Race and language / by André Lefèvre.

  • Lefèvre, André, 1834-1904.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Race and language / by André Lefèvre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    437/444 (page 421)
    Two Analytical Languages. 421 vocabulary is as two to three. And in counting all the words in the dictionaries of Webster and Robert¬ son, M, Thommerel has shown that out of 43,566 words, 29,853 come from the classical languages, 13,230 from the Teutonic. Now of these 30,000 French or Latin words, which for the rest are entirely Anglicised in pronunciation, more than a third are but doubles of Saxon words. Hence there is an infinite wealth of synonyms—that is, of expressions applicable to the subtlest variations of the same idea. The Teutonic element predominates in all that relates to the pro¬ ducts of nature, minerals, plants, living animals, to the structure of the human body, to temperature, and to atmospherical phenomena, in the names of utensils, furniture, and tools. All which marks the relation of words to each other, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, is also Saxon., Politics, law, social functions, wealth, honours, philosophy, art, science, trades, and cooking derive their terms from French and Latin. Poetry uses Saxon words by preference, and this it is which renders it so difficult for foreigners to understand ; there are two languages in English, and he must know them both who would read Shakespeare and Byron. English, in short, received in the eleventh century from a more advanced civilisation, and has con¬ tinued to borrow from it, the expression of those ideas which it had not had time to acquire. French presents a similar phenomenon; only it was from the same source as it had drawn the elements of its popular form that it sought the new terms required by the progress of science and thought. Having exhausted the Latin of the people, it borrowed freely from classical Latin, It therefore remains far more homogeneous than English; but it has drawn similar advantages