The colloquial linguistic faculty and its physiological groundwork / by Walter Hayle Walshe.

  • Walshe, Walter Hayle, 1812-1892.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The colloquial linguistic faculty and its physiological groundwork / by Walter Hayle Walshe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    of the young lady of the house are made constantly to address her as Miss,—for example, Out, Miss, je dois partir demain A well-meaning English friend of the author undertook to point out the error of this mode of address, striving to make the Parisian understand that in good English society equals do not, after the French model, Mademoiselle young ladies, as themselves would say,. a tout bout de champ!' He was told, servants only and inferiors use the phrases No, Miss, Yes, Miss, &c. But the French dramatist knew better; he would hold to his text. At one stroke he would give the benighted Anglo-Saxon three lessons : one in pronunciation (Miss is always pronounced in France as if written Meess), a second in idiomatic social phraseology, and a third in good manners; for obviously if we do not, we ought to, inter- lard our conversation with unmarried ladies with a per- petually recurring Miss, Miss, Miss, for the simple reason, 'tis the habit in France.* The acknowledged inaptitude of the average Englishman for the colloquial acquirement of continental tongues owns no such cause as national vanity; we do not render our- selves ridiculous by inane faith in the wondrous superiority of our vernacular. Nor is the cause of failure among English people any special want of readiness in ideation : their linguistic deficiency apparently depends on sluggish dynamism of the national emissive word-centre; feeble activity of the motor-centre regulating movements in the mouth and lips; inaptness of the muscles concerned to respond to the cerebral orders, and poverty of imitative faculty. The extreme difference of the vowel-sounds in the two languages will always prove a stumbling block in the way of the Englishman striving to reproduce the native French pronunciation, and his powers of memory will be unduly taxed in retaining the arbitrary distinctions of gender. IX.—In conclusion : the rare endowment of easily and perfectly acquiring fresh languages apparently depends on the possession of a plus amount of structural and dynamic excellence of the ideating and emissive word-centres, aided by subordinate activities and conditions. Not assuredly can the accomplishment be traced to extra-vigour of the higher qualities of intellect. The mathematical! and the * I regret to have mislaid the reference to the newspaper article in which this whimsical illustration of national conceit is put on record.