Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
The Future of Our Tongue
By Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury (18381915)W
In fact, it is not from the agencies that are commonly supposed to be corrupting that our speech at the present time suffers: it is in much more danger from ignorant efforts made to preserve what is called its purity. Rules have been and still are laid down for the use of it, which never had any existence outside of the minds of grammarians and verbal critics. By these rules, so far as they are observed, freedom of expression is cramped, idiomatic peculiarity destroyed, and false tests for correctness set up, which give the ignorant opportunity to point out supposed error in others; while the real error lies in their own imperfect acquaintance with the best usage. One illustration will be sufficient of multitudes that might be cited. There is a rule of Latin syntax that two or more substantives joined by a copulative require the verb to be in the plural. This has been foisted into the grammar of English, of which it is no more true than it is of modern German. There is nothing in the usage of the past, from the very earliest times, to authorize it, nothing in the usage of the present to justify it, except so far as the rule itself has tended to make general the practice it imposes. The grammar of English, as exhibited in the utterances of its best writers and speakers, has, from the very earliest period, allowed the widest discretion as to the use either of the singular or the plural in such cases. The importation and imposition of rules foreign to its idiom, like the one just mentioned, does more to hinder the free development of the tongue, and to dwarf its freedom of expression, than the widest prevalence of slovenliness of speech, or of affectation of style; for these latter are always temporary in their character, and are sure to be left behind by the advance in popular cultivation, or forgotten through the change in popular taste.
Of the languages of Christendom, English is the one now spoken by far the largest number of persons; and from present appearances there would seem to be but little limit to its possible extension. Yet that it or any other tongue will ever become a universal language is so much more than doubtful, that it may be called impossible; and, even were it possible, it is a question if it would be desirable. However that may be, its spread will depend in the future, as it has in the past, not so much upon the character of the language itself, as upon the character of the men who speak it. It is not necessarily because it is in reality superior to other tongues, that it has become more widely extended than they, but because it has been and still is the speech of two great nations which have been among the foremost in civilization and power, the most greedy in the grasping of territory, the most successful in the planting of colonies. But as political reasons have lifted the tongue into its present prominence, so in the future to political reasons will be owing its progress or decay. Thus, back of everything that tends to the extension of language, lie the material strength, the intellectual development and the moral character, which make the users of a language worthy enough and powerful enough to impose it upon others. No speech can do more than express the ideas of those who employ it at the time. It cannot live upon its past meanings, or upon the past conceptions of great men which have been recorded in it, any more than the race which uses it can live upon its past glory or its past achievements. Proud, therefore, as we may now well be of our tongue, we may rest assured that, if it ever attain to universal sovereignty, it will do so only because the ideas of the men who speak it are fit to become the ruling ideas of the world, and the men themselves are strong enough to carry them over the world; and that, in the last analysis, depends, like everything else, upon the development of the individual; depends, not upon the territory we buy or steal, not upon the gold we mine, or the grain we grow, but upon the men we produce. If we fail there, no national greatness, however splendid to outward view, can be anything but temporary and illusory; and, when once national greatness disappears, no past achievements in literature, however glorious, will perpetuate our language as a living speech, though they may help for a while to retard its decay.