Page:The history of the Bengali language (1920).pdf/34

12 even by many educated persons "Sanskrit Akṣar," merely because to serve some convenience, many Sanskrit books are published in Bengal in Nāgri character. One word more regarding word-borrowing. It must be noticed that the words borrowed from other languages have all to conform to the genius of the languages into which they are adopted. This is what takes place in the Bengali language and this is what as a matter of course takes place in Hindi even though the speakers, through whose agency the adoption is accomplished, are Muhammadans. That an adherence to an unscientific situation has a mischievous effect on education must be duly appreciated.

(ii) The second proposition I should put forward is, that it is only when a new structure is gradually built with new elements on a fresh basis, a new language is evolved; but that this new language, by merely coming in contact with other languages cannot change its own structure, for such change means nothing but death or extinction of that language. The imperceptible slow change with which a new language is developed is by itself a matter for study. Never can a living people change radically or discontinuously, nor can its natural and organised mode of thinking, which expresses itself in the form or structure of its speech, be radically changed.

(iii) My next proposition is that what is called a patois or a rude or vulgar speech, is never a separate language. Isolation and want of culture bring about deformities, and these deformities characterise a language as a rude dialect. The language of the Māl Pāhāḍis is as much Bengali as the language of the peasants of Northern