308 GOVERNMENT OF SUBJECT PEOPLES 



in the case of language. The language which is 

 used between a subject people and its rulers usually 

 differs in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar 

 from that which the people use in their intercourse 

 with one another. 



The usual history of the process by which such 

 a distorted language comes into being is as follows : 

 An early settler uses a native word or expression 

 wrongly, but as the people do not like to correct 

 him, they adopt his word or expression when they 

 speak to him though they know it to be wrong and 

 do not use it among themselves. When by the 

 repetition of such mistakes the first settler has come 

 to use a large body of such incorrect expressions, he 

 is joined by another who, according to the almost 

 invariable custom of those who go to live among 

 strange peoples, does not learn from the natives 

 but from those of his own race whom he finds 

 already settled in his new home. The incorrect 

 usages of the first settler are thus passed on and 

 perpetuated, and in the course of time there is 

 produced a systematised form of language, subject 

 to constant variations arising out of the mistakes and 

 whims of individual persons, which is adopted by 

 the rulers and becomes the accepted means of inter- 

 course between them and the people they govern. 



The process by which the traditional knowledge 

 of rulers thus comes to differ from that of the people 

 they rule is especially obvious and easy to follow 

 in the case of language, but it applies just as 



