Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-11-07
TEACHING OF ENGLISH TONGUE.
Careless Introduction and Use OF
Words Condemned.
From the New York Herald.

From the New YORK Herald
Discussions now current in educational
circles concerning the manner IN when
English shall be taught to pupils In acade-
mics and colleges direct attention once
more to the imminent need of proper edu-
cation for educational authorities. A pro-
cess Of deterioration is at work In the Ian
guage, which is largely due to the careless
hospitality OF our dictionary makers toward
the ugly and superfiuous in verbal innova-
lions or verbal resurrections. The importa-
ton Of slang by the vulgar, on the one
hand, and on the other the revival OF OBJ
solete and obsolescent words by the affect
ed and the self-conscious, are alike
menace to the vigor and purity OF our
speech.
Lingual orthodoxy must not. Of course,
be too fanatically conservative or II Will
result In the stagnation which fanatlcai
conservatism has always brought down
upon orthodoxy. To a certain extent the
exits and entrances Of words must con-
stantly be going on, In order that IAN
guage shall be kept vitality responsive TO
every contemporary need. But the pro
cession to and fro should be under the
sternly repressive hand of a wise master
of ceremonies. They order this matter
better in France" There the academy
stands guard over the portals and examines
the credentials Of every applicant Tor ad-
mission or rejection. Here the dictionary
makers defer too much to the sciolist and
the unscientific. And thus words are con-
tinually perverted from their legitimate
meanings or forced into new and nleS1tl-
mate uSageS.
Thus nouns are transformed into verbs,
either directly as in ito knife" or ito dy-
Mantle" or with some infiectional change,
as in donate" from donation, or bur
gle' or ''burglarize," from burglary All
M
bered are sanctioned, either condfttonally
or Internationally, by the dictionaries OF
greatest repute among American scholars
In the way of REVEALS verfdical, which
has no meaning beyond that packed into
the little word true" seems to be a use
less waste of syllables. Moreover. 1t is
formed upon a false analogy with the
French 'veridique," which means truthful
and is applied only to persons Urquhart,
however, used 1t in the seventeenth CEN
tury-in translation from the Frenchman
Rabelais-and Carlyle repeated its use In
the nineteenth-in an essay on the French
man Voltaire. What Urquhart did and
Carlyle approved cannot be wrong'-is this
the new version of Budgets famous lines!
Such words "arrestation' for arrest
and retractation'' for "retract'' are likewise
ugly phonetic redundancies which have no
proper place, save as archa elogtcal Curl
osities In our language. But they are sup
ported by authority, therefore they can
not escape the dragnets of the word fishers
Now, authority, not even lfldt Oh genius,
can force a word into general usage with
the cultivated classes. And 1t is only such
usage-the result of natural selection and
not of coercion-which decides whether
word is English or not.
During the middle ages hundreds OF
Latinsms were introduced into the current
vocabulary. There were no dictionaries IN
those days. Therefore, the majority of
these many inventions persisted, as they dc
served to perish Only the best and most
useful survived. But the dragnets have
been tossed even into the waste places IN
these photographed days. Hence we see,
for example, the resuscitation of such
word as "suscitate," because 1t was found
that the unread Ben Jonson uses 1t In its
participial, and the forgotten Sir Thomas
Eiyott in its Indicative form.
Many years ago Richard Grant White
bemoaned the existence of such a perverse
melting of discordant meanings as occur in
the then common phrase prominently
Identified The then common phrase con-
tinues to be common still, despite all that
can be said against 1t. OF course identity
Cbased on the Latin. idem) means same
ness Prominent (from the Latin promi-
nens) means "jutting out FROM, standing
apart from" The two terms, IN short, are
utterly homogeneous. Now when you say
that a man is Identified with a cause or
country you strain the limits of allowable
metaphor, but when you say that he Is