vows. 



745 



richer in forms than almost any other living language, | can be avoided by the use of auxiliaries, and the mod- 

 and allows greater latitude in the construction of sen- j ern development of language has tended strongly in 

 tences. Yet it is not free from exceptions, such as this direction. Most prepositions could be omitted by 

 that in which the preposition governs mostly the nom- the arrangement of the sentence into verb, direct 

 inative. Exceptions of accent are also allowed in object, and indirect object. This simplification would 



yield an equal simplification in syntax, but would be 

 attended with a loss to the flexibility of language. 

 The logical arrangement of the sentence should be : 

 the subject before the predicate ; the noun before the 



poetry. 



The advantages above named are correlated with 

 faults which must stand in the way of its general 

 acceptance by Aryan nations. These faults have been 



pointed out by a committee of the American Philo- adjective; the verb before the adverb; the immediate 

 sophieal Society appointed in 1887 to consider and j before the remote object. Internal inflection, and the 

 report upon the newly proposed language. The re- 

 port of the committee is shrewd and sensible in its 

 -rions, and we give an abstract of it, as showing 



the views uf many linguists as to what a world lan- 

 guage should be. The committee had for its chair- 

 man Prof. D. G. Brinton, the distinguished archaeolo- 

 gist, the other members being Henry Phillips. Jr., and 

 Monroe B. Snyder. They expressed the opinion that a 

 universal language is greatly needed for the use of 

 scientists, and also for the commercial and travelling 

 world, but much less so for general literature, and that 

 if adopted it is likely to be used as an addition to the 



use of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes should be avoided. 

 These suggestions, which are based on the tenden- 

 cies manifested in the evolution of languages, and 

 particularly of modern English, which has divested 

 itself of the old inflectional methods more fully than 

 any other modern language, are applied to the system 

 of Volapiik, which, as weighed in this balance, is 

 found seriously wanting. It is, in the opinion of the 

 committee, in conflict with the development of the 

 Teutonic and Romance tongues alike, and is full of 

 difficulties to the learner. It retains the impure Ger- 

 man modified vowels, the French j and the aspirate h, 



lUOptl 



native language of each people. Their report contains and lias 8 vowels and 19 consonants, where 5 vowels 

 the following Mr_"jesi ions : 1st. the orthography of such and Hi consonants would suffice. It has various dia- 

 n language should be absolutely phonetic; lid. every let- criiical marks of accent, tones, inflection, and quantity 

 ter should have but one sound; 3d, this sound should j (all needless obstructions). Double consonants are nu- 

 be common to all the leading Aryan languages; 4th, j merous, and vowels are printed and written with 

 diphthongs, double consonants, etc., should be omitted ; ; underscoring and Italic letters to facilitate the compre- 



5th, the meaning should never depend on tone, 

 accent, quantity, or inflection of the voice; Cth, the 

 vowels should be limited to the five pure vowels a. e, 

 i, o, u, with the Italian pronunciation (these being 

 common to all Aryan tongues); 7th, in consonants, 

 all gutturals, aspirates, lisps, and nasals should be 

 omitted, and all double and complex consonantal 

 Bounds ; 8th, diacritical marks, accents, and apostrophes 

 should be omitted, and all signs that cannot be made 

 without liftine the pen (as the crossing of the t and 

 the dotting of the i) avoided ; 9th, all sounds should 

 be easy to make and agreeable to the ear; 10th, brev- 

 ity should be sedulously sought. 



The vocabulary should be based on that common 

 to the leading Aryan tongues. There are 1500 words 

 in German almost the same as in English, and more 

 than this common to English, French, Spanish, and 

 Italian. At least a thousand words are common to 

 all these languages, their main difference lying in pro- 

 nuciation. Commercial, business, and scientific terms 

 have much in common, the chief differences occurring 

 in literary and art terms. The most important differ- 

 ences, and the least easy to obviate, are those iictween 

 the grammatical forms of the several laniriiii'.'cs. In 

 respect to grammar, the simplest method is the best. 

 In a simplification of grammatical forms the interjec- 

 tion and article might be dispensed with. Several 

 languages find no need of the. latter. The adjective 

 h;t- neither gender, number, nor case in English, yet no 

 difficulty arises in ooiiseipienep, and therefore these 

 modifications could be dispensed with. The di.-tinetion 

 of form between the adjective and adverb might be 

 omitted, as it often is in the spoken language. This 

 would reilnee the present nine parts of speech to six. 



The comparison of adjective-- by " more and "most" 

 is now practically the rule in the Romance languages, 

 and might. be generally adopted. The noun has no gen- 

 der in English and modern Persian, though useless and 

 annoying gender inflections are retained in all other 

 Aryan tongues. The adjective of sex serves nil nec- 

 y purposes of indicating gender in English. 

 Number also could be usually dropped, as is now occa- 

 sionally done. Case might be omitted. English retains 

 only the genitive. Case can be readily replaced by 

 pronouns and prepositions, as the genitive by the old 

 use of "his" as in "John his book." Relative, inter- 

 rogative, and demonstrative pronouns could be blended 

 without confusion. The reflexive form is unnecessary, 



ae is shown by English usage. 

 VOL. IV. 2 w 



In verbs all inflections 



hension of words. Several of the sounds used could 

 not be pronounced by an Aryan without special oral 

 training. Many words arc manufactured from en- 

 tirely new radicals, capriciously formed. Nouns are 

 inflected through four cases, prefixes and suffixes com- 

 monly used all this being out of accordance with the 

 tendency of Aryan speech development. There is an 

 excessive multiplication of inflectional forms ; verbs are 

 modified by 14 prefixes and 16 suffixes, and the 

 meaning of a word largely depends upon its place in a 

 sentence. The system of Volapiik, in short, is abso- 

 lutely opposed to the evolutionary tendencies of Aryan 

 speech ; it being synthetic and complex, while all 

 modern dialects are growing more and more analytic 

 and simple. It proposes a distinct retrogression in 

 linguistics, a step backward toward conditions from 

 which we have been lor centuries escaping. 



The committee, th conclusion, recommended the 

 calling of a congress of philologists, for the purpose of 

 devising an international language of the simplest and 

 most advanced character possible, not for the purpose 

 of supplanting exist ing tongues, but to add to them a 

 general medium of international intercourse, and a 

 common scientific and commercial language. In com- 

 pliance with this recommendation the American 

 Philosophical Society has taken steps to call together 

 such a congress, composed of the most capable philol- 

 ogists of Kurope and America, and it seems very prob- 

 able that the instigation of Volapuk will lead to the 

 formation of a world language in every respect in har- 

 mony with the present state of the science and fully 

 adapted to the needs of international intercourse. 



(c. M.) 

 VOWS AND OATHS. In our English versions of 



the Bible the phrase "God forbid" (as 

 . distinguished from " the LORD forbid," 

 Am Rep) ~ or " n '. v '''"' forbid") occurs eight times 



in the Old Testament, and fifteen times 

 in the New Testament. Neither the Hebrew nor the 

 Greek phrase so translated contains the name of the 

 Supreme Being, either expressly or by implication. 

 The phrase "God save the king" occurs eight times; 

 in each case the Hebrew is simply "Live the king." 

 We are in these cases accustomed to translate the 

 Hebrew or Greek phrases, not by English words that 

 correspond with the words of the original, but by Eng- 

 lish idiomatic phrases that are conceived of as convey- 

 ing, on the whole, the same meaning with the original, 

 and these English phrases came into the language 



