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Show OTJB LANGUAGE UNIFORM. t . It has been observed that the language spoken in the United States Is remarkably uniform. True, there are many dialects, but Great Britain, less in area than any one of half a dosen of our States, contains con-tains such very different languages as English, Welsh and the Gaelic of the Scottish Scot-tish Highlands, io say nothing of the provincial pro-vincial dialects of Cornwall and Yorkshire and the unique speech of the London cockney; while in this country, with Its yast expanse of territory. Its settlement by Spanish, French, Dutch and Swedish colonists, and its millions of Immigrants I drawn from nearly every country, large and small, all over the world, there Is far greater uniformity of speech than in any other land of equal area and popula-tion. popula-tion. , . The causes can be readily seen. The public .schools have made us a nation of readers, and the press has supplied books and papers without limit,. Press associations associa-tions have done their part toward giving a uniform aal fairly good tone to the newspaper language of the day. The telegraph, tel-egraph, the telephone and cheap postage have brought distant parts of the country coun-try into quick and easy communication, and so have aided In teaching a common language. The railroad has penetrated every corner of the land and has made us a nation of travelers. Countless human shuttles thus are drawn daily across the land In every direction, carrying with them the threads of thought and speech and doing their part to make one pattern pat-tern of tho whole. No doubt our maps, which still present so many different kinds of names, will In time lose the strangeness strange-ness and the "foreign air" that are so roticeable now. St. Nicholas. |