Year: 1873

THE ENGLISH LANG UAGE ON TRLAL.


The letter from Mr. Arinori Mori. the
Charge dAflaires of Japan, to Professor Whit.
ney, which we published recently, opens
the most Important question in practical phi
lOlogy ever presented to the world. There is
something stupendous about Mr.. Morris plan.
IL cOntemplates nothing less than the deliber-
ate rejection of their own language and the
adoption of another utterly different one, by
the people of 'an empire of forty millions.
Mr.. Mori recognizes the impossibility of max
ing a cumbrous language like the Japanese
serve as a vehicle for the new ideas and the
enormously enlarged relations of the new
Japan. He sees the advantages which
would result from the adoption OF
live and flexible speech like the English,
terse and concise. almost free from infections
or grammar. But he shrinks from recon-
mending to his countrymen the terrible labor
which is necessary to surmount the difficult
ties which be has himself devoted years to
conquering, and if the English language is to
be adopted in place of the Japanese, he wants
it to be pruned of its irregular verbs, its
capriciOus plurals, and its lawless variations OF
spelling and sound. 1t is easy enough for us
to read


"Though the tough cough and hiccough plough me
through,


Straight through the slough I'll thoroughly pursue"


but the acquisition of the true pronunciation
of these lines would be weeks work to the
average foreigner Mr.. Mon proposes to dis
pose of this difficulty at once by phonetic
spelling. The enterprise kof making forty
millions of people learn new language Is
one so gigantic that the able diplomatist who
nroposes It NAV well be excused for trying in
every possible way to make the task easier.
For this purpose he calls upon the authority
hest fitted to answer, to know if the desirable
notifications are practicable


II does not seem, at first sight, as if the
great difficulty would lie in that direction. 1t
is extremely improbable that any considerable
portion of the population of the Islands can
be induced to learn foreign language The
English would not learn French under William
and his successors. The Poles will sooner die
than learn Russian. The Magyars prefer isola-
ton 10 the study of German. And even If
this difficulty were out of the way the strange
and unvarying law of dialect would come into
piay, and a new language would grow up from
the effort to learn English bearing little more
relation to the language of Shakespeare than
the pigeon English of China, or the Chinook
iargon of our Northwest coast There are
very ingenious theories to account for all dia-
lect peculiarities, but it has never been made
clear why Cockney should say Heggs" and
not Ham, to save his life, and why Ger
man should interchange his DIS and ts his
p's and b's in foreign language while pro-
noyncing them correctly in his own. 1t
is probable that however perfect frame
work Mr.. Mori might be able to pre-
sent to his countrymen, he would find
that by the time a few. millions of them
had learned English, it would be language
such IA neither he nor Prof Whitney ever
dreamed of. But the plan is fascinating and
grandiose all the same, and the discussion of
it by man So quick -witted and liberal as
Arinori Mori, and a pbioogist so thoroughly
accomplished as Prof. Whitney, cannot fail to
be equally entertaining and instructive.