INFORMATION CARDS FOR SCHOOLS.

The English Language.

BY

W. J. ROLFE, A.M.

The inscription on the Soldiers' Monument in Boston, written by the President of Harvard College, has been much admired. It reads thus:

TO THE MEN OF BOSTON

WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY

ON LAND AND SEA IN THE WAR

WHICH KEPT THE UNION WHOLE

DESTROYED SLAVERY

AND MAINTAINED THE CONSTITUTION

THE GRATEFUL CITY

HAS BUILT THIS MONUMENT

THAT THEIR EXAMPLE MAY SPEAK

TO COMING GENERATIONS

What is to be said is here said in the simplest way. There is no waste of words, no attempt at display. It is a model of good English, brief, clear, and strong. If a school-boy had written it, he would have thought it a fine chance for using big words. He would have said, "The citizens of Boston who sacrificed their lives," not "the men who died"; and "preserved the integrity of the Union," not "kept the Union whole"; and "erected," not "built." And some men who have written much in newspapers and books would have made the same mistake of choosing long words where short ones give the sense as well or better.

A great preacher once said that he made it a rule never to use a word of three or two syllables when a word of two syllables or one syllable would convey the thought as well; and the rule is a good one. In reading we want to get at the sense through the words; and the less power the mind has to spend on the words, the more it has left for the thought that lies behind them. Here the simple words that we have known and used from childhood are the ones that hinder us least. We see through them at once, and the thought is ours with the least possible labor.

Those who urge the use of simple English often lay stress on choosing "Saxon" rather than "Classical" words, and it is well to know what this means.

The English is a mixed language, made up from various sources. Its history is the history of the English race, and the main facts are these:

Britain was first peopled, so far as we know, by men of the Celtic (or Keltic) race, of which the native Irish are types. The names of the rivers, mountains, and other natural features of the land are mostly Celtic, just as in this country they are mostly Indian. About fifty years before the Christian era the Romans conquered Britain, and held it for about 500 years. They brought in the Latin language; but few traces of it now remain except in the names of certain towns and cities. The mass of the people kept their old Celtic tongue. Between the years 450 and 550 a.d. Britain was invaded and conquered by German tribes, chiefly Angles and Saxons. It now became Angleland, or England; and the language became what is called Anglo-Saxon, except in the mountains of Wales and of Scotland, where Celtic is found to this day. In the ninth and tenth centuries the Danes invaded England, and ruled it for a time, but they caused no great change in the language. In the year 1066 the Norman Conquest took place, and William the Conqueror became King of England. Large numbers of the Norman French came with him, and French became the language of the court and of the nobility. By degrees our English language grew out of the blending of the Anglo-Saxon of the common people and the Norman French of their new rulers, the former furnishing most of the grammar, the latter supplying many of the words. Now the French was of Latin origin, and the English thus got an important Latin or "Classical" element, which has since been increased by the adding of many Greek and Latin words, especially scientific and technical terms.

The two great events in the history of the English language, as of the English people, are the Saxon and the Norman conquests. To the former it owes its grammatical frame-work, or skeleton; to the latter much of its vocabulary, or the flesh that fills out the living body.

It must not be inferred that our grammar is just like the Anglo-Saxon because this is the basis of it. The Anglo-Saxon had many more inflections (case-endings of nouns and pronouns, etc.) than the French, and in the forming of English most of these were dropped, prepositions and auxiliaries coming to be used instead. It was not until about a.d. 1550 that the language had become in the main what it now is. Some words have since been lost, and many have been added, but its grammar has changed very little. Our version of the Bible, published in 1611, shows what English then was (and had been for fifty years or more), and has done much to keep it from further change.

As a rule the most common words—those that chiefly make up the language of childhood and of every-day life—are Saxon; and very many of them are words of one syllable. In the inscription above, every monosyllable is Saxon, with Boston, grateful, and coming; the rest are French or Latin. In the case of pairs of words having the same meaning, one is likely to be Saxon, the other Classical. Thus happiness is Saxon, felicity is French; begin is Saxon, commence is French; freedom is Saxon, liberty is French, etc. The Saxon is often to be preferred, though not always; but, as has been implied above, if a short and simple word conveys our meaning, we should never put it aside for a longer and less familiar one. In such cases the chances are that the former is Saxon, and the latter Classical. Thus above, citizens, sacrificed, preserved, integrity, and erected are all Classical.