MODERN LANGUAGES.

Thames Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 17585, 26 March 1929, Page 6

MODERN LANGUAGES.

VALUE OF UNI FORMITY DOUBTED ' The presidential address to the Modern Language Association's annual conference was delivered by Mr. H. Wickham. Steed, who said he did not believe that civilisation would gain greatly by linguistic uniformity, or that the human spirit would ever be able to express itself adequately through any medium that was not native to it. English would still be written and spoken best by Englishmen French by Frenchmen, aoid German by Germans. The question whether it was possible to command all the resources of one language without some knowledge of others was not easy.to answer. So far as English was concerned lie was inclined to answer it in the negative, and to say that a study of foreign languages, the acquisition of ability to speak and to write them well, might be" a distinct advantage to any speaker or writer, provided that he or she gave equal or greater care to the study of his or her native tongue. At bottom the justification of linguistic studies apart from the practical utility of being able to communicate with : peoples of other races and.tongues, lay in the enrichment and refinement of the stu-

dent's mind, which should thus be able to use more worthily its native means or expression. Each modern language had its own savour its own philosophy, its own history, Mr. Steed continued. The true object of linguistic studies, like that cf true internationalism, was not to enable the student to use a cosmopolitan jargon or to abandon national preferences for a tasteless cosmoopolitanism. It was rather to develop a sound catholicity of taste and outlook coupled with precision and happiness of expression. A wholesome international philosophy was none the worse for being written in good French or good English. They might or might not be ncaring the ' day when some neutral medium of intercommunication between civilised peoples would be evolved and adopted, but he was convinced that they wero farther than ever from the lamentable moment when the ideas and feelings of human beings would be so uniform that they could be fully expressed in any save their native tongues.