Preface

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CHAPTER I
Preliminary Sketch  (p1-16)

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... and an attempt will be made to connect the teachings of linguistic history with the chief events in the general history of the English people so as to show their mutual beaarings on each other and the relation of language to national character. The knowledge that the latter conception is a very difficult one to deal with scientifically, as it may easily tempt one into hasty generalizations, should make us wary, but not deter us from grappling with problems which are really both interesting and important.

in ... French where everything is condemned that does not conform to a definite set of rules laid down by grammarians. The French language is like the stiff French garden of Louis XIV, while the English is like an English park, which is laid out seemingly without any definite plan, and in which you are allowed to walk everywhere according to your own fancy without having to fear a stern keeper enforcing rigorous regulations. The English language would not have been what it is if the English had not been for centuries great respecters of the liberties of each individual and if everybody had not been free to strike out new paths for himself.

In England every writer is, and has always been, free to take his words where he chooses, whether from the ordinary stock of everyday words, from native dialects, from old authors, or from other languages, dead or living. The consequence has been that English dictionaries comprise a larger number of words than those of any other nation, and that they present a variegated picture of terms from the four quarters of the globe.

 

 

CHAPTER II
The Beginnings  (p17-30)

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CHAPTER III
Old English  (p31-54)

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CHAPTER IV
The Scandinavians  (p55-77)

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[Jespersen observes that Scandinavian words were included into Anglo-Saxon for 'homely expressions for things and actions of everyday importance', which indicates the Danes lived on an equal social status with the Anglo-Saxons, whilst after the Norman conquest, the French were the rich, powerful and culturally advanced, so the loan words from French relate to 'higher intellectual or emotional subjects or about fashionable mundane matters.'

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"..it took a long time before the old forms were finally displaced, nay, the dative hem still survives in the form 'em ('take 'em'), which is now by people ignorant of the history of the language taken to be a shortened them; [an example of 'folk etymology'.]

"The English language of America has no loan-words worth mentioning from the languages of the thousands and thousands of Germans, Scandinavians, French, Poles and others that have settled there. Nor are the reasons far to seek.¹ The immigrants come in small groups and find their predecessors half, or more than half, Americanized; those belonging to the same country cannot, accordingly, maintain their nationality collectively; they come in order to gain a livelihood, generally in subordinate positions where it is important to each of them separately to be as little different as possible from his new surroundings, in garb, in manners, and in language."

 

 

 

CHAPTER V
The French  (p78-105)

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CHAPTER VI
Latin and Greek  (p106-139)

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"Stuart Mill exaggerates the danger of such innovations, when he writes: 'Vulgarisms, which creep in nobody knows how, are daily depriving the English language of valuable modes of expressing thought. To take a present instance: the verb transpire . . . Of late a practice has commenced of employing this word, for the sake of finery, as a mere synonym of to happen: 'the events which have transpired in the Crimea', meaning the incidents of the war. This vile specimen of bad English is already seen in the despatches of noblemen and viceroys: and the time is apparently not far distant when nobody will understand the word if used in its proper sense . . . The use of 'aggravating' for 'provoking', in my boyhood a vulgarism of the nursery, has crept into almost all newspapers, and into many books; and when writers on criminal law speak of aggravating and extenuating circumstances, their meaning, it is probable, is already misunderstood.'¹ [A System of Logic, People's edition, 1880, p. 1.]"

[Jes[ersen discusses the erroneous application of Latin grammatical rules to English, including not ending a sentence woth a preposition.]

[Whilst English has a great wealth in the extent of vocabulary,] 'The number of words at your disposal in a given language is, therefore, not the only thing of importance; their quality, too, is to be considered, and especially the ease with which they can be associated with the ideas they are to symbolize and with other words.'

[Classical words are often resorted to as adjectives (scarce in the native vocabulary.] " e.g. mouth: oral; nose: nasal; eye: ocular; mind: mental; son: filial; ox: bovine; worm: vermicular; house: domestic; the middle ages: medieval; book: literary; moon: lunar; sun: solar; star: stellar; town: urban; man: human, virile, etc., etc. In the same category we may class such pairs as money: monetary, pecuniary; letter: epistolary; school: scholastic, as the nouns, though originally foreign, are now for all practical purposes to be considered native."

 

 

CHAPTER VII
Various Sources  (p140-148)

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CHAPTER VIII
Native Resources  (p149-167)

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CHAPTER IX
Grammar  (p168-198)

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CHAPTER X
Shakespeare and the Language of Poetry  (p199-221)

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CHAPTER XI
Conclusion  (p222-234)

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"It is often said, on the Continent at least, that the typical Englishman's self-assertion is shown by the fact that his is the only language in which the pronoun of the first person singular is written with a capital letter, while in some other languages it is the second person that is honoured by this distinction, especially the pronoun of courtesy ( Gennan Sie, often also Du, Danish De and in former times Du, Italian Ella, Lei, Spanish V. or Vd., Finnish Te). Weise goes so far as to say that 'the Englishman, who as the ruler of the seas looks down in contempt on. the rest of. Europe, writes in his language nothing but the beloved I with a big letter'.1 But this is little short of calumny. If self-assertion had been the real cause, why should not me also be written Me? The reason for writing I is a much more innocent one, namely the orthographic habit in the middle ages of using a 'long i' (that is, j or I), whenever the letter was isolated or formed the last letter of a group; the numeral 'one' was written j or I (and three, iij, etc.) just as much as the pronoun. Thus no sociological inference can be drawn from this peculiarity."

"The modern word a helpmate is a corruption of the two words in Gen. II. 18: 'I will make him an helpe meet for him' (meet 'suitable'); "

 

    

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