illiterate and did not know whence their ancestors came, they can only have inherited, by oral tradition, the words brought generations before by immigrants from the mother country. It is strange with what tenacity the best-instructed persons are wont to cling to the past in matters of speech. When they can not do so in pronunciation, they show their fidelity to the same instinct in orthography.[1] They would greet with a guffaw the suggestion that they should travel, or live, or dress as did their grandfathers, or even their fathers; but they adhere to the spelling of the tenth preceding generation with a tenacity worthy of a nobler cause. In France no less than in England the spelling reformers have an almost insurmountable task before them. It is worthy of remark, however, that many words are pronounced by Americans more nearly as printed than by Englishmen. One seldom knows how to pronounce an English proper name from the printed page.
The primitive races exhibit a lack of capacity for abstract thought that is well nigh incredible. It seems almost impossible for them to generalize. Every perceived object has a separate name because it is a separate entity. Among the Innuits an older brother, a younger brother, a youngest brother, is each designated by a different term. The same is true of sisters; and when a brother, a sister or a father is deceased, still another word is employed when speaking of them. The Lapps have a word to designate the relationship of the husband of a man's sister, and another to designate that of men who have married sisters, but their language lacks one for brother-in-law. In this respect these and other languages are more definite than the English or the German. The Greek and Latin are still more careless in the designation of relationship by marriage. Herein all the primitive races have
- ↑
The following bits of verse, which I found somewhere, facetiously but truthfully represent some of the vagaries of our English pronunciation and orthography:
My wife had a dog yelept Caesar,
As a gift he was given to please her.
One day he attempted to seize her,
Angry, perhaps, or to tease her.
She said: "I'd be glad if some bees or
Wasps would do him to death, or a freeze, for
I've no more int'rest in him."
Wife, make me some dumplings of dough,
They're better than meat for my cough;
Pray, let them be boiled till hot through,
But not till they're heavy or tough.
Now I must be off to the plough,
And the boys, when they've all had enough
Must keep the flies off with a bough
While the black mare drinks at the trough.
