130 BROOM ALL : 



may exterminate the weaker. This can occur onlj^ when 

 there is great disparity in numbers or organization, or both, 

 and the peoples differ physically too much to mix. The Eng- 

 lish in North America, South Africa and Australia, have so 

 met and exterminated the native. In fact, the English lan- 

 guage has never spread on foreign soil except by such methods. 



Such vital contests are simply destructive of the weaker, and 

 the victor gets nothing but room to expand. There is little oppor- 

 tunity for influence, linguistic or otherwise. In contrast with 

 this simply destructive conflict, however, there is also a vital 

 conflict that is constructive. By it the victor and victim are 

 not so different in numbers, organization or race, but that they 

 are mutually influenced. Amalgamation or absorption results 

 because extermination is impossible. The stronger, although 

 victor, l)ecomes simply the predominant factor in a new 

 people. Intermarriage is the process by which this result is in 

 fact worked out. This insures the social equality that pro- 

 duces a true amalgamation of peoples. And it brings the 

 two languages in conflict within the family circle, where either, 

 more or less modified by the other, may become the vernacular 

 of the child. The more numerous people have the advantage 

 in these conditions because there will be many families where 

 its tongue is the sole environment of the child, and this child 

 can be influenced by the other tongue only after his vernacu- 

 lar is more or less established in his mind. 



Another condition, however, is the proportion of the sexes. 

 The vernacular of the mother has the first chance at the child. 

 Even if she have acquired another language, she naturally 

 talks to her babe in the forms associated with her own child- 

 hood. Where the mixed communities are not too unequal 

 numerically, the tongue of the mothers will survive, especially 

 in those essential elements of which we have already spoken 

 — its grammar and the vocabulary of the home. This is 

 illustrated in the history of our own language. 



Scandinavians, related by blood and language to our titu- 

 lar Anglo-Saxon ancestors, descended in piratic expeditions 



