OUTGROWN ITS GRAMMAR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3584, 9 March 1914, Page 3

OUTGROWN ITS GRAMMAR.

LANGUAGE IN TIGHT CLOTHES

TRANSFORMATION OF FRENCH

The strange spectacle of a language that has outgrown its grammar is seen in France, .according to one of the ablest French reviews. The grammar has stood stid, the language has gone on; one is dead, the other is living, it will come with something of a shock to those who have always believed French to bo the most scientifically tended and nurtured of languages to learn from an article in the “Revue B’eue” (Paris) that there is no language of which the grammar gives so false an idea. As the grammar has remained in a fixed state, he .says, while the spoken language of the people has been in a state of change, no account or record of the advance is to be found even in the best and most advanced manuals. As a consequence, the traditional method of instruction hardly in aiiy wise bears upon -me actual use of the language, and to a great degree written usage remains far removed from oral usage. Also, the writer adds ? written French suffers by comparison with spoken French in

that it is “unexpressive and lifeless.” The changes that have affected French lie ascribes in part to the epread of education luilf-education among all classes and to the invasion of Paris and Central France during the nineteenth century by “immigrants from all sections.” They come from the provinces or from countries where French is not the language of the people, as, for. instance, Flanders, Alsace, Brittany, and especially from the Midi of France itself. While he is willing to admit that the French of tJheoe people may show an exactitude of grammar above that of the Central Frenchman, nevertheless, he maintains, they have not the /‘intimate feeling” of the language and bring to it an a’icn accent and grammatical tendencies that are also alien. To make clear the fac t of remoteness between French as it is and the gram- ( mar, he points out Fiat the grammar was formed in medieval times, mis been altered only in matters of detail since the thirteenth century, and for (he past two hundred years has undergone no alteration whatever. To prove his case, he cites'various examples of the parts of speech and their modifications which are written one way and spoken another, and also certain idiomatic expressions that may be used orally, but actually are used only in writing, and he adds: ‘‘Time from day to day the breach widens between the sqoken language, which is constantly renewing itself and full of ‘bite/ and the written language, which remains almost unchanged and gradually becomes flat and dull, of service only as an im ‘ lectual medium. Turns of phrase, while appearing the same from .the outside, as it were, are constantly losing their value of expression and feeling to i e-tain merely a value that is abstract and intellectual. And it follows that the more a language is used in a literary sense, the less suitable it grows for literature, or, as least, for poetic literature and literature of the imagination, which have their life

m the expression of feeling. From the day it is fixed as a literary languag its resources begin to be used up, and as it. possesses only a halting and limited faculty of recuperation, it loses its value, in time, for the poet. The history of past, ages shows that, however well endowed may bo the men who work in a language, it fails after a few centuries to he able to afford the living product of poetry. Latin poetry fails swiftly to painful or artificial versification from Lucian or Sillius to Claudian, who wrote ‘Latin verse.’ If Greek poetry resisted for a relatively longer period, it was because it drew strength from divers dia’ects ; but in the Alexandrian epoch its poetical resources- were wholly exhausted. One may question whether all the great literary languages of modern Europe have not reached the same condition of exhaustion.”

As for any hope of France profiting of the stores that on stained Greece for a time, the writer argues that: “It would be futile to hope for rejuvenescence from popular speech or fro mdialects. Popular speech, while of necessity moot expressive, is corrupt with platitudes of the style and with the catch-phrases of .the penny papers and of school-books. As for dialects, they arc degenerating from day to day and are being infused with French.” Turning then to a peculiarity of the French language, which to a certain extent it shares with English, namely, Fiat so many derived words are taken not from the mother tongue, but from written Latin with slight adaption, I the writer affirms that even a. cidti- I voted Frenchman, who is unacquainted with Latin, must find a large proportion of the French vocabulary quite “inexplicable.” As for revivifying or re-energising the language with th eintroduotion of new Latin words, he goes on to sa.y, ‘the authors who make such an effort only aggravate the present fevsl.“They who write renoVer instead of renouveler (to renew) may communicate to their readers the impressions always produced by a word little used, but they are on the wrong track. The sensation of novelty is. always fleeting for one thing. Then if through usage „of words of disorder be retained in |the language, they do not really enrich it, because, the majority of French people have no feling for them and a great many do not know their precise meaning, ■ * As long M 3

literary French was in uee only among a certain class of people, who were highly cultivated and for |hc most part knew Latin, this borrowing of dei - iva..ve.s and mw formations from from the written Latin did not matthat it afforded at. will terpis to wuich ter. Indeed, it had its advantages In might be attached a precise meaning. But now that everybody reads and literary French is the language of everybody, while the greater number of those that use it do hot know Latin, the artificial and alien cast of the French vocabulary renders it of vague comprehensibility to a vast number, so that they are led to tih-e misuse of words. Some amusing examples of such misuse are to be found in the literature circulated about election time.

“The fact that so many young persons scarcely know how to write their own language is in part proof that the condition of the language is no longer normal. The grammar applied to it does not adjust itself to actual practise and the vocabulary is laden with artificialities. To correct a profound disorder demands a remedy not easy perhaps to discover, yet as long as the old order endures the worse tlhe- case becomes.”