Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/494

Rh they now occupy, in the sequel of an adventurous and conquering career which has led them around nearly the whole earth, and leaves them masters of many of its fairest portions, under the most varied skies. The virtual distance between the two is therefore almost world-wide; it is to be measured by the course which the English race has traversed, rather than by the distance which still separates its outposts from China. So the English language, starting in that monosyllabism which the Chinese has never quitted, has made the whole round of possible development, till its most advanced portions have almost come back again to their original state; but it still holds in possession much of the territory over which it has passed, and is dowered with all the wealth which it has gathered on its way; it has passed through all stages and varieties of enrichment, and has kept fast hold of their most valuable products. It is therefore in its essential character as far removed from the Chinese as is the Greek. Its resources for the expression of relations, for the sufficient distinction of the categories of thought, are hardly inferior to those of the tongues of highest inflective character: they are of another kind, it is true, but one which, if it has its disadvantages, has its advantages as well. Our analytic flection has a practical value equivalent to that even of the rich synthesis of the classical tongues; and in this respect also we need confess to no disabling inferiority, as compared with the speakers of other cultivated languages.

That, again, the English is a mixed tongue, may not be denied. There has not been that assimilation of its two elements which is the natural result of a complete fusion. The length of our words of Latin origin, as compared with the Saxon, is a plain external indication of this: take anywhere a page of English, and you will find that its Saxon words average less than half as long as those of other derivation. What would have been the natural tendency of the language with respect to these long forms is shown by its treatment of words borrowed earlier from the classical tongues: thus, it has worked down moneta into mint, küriake into church, presbüteros into priest, eleēmosünē into alms, and so on. Only the specially conservative forces of learned culture and the