ANTICIPATIONS
These are the aggregating tongues. I do not think that any other tongues than these are quite likely to hold their own in the coming time. Italian may flourish in the city of the Po valley, but only with French beside it. Spanish and Russian are mighty languages, but without a reading public how can they prevail, and what prospect of a reading public has either? They are, I believe, already judged. By A. D. 2000 all these languages will be tending more and more to be the second tongues of bi-lingual communities, with French, or English, or less probably German winning the upper hand.
But when one turns to China there are the strangest possibilities. It is in Eastern Asia alone that there seems to be any chance of a synthesis sufficiently great to maintain itself, arising outside of, and independently of, the interlocked system of mechanically sustained societies that is developing from mediæval Christendom. Throughout Eastern Asia there is still, no doubt, a vast wilderness of languages, but over them all rides the Chinese writing. And very strong—strong enough to be gravely considered—is the possibility of that writing taking up an orthodox association of sounds, and becoming a world speech. The Japanese written language, the language of Japanese literature, tends to assimilate itself to Chinese, and fresh Chinese words and expressions are continually taking root in Japan. The Japanese are a people quite abnormal and incalculable, with a touch of romance, a conception of honour, a quality of imagination, and a clearness of intelligence that renders possible for them
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