The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, May 1885, No. 8

The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, May 1885, No. 8

President, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. Chancellor, J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn. Counselors, The Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D., the Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.; Edward Everett Hale. Office Secretary, Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. General Secretary, Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa. At the beginning of this study we must determine as clearly as possible the meaning attached to the word universal when it is applied to a language. For this purpose, the word is employed in a restricted sense. It is not meant that men are returning to the conditions of speech which prevailed before the building of Babel. To that condition men may or may not return in some far off century; so far as we can judge, that reunion of mankind is very distant. Max Mller[1] says that 900 languages are spoken by the human race; and if dialects are added the number may be three or four times as large. Most of our race speak dialects having no literature, and it is found to be a very slow task to substitute the language of a nation for the dialects of its people. Classical Greek was probably spoken by only a few of the Greeks. We know that the Latin of Cicero was not, not even in Rome, the speech of the people. At this day more than a score of dialects are spoken in Italy, and the majority of the population of that Peninsula can neither speak nor understand Italian. Public education and other unifying influences make very little progress against the diversity of speech in the various provinces. An Italian gentleman is bred in a nurses language (the dialect) and educated in Italian. He speaks two tongues, dialect and Italian; his servants speak but one, and that is the dialect. To break up the power of the nurse, and of the local influences which she represents, is a Herculean task which must be accomplished in every country except the United States, the Canadas, and a part of Great Britain, before mankind will speak only 900 tongues; the time required to reduce nine hundred to one can only be guessed at. If the problem of a universal language were how to provide a common language to be exclusively used by all men, this problem would be one for pure speculation, in the solving of which the imagination would be more active than the reason. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 55331
Author: Chautauqua Institution
Release Date: Aug 10, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Editor: Flood, Theodore L., 1842-