and destroy any and every new word or phrase that may be suggested, it ought to be his business to encourage all true and fitting developments of his native tongue. Dryden, in the admirable passage from which we have quoted already, uses the memorable phrase, "I trade both with the living and the dead for the enrichment of our tongue." But we may be quite sure that such Free-trade in words would not be allowed for a moment by Mr. Stead's Academy. Their first action would almost certainly be to set up the machinery of Protection. We should most cer- tainly see "certificates of origin" demanded by all literary traders, and unless the origin was approved the word, good or bad, would have but short shrift. The only way, as we have said above, is to let each word take its chance. If it is a stupid, a clumsy, or an unnecessary word it will soon die a natural death. No one will take the trouble to use it. If, however, it turns out that it supplies a real want it will gradually win its way into the language.
Closure" was at one time objected to as an unnecessary word, but in the end it won its way into usage. Milton tells us as well kill a good man as a good book. We may say the same of words. But we can only tell whether a word is a good one by proposing it to the public. Hence there ought to be no 'formal strangling of words by an Academy on general principles, for such strangling is very likely to end in the destruction of good words. An Academy, if it does anything, is certain to do harm.
We must not, however, forget that the main question is not whether an Academy for the English language will do harm, but whether one is needed. We do not believe that any need exists, because we entirely deny the proposition that the English race in its various habitations is taking to unin- telligible dialects. We have never met a newspaper article in modern English, much less a printed book, whether hailing from America or Australia, which, if not de- liberately intended to be a skit on current local slang, was not perfectly intelligible to every educated man who uses the English language as his mother - tongue. Again, we do not believe that a copy of the Spectator was ever by reason of its British dialect unintelligible in Denver or Chicago. The marvellous thing about the Free- trade in words which has been applied to the English language is the manner in which it has kept the English language steady. This steadiness is indeed the most remarkable feature of our tongue. Books written in the Elizabethan age are still perfectly intelligible. It was lately the good fortune of the present writer to read in Mr. Arbor's delightful "English Garner" (8 vole.; Constable and Co.) a number of prose tracts written for the popular taste three hundred years ago, and describing fights and adventures by land and sea. Not one of them would present any more difficulty to the modern Englishman and American than does the "Pilgrim's Pro- gress." The notion, too, that our classics are becoming unin- telligible is, we believe, a pure delasion,—a piece of literary fussiness. Take, for example, a reprint of the "Pilgrim's Progress" for use in schools, lately published by Messrs. Macmillan. The ordinary man would not imagine that there was any need for bringing the English of the "Pilgrim's Progress" up to date, but its latest editor has other views. In several instances he has substituted what he considers a more intelligible word or phrase. Unless our memory deceives us, the club which Giant Despair took with him when he went to visit and persuade his prisoners was "a stout crab-tree cudgel." In the new edition this appears as "a very heavy wild apple cudgel." Surely this is an entirely unnecessary interpretation. If a Cockney boy does not know what a crab-tree is, let him learn out of the text. But in truth, as we have said above, all this talk about unintelligibility is a delusion. There is going to be no English Tower of Babel. Instead the language will broaden and deepen, and yet remain as clear as ever it was. But if there is to be no Tower of Babel there is no need for an Academy, a remedy which, as we have said, must be quite as bad as the supposed disease.
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