Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-09-22
THE WORLDS TONGUE.
More and More English is Becoming
the Universal Language.

From the San Francisco Bulletin.
English is today what French was in the
eighteenth century and Latin in the middle
ages the language chosen by common con-
sent for INSTRUMENTATION between
statesmen savants and fashionable and lit
erary persons Of different nations. With
English one can make his way convenient
ly along any Of the beaten tracks in Eu-
rope More people now speak English as
their vernacular than speak any other Eu-
rOpean tongue. s..
English tongue Is the recent action Of the
school authorities of the German govern
ment In making English an optional study
in the public schools OF Saxony. rms &C
ton was induced by petition addressed to
the government by the Dresden School,
masters Association. The petition was an
excellent syllabus Of the arguments In IA
vor Of English as subject for study In the
German public schools. A portion of it was
as follows:
First-English is the most widely used
civilized language in the world.
Second-It Is the most important Ian
guage for Germanys international trade
relations. In Dresden especially the knowl-
edge of English is of great advantage TO
shopkeepers and commercial men, owing TO
the important Anglo-American colony
thare.
Third-English deserves preference over
French on account of it's literature. which
(a) excels that Of France both from the ar
more nearly to our sentiment and under
standing as that Of Germanic people; tc)
has played prominent part in the develop
ment of our own literature.
Fourth-English is not inferior to French
in educative value.
Fifth-In the teaching of English the
readily learned grammatical forms of the
language enable the time allotted to Its
study to be spent in attaining the most I'M
portant object in teaching a foreign Ian
qua ee-the power of it's free use In speech
and writing This is not possible in the case
of French owing to the difficulty OF Its
grammar.
II is only within recent times that English
has been taught carefully even In English
and American schools. The old theory was
that student learned English best by
reading the Latin and Greek authors. While
the benefits Of a knowledge Of Latin and
Greek are very great. and certainly assist
in acquiring the accomplishment Of using
English correctly and elegantly, the close
attention now given to English in our own
schools will improve the average quality OF
English composition.
We scarcely appreciate what treasure
we possess In our English tongue. me vo-
cabulary of English has been enriched by
plumber from every land and every Ian
guage. 1t Is flexible tongue. adaptable to
any idea. and a tongue which welcomes &C
cessions when those are necessary 1t is
not by its intrinsic virtue, however. that the
English language is spreading and Is be-
coming the cosmopolitan medium OF COM
munication, but rather by the increasing
Importance Of the people that speak Eng
fish The British and the Americans con-
troll a large portion of the worlds trade
Their influence is felt everywhere. They
sell to everybody and everybody wishes to
sell to them. Verify. the English language
has come forward since the time when Ba-
con- despairing of the perpetuity of the
English tongue, translated some Of his
works into Latin.