The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-03-24
The French and English Languages.

M. Milsand supports these assertions by
comparison of French with English, which he
considers especially calculated to display by
contrast the peculiar tendencies of his own lam
guage. English, as he describes it, is far from
homogeneous in character; it is less the result
OF any organic growth than of the organic de-
composition of two forms of speech, the ele-
ments of which cannot even be united under
one system of grammatical rules; but it possesses
the creative power of growing languages; it
still imposes on those who speak it the necessi-
ty OF creating new terms for every fresh sensa
ton, This is done by means of its movable
afhxes, which behave almost like the primary
elements of half formed words, not combining
with verb or substantive which they are.intend-
ed to modify, but assuming toward 1T a tenn
porary juxtaposition which indicates the more
clearly the mental conditions under which the
peculiar impression was conceived. A door
opens and dog, tortoise, a child or a maies-
tic person comes into the room. A Frenchman
sees them enter bounding" Crawling "run-
ming or walking solemnly" as the case may
be. For these different kinds of facts he has
but one general abstract term which denotes
no visible action, and which utters, under the
false semblance of verb, the merely Ineligible
result to which thousand different actions
may conduce. The Englshman, on
the contrary, employs as his verb
scribed, and indicates by simple proposition
the same result, which the occasion attaches
to it. He says the dog, the tortoise or the child
bounds, crawls or runs iuto the room. Again,
instead of the abstract word chercher, which ex-
presses only one conceivable hope or intention,
in view of which we may run,nage in our
pocket, extend our hand in the dark, look out
of the aoiadoac or turn ouer the leaves of die
tionary, the Englishman is able and even COM
PEELED to employ, each in its turn, as many de-
scriptive verbs as there are acts to be accom-
plished under the general name of seeking He
says feel for, tumble tor. look out for
The same descriptive CHI aracter at
taches to English adjectives; these denote the
sensible effect which the given quality pro-
duces. while corresponding words in French
express purely ineligible types of character
which no two minds can conceive in the same
manner, but which all minds clotho alike in the
one unmeaning word. In short, English ap-
peals to the imagination, French exclusively to
the intellect. The one reflects thought in its
subjective condition, the other expresses only
its objective results The one is supple medi-
UNI for all spontaneous and individual emotion
and the other is legal mask under which all
such emotion is concealed. German, of course
shares with English this elasticity, which is an
essential feature of Teutonic languages; it even
surpasses it in the power of raising sensuous
images by means of abstrac terms. The words
Undbhdngig Zufalig UaaaaStandig, for instance,
while expressing an abstract idea, recall more
strongly still the material impression from
which it is derived, The speech of an English.
man and German is like that of the ancient
Greeks, full of phrases. the meaning of which
it is impossible to UNDERESTIMATE which affect
the mind as SO many impressions of sight or
bearing, or so many strings of spontaneous
thought. contemporary Review.