Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/96

86 change—differences wholly insufficient to mark the death of one language and the birth of another.

Old English is synthetic, with an elaborate system of inflections; modern English is analytic, and almost inflectionless. We must not fall into the error of supposing that this change has been brought about by the Norman Conquest. Other kindred dialects, as Danish and Low Dutch, have undergone similar changes without the influences of external causes. So our mother-tongue has developed itself into its present forms, not by chance or by the will of Norman masters, but according to fixed laws. In its wonderful growth, and in all its seemingly lawless transformations, it has followed necessary rules. In our teaching, we must leave the unfruitful field of guess-work, and investigate the manner in which the general laws of linguistic change and development are applicable to the growth of the English language. It is impossible to explain words and grammatical facts, or idioms, except by their history. We must first know their affiliations and the facts that have preceded them; just as in the sciences of observation, such as chemistry or natural history, we can give an account of a fact only by knowing what has preceded it. For instance, in order to explain the manner in which a tree is formed, it is not enough to study the tree as it stands before us in its full-leaved glory; it is necessary to construct a history of the tree by the aid of accurate observations of the different states and forms through which it has successively passed. We are able to understand clearly what is only through a knowledge of what has been. We can discover the causes of a phenomenon only by taking a comprehensive view of antecedent phenomena. Grammar, in its true method, is the botany of language.

Modern English without old English is a tree without roots—a lifeless trunk. The words that have been imported from Latin and other sources have been ingrafted upon the English stock, and draw their life-nourishment from roots that strike deep down into the death kingdoms of the oldest Teutonic speech.

Theoretically, we begin with what is oldest and farthest from us, to explain all that follows in the course of time; but practically, in learning and in teaching, we begin with what is nearest and best known, and work back to what is less and less familiar.

As an illustration of what I mean by studying a fact historically, take the plural of the word foot. The boy or girl learns in the elementary school that the plural of foot is feet, and accepts it as an ultimate, inexplicable fact. But the man or woman in the college or university may ask why the plural is feet and not foots. I am afraid there are some very learned teachers of Latin and Greek who could not answer, except with a growl about the lawlessness of the English language. However, it is explicable. Going back twelve hundred years, we find our present form fót, fét. There seems to be an end of our search. But we can go farther; for, looking into the old Saxon,