TOWER OF BABEL REERECTED

Evening Star, Issue 20310, 19 October 1929, Page 28

TOWER OF BABEL REERECTED

LANGUAGE RIDDLE IN EUROPE Having spent one of the happiest of weeks in Stockholm, I was advised by my host,. Captain . James Murray, D.S.O.—a Marlborough boy, who had a distinguished career iu tho Royal Scots during the Great War—to travel through the Baltip provinces to Berlin (states a writer in tho ‘ Capo Times’). In such a hurried scramble through four countries, Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and across the Polish Corridor, one’s impressions must naturally bo extremely tentative. But nobody-can go that way, even for the shortest time, without being struck by the extraordinary paradox of Babel, in which- one sees, side by,side with tho standardisation of business’’commodities, complete destandardisation in language in these different countries. Everywhere I saw the same sort ol cars, Fyffe’s bananas, Shell oil, and soaps of British or American make. Everywhere the fairly well-to-do girls wear the same white stockings—although in Finland ono finds women working as builders’ labourers and carrying heavy hods of lime—with short skirts in varying degrees of frankness. In all these countries there are other similarities, for tho open-air idea has taken them badly, Germany most of all. And yet wherever I went there were different languages—this being specially noticeable iu the Baltic provinces, “ which wero formerly Russian. In fact, Babel has come . again, and •standardisation in business and fashions is being thwarted by differences! iu language. CULT OF VERNACULAR. This puzzling paradox interested me all the more, as for some years I have been closely'associated with a movement for the cultivation of the Scots vernacular with a view of making it pos siblo for modern Scots readers to understand Bums. It is a movement paralleled in England by tho revived interest in dialect —in Stockholm 1 met a Swede who had made a special study of the Cumberland tongue—and also in “ regional” fiction. The movement is all tho more curious among ourselves, because it is being ardently pursued at a time when the broadcasters are trying to introduce “standard” English. Bub so far from it being peculiar to this country—wo have, of course, had ii verv good example of it iu Ireland— I have found vernacular raised to the, nth degree in tho Baltic States. I am not arguing hero whether it is right or wrong or advisable. All 1 am concerned with is the existence of the fact. lb is understandable in the case ol tho Finns, for their tongue belongs to the Ugric group, which has affinities with Magyar. But it is remarkable in' the case of other provinces, which had never tho samo sense of resistance agaiiist Russia. OLD PLACE NAMES REVIVED. Tins struck mo at once on landing in Finland, where tlio old names are being changed on tho map. Thus Abo, the nearest port to Sweden, is calling itself Turku, while tho name of Finland is unknown. Tho national name for it is Suomi. Again, Helsingfors calls itself Helsinki,_ and an Englishman who has lived in Helsingfors lor tho last nine years informed mo that he notices a” growing indisposition among people, even among cabmen, to reply to him in Swedish, wiiich they all know. Incidentally mio may note tho return to old place names in the case of Norway, where Christiania has become Oslo.

On tho way through Esthonia I met a Latvian Jiving in Reval (which now calls itself Talinn), who was just about to send his two little boys to school tor tho first time. They have been brought up at home to spunk Russian and German, and now, perforce, on going to tho national school, they must master Esti, which also belongs to tho Ugne group. Tho people iu these provinces have to bo polyglots. Thus the page boy in my little hotel in Riga spoke Latvian, and ho told me he could talk Russian and German and get along in Lithuania, which’, of course, i was quite unable to test. But I know that he told me in quite goed English that ho wished to come to England to sec “ Konig Georg” (King George). i asked him why, and his immediate reply was, “ Because he is a good man.” ’] XSTJNCT] ve INDIVIDUALITY. One of tho most obvious reminders of tho change of tongues was in the omnipresence of Erich Remarque’s powerful war novel, winch wo call ‘ All Quiet on tho Western Front.’ Hero is a book making a universal appeal, but that appeal has to be made iu diftercnl tongues. As everybody knows, the Genuau title is ‘im Wcsten Nichts Ncues.’ Li Stockholm J found it in every shop under the title ‘ Pa Vastfronten intet nytt.’ in Finland .1 found it as ‘ Lansi rintamalta ei mitaan uutta,’ and at Riga it appeared in Latvian as ‘ Rietumu I'ronto bez pannalyan.’ t havo seen no explanation of this rc-crcction of the Tower of Babel, which is nearly as striking as Saarinen, tho great Finnish architect's remarkable structure in tho station at Helsingfors. It is self-determination iu the highest, if not wisest, degree, and though it seems irrational, all. tho more as nmiy of the provinces involved is nearly as big as London, there can be no doubt of its, appeal. It seems to answer some strange instinct, partly perhaps as an earnest of tho new freedom from foreign domination, whether Swedish or Russian. But it probably goes beyond that in an automatic resistance to all the forces which are trying to road-roller the world to one flat, uninteresting surface. Among'our selves the survival of Cockney has become very marked in the so-called Oxford or “ retailed ” accent,, where “ a ” slips into “o” (such as “ jecket ” for “ jacket and “o” becomes “ ow.' 1 As Tennyson said long ago, “ God fulfils Himself in many ways,” and language apparently is one of them. The problem, as the slapdash novelist would say. is “intriguing.”