meditative, philosophical, nor to any great extent a poetic or romantic, people. They lived very close to the external world. They dealt chiefly with the concrete and the obvious-the practical. Their very poems were largely narrative, devoted mainly to the exploits, the toils or the hard fights of heroes, or, in the Christian period, of saints scarcely to be distinguished from warriors; their moral lessons were quite likely to be conveyed by a story of some personified virtues or vices, depicted as very crudely real in countenance, form, bearing and dress. Imaginative touches in their narratives came in but incidentally, to give vividness to the story. Anglo-Saxon men were warriors, sailors, farmers, and traders. Their preference was for brief, rugged words to express actual objects and practical activities. Their language is constructed as if they had said, "Why use two syllables where one will do?" They were not concerned with the melody but with the efficiency of their speech. Their ambition was not for a language of rippling rhythm but for one of concrete facts and of doing things. They loved strong consonants and plenty of them, with only vowels enough to float the consonants. Thus the very word "strong" has five substantial consonants with but one vowel. The corresponding noun in the old Anglo-Saxon was "strengthu," but the tendency to shortening went on until it developed the English word "strength," where a single vowel must do duty for seven consonants. Yet with that combination we feel perfectly satisfied and very much at home. How insistent the monosyllabic tendency of the language was we see by what it did to the words it adopted in the early day from the Latin and the Greek. The Latin clericus became the Anglo-Saxon clerc (English clerk); the Latin monachus became the Anglo-Saxon munuc, later contracted into the English monk (which, though spelled with an o, is pronounced with a u); while the Greek kyriakon, "the Lord's house," became the Anglo-Saxon circe, which, by some almost unimaginable change, has been contracted into the English word church. The monosyllabic tendency became the genius of the Anglo-Saxon, and through that element has become a controlling influence in the English language. The constant abbreviation of words to some short, compact form is one of the most familiar facts in our modern English speech. The Greek-Latin compound, automobile, becomes the "auto," or is superseded by the simple word "car"; the aeroplane is constantly called the "plane"; the Greek derivative telephone, both as verb and noun, is commonly contracted into "phone"; while the Greek word telegraph, both as verb and noun, is to a great extent supplanted by the plain English monosyllable "wire"; and when Zeppelin dirigibles were seen approaching London, the word was passed, "Here come the Zeps!" Our language is full of monosyllabic or dissyllabic words so perfectly shaped upon the Anglo-Saxon model that only a close study of the dictionary can enable us to know that they are not of native origin. The ancient Anglo-Saxon brevity of forms has become a dominant factor in English speech. These short words are readily learned and easily remembered. It is very common for children to catch them by one hearing. This fact must be an important aid to the ready and wide diffusion of the English language, which has become so striking a fact in modern times. For the same reason these become the words of the common people. The common people now, as in ancient days, are first and most directly concerned with the outward, concrete realities of home, food, and shelter, of daily work and wages, of heat and cold, hunger and thirst, storm or sunshine, of health or sickness, hurt and pain, or cheer and comfort. With the advance of popular freedom and education, the common people are becoming an ever-increasing factor in the affairs of nations and in all the great movements of the world. To help them, to guide them, to instruct them, to control them, even to please them, one must speak or write largely in the simple, strong, homely and homelike Anglo-Saxon that has become the substantial basis of the mighty English language as it exists to-day. Nor must it be forgotten that the simplicity of English grammar, later perfected by the fusion of the Anglo-Saxon with the Norman-French, had begun long before the Norman Conquest. As the various tribes of Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Danes and Scandinavians toiled, traveled, traded, intermarried, or even as they met in each others' realms, as invaders or invaded, as conquerors or conquered, in their ceaseless wars, they were constantly learning each others' speech; they were working out that great law that, when kindred languages meet and blend, while words are interchanged, inflections and intricate grammatical idioms fall away. Hence, the Anglo-Saxon, while still an inflected language, had become quite simple in construction even in the days of Alfred, and became increasingly so up to the Norman Conquest. The habit of dropping troublesome idioms and inflections had been established. Simplicity of construction was already a marked quality of that early English, and had prepared the way for the final throwing aside of all that was intricate and complicated in grammar when the early English united with the Norman-French in the centuries following the battle of Hastings. The simplicity of English had become a recognized fact and a strong tendency before that day, and this simplicity has become an important element of its prominence and power among the languages of the world. |