786 



DIAL AND DIALLING 



DIALECT 



on the same meridian as London. If the sphere 

 were cut through the middle by a plane ABCD, in 

 the rational horizon of London, and if straight lines 

 were drawn from the centre, E, of the plane to 

 the points where its circumference is cut by the 

 hour-circles of the sphere, those lines would be the 

 hour-lines of a horizontal dial for London ; for the 

 shadow of the axis would fall upon each particular 

 hour-line of the dial, when it fell upon the like hour- 

 circle of the sphere. Similarly, if we suppose the 

 sphere cut by any other plane facing the meridian, 

 the hour-circles of the sphere will cut the edge of 

 the plane in those points to which the hour-lines 

 must be drawn straight from the centre ; and the 

 axis of the sphere will cast a shadow on these lines 

 at the respective hours. The like will hold of any 

 plane, whether it face the meridian or not, provided 

 it do not coincide with it, or do not coincide with a 

 plane through the poles, and perpendicular to the 

 plane of the equator. In the latter case, the axis 

 would have no elevation above the plane of the 

 dial ; in the former, the shadow would not move 

 circularly. 



The universal dialling cylinder, an invention of 

 Ferguson's, is represented in fig. 2. ABCD is a 



Kg. a 



glass cylindrical tube, closed at both ends with 

 brass plates, on the centres of which a wire or axis, 

 EFG, is fixed. The tube is either fixed to a hori- 

 zontal board, H, at an angle equal to the latitude 

 of the place, or moves on a joint, so that it may be 

 elevated till its axis is parallel to the earth's at any 

 latitude. The 24 hour-lines are drawn on the out- 

 side of the glass, equidistant from one another, and 

 parallel to the axis. The XII next B stands for 

 midnight ; the XII next the board, for noon. 

 When the axis is adjusted for the latitude, and the 

 board levelled, with the line HN on the meridian, 

 and the end towards the north, the axis EFG, when 

 the sun shines, will serve as stile, and cast a 

 shadow on the hour of the day among the parallel 

 hour-lines. As the plate AD is parallel to the 

 equator, and EFG perpendicular to it, right lines 

 drawn from the centre to the extremities of the 

 parallels will be the hour-lines of an equinoctial 

 dial, and the axis will be the stile. A horizontal 

 plate, ge, if put into the tube, with lines drawn 

 from the centre to the several parallels cutting its 

 edge, will be a horizontal dial for the given lati- 

 tude ; and similarly a vertical plate fronting the 

 meridian, and touching the tube with its edge, with 



lines drawn from its centre to the parallels, will be 

 a vertical south dial, the axis of the instrument in 

 both cases serving for the stile ; and similarly for 

 any other plate placed in the cylinder. If, instead 

 of being of glass, the cylinder were of wood, any of 

 these dials might be obtained from it by simply 

 cutting it in the planes of the plates, and drawing 

 the lines on the surface of the section. 



Dialling sometimes occurs as a term for surveying 

 by help of a compass with sights, such as is called 

 a 'miner's dial,' and is used especially in under- 

 ground surveys and mine-surveying. 



Dialect, in popular language, a local form of 

 speech which diners from the general or received 

 speech of the country, but is manifestly related to 

 it. Still more popularly, dialect is considered to 

 be a ' corruption ' of received speech, due to ignor- 

 ance or carelessness, and is stigmatised as boorish. 

 Both definitions are untenable. The last is so 

 extremely wrong that it would be more correct 

 to term received speech an artificial (as distinct 

 from a natural or organic ) ' corruption ' of some 

 local form of speech which political or literary 

 circumstances have imposed upon the whole 

 country. The first definition labours under the 

 disadvantage of supposing that there was from 

 the first in any country a received form of speech 

 which ' broke up ' into dialects, just as the Latin 

 language actually broke up into the Romance 

 languages of to-day. And this leads to the ques- 

 tion, How does a dialect differ from a language ? 

 Are the so-called Romance languages not rather 

 dialects of Latin ? Is not English collectively a 

 dialect of Low German ? Was not Latin itself a 

 dialect of that original Aryan speech which we 

 only know in such dialectal forms as Sanskrit, 

 Greek, Latin, Gothic, &c. ? This is a question 

 merely of the meaning we assign to words. It 

 is well fitted for arguing, as Gil Bias argued 

 (chap. i. ), but it is of no practical value. 



Without going into the very vexed question of 

 the origin of language, we find that wherever two 

 human beings are thrown together a spoken means 

 of communication or language grows up ; that 

 wherever a family is isolated a family language 

 is generated ; that when the family separates 

 into many distinct families they carry with them 

 some general and various particular forms of the 

 original family speech ; that where these families 

 again separate the same process goes on, till the 

 one original speech is broken up into a variety of 

 local forms which differ but slightly from each 

 other, and are usually, though strange, mutually 

 intelligible. Wars, especially civil wars, conquests, 

 defeats, changes of environment due to immigra- 

 tion and emigration, contact with others deriving 

 from a different original family, produce harsher 

 changes, till the groups become mutually unin- 

 telligible. It is at this point that the old dialects 

 may be considered to become languages. We have 

 not to go far to seek examples. The slang of each 

 nursery, school, college, profession, and handicraft 

 illustrates the first ; the history of Europe furnishes 

 abundant examples of the second. We may there- 

 fore have dialects or diversities of related speech 

 without having a received speech at all. In the 

 flourishing time of Greece, Herodotus wrote in 

 Ionic and Thucydides in Attic. There was not 

 even a word for Greek, which, as separate from 

 its dialectal forms, was unknown till long after- 

 wards. In England the author of the first English- 

 Latin dictionary, the Promptorium Parvulomm, 

 apologises for writing in East Anglian, as being 

 the only form of speech he knew. It was not till 

 political domination called forth a court speech 

 that the seed of a received speech was sown ; but 

 centuries of writers, each touching up the artificial 

 changeling in his own way while using it to express 



