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Show THE- - fyWEAUGHMEMMMJl LANGUAGES Language is the dress of thought and it is the thread of life running through all the ages and thereby serving to keep man in touch with the things which went before his appearance on this earth. And languages are distinctive and typical typi-cal of the peoples who speak them. Someone said that if he wished to sing well he would prefer Italian. If he wanted to make love properly, proper-ly, Spanish was ideal. If he wanted to express himself before cultured men he would speak French, and if he wanted to drive and curse a lazy horse the English tongue was exceptionally appropriate. The average American has no conception of the great number of different languages used by mankind man-kind to convey their thoughts. Few are aware that Chinamen living liv-ing in the southern part of that wonderland land cannot speak or understand the members of their own race and country who live in the north of China. In India, with its diversified races and languages, lan-guages, business is conducted every day among its 450,000,000 population in one hundred and twenty-six different tongues, several sev-eral of which are used by more than 200,000,000 people. Each African tribe has its distinctive dis-tinctive idiom. Some of these languages lan-guages have less than two hundred words, but are amply sufficient to express what those speaking wish. In fact teachers say that a person with three hundred different words at his or her command needs no more to carry on an intelligent conversation and clearly present any thought. During the World War, American Ameri-can surgeons at a base hospital were mystified by the language spoken by an American soldier who had been badly wounded and had a skull fracture. For sixty days he seemed to be jabbering in an unknown and unheard-of tongue. As his mind cleared and he became normal, the situation was explained satisfactorily. The young man, the son of a missionary, born in the north of India near Thibet, acquired the Thibetian language and then Hindustani, Hin-dustani, from the servants in fact, spoke them before he learned English. With the injury to his head his mind reverted to childhood child-hood days again and he was simply sim-ply talking the two tongues he first acquired, and nobody understood under-stood a word. |