| OCR Text |
Show WW www wwl wa CNQLI8H TO DE WORLD SPEECH. I All Other Tongues Give Way to Modern Mod-ern Demand for Homely Language. From the Columbia State. By "homely" wo hero mean partaking ol the nature of homo, and not plain or ugly. Wordsworth thus speaks of "tho homely beauty of tho good old cause." So often In llfo wo find that It Is the homely, tho thing soiled and perhaps stained with dnlly use, rather than tho lino thing, tho great and tho high thing, that endures. Why? Because Be-cause It Is humanized; Us very stains revealing to all that It Is fit for dully uho. Affection has touched It, love has handled it, aud It is Immortal. j This princtpto has often been lllus j tratcd In history, and It Is being lllus-1 trated every day by ono of the most remarkable phenomena In all history tho endurance of a language apparently apparent-ly the least fitted to survlvo of nil tho widely spoken tongues of tho human race. Wo see that In Japan, in China, In India, In France, In Germany throughout tho world people aro learning English. Tiio language that has no grnmmur, only a mass ot exceptions ex-ceptions to overy rule and principle of human speech; a language that has no. system of spoiling, that Is unspoll-able, unspoll-able, that Is harsh, la supplanting tho languages of people that outnumber tho English speakers as four to ono. Is driving Gormnn from tho chancelleries. chancel-leries. It seems vain to dovlso now tongues to render Intercourse more facile; they can niako no Inroads upon up-on our homely English speech. It Is homoly, and It survles. All tho smooth an beaullful and perfect per-fect lnnguages pass away. The ox-qulslte ox-qulslte Idiom of Iran, or nnclent Persia, Per-sia, has lost Its tongue; Arabic, tho" most elastic and, In many respects, tho most wonderful of all languages, Is passing swiftly from desert and tent nnd mosquo; and Greek, finest of all languages, richest In meaning, In fruits, is spoken In a decadent dialect by a decadent people. Tho hard, rough languages that grato tho tongue like a file, that would have mndo Quln-tillan Quln-tillan stare and gasp, theso havo somo chanco of survival, and of theso tho English Is tho most uncouth and chaotic. cha-otic. It will, therefore, endure and It may yet beconio tho speech of tho wholo civilized world. |
