Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/97

Rh the language as spoken by our forefathers in their old home on the Elbe before they settled in England, we find a plural in i, fôti. But it is a known law, holding good in all the Teutonic dialects, except the Gothic, that a or o is changed into e through the influence of i in the following syllable; hence fôti became fêti. After a time, this final i, the true sign of the plural, was dropped, and then the modified e was considered the sign of the plural. This Umlaut is itself an ultimate fact, like gravitation in physics, inexplicable in the present state of our knowledge.

Whatever help to a right understanding of the constructions and inflections of modern English may be obtained from comparing them with the forms and laws of the Latin language, it is clear that vastly greater help may be obtained from studying them in the light of their own history.

The second instrument of fruitful study is comparison. This opens a vast field for investigation; for we must compare our English tongue with all the cognate Aryan languages; but especially with German, Dutch, Danish, Icelandic, Gothic—all the Teutonic tongues, old and new—and with those languages with which it has come into contact during its long and wide-reaching history. English, the grandest language in the history of humanity, has the most extended affinities and historical connections.

As an example of an English form that can be explained only by comparison with a cognate dialect, take ed, the sign of the past tense. No clew to the origin of this termination can be found in the English of any period. Our knowledge of Latin and Greek is again useless. In this case the Gothic will help us to the true explanation; for it is simply a reduplicated perfect of the verb do, did. Hence the old English lufode is merely, I love did, that is, I did love.

Thus studying English in its historical development, and comparing it at every point with the languages with which it is connected by kinship or by contact, the student sees language in every form in which an Aryan tongue can appear, and may learn every important truth of linguistic science. Having learned English in this way and gotten a knowledge of French and German as collateral helps, the student will enjoy the best fruits of learning languages—a liberal culture, a critical knowledge of his mother-tongue, an intelligent insight into the laws of language, and a key to what is best, usefulest, and most inspiring in literature.

But, to learn the language in its living power, it is necessary to study it in its literature. The language is the body, the literature is its soul; they can be rightly understood only by studying them together. In a course of higher instruction in English, grammars, rhetorics, and histories of literature, are useful only for reference. It would be hard to invent a course of study more useless than that which fills the mind of the student with barren dates and facts in the