308 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES
of the world, finding it necessary to have a common* tongue for mutual intercourse, have raised Yiddish to the status of a language, and have succeeded in translating into Yiddish the best books to be found in the world's literature. Even they qpuld not satisfy the soul's yearning through the many foreign tongues of which they are masters ; nor did the learned few among them wish to tax the masses of the Jewish population with having to learn a foreign language before they could realise their dignity. So they have enriched what was at one time looked upon as a mere jargon but what the Jewish children learnt from thei* mothers by taking special pains to translate into it the best thought of the world. This is a truly marvellous work. It has been done during the present generation, and Webster's Dictionary defines it as a polyglot jargon used for inter-communication by Jews from different nations.
But a Jew of Middle and Eastern Europe would feel insulted if his mother-tongue were now so described. If these Jewish scholars have succeeded, within a genera- tion, m giving their masses a language of which they may feel proud, surely it should be an easy task for us to supply the needs of our own vernaculars which are cul- tured languages. South Africa teaches us the same lesson. There was a duel there between the Taal, a corrupt form of Dutch, and English. The Boer mothers and the Boer fathers were determined that they would not let their children, with whom they in their infancy talked in the- Taal, be weighed down with having to receive instruc- tion through English. The case for English here was a strong one. It had able pleaders for it. But English bad to yield before Boer patriotism* It may be
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