Evening star., 1909-03-04
BAD ENGLISH ONCE 5000
BEST WRITERS AT ONE TIME
USED "HAVE WENT"
The Distinction Between Learn"
and "Teach" Is a Comparatively
Recent Fashion.

From the Literary Digest.
Some of the forms OF uneducated speech
that cause a shudder to the purist are
merely survivals of former polite usage.
They have gone a course like worn-out
clothes or furniture and are fallen on evil
days, as Prof Lounsbury shows in Har-
pers A case in point is the distinction
made between learn and teach. I'VE can
learn a thing: we canpot learn person
Yet Prof. Lounsbury asserts that there
are more than a dozen instances of the
use of learn in the sense OF teach IN the
writings Of Shakespeare" and he adds
that Lady Mary WORTHY Montagu. "one OF
the most brilliantly intellectual women
of her age "resorted unhesitatingiy TO
the now discarded employment or tho
word" When the uneducated use the eS-
preston have went they merely uncoh.
sciouslv refuse to go partner to a case OF
highway robbery. The Anglo-SaXoh speech
of our early ancestors equipped US. IL Is
said, with two verbs expressing the iuea
of movement In a given direction. one
was gam the original of go The other
was 'wendan,' our 'wend- The Vero
go" was and Is a genuine irregular verb
but 1t came to prefer the past tense
.wente" of its fellow to its own eode'
"yede" or ''yode." and helped itself there
to, clipping this word Of its final e. IL
retained its own past particlpie gone.
When. therefore. have. in Its capaclty
Of universal auxiliary, began to take the
place Of the forms Of be with verbs OF
motion" comments the professor. nave
gone became the standard tense phrase.
Have went was relegated to the speech
of the uneducated." The change came
gradually, however, and Chaucer. Spen-
GER. Sidney and finally Thomas Hearne as
late as 1927 used the earlier form. Prof
Lounsbury writes:
'.Have Went" Survives.
But though the use of went as past
participle disappeared from the language
of literature, it has continued to retain In
the speech of the uneducated all its orig
inal vigor From them it is heard now
as frequently as II was heard In Chaucers
time from the lips of the most cultivated
In this respect its fortunes have close
resemblance to those of certain aosolute
forms of the possessive pronoun Wneh IL
is not followed by substantive. Ihese
were once in good concurrent use with
rivals which have driven them out OF !
literary speech. None the less 90 u
still flourish as luxuriantly in the la
guage of low life they did in the da
when they were accepted by all as pt
fectly proper. These are in the forr
'ourn, 'yourn' and 'hern, to whlch In
were added 'hisn' and 'theirn Tn
used to be regularly accounted TOT
ractions Of the pronoun with the Ie
lowing own; our own for nlustratio
becoming 'our'n.' 1t bareiy neeo
of amateur philology. has long gone II
way Of similar explanations
"Ourn" and "Yourn."
"At the very outset IL is to be sat
that both ours and 'ourn.' yours an
| 'yourn, came somewhat late in the lar
guage The genuine chronological form
in both cases are 'oure.' our and you're
! your These continued to appear at time
| in Chaucer and his contemporaries.
| you swore to be all freely your, say.
| Cleopatra in addressing the dead Antony
This usage crops up at intervals ooWi
| to a. somewhat late period-as late Ger
| tainly as the seventeenth century. In llL'
! second Of his sonnets to Caelia, Bro"ne
| the author of 'Britannia's Pastorals, says
| of the sun that
| or thick clouds iutcrposed makes her less our
But these simple forms lack distinctive
ness. Language therefor out TO I'M
part it by adding to In one par.
| of the country the n $ OF INC
northern dialect in ano. art the END
ing ia n common in the leril. Stricty
I soea King they were both what We arc
wont to call corruptions. Ihey were III
reality double possessives. But they were
corruptonS which language lell the he
cessity of having.
Yet a choice between the two forms
seemed inevitab BILE. The Wyclimte YER
sion Of the Scriptures contains forms
ending in $50 and n; but Chaucer. VINO
in this particular pretty certainly rep
resented the usage prevailing in the cir
cles of the court" used only the
| forms. Says the writer: Had the condi.
ton of things been reversed we shoulo
all have been saying in these days ourll
ours and yours and hers as irredeem-
| a hla yl.lparlSmS.