of a Dominant Language for Science. 407 



French and Italian have but two. The conjugations of many 

 verbs are rather complicated. Nevertheless modern tendencies 

 weigh with the Germans, and it is evident that their language 

 is becoming a little modified. Scientific authors especially 

 exert themselves to attempt the direct modes of expression and 

 the short phrases of other countries, in the same way that they 

 have abandoned the Gothic printed letters. Should they 

 correspond with strangers, they often have the politeness to 

 write in Latin characters. They willingly inti'oduce in their 

 publications terms taken from foreign languages, modifications 

 sometimes merely of form, occasionally fundamental. These 

 attest the modern spirit and the enlightened judgment of the 

 learned men so numerous in Germany. Unhappily the modi- 

 fications of form have no great importance, and the fundamental 

 changes take place very slowly. 



The more practical English language shortens sentences and 

 Avords. It willingly takes possession of foreign words, as 

 German does ; but of cabriolet it makes cab^ of memorandum it 

 makes mem. It makes use only of indispensable and natural 

 tenses — the present, the past, the future, and the conditional. 

 There is no arbitrary distinction of genders : animated objects 

 are masculine or feminine ; the others are neuter. The ordi- 

 nary construction is so sure to begin with the principal idea 

 that in conversation you may often dispense with the necessity 

 of finishing your sentences. The chief fault of the English 

 language, its inferiority in comparison with German or Italian, 

 consists in an orthography absolutely irregular, and so absurd 

 that children take a whole year in learning to read *. The 

 pronunciation is not well articulated, not well defined. I 

 shall not go as far as Madame Sand in her amusing impreca- 

 tions on this point ; but there is truth in what she says. The 

 vowels are not distinct enough. But, in spite of these faults, 

 English, according to the same clever -vvi-iter, is a well-ex- 

 pressed language, quite as clear as any other, at least when 

 English people choose to revise their MSS., which they Avill 

 not always do ; they are in such a hurry ! 



English terms are adapted to modern wants. Do you wish 

 to hail a vessel, to cry "stop" to a train, to explain a machine, 

 to demonstrate an experiment in physics, to speak in few words 

 to busy and practical people, it is the language ^^ar excellence. 

 In comparison with Italian, with French, and, above all, with 



* Surprised, on one occasion, by the slowness with which intellirrent 

 English children learnt reading, I inquired the reason. Each letter has 

 several sounds, or you may say that each sound is written in several ways. 

 It is therefore necessary to learn reading word for word. It is an affair 

 of memory. 



