Note D — WHY WE SPEAK ENGLISH.

The Scandinavians, and all the peoples who are loosely called German tribes, High-German, Low-German, and what-not, are generally regarded as branches of a great Aryan stem, which is called the Teutonic race; and some of my philological readers, should any such honor these unpretending papers with their attention, may be surprised, and even offended, at my omission of any mention of the great Teutonic family. As to this, my only defense, or rather my only excuse, is that I have been unable to convince myself of the existence of any such branch as the Teutonic, antecedent to the Gothic, of which the Mæso-Goths were an early offshoot. I can not see that the Teutones of the Roman historians represent an elder, dominant, or parent branch of the Aryan race of which the Goths were a younger and minor. As to the word German, and its use in “German tribes,” “German dialects,” every scholar knows that it is not an indigenous name, but that it was imposed from without, by strangers, upon the people who bear it, who call themselves Deutch; and that this name was in effect territorial, meaning all the people, of whatever race, who lived within or beyond certain boundaries. As to the identity of origin in Deu-tch and Teu-ton, that seems to me to be by no means clearly made out. For Teutonic race I would substitute Gothic. The question from the present point of view is happily not of serious or intrinsic importance.