Charles Noble
Published: 2015-06-26
Total Pages: 260
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Excerpt from The Story of English Speech, Vol. 1 Language is the expression of life, whether for the individual, the nation or the race; and the constant aim of this study of the subject will be to show this living relation of language to the life of nations and of peoples. It is, indeed, implied in the somewhat poetical terms and phrases used by philologists to describe the interrelations of the various forms of speech; so that they speak of "families" of languages, "sister" tongues and dialects, the "mother" tongue and so on, making quite the impression of a family party. Languages are said to grow, to develop, to decay, to die; to have certain tendencies and characteristics; to show signs of a spirit of one sort or another; the life idea thus pervading the usual treatment of the subject. The special purpose of this introductory chapter is to show the relation of the English language to the other families, branches and divisions, limiting our study to those which have had some vital and significant relation to its origin and growth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.