Page:Book of record of the time capsule of cupaloy (New York World's fair, 1939).djvu/27

 A KEY TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

DR. John P. Harrington

FTER five thousand years all the spoken languages of the present time will have become extinct or so altered as to require a key for their understanding. The English language spoken in the United States today, if not replaced by some other natural or invented tongue, will have suffered complete reforming many times over through the laws of linguistic evolving—laws which though proceeding in regular paths will, because of their complexity, work the apparent result of radical havoc. Books of the present day, through chemical change, will have disappeared.

Records of the Etruscan language of ancient Italy in Greek letters which are easily readable have amply survived to the present time, but no one has been able to understand the words and their meaning. We have a whole book in Etruscan, but no one can understand it. The key [ 19 ]