language, a Low German spoken in the north, which any of you 

 as a German scholar would not understand. Now this is in itself 

 quite as good language as the other ; but mainly by the accident 

 of the Bible having been printed in it. High German has become 

 the standard language, and so Low Germans speak one language, 

 and learn another in the schools. The same thing obtains to 

 some extent in England, and still more in Scotland ; and the 

 reason why they speak such good English about Inverness is said 

 to be, that it is so far different from the native speech, that it is, 

 more than elsewhere book — that is to say, classical — English. 



I think it then possible, that differences of dialect may arise, in 

 the course of time, so considerable as to make one member of the 

 English-speaking family unintelligible to another, and that then 

 they will agree, by mutual consent, to fall back upon the standard 

 English which both of them have learned at school. I say that 

 this may be so, and that it will be compatible with the existence 

 of a uniform literary language. I do not say that it will be so, for 

 the restraining influences will be ever increasing with the advance 

 of science ; and what the achievements of science will be in the 

 ages that are to come, what man is there who will venture to 

 foretell? 



But I am inchned further to the opinion, from the current 

 indications that come before us, that as regards what we may call 

 the more civilised speech — that is, the language of the press and 

 of the better educated — the changes which occur will take place 

 to a great extent pari passu throughout the English-speaking 

 range, and that these changes will come not from the mother 

 country, but from outside, and mainly — for some time to come at 

 least — from America. Of this I shall bye and bye proceed to give 

 the indications. Now, the only English-speaking community 

 outside our own which has lasted long enough to give us any data 

 for comparison is of course American. Let me observe in passing 

 that English people are apt to look rather unfairly upon what are 

 called Americanisms. We take our own speech as the standard, 

 and any colloquial variations from it we look upon as partaking of 

 the nature of oddness, if not of vulgarity. Now this I conceive to 



