Article September 28, 1899 Issue

A Plea for the English Language

Leon Mead

If by the international language, proposed by Doctor Samenhof, the Russian philologist, is meant a universal language, then I say, let the world adopt the English language. For more than a thousand years the English has been in the process of evolution, and to-day it is the most flexible, composite, and beautiful language ever invented by man. It has borrowed liberally, but with discretion, from nearly all languages, living and dead; it contains more synonyms and antonyms than any other one tongue, and more words from which a great literature may be produced.

There was a time—but a few years ago—when French was considered the language of polite society the world over. But to-day English is spoken by a far greater number of people than is the Gallic tongue, and the reason is not far to seek. England owns about one-fifth of the land area of the globe, exercising a sovereignty over four hundred million people. Of course a large percentage of her subjects do not speak English, but from present indications it is only a question of time when their descendants will. Then we have to reckon in seventy-five millions of Americans who use the English language, besides other races in the Western Hemisphere and in other parts of the world to whom English is familiar. From this it will be seen that the English language has a good start of all the civilized tongues of the earth, and it must also be remembered that hundreds of thousands of Europeans are conversant with English. In its structural forms it has gained a strength and solidarity second to on other known language. It enabled Shakespeare to prove himself the greatest poet the world has ever seen. No thought or sentiment or casuistry that has been expressed in any other language is there that cannot be as perfectly and as forcibly expressed in English—if the right man guides the quill. it is true, our translators often lose much of the aroma and many of the verbal nuances of foreign literature in their transcriptions into English. But in our purely creative performances we do not sheepishly shrink from a comparison with the work of our foreign contemporaries.

As a nation the Yankees are not especially given to philology. Polyglots among us are few and far between. But we claim to be an intelligent people, and I think the standard of education among our lower classes will be found to be considerably above that in any other nation. We keep our printing presses going night and day, and maintain over twenty thousand periodicals. We are a nation of readers, and there are few, if any, inhabited parts of our broad land where publications of one sort or another do not go.

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