THE FUTURE OF DIALECTS

Evening Star, Issue 13090, 24 October 1908, Page 2

THE FUTURE OF DIALECTS

The study of philology suggests many interesting questions, and perhaps the most interesting of these is: What will be the future relation of provincial dialects to the standaTd'or literary language? Are these .dialects doomed in the near future to bo Superseded by the .Standard language? Thirty years ago philologists would have said yes to these questions without much hesitation, but a discussion of this matter will, we think, tend to show that some of these local forms of language are, at least, not being extinguished as fast as scientists confidently predicted that they would. Jn fact, some of the more important of these dialects at the present day show an astonishing amount of vitality, and evfen threaten to overturn the conclusions of scientists. It is well known that a savage people cannot spread oven a short distance without causing a variation in their dialects. The want of communication causes isolation of one tribe from another,. and soon their language begins to differentiate. Under such circumstances, it is only a question of time when the language of one division of the tribe will become almost unintelligible t.) the. other. There are many examples to be met with now of mutually unintelligible speech between the smallest subdivisions of a race of plainly kindred tongues—;.as the different clusters of huts on the same coral island in the Pacific. We suppose that before the beginnings of civilisation the human race, presumably from one centre of dispersion, was spread over the earth in a statd? of utter isolation. Differentiation of language was the, natural result of separation/ Wo have abundant proof of this im-'the large r number of Asiatic- and European, languages and dialects that can ’ be" 'grdtiped under'-the Aryan or Indo-European family, which embraces the large majority -of; longues from India to Ireland. * * * * * * * But just as the separation of savage tribes caused their language to develop several varieties, so the rise of civilisation, by multiplying the means of communication, made it possible for the widelydivided parts of one people, living under dissimilar circumstances, to maintain a substantial oneness of speech. A striking example of this'is tho similarity of the English used in the United Kingdom and in New Zealand. The differences are very slight, although the two countries are almost as far apart as possible. Tho intercommunication of thought in books, in newspapers, with' their daily cablegrams, tho political: union, all tend towards the free exchange of words, and prevent the isolation that distance would seem to imply. The two great divisions of the English-speaking people on the opposite sides of the Atlantic have diverged only slightly in speech, in spite of political separation. The Atlantic liners, tho electric cable, with its daily messages, the exchange of thought in reading each other's books and magazines—all those links have tended to keep the language substantially the same. And, again, as Whitney has expressed it: Since culture hjis become incontestably the dominant; power in human history, the unifying forces in language have also been stronger than the diversifying ; and with culture at its full height, and spread to every land and race, one universal language,, like one universal community, is not an absurdity or theoretic impossibility, but only a Utopian or millennial dream. * * * * * * * And.it has been taken for granted that the standard languages, such as English, Parisian, French, High German, would, as education advanced; altogether supersede the provincial dialects. It cannot be denied that the use of the standard languages is greatly increasing, and will continue to increase; but a closer examination of this question tends to show that this does not necessarily involve the extinction of dialects. Since the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, and the consequent removal of the Court from Edinburgh to London,' the Scotch language has still been used ak a medium of literary expression by many .writers pf genius, such as Allan Ramsay, Kurils, Sir Walter Scott, George Mac Donald, <E. L. Stevenson; J. M. Barrie, and Pa'ri Maclaren. Now, these works have , circulated not . - . only among Scottish readers, but have also been read and admired Ijy.many “Southrons;” Tho consequence is v;that not only have these writings tended to perpetuate the Scotch language among the people of' Scotland, hut they hay (/.also served to make many Englishmen letter acquainted,jwith the expressive language of Caledonia. Burns began the publication of his works with a, small volume of poems, “ chiefly in the Scottish dialect,”, of which it has well been said that/their natural destiny would seem to havm-been fulfilled in miking the Ayrshire hard known in Ayrshire, of at most in Scotland; but this humble beginning turned out to be an occasion,' in literature and in/history, of world-wide significance. It is-at; once an evidence of the manly independence of the prince of Scottish poets/ the value/bf the language as a median ,l,or : literary oxpfcs4pn,/that, writing igop dialect nofy known outside of Scotlandj;;hb: was able >to patch

the ear of the civilised world.. Writing at a time when national feeling was low, the genius of Burns, finding natural utterance in his expressive and concise mother tongue, helped materially to elevate his country and its language to a higher standing. In what other language, for example, could these sentiments have been so neatly and forcibly expressed: See yonder birkie, oa’d a lord, Wha struts ami stares and a’ that; Tho’ hundreds worship at his word, He’s but a ccof for a’ tliat. Could this verse ba translated into English without losing its pithiness? We think not. What more fitting words could be found in- which to express the love of a passionate heart than : 0 wert thou in the cauld blast, On yonder lea, on yonder lea, My plaidie to tlte angry airt Wad shelter thee, wad shelter thee. But while it is easy to understand why the genius of Burns was able to make the language of Scotland kuown and appreciated beyond his own land, we should notice why it has been used so largely in the literature of succeeding generations. The Scottish dialect has lost less of its original characteristics than the English language. ' While present-day English has changed very considerably in pronunciation, and is more verbose than the language of Chaucer, Lowland Scotch has undergone much less change, and is therefore more forcible, concise, direct, and quaint than the English of our day. These qualities are well illustrated ’in the Scotch proverb “ A bonnie bride is soon husked.” How well Lowland Scotch is adapted for humor is seen in numerous passages in Burns. Lady Nairn also has given ue an exquisite example in ‘ The Laird of Cockpen.’ * * * * * * * The career of- the: poet Jasmin, in the .South of France, is a remarkable parallel to that of Bums, and illustrates well our main contention. Jasmin, whose poems are marked by exquisite feeling, beautiful imagery, and simple pathos, flourished in Gascony from 1840 to 1870. On beginning his career he found his native Gascon dialect, which was remarkable for its simple and melodious diction, in. danger of being ousted altogether by Parisian French.- Only the illiterate peasants used it. Jasmin studied the language carefully, especially the poetry of tho troubadours of previous centuries. Ho wrote many beautiful and pathetic poems in llic euphonious dialect, and often recited these at largo gatherings with enthusiastic applause. The elegance of the language caused a remarkable revival in its use throughout the South of France from Bordeaux to Marseilles. * * * * * * * As civilisation increases, as the state of society becomes more complex and its language more artificial, and as the use of standard languages gains a wider vogue, Literature will assuredly continue to invoke the aid d those native dialects tliat have not lost their original directness and conciseness of expression.