LANGUAGES. 



Tho Origin of Languages. Decadence of the Latin Language. The Celtic and Teutonic 

 Languages. The Rustic Language. Common Neo-Latin Dialects. First Evidences of 

 the French Language. The Oath of Louis the German in 842. Laws of William the 

 Conqueror. The Oc and Oil Languages. Poem of Boethius. Tho " Chanson do Roland." 

 Fabliaux. The " Romance of the Rose." Villehardouin. The Sire de Joinville. Froissart. 

 Influence of Flemish Writers. Antoine de la Sale. The " Cent Nouvelles nouvelles " and 

 Villon. Hellenism and Italianism. Clement Marot and Rahclais. Ronsard, Montaigne 

 and filalherbe. 



soon as a language has reached the stage 

 of making the task of understanding 

 it a difficult one, the dissolution of the 



social elements is not far off Babel 



is symbolic of the destiny of languages." 

 We take this remark from the work of 

 M. Francis Wey on the "Variations of the 

 French Language," in which he points out 

 that idioms, like everything else mortal, 

 have their periods of rise and fall, and that 

 a time arrives when they are rendered 



diffuse by neologism, or decomposed by the influence of equivocation. 

 (3 The history of the confusion of tongues, as described by Moses in the 

 Book of Genesis, might be looked upon as typical of what happened in Europe 

 when the Roman people endeavoured to establish their dominion over all the 

 lands which they had conquered by means of their language, which was to 

 be the social cement of the whole nationality. " And the whole earth was of 



one language and of one speech And the Lord came down to see the 



city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, 

 Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language ; and this they 

 begin to do : and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they 

 have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their 



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