THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE.

The greatest impediment to free intercourse between nations is neither distance nor the differences of mental habits, nor the opposition of national interests; it is simply the imperfect manner in which languages are usually acquired, and the lazy contentment of mankind with a low degree of attainment in a foreign tongue when a much higher degree of attainment would be necessary to any efficient interchange of ideas.

It seems probable that much of the future happiness of humanity will depend upon a determination to learn foreign languages more thoroughly. International ill-will is the parent of innumerable evils. From the intellectual point of view it is a great evil, because it narrows our range of ideas and deprives us of light from foreign thinkers. From the commercial point of view it is an evil, because it leads a nation to deny itself conveniences in order to avoid the dreaded result of doing good to another country. From the political point of view it is an enormous evil, because it leads nations to make war upon each other and to inflict and endure all the horrors, the miseries, the impoverishment of war rather than make some little concession on one side or on both sides that would have been made with little difficulty if the spirit of the two countries had been more friendly. May we not believe that a more general spirit of friendliness would result from more personal intercourse, and that this would be the consequence of more thorough linguistic acquirement?

It has always seemed to me an inexpressible misfortune to the French that they should not be better acquainted with English literature; and this not simply from the literary point of view, but because on so many questions that interest active minds in France it would be such an advantage to those minds to be able to see how those questions have appeared to men bred in a different and a calmer atmosphere. If the French read English easily they might often avoid (without ceasing to be national) many of those errors that result from seeing things only from a single point of view. I know a few intelligent Frenchmen who do read our most thoughtful writers in the original, and I can see what a gain this enlarged experience has been to them. On the other hand, it is certain that good French literature may have an excellent effect on the literary training of an Englishman. The careful study of that clear, concise, and moderate French writing which is the most perfect flower of the cultivated national mind has been most beneficial to some English writers, by making them less clumsy, less tedious, less verbose.

Of commercial affairs it would be presumptuous in me to say much, but no one disputes that international commerce is a benefit, and that it would not be possible without a class of men who are acquainted with foreign languages. On this class of men, be they merchants or corresponding clerks, the commercial intercourse between nations must depend. I find it stated by foreign tradesmen that if they were better acquainted with the English language much trade that now escapes them might be made to pass through their hands. I have myself often observed, on a small scale, that transactions of an international character have taken place because one of the parties happened to know the language of the other, when they would certainly not have taken place if it had been necessary to make them through an agent or an interpreter.

With regard to peace and war, can it be doubted that the main reason for our peaceful relations with the United States lies in the fact of our common language? We may have newspaper quarrels, but the newspapers themselves help to make every question understood. It is far harder to gain acceptance for English ideas in France, yet even our relations with France are practically more peaceful than of old, and though there is intense jealousy between the two countries, they understand each other better, so that differences which would certainly have produced bloodshed in the days of Pitt, cause nothing worse than inkshed in the days of Gladstone. This happy result may be attributed in great part to the English habit of learning French and going to Paris or to the south of France. We need not expect any really cordial understanding between the two countries, though it would be an incalculable benefit to both. That is too much to be hoped for; their jealousy, on both sides, is too irritable and too often inflamed afresh by new incidents, for neither of them can stir a foot without putting the other out of temper; but we may hope that through the quietly and constantly exerted influence of those who know both languages, war may be often, though perhaps not always, avoided.

Unfortunately an imperfect knowledge of a foreign language is of little use, as it does not give any real freedom of intercourse. Foreigners do not open their minds to one who blunders about their meaning; they consider him to be a sort of child, and address to him “easy things to understand.” Their confidence is only to be won by a demonstration of something like equality in intelligence, and nobody can give proof of this unless he has the means of making his thoughts intelligible, and even of assuming, when the occasion presents itself, a somewhat bold and authoritative tone. People of mature and superior intellect, but imperfect linguistic acquirements, are liable to be treated with a kind of condescending indulgence when out of their own country, as if they were as young in years and as feeble in power of thought as they are in their knowledge of foreign languages.

The extreme rarity of that degree of attainment in a foreign language which deserves to be called mastery is well known to the very few who are competent to judge. At a meeting of French professors Lord Houghton said that the wife of a French ambassador had told him that she knew only three Englishmen who could speak French. One of these was Sir Alexander Cockburn, another the Duke of Bedford, and we may presume the third to have been Lord Houghton himself. Amongst men of letters Lord Houghton only knew one, Henry Reeve, the editor of the “Edinburgh Review” and translator of the works of De Tocqueville. He mentioned Lord Arthur Russell as an example of accomplishment, but he is “quasi French by l’esprit, education, and marriage.”

