date

24 March 1814 Omitt out of school 2 +
24 March 1814 Omitt out of school 2 +

School {or Logic}

1

Language

5

'. Importation of Words from Foreign Languages dead and living - its conveniences and inconveniences.

There exists not that state in life, be it ever so humble, in which a man's wellbeing is not, in some shape or other, in some degree or other more or less dependent on the acquaintance he has with his own language - of the language in which he not only converses but thinks. Language being not merely the instrument of discourse but, moreover, the instrument of thought, the stock of a man's ideas is limited and determined by the stock of the words which he finds at his command for giving expression to those ideas.

In every language, words are found in clusters growing out of the same root. Whatsoever be the cluster to which the word in question belongs, the comprehension a man has of its import is comparatively imperfect, if it include not a more or less general acquaintance with the whole cluster to which it belongs. In the stock of words of which the English language is composed, a very considerable, not to say the largest, portion, are borrowed from some one or other of several foreign languages; in some instances at a very early date, in others at different points of time from the remotest down to the most recent. In some instances these words so borrowed were transplanted in a single state, in others in large clusters, in others in smaller clusters, which, after transplantation, have gradually grown into larger ones.

125
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  • Title: [25 March 1814 School 2]
    Description: 25 March 1814

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    When a word has thus been transplanted and naturalised in a single state, the conception entertained of its import by persons altogether unacquainted with the cluster to which it belonged in the language from which it was borrowed, is always very obscure and imperfect in comparison with that which he has of a word which forms one of a cluster, more or less complete, originally of the growth of his own language, or fully rooted and naturalised in it.

    These languages are some of them of a northern, some of them of a southern origin; of the northern, the one principally borrowed from is the German; of the southern, the French. Among ancient languages, those principally borrowed from are the Latin and Greek. The Latin being the language from which the French has borrowed a great part, perhaps the largest part, of it words; hence in the instance of many words of Latin origin, it remains a question whether the word was derived from the Latin immediately, or remotely, through the medium of the French. The Greek being the language of the writers from whom the first crude notions respecting most of the arts and sciences were derived to us; hence the appropriate terms, expressive of the subject-matters and operations belonging to those several branches of art and science, have in a large proportion been borrowed from that language. Even when the subject-matter, instrument, or operation, is itself new, a convenience is found, on several accounts, in taking its name from a foreign language, more especially from the Greek, rather than from our own.

    126
  • Title: [25 March 1814 School 4]
    Description: 25 March 1814

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    The difficulty consists in getting men to give themselves the trouble of establishing this association; whereas, when the language from which the word is taken is a man's own language, the association, such as it is, is already formed; and howsoever clumsy the new appellative appears, and howsoever troublesome the cluster of collateral and (with reference to the purpose in question) irrelevant ideas it stands associated with, and however confused and inadequate the import is which it has the effect of presenting, still it can scarcely fail of bringing to view an import having some similarity to the one which it is intended to present; whereas, if it be a word of altogether foreign original, no other word of the cluster it belongs to being presented to the mind of the person in question, the necessary result is that, if the explanation attached to it has either never been received into the mind, or, after having been so received, has dropped out, the word is so much unmeaning sound, not presenting any the faintest intimation of the import which it is intended to present.

    128
  • Title: [1825 March 16 Language 6]
    Description: 1825 March 16

    Language

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    6

    The greater the number which in any language can be found of those sorts of words called conjugates, the more manageable will the language be, and the fitter for all the purposes of language.

    For the formation of these, the first and most obvious step will be, for a man to begin with the language in which he writes - to take stock as they say in mercantile accounts, to form his inventory out of those articles which his own language furnishes, and then to see what if any enrichment it may be made to receive from other languages.

    On this occasion one subject of observation will be, the difference - the prodigious difference, between the degree, in which, in its present state, the language is stocked with this or that one sort of conjugate, and the degree in which it is stocked with this or that other sort of conjugate; in this or that one instance the number stretching to hundreds or even thousands, in this or that other, not going beyond units; when the same use, which is actually derived from the species of conjugate in those two or three instances, might, without inconvenience, be derived from it in the two or three hundred, or two or three thousand instances.

    As a noun or a verb is a cluster of words, so a complete set of conjugates, formed upon the model of those already in use, and by analogy, each of them made complete, would include in it an aggregate cluster of all those clusters.

    139