Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1895-05-29
OUR LANGUAGE.
Rapidly Spreading Itself Over
the World.
THE CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.
The English Language is Estimated b,
Some Philologis to Comprise About
10000 Distinct Words.

ing itself over the world is evident, II
the recent statement is admitted as
evidence: "In 1850 English was the
yernaoular Of about 100000; it is
now spoken by more than 1870. 900. 900.
This has been more than a mere lin
guistic expansion; it has been the de-
yelopment of the reach and the powers
of great treasure of thought; 1t has
been the establishment of an intellect
ual empire; it has made Shakespeare
and Milton and Bunyan, and above all
the English bible, familiar wherever
their tongue was spoken, and since it
has grown well-nigh cosmopolitan they
have become classics of the world. y
With "folk-lore" on the one side,
and the constant borrowing or incor-
porating foreign vocables from neigh
boring nations on the other, il need not
surprise us to hear it said that the dream
of its ultimately becoming the universal
form of human speech may yet be real
lied. PORT. Sayce of Oxford assumes
that the English is destined to become
the universal language; for 1T may be
heard" he writes, 'all over the world,
from the lips of larger number of
persons than any other form of speech,
and it is rapidly becoming the lam
guage of trade and commerce, the
unifying elements OF our modern life.
Science, too, is beginning to claim ii
for her own; it is not long ago that a
Swedish and Danish writer on scientific
subjects each chose to speak i'll Eng
fish, rather than in their own idioms,
for the sake of gaining wider au-
dience." The English language is esti-
mated by some philologists to comprise
about 10000 distinct words. Max
Muller is of the opinion that the aver
age farmer does not employ more than
about 800 words, while on the average
the cultivated classes of society may
use nearly ten times that number.
Milton. it has been estimated, repre-
sents about 5000 words, and Shake
speare, in all his productions, some.
thing like 1000.
Our every day speech may be per-
haps thus variously characterized as
symbolic. phonetic, idiomatic. poetic
and colloquial; but there are yet other
varieties-the dialectic, with its clip
pings and vulgarisms. which are alike
destructive of the purity, euphony and
charm of cultivated talk. No person
may be individually responsible for
the conventionalisms or inelegancies of
speech we so often hear. but it is in
the power of every one to avoid their
use.
Prof. Whitney's protest against the
too prevailing use of slang phrases is
worth repeating. He says: Attend
ency to colloquial inelegancies and
slang and vulgarities of speech is the
besetting sin against which we, as
Americans, have especially to guard
and to struggle" Good old Anglo
Saxon IS to be chosen rather than Nor
man roots: and monosyllabic rather
than polysyllabic "Avoid all poly
syllable profundity, pompous prolixity
and ventriloquial verpidity. Shun
double entendre and prurient jocosity,
whether obscure or apparent. In other
words, speak truthfully, naturally,
clearly, purely, but do not use large
words"
But now to our pathological excur-
sion in hunting up some of the vagaries
of common talk; and the first instance
shall be with Understanding word,
and one which no person would sus-
pect to have had very undignified
parentage-sagacity. We find the an
cient Romans applied to it the keen
ness of scent of the dog. Cicero de-
rives "sagax" from 'sagire''; so we
may be said to derive our modern title
of wisdom from the canine quadruped.
since "sagax" was given to that faith
full animal because he followed his
nose. The term person" came to us
from the Latin root persona, which
originally was applied to mask, worn
sometimes by the actors at Rome;
when we now read of the "dramatis
persona" we no longer think of the
masks, but the real characters of the
play. We rather apply it to an indi-
vidual to indicate personality. AS
illustrative instances, taken at ran
dom, Of instances of words that have
travelled from their primitive import,
the following speak for themselves:
The term funeral is from the Latin
"funis," a torch; the name was APP
piled to the burial service, because the
Romans were accustomed to bury their
dead by torchlight. With us the
funotionary who superintends the
burial is styled undertaken. but why
that word should be monopolized by
him does not appear, unless it is be-
cause he puts under the deceased. The
word which is now generally used to
indicate affection, 'tribulation, "
came also from the Latin, "tribulum, "
which originally meant separating, as
we separate the wheat from the chat
by the thrashing machine. There
are few persons. doubtless. who have
not been visited by the evil genius
called nightmare. Warrior gives us
the following derivation of the name
Mara, whence our nightmare is de-
rived, was. in the Runic theology, a
- n - Il. u