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TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 



M. Kenan's objection, I have begun b^ show- 

 ing, from a consideration of the Romanic dia- 

 lects, that the difficulty is only imaginary. " A 

 language like Latin, spread over a vast space of 

 country in imperfectly civilized times, inevitably 

 breaks up into a host of local patois. Each se- 

 cluded rustic community has its own style of 

 pronunciation, its own choice of words and syn- 

 tactical devices, its own method of contracting 

 or otherwise modifying its expressions. And 

 although the inhabitants of any given town 

 can usually communicate with those of the next 

 town, the slight differences accumulate until 

 intercourse between distant places is no longer 

 practicable. In such a state of things we find 

 plenty of transitional dialects, as the Genoese 

 and Provencal between Italian and French, and 

 the Balearic and Catalan between French and 

 Spanish. The Tuscan can understand the Gen- 

 oese, the Genoese can understand the dweller 

 in Piedmont, the Piedmontese can understand 

 the Vaudois, the Vaudois can understand the 

 Lyonnais, and so on until we come to Paris ; 

 but the Tuscan and the Parisian cannot under- 

 stand each other. Now the progress of civili- 

 zation in each country tends to kill out the 

 patois, elevating that variety of the language 

 which has been made the vehicle of the domi- 

 nant literature to supremacy over the more 

 provincial forms. Increased facilities of com- 



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