THE WAIKATO TIMES With which Is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 1930. UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17964, 8 March 1930, Page 6

THE WAIKATO TIMES With which Is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 1930. UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

The tendency to accord to one language a universal acceptance seems to be gaining ground. As the trade relationships between nations become more complicated and closer, It is, felt that a common medium of communication is more necessary. The time has come to remove or modify the curse of Bebel. To meet this need for a common speech of mankind various artificial languages have been constructed on strictly scientific principles, but as years go by it is becoming clear that none of the aftificial languages is going to become universal. French, which used to be the language of all diplomatic relationships, and Spanish, which, carried a traveller through almost all of South America and across the Pacific, have many things in their favour, but they are not increasing in use throughout the world. Recently there came from certain quarters in the East a suggestion which is almost staggering. It is a claim put.forward on behalf of the Chinese language, and is part of the strong racial consciousness of the lime and country. After all, there is something to be said for the suggestion, but there is also much that makes it impossible. Chinese is the language of almost one-third of the world’s inhabitants, and may well become tho language of half the world if the Chinese race had room for expansion. Nor is the Chinese language a barbaric, ignorant thing. It was prevalent and perfected long before Europe had awakened out of savagery, and it has advantages all of its own. On the other hand, the Chinese language lias no real vocabulary. These are more characters than sounds, 'thus sixty words arc .said to be pronounced the same; their meaning can :ily be learned from the context. Nor ;an Chinese be whispered, it is too poor in consonants and depends largely on phonation and vowels. Whatever

the distant future may bring, it is certain, therefore, that in the present-day conflict between the languages of East and West, English has every likelihood of victory. Before the Great War the Germans were fond of asserting that the English language had passed its best period and was now decadent. Nowadays there is a group in the United States who talk of frankly abandoning the name and the use of English and substituting the “American language,” which they dec'are to be already in existence among them. But it may be said, without patriotic prejudice, that English is the most serviceable, lab-our-saving, and practical instrument of thought, and the most precise which civilised nations have at their command. English long since passed out ■of the primitive stages of language development, dropped its inflections, shed a host of unnecessary terminations and vain repetitions which are still common in German and French, and has been battered by time and circumstance into a fairly perfect instrument of intelligent speech. Some educationists warn us from time to time that the language is becoming contaminated with slang, with lazy forms, with unworthy idioms. There may be some danger in checking natural growth. There is always the fear lest any 'attempt to control the development of the English language, to keep out foreign words and new fashions of ’speech would only end in harm. The English language can stand a great deal of new slang, absorb the desirable part of it, and work out the rest. This, after all, is what has been happening for centuries, and it is in the main the chief factor in keeping the language flexible. So long as In the affairs tf the British race good Arm, straightforward speech is used, with little of the affectations and crudities which are 100 prevalent in London, for example, the English tongue has nothing to fear at home or abroad. it fulfils its purpose worthily among the various peoples of the Empire and among the related peoples of the United Slates of America it need fear no competition from any other tongue. Oriental or Occidental, in the generations to come.