Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/339

 THE NORTH SLESWIC QUESTION 323

eradication have proved an extremely arduous task. Anglo-Saxon purifiers of the English tongue will appreciate this difficulty. While the weeding-out process is continually going on, led by able linguists and men of letters, German loan-words still abound, clad in Danish garb and naturalized. It would thus be futile to deny that the Danish language is indebted to its German neighbor ; but it is not the indebtedness of a child to a mother or even an older sister ; rather that to a midwife and a nurse.

The two are akin. But between modern High German and Danish, as it is today spoken and written by the educated classes, there is a wide gulf of differences in form and structure, in sound and genius. The Danish sentence construction is simple and direct as in English, not involved and labored like the Ger- man. Danish is rounded and smooth, with a tendency to slur and a strong predilection for soft consonants ; German is rugged and pebbly, inclined toward hardness, harshness. In consonance with the national character of the two peoples, Danish is supple and conversationally easy lyrically tender ; German stiff and majestic, rhetorically ponderous epically stirring. In the armory of dialectics Danish supplies the rapier of irony, German the war-club of pathos. Danish has been called the most sub- dued language in the world ; the very core of German is robust- ness and force. German is an Alpine torrent, Danish a serene brook. The storm-swept pines of the Black Forest breathe through the German's songs ; the lyre of the Dane is tuned by the balmy breeze from the beech woods of his low, green isles.

Which of the two offers the better vehicle for the expression of thoughts and feelings, in verse and prose, must remain a mat- ter of individual taste. In any comparison allowance must be made for the national equation. Either is indissolubly wedded to, and must be seen in the light of, at the same time that it reflects, the national character which forged it. No touchstone has as yet been discovered for testing the relative merits of dif- ferent languages as bearers of culture other than the degree of adequacy to which the products of culture have found utterance in them and through their medium been made accessible to all who master them. But the Dane who should venture the asser-