Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/347

Rh I do not mean to say that French is, or will be, in any but the vaguest sense of the term, the international language of literature. If a few writers may be led by the prospect of more rapid success, or merely for personal reasons, to serve under foreign colors, the majority will remain faithful to their mother tongue, great or small, for in it alone their best work can be done. A language spoken by five million men may be as good a literary medium as one used by a hundred and twenty million. Indeed, a Pole, for instance, might actually be better off than a Frenchman in many respects, for he would combine an intenser national feeling with a more cosmopolitan culture. It is possible not only to do good work in the so-called minor languages—most of which have a larger public than English in Shakespeare's time—but also to conquer universal fame. Russian is little known beyond its frontiers, yet Tolstoy is everywhere admired. New York alone has a much larger population than Norway, but Clyde Fitch's glory has not eclipsed Ibsen's. Sienkiewicz's country is dismembered, his language persecuted in Prussia and in Russia—and who has not read "Quo Vadis"? Mistral writes in a dialect, a patois, an artificial one at that, the combined work of the peasant and of the philologist; no one was surprised when the Nobel prize was awarded him. We do not see any tendency to a concentration of languages analogous to the Marxian concentration of wealth. But if there were any signs of such a concentration, they would seem to be in favor of French rather than English.

It seems therefore improbable that this tangled problem of international speech will be solved automatically, by a natural process of selection. One alternative remains to be considered: a universal agreement. There is a growing spirit of cooperation among nations, and so the adoption of a world-language is becoming at the same time easier and more desirable as time goes on. Latin was universal when there was a Roman world, Imperial or Catholic; classical French was universal when there was a "classical Europe"; after a century of division, the world is recovering the consciousness of its unity. Let us hope that a conference will be called together, and a universal agreement arrived at; what, in an open competition of that sort, would be the chances of English?

I waive the argument from the present erratic spelling of English. Professor Brander Matthews is doing his best to reform it. Let us hope he will fully succeed, that is to say, that English will be altered beyond recognition. Perhaps the difficult sounds of the language, its weird consonants, its tripthongized vowels, might also be eliminated. The present chaotic state of English accentuation calls for urgent reform. A "Simplified Pronunciation Board" would help us out, by making it a misdemeanor to pronounce English otherwise than in the scientific, or German, way. After such thorough overhauling, English