Rock Island Daily Argus

THREE ENGLISH DIALECTS.

What Might Have Been—Influences Which Modify Our Language.

In a recently published work, Rev. Dr. Skeat, author of the only etymological dictionary of the English language that has any permanent scientific value, declares that the whole character of the language now spoken in England and North America might have been changed if London had been founded north instead of south of the Thames.

The statement will not seem so strange when we recall the fact that London was the center of "literary English" during the formative period of what may be called the modern language. Before the beginning of that period, the dialects spoken north of the Thames, and now divided by students of English into "Northern" and "Midland," differed widely from the dialect of southern England—a dialect which became "literary English" even before King Alfred's time. It is now generally known as "Anglo-Saxon," and with the exception of a few fragments, glosses and inscriptions, the entire remains of English literature up to the time of the Norman conquest are written in it.

These three dialects of spoken English have been greatly multiplied since the English stock has been scattered over the world, and in spite of printing and rules of pronunciation this multiplication must go on. The laws of languages, so far as they have been observed, seem to make it impossible that the same language should be spoken in our territory of Alaska and in the English provinces of Australia. From Alaska to the tropics, from the tropics to the South Pole, written English is the same language, but the real language is the spoken sound, not the written symbol. Subjected to different influences of locality and climate, the language adapts itself to them. The same written English word will convey the idea to the brain of the Englishman in Calcutta that it does to the American in Sitka, but if our colony in Sitka becomes a permanent American settlement, and Calcutta remains under English control long enough to develop an English stock native to India through a dozen generations, the written symbol will stand for widely different sounds. This is a probability so strong that it may almost be stated without qualification.

The difference between the language as it is pronounced by educated men in London, New York and New Orleans is already so plain as to enable the Londoner, the New Yorker and the native of New Orleans to detect each other at once—something that could not be prevented by any amount of study they might mutually devote to the same dictionary rules.—St. Louis Republic.