14 



ON THE CLASSIFICATION 



of language and race, take into consideration, if possible, 

 the original and not the adopted language ; and that too 

 in a form the least corrupted and mixed with modern 

 and foreign elements. 



Numerical preponderance will generally, in course of 

 time, overpower the resistance of a minority, especially if the 

 majority is the reigning tribe, and the weaker minority cannot 

 support their resistance by peculiarly favorable coincidents, 

 such as are provided by impenetrable jungles in inaccessible 

 mountain tracts, or by a distant island where the refugees 

 might find a sure shelter, live unmolested from their foes, 

 and keep up their manners and customs together with their 

 native dialect. History provides many examples of this 

 kind. 



But victorious races do not succeed always in imposing 

 their own idiom on the vanquished ; nay,, we often see that 

 the victors accept, in course of time, the language of their 

 subjects. A remarkable instance of this kind is offered by 

 China, where nearly every foreign invader had to submit 

 to Chinese fashion in his speech as in his domestic arrange- 

 ments. In South India the more highly gifted Aryans 

 adopted as speech Dravidian languages which denote a less 

 developed state of expression than Sanskrit. The fact that 

 the Saxons of England retained their Teutonic dialect, even 

 after the Norman conquest, is of no great importance, as the 

 original dialect of the Norman was related to the Anglo- 

 Saxon ; and French, though adopted in France owing to 

 the influence of the greater refinement and civilization of 

 the French, and to the authority of the clergy, was equally 

 different from Norse as from Anglo-Saxon. 



We must not lose sight of the fact that a person who 

 learns a foreign language, and who does so either volun- 

 tarily or compulsorily, either for temporary or for permanent 

 use, submits himself to the rule of that language. He tries 

 to speak it, to think in it according to its proper mode, i.e., 