On reading the report of Lord Houghton’s speech, I asked a cultivated Parisian lady (who knows English remarkably well and has often been in England) what her own experience had been. After a little hesitation she said it had been exactly that of the French ambassadress. She, also, had met with three Englishmen who spoke French, and she named them. I suggested several others, and amongst them some very learned scholars, merely to hear what she would say, but her answer was that their inadequate power of expression compelled them to talk far below the level of their abilities, so that when they spoke French nobody would suppose them to be clever men. She also affirmed that they did not catch the shades of French expression, so that in speaking French to them one was never sure of being quite accurately understood.

I myself have known many French people who have studied English more or less, including several who read English authors with praiseworthy industry, but I have only met with one or two who can be said to have mastered the language. I am told that M. Beljame, the learned Professor of English Literature at the Sorbonne, has a wonderful mastery of our tongue. Many French professors of English have considerable historical and grammatical knowledge of it, but that is not practical mastery. In general, the knowledge of English attained by French people (not without more labor than the result would show) is so poor and insufficient as to be almost useless.

I remember an accidental circumstance that put into my hands some curious materials for judging of the attainments of a former generation. A Belgian lady, for a reason that has no concern with our present subject, lent me for perusal an important packet of letters in the French language written by English ladies of great social distinction about the date of Waterloo. They showed a rough familiarity with French, but no knowledge of its finer shades, and they abounded in glaring errors. The effect of this correspondence on my mind was that the writers had certainly used (or abused) the language, but that they had never condescended to learn it.

These and other experiences have led me to divide progress in languages into several stages, which I place at the reader’s disposal in the belief that they may be convenient to him as they have been convenient to me.

The first stage in learning a language is when every sentence is a puzzle and exercises the mind like a charade or a conundrum. There are people to whom this kind of exercise is a sport. They enjoy the puzzle for its own sake and without any reference to the literary value of the sentence or its preciousness as an utterance of wisdom. Such people are much better adapted to the early stage of linguistic acquirement than those who like reading and dislike enigmas.

The excessive slowness with which one works in this early stage is a cause of irritation when the student interests himself in the thoughts or the narrative, because what comes into his mind in a given time is so small a matter that it seems not worth while to go on working for such a little intellectual income. Therefore in this early stage it is a positive disadvantage to have eager literary desires.

In the second stage the student can push along with the help of a translation and a dictionary; but this is not reading, it is only aided construing. It is disagreeable to a reader, though it may be endured by one who is indifferent to reading. This may be made clear by reference to other pursuits. A man who loves rowing, and who knows what rowing is, does not like to pull a slow and heavy boat, such as an ordinary Scottish Highlander pulls with perfect contentment. So a man who loves reading, and knows what reading is, does not like the heavy work of laborious translation. This explains the fact which is often so unintelligible to parents, that boys who are extremely fond of reading often dislike their classical studies. Grammar, prosody, philology, so far as they are the subjects of conscious attention (which they are with all pedagogues), are the rivals of literature, and so it happens that pedagogy is unfavorable to literary art. It is only when the sciences of dissection are forgotten that we can enjoy the arts of poetry and prose.

If, then, the first stage of language-learning requires rather a taste for solving puzzles than a taste for literature, so I should say that the second stage requires rather a turn for grammatical and philological considerations than an interest in the ideas or an appreciation of the style of great authors. The most favorable state of mind for progress in this stage is that of a philologist; and if a man has literary tastes in great strength, and philological tastes in a minor degree, he will do well, in this stage, to encourage the philologist in himself and keep his love of literature in abeyance.

In the third stage the vocabulary has become rich enough to make references to the dictionary less frequent, and the student can read with some degree of literary enjoyment. There is, however, this remaining obstacle, that even when the reader knows the words and can construe well, the foreign manner of saying things still appears unnatural. I have made many inquiries concerning this stage of acquirement and find it to be very common. Men of fair scholarship in Latin tell me that the Roman way of writing does not seem to be really a natural way. I find that even those Latin works which were most familiar to me in youth, such as the Odes of Horace, for example, seem unnatural still, though I may know the meaning of every word, and I do not believe that any amount of labor would ever rid me of this feeling. This is a great obstacle, and not the less that it is of such a subtle and intangible nature.[11]

In the fourth stage the mode of expression seems natural, and the words are perfectly known, but the sense of the paragraph is not apparent at a glance. There is the feeling of a slight obstacle, of something that has to be overcome; and there is a remarkable counter-feeling which always comes after the paragraph is mastered. The reader then wonders that such an obviously intelligible page can have offered any opposition whatever. What surprises us is that this fourth stage can last so long as it does. It seems as if it would be so easily passed, and yet, in fact, it is for most persons impassable.

