New-York daily tribune., 1858-11-16
Mr.. MARSHS FIFTH LECTURE.

.
| The Hon. Mr.. M,KsH gave The Filth Iectsre of biz
Series the English Language yesterday aternoco.
He said that when Sharon Turner wrote his HIS
tSry of the AugloSaxons their tongue supplied eighty
per eeot OF the words cf the English language $nce
then In foreign elements have been rapidly incruAes
lpg Nsh reference 10 the comparstve strength o! shs
Latin and Saxcr constituents Of English, he said that ~
gerera, employed Lsi, rsefxss for Latin words, %
rather tock thnn In their ecrivave shape. resdy-tr>
nlshed with pieSAss; 80, Saxon woris had Ssxo D
pie6xes; il there was any diStyerce il WAS in
favor of tie Saxon. But as 20 suffice while freely
tolerated SaIsn suflxss to Is.io werAs, a. psifsl
rr;nle.s, and aoded them to Latin vcrbs =
c'asaess found difficulty ia adding Latin suifixes
to Sa1or word, and found such words ~ sceabe and
te.reble awkward, although we had besn drilled
n;o enduring few, Ike i0ra5te. Latin verbs
we'c coniuga,oi according to the Ssron rule.
and foreign adiectives, according to the Saxon
fashion, although had imported the
Of more and most, irst for the two or three sysbled
French adiectivss ending in ess and for the longer
SaAo, adjectives. But thoroughly English authors
had never fully adopted and most aud the, were
| row less used than they had been. 1t was quite
natural that the English tongue should receive
sons fism every other il was brought into
nearly universal relations than any other as the great
| bulk of the worlds commerce was done by Anglo
Saxon msn. Uniting freedom tolerance aud dprosrrs~,
il WAS III. model speech Of modern humanity Pevicus
TO the date OF any Apgo-Saxon literature which hsd
come dows to us. and long before the Norman ceo-
quest the lana uage had been Lstnsed to some exsnt
BY the introduction of Christianity. II WAS remark
able that the Celtic cemen, slight for generally
languages Ike ser seemed to be absorbed to the sol
and usually after the conquest Of country the tongos
c the copquerors conquered by the tongue Of tho
conquered. The Latin tongue exceptionally folowsd
Latin civilization throughout Southern Europe exoePS
in those countries where it met the superior Greek
| civilization; there il found no foothold. The Latin
invasion of Cloths, Vandals and Tartars succeeisa
only in reducing the Latin TO dialects. There wsro
some T.utonic words in Italnn-many ip tho speech
Of some portions of ftaly-and tho syntax OF Spsnish
showed traces Of the blonde blood (sdagre d-rD Of
the Northern invader. During the Moorish conquest
books were written in Arsbsc by Spanish Jews
| and Christian princes, aud the Arabic char
aeter was used for the Spanish language. Of
| all the European languages tho Celtic aiose
appeared to have made no conquess. 1t had modihsd
neither the vocabulary nor the syntax OF any OF the
languages with which it had como in costsct. Tho
Wesh-tbe only dialect Of Celtic which had rcacAe4
| any COZ siderable cutme-though bordering on the
English, had made less impression upon It than tho
Arabic; aud upon the Scotch, continual c,ntsct with
the Gallo had produced ess change than occasionaa
contact with the Scandinavian. There were two ways
of estmarg the value Of wordsone by the dictionary.
another, better ard more difficult by noticisg their
frequency and Importance in actual speech. Il was
singular that although the Spanish was extensively
cultivated in En- gland toward the close Of the siteenth
| "a l.l l.I l.kkf o..,ko c,l,a "a had
more Portuguese than Spanish words Our tef,cAis.
from the Porting sorccry our 600 srroneously
spelled cocoa, and generally confoundsd with caoae
very different thing) tho Portuguese word for
bogy and the nuts called from thoir rc-
sebance to the masks used to fghten children with.
Palarr was the Portuguese polarra, word. These
words had been supposed to be African or Indian
Tbe word demyoln, sometimes spelled dess.,ohn, a. U
it was only half john in French damn Jeanne lady
jane, which had given rise to story about some Lady
Jane who introduced them, not compound, but
was 20 called from town in Persia, once famous for
it's glassworks, DamagaD where they originally
manufactured. It seemed strange to and Arabs and
Icelanders using the word for elephant but when
we remembered the voyages of Icolanders In the
middle ages to the Levant and to Jerusalem, It was
accounted for. Calico had been sent US with tho
article from Caicut in Hndoetan and tho Few psddlsr
in the streets of the cities of the Leyant cred out,
"Amenkanee," meaning that be had American cottons
to SELL or cottons which he wished to sell for America
Our commerce was exchange of words well a. Of
products. Wherever railways and steamboats, had
gone English words had gone with them. The words
railway, wagon, express, truck, tender, ballast tus-
mel, were in all Europe and on stsamboats--
whether on the Baltic, the Rhone the Danube or tho
dstaL. East one heard the familiar words, Stop her,
80 ahead, half steam. Many a traveller had been sur
prised to find what he thought remarkable resem-
blsnce between Slsyonic or Arabic and bis own
tongue Beside the words which added to the IAN
gusge by every generation, multitude wers produced
and used for time only without attaining place IN
literature. Our word caucus was one. And Montaigps
told us the pains taken to teach him Lstin-hs heard
nothing ese for several years from his birthevery-
body with him, even the nurse, being obliged to speak
Lstr-rooted many Latin words firmly in the speech
Of the peasanry his fathers domain that they woro
still used fifty years afterward.
Mr. Marsh will, on Wednesday, consider the relative
influence Of different foreign languages upon the En-
ish.
Css,L CosrrAcTIsc BoARD.-The Board, at its