The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-03-06
Our &ops anb Glrls.
The Scribe's Report.
OUR EXCURSION INTO THE REALM
OF LANGUAGE.

JlOnS nave ndu QulIe as IDuCu W w
with history as with literature. But
we are finding out that history and
literature have great deal to do with
each other. In some of your answers
allusion has been made to the need
that people have not only settled
language before they can have litera
ture, but language which is capable
of expressing great variety of ideas,
and of distinguishing fine shades of
glsh language stands in the front rank
in these respects that its literature is so
rich and varied. 1t has been our pur-
pose of late in some of the questions to
lead you to study out the cause of this
excellence in our language, which has
made it possible for us to have such
literature.
Archbishop Trench, in his " Study of
Words" calls language fossil his
tory" You know, many of you, that
it is by the help of fossils that geolo-
gists learn what was going on in this
earth of ours thousands of years before
man was created. These fossils are
bones and shells and imprints of va
rious forms of animal and vegetable
life which are found in the rocks; and
biologists can tell what condition the
earth must have been in for such ami
mails and plants to have been living
when the rocks in which they are found
were on the outside of the earth's crust.
And so when the philologist, as the
student of language is called, finds
words for ploughing, building or grinding
in some old inscription of three or four
thousand years ago, he knows that the
people who wrote that inscription must
have known about these arts. And
when he finds that several nations have
similar words for the same thing. he
knows that they must have had more
to do with each other than with the
people who either have very different
words for these things, or perhaps no
words at all for them, showing that
they were probably ignorant of these
arts. BY long and patient study of
this sort, philologists have learned that
all the languages of the world can be
traced back to three grand divisions.
The two most important of these are
the Semitic and Aryan. The other
class, called the Turanian, or Sporadic,
includes all not belonging to these two,
and is not so clearly defined as they
are. We will not stop to notice the
Semitic branch, except to say that the
Hebrew, in which our Old Testament
was written, is one of the most impOr-
tant members of that branch. We
have to do now with the Aryan lam
guages, which include nearly all those
of Europe, and nations-like our
selves-coonized from Europe, together
with the languages of India and Persia.
The earliest traces of the Aryan tongue
are found in the countries bordering
on the Black and Caspian seas. 1t is
thought that the forefathers of the
Aryan nations must have dwelt together
as one people for long time, because
their language shows that they made
great progress toward civilization But
there came a time when migration be-
gan toward the west; we can not tell
exactly when, but probably several
hundred years before Christ. For we
find that at the time of julius Caesar
the Celtic branch, who were among
the first to migrate, had been driven
by other swarms of Aryans en-
tirely across the continent of Europe
into Britain and Gaul. The Celtic
was the language spoken by the
early Britons, hence they were some
times called Celts; and the language
still survives in those parts of Cornwall
and Wales to which the Britons were
afterward driven by the Anglo-Saxons.
Other branches of the Aryan tongue
were the Hellenic, or Greek; the Sla-
vonlc, or Russian; the Romanic, used
in Italy, Spain, France and Portugal;
and the Gorhic, which is the one with
which we are chiefly concerned. This
branch took complete possession of
central and northern Europe and has
never reinquished its hold of these
parts, while its influence has been ex-
tending around the world. From il
came the language of the Germans, the
Scandinavians, and the Danes, or North
men; and this was the groundwork of
the Anglo-SaXon, which is, in turn, the
foundation of our English tongue.
And here we come to the point at which
we were aiming. 1t is because our
language is neither Hellenic, nor Ro-
manic, nor Gorhic, nor even Anglo
Saxon, but because it is composite
language, having absorbed into itself
from all these other languages what