The fifth stage is that of perfection in reading. It is not reached by everybody even in the native language itself. The reader who has attained it sees the contents of a page and catches their meaning at a glance even before he has had time to read the sentences.

This condition of extreme lucidity in a language comes, when it comes at all, long after the mere acquisition of it. I have said that it does not always come even in the native tongue. Some educated people take a much longer time than others to make themselves acquainted with the contents of a newspaper. A clever newspaper reader sees in one minute if there is anything of importance. He knows what articles and telegrams are worth reading before he separates the words.

These five stages refer only to reading, because educated people learn to read first and to speak afterwards. Uneducated people learn foreign languages by ear in a most confused and blundering way. I need not add that they never master them, as only the educated ever master their native tongue. It is unnecessary to go through the stages of progress in conversation, as they are in a great degree dependent upon reading, though they lag behind it; but I will say briefly that the greatest of all difficulties in using foreign languages is to become really insensible to the absurdities that they contain. All languages, I believe, abound in absurd expressions; and a foreigner, with his inconveniently fresh perceptions, can hardly avoid being tickled by them. He cannot use the language seriously without having first become unconscious of these things, and it is inexpressibly difficult to become unconscious of something that has once provoked us to laughter. Again, it is most difficult to arrive at that stage when foreign expressions of politeness strike us no more and no less than they strike the native; or, in other words, it is most difficult for us to attach to them the exact value which they have in the country where they prevail. French forms seem absurdly ceremonious to Englishmen; in reality, they are only convenient, but the difficulty for an Englishman is to feel that they are convenient. There are in every foreign tongue two classes of absurdities,—the real inherent absurdities to which the natives are blinded by habit, though they are seen at once to be comical when attention is directed to them, and the expressions that are not absurd in themselves but only seem so to us because they are not like our own.

The difficulty of becoming insensible to these things must be especially great for humorous people, who are constantly on the look-out for subjects of odd remarks. I have a dear friend who is gifted with a delightful genius for humor, and he knows a little French. All that he has acquired of that language is used by him habitually as material for fun, and as he is quite incapable of regarding the language as anything but a funny way of talking, he cannot make any progress in it. If he were asked to read prayers in French the idea would seem to him incongruous, a mingling of frivolous with sacred things. Another friend is serious in French because he knows it well, and therefore has become unconscious of its real or apparent absurdities, but when he is in a merry mood he talks Italian, with which he is much less intimately acquainted, so that it still seems droll and amusing.

Many readers will be already familiar with the idea of a universal language, which has often been the subject of speculation in recent times, and has even been discussed in a sort of informal congress connected with one of the universal exhibitions. Nobody now looks forward to anything so unlikely, or so undesirable, as the abandonment of all the languages in the world except one. What is considered practicable is the selection of one language as the recognized international medium, and the teaching of that language everywhere in addition to the mother tongue, so that no two educated men could ever meet without possessing the means of communication. To a certain degree we have this already in French, but French is not known so generally, or so perfectly, as to make it answer the purpose. It is proposed to adopt modern Greek, which has several great advantages. The first is that the old education has familiarized us sufficiently with ancient Greek to take away the first sense of strangeness in the same language under its modern form. The second is that everything about modern arts and sciences, and political life, and trade, can be said easily in the Greek of the present day, whilst it has its own peculiar interest for scholars. The third reason is of great practical importance. Greece is a small State, and therefore does not awaken those keen international jealousies that would be inevitably aroused by proposing the language of a powerful State to be learned, without reciprocity, by the youth of the other powerful States. It may be some time before the Governments of great nations agree to promote the study of modern Greek, or any other living language, amongst their peoples; but if all who feel the immense desirableness of a common language for international intercourse would agree to prepare the way for its adoption, the time might not be very far distant when statesmen would begin to consider the question within the horizon of the practical. Let us try to imagine the difference between the present Babel-confusion of tongues, which makes it a mere chance whether we shall be able to communicate with a foreigner or not, and the sudden facility that would result from the possession of a common medium of intercourse! If it were once agreed by a union of nations (of which the present Postal Union may be the forerunner) that the learning of the universal language should be encouraged, that language would be learned with a zest and eagerness of which our present languid linguistic attempts give but a faint idea. There would be such powerful reasons for learning it! All those studies that interest men in different nations would lead to intercommunication in the common tongue. Many books would be written in it, to be circulated everywhere, without being enfeebled and falsified by translation. International commerce would be transacted by its means. Travelling would be enormously facilitated. There would be such a gain to human intercourse by language that it might be preferred, in many cases, to the old-fashioned international intercourse by means of bayonets and cannon-balls.