The Value of Provincialisms. 



Latin and Greek hybridisms, which are daily coined to suit the 

 exigencies of commerce or science. 



Provincialisms are, in fact, when properly looked at, not so 

 much portions of the original foundations of a language, as 

 the very quarry out of which it is hewn. And as if to com- 

 pensate for much of the harm she has done, America has 

 wrought one great good in preserving many a pregnant Old- 

 English word, which we have been foolish enough to disown.* 

 Provincialisms should be far more studied than they are ; for 

 they will help us to settle many a difficult point, where was 

 the boundary of the Anglian and the Frisian ; how far on the 

 national character was the influence of the Dane felt ? how 

 much, and in what way, did the Norman affect the daily business 

 of life ? 



Still more important is a country's folk-lore, as showing the 

 higher mental faculties of the race, in those legends and snatches 

 of song, and fragments of popular poetry, which speak the 

 popular feeling, and which not only contain its past history, but 

 foreshadow the future literature of a country ; in those proverbs, 

 too, which tell the life and employment of a nation ; and those 

 superstitions which give us such an insight into its moral 

 state. 



Throughout the West of England still linger some few 



* See Dictionary of Americanisms, by J. R. Bartlett, who does not, 

 however, we think, refer nearly often enough to the mother-country for 

 the sources of many of the phrases and words which he gives. Even the 

 Old-English inflexions, as he remarks, are in some parts of the States still 

 used, showing what vitality, even when transplanted, there is in our 

 language. Boucher, too, notices in the excellent introduction to his 

 Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words, p. ix., that the whine 

 and the drawl of the first Puritan emigrants may still in places he 

 detected. 



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