THE INADEQUACY OF SPEECH 431 



Europe. This is the usual assumption, but it must always remain a 

 hypothesis like so many other explanations of prehistoric phenomena. 

 That English resembles the Scandinavian languages more than it does 

 the German will not surprise any one who takes account of the early 

 history of Great Britain. But who will tell us what brought about the 

 transformation of the prepositive article, as we find it in English and 

 German into a suffix which is its normal position in the Danish-Nor- 

 wegian and Swedish, a transposition that seems to have taken place 

 less than a millennium ago? 



It is probable then that the same psychic cause led to the forma- 

 tion of dialects that in remoter ages produced separate languages. We 

 know that the primitive Germans were a migratory people. At one 

 time and another they are heard from in almost every part of Europe 

 except Russia, because their movements were always southward or 

 westward. When they were constrained to adopt a more fixed mode of 

 life, there was but little intercourse between the different tribes; the 

 divergences of speech, therefore, that had doubtless already begun to 

 manifest themselves, became more and more marked until the intro- 

 duction of letters among them virtually put an end to the disintegra- 

 tion. We find a similar phenomenon in South Africa. That conti- 

 nent from the equator to the Cape is occupied by the Bantus, except 

 a few enclaves, whose dialects have a clearly marked relationship. No 

 philologist ventures to affirm where the starting-point is to be found, 

 although the general movement seems to have been from north to 

 south. It is remarkable with what tenacity the natives of any par- 

 ticular district cling to the vernacular which they have received by 

 inheritance. The student of the oldest German is constantly sur- 

 prised by many words, and especially by a pronunciation still in use in 

 southwest Germany, a region in which the language was first reduced 

 to writing, that have undergone but little change in six or seven cen- 

 turies. We find the same thing in other countries and in England. 

 The unlettered still use words that are only found in the dialect dic- 

 tionaries; and, as these are a modern innovation, they must have been 

 transmitted orally through many generations. It is more than prob- 

 able that of the words in common use to-day not a few are pronounced 

 as they were in Shakespeare's time, or even in Chaucer's. There is 

 a considerable number in the former writer with which he evidently 

 makes puns and rhymes, but which lose their point if we give to them 

 the pronunciation now assigned to them by our dictionaries. Evidently 

 beat and bait were pronounced alike; so were louse and luce, Moor and 

 more, mode and wood, and so on. I remember hearing in my youth in 

 Pennsylvania some of my father's neighbors say " yarbs " for herbs, 

 " coo " for cow, but by a singular perversity " cowcumber " for 

 cucumber, " af eard," "pore" (poor), " sturk," together with several 

 other archaisms. As the people who talked in this way were very 



