43 2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



illiterate and did not know whence their ancestors came, they can only 

 have inherited, by oral tradition, the words brought generations before 

 by immigrants from the mother country. It is strange with what 

 tenacity the best-instructed persons are wont to cling to the past in 

 matters of speech. When they can not do so in pronunciation, they 

 show their fidelity to the same instinct in orthography. 1 They would 

 greet with a guffaw the suggestion that they should travel, or live, or 

 dress as did their grandfathers, or even their fathers; but they adhere 

 to the spelling of the tenth preceding generation with a tenacity worthy 

 of a nobler cause. In France no less than in England the spelling 

 reformers have an almost insurmountable task before them. It is 

 worthy of remark, however, that many words are pronounced by 

 Americans more nearly as printed than by Englishmen. One seldom 

 knows how to pronounce an English proper name from the printed 

 page. 



The primitive races exhibit a lack of capacity for abstract thought 

 that is well nigh incredible. It seems almost impossible for them to 

 generalize. Every perceived object has a separate name because it is 

 a separate entity. Among the Innuits an older brother, a younger 

 brother, a youngest brother, is each designated by a different term. 

 The same is true of sisters ; and when a brother, a sister or a father is 

 deceased, still another word is employed when speaking of them. The 

 Lapps have a word to designate the relationship of the husband of a 

 man's sister, and another to designate that of men who have married 

 sisters, but their language lacks one for brother-in-law. In this respect 

 these and other languages are more definite than the English or the 

 German. The Greek and Latin are still more careless in the designa- 

 tion of relationship by marriage. Herein all the primitive races have 



1 The following bits of verse, which I found somewhere, facetiously but 

 truthfully represent some of the vagaries of our English pronunciation and 

 orthography : 



My wife had a dog yclept Caesar, 

 As a gift he was given to please her. 

 One day he attempted to seize her, 

 Angry, perhaps, or to tease her. 

 She said : " I'd be glad if some bees or 

 Wasps would do him to death, or a freeze, for 

 I've no more int'rest in him." 



Wife, make me some dumplings of dough, 



They're better than meat for my cough; 

 Pray, let them be boiled till hot through, 



But not till they're heavy or tough. 

 Now I must be off to the plough, 



And the boys, when they've all had enough 

 Must keep the flies off with a bough 



While the black mare drinks at the trough. 



