Direction. Find Anglo-Saxon expressions, each a single word where it is possible, for these good words of Latin or Greek origin, and use them in sentences of your own:

Residence, aggravate, instruct, invalidate, circumspect, disparage, atmosphere, occult, isothermal, deposed, extinguish, idiosyncrasies, termination, reside, accomplish, obliterate, ethereal, pabulum, æsthetic, supersede, interpolate, anomaly, tortuous, philanthropic, subordinate, simultaneous, deplorable, elimination, circumlocution.

LESSON 32.

USE OF WORDS-SIMPLE WORDS.

Direction. Read this paragraph with great care, and substitute, where it is possible, Anglo-Saxon words for those italicized:·

When an intelligent foreigner commences the study of English, he finds every page sprinkled with words whose form unequivocally betrays a Greek or Latin origin, and he observes that these terms are words belonging to the dialect of the learned professions, of theological discussion, of criticism, of elegant art, of moral and intellectual philosophy, of abstract science, and of the various branches of natural knowledge. He discovers that the words which he recognizes as Greek and Latin and French have dropped those inflections which in their native use were indispensable to their intelligibility and grammatical significance; that the mutual relations of vocables and the sense of the English period are much more often determined by the position of the words than by their form, and in short that the sentence is built up upon structural principles wholly alien to those of the classical languages, and compacted and held together by a class of words either unknown or very much less used in those tongues. He finds that very many of the native monosyllables are mere determinatives, particles, auxiliaries, and relatives; and he can hardly fail to infer that all the intellectual part of our speech, all that concerns

our highest spiritual and temporal interests is of alien birth, and that only the merest machinery of grammar has been derived from a native source. Further study would teach him that he had overrated the importance and relative amount of the foreign ingredients; that many of our seemingly insignificant and barbarous consonantal monosyllables are pregnant with the mightiest thoughts and alive with the deepest feeling; that the language of the purposes and the affections, of the will and of the heart, is genuine English born; that the dialect of the market and the fireside is Anglo-Saxon; that the vocabulary of the most impressive and effective pulpit orators has been almost wholly drawn from the same pure source; that the advocate who would convince the technical judge or dazzle and confuse the jury speaks Latin; while he who would touch the better sensibilities of his audience or rouse the multitude to vigorous action chooses his words from the native speech of our ancient fatherland; that the domestic tongue is the language of passion and persuasion, the foreign, of authority or rhetoric and debate; that we may not only frame single sentences but speak for hours without employing a single imported word; and finally that we possess the entire volume of revelation in the truest, clearest, aptest form in which human ingenuity has made it accessible to modern man, and yet with a vocabulary wherein, saving proper names and terms not in their nature translatable, scarce seven in the hundred are derived from any foreign source.

The attempt to substitute Anglo-Saxon words for those italicized in this extract will be almost fruitless, as few such substitutes can be found. Equivalents can be discov ered for many of these words in italics, but in general they will not turn out to be Anglo-Saxon. The pupil can use begins for commences, sees for observes, finds for discovers, and meaning for sense, but few other Anglo-Saxon equivalents for the classical words in the paragraph can be found. We commend to the teacher and to the pupil the lesson, taught by this quotation, concerning the kind and the measure of our dependence upon the Latin and the Greek words in English-the lesson taught, however, not by what

Mr. Marsh says, but by the words he uses in saying it. We submit that, if the Anglo-Saxon so nearly suffices for all our needs as Mr. Marsh here claims, he would not himself have been driven to a diction so largely classical. If we count each word but once, we find that sixty per cent of the words Mr. Marsh here uses in eulogizing the AngloSaxon are themselves classical!

The Anglo-Saxon and the Latin in Our Vocabulary.— ♪ slight percentage of our words are the original Indo-European words; some are Celtic; some, Scandinavian; some, Greek; and a few have been adopted from the languages of the peoples with whom the English have had intercourse.

The remainder are Anglo-Saxon and Latin. It is of this remainder, more than ninety per cent of the vocabulary, that we are now to speak. And we should speak more plainly if we could speak specifically if we could throw these words into classes and look at them there. This we cannot do here, but we can give the results reached by us in work of this kind substantially done elsewhere — results which not unfaithfully picture the functions of the AngloSaxon and the Latin in the English vocabulary.

The pronouns and the numerals (those not Indo-European), the irregular verbs (including the auxiliaries), the prepositions, and the conjunctions are Anglo-Saxon.

In addition we may say that the names of such things (1) in the animal and vegetable worlds as were native to the island and generally known before the Conquest; the names (2) of the outward parts of the animal body, and of those internal organs that easily reveal their presence; (3) of common buildings and their necessary parts; (4) of the household equipment that families living in such houses must have; (5) of such farm implements as a people rude in arts and agriculture could make and use; (6) of occupations mainly manual; (7) of the essential divisions of time;

(8) the verbs that express many of the customary acts in the material world and operations in the mental; and (9) adjectives that denote obvious sensible qualities and the obtrusive attributes of the intellect, of the emotional nature, and of character;- these are mainly Anglo-Saxon.

But to name (1) things in the animal and vegetable kingdoms seen by travel; (2) to denote buildings higher and more complex than the common dwelling, and to mark those parts of them and those belongings to them unfamiliar to the Anglo-Saxons, but needful, we should think, even for comfort; (3) to indicate those parts of the body and their functions which science has disclosed; to denote (4) the longer or the more minute divisions of time, and the occupations that indicate higher culture; and (5) generally, to mark the less ordinary physical acts, requiring, many of them, plan and combination, and to denote the less obvious objects and qualities of objects in the outer world; to do these things we draw largely upon the Latin element of the language. And when we turn to the words in English expressive (6) of civil and social organization, or used (7) to denote i..tellectual acts, states, qualities, powers, possessions, products, or required (8) to express the higher feelings and the traits of character, or needed (9) to denote classes and general notions,we find the contrast between the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin in English most striking. It is in words expressive of these things that the Anglo-Saxon element is painfully lacking.

The Anglo-Saxon and the Latin in Actual Use. - The relative number of the Anglo-Saxon words and of the Latin used by writers and public speakers depends somewhat upon the man, upon his subject, and upon the culture of those addressed. But, in the showing, the percentages depend still more largely upon the method of counting

adopted. If every word of the author is counted every time it is used, the results reached will be one thing; if each word of the author is counted but once, no matter how often used, the results reached will be quite another thing. The words oftenest employed, not alone in ordinary conversation, but for literary purposes as well, are the irregular verbs (especially the auxiliaries), the pronouns, the articles, the prepositions, and the conjunctions. These, with scarcely an exception, are Anglo-Saxon. The words then constantly appearing, reappearing, on the pages of literature and in public discourse as well as in colloquial speech are almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon. Surely the method of counting will have much to do with the exhibit made.

Mr. George P. Marsh at one time made several excerpts from British and American writers. He counted each word in these extracts ev ry time it was found, and published the results in tables which show that the Anglo-Saxon words used by these men ranged from seventy to ninety-five per cent of all the words employed by them. We give these figures without judgment as to whether the extracts made were ample in number and in length to justify the claim that they fairly represent the levy which these men in their complete works made upon the Anglo-Saxon.

It came in our way some years since to make a far more extended examination of the words eminent writers and speakers choose. The different words of one American, Rufus Choate, as found in his complete works, were brought together and arranged alphabetically. Twenty other dis*inguished men ten British and ten American were chosen. From each of these a speech, an argument at the bar, an oration, or some chapters of a book were taken, and the words of each author were alphabetically placed. No word in any one of the twenty-one lists thus formed was counted more than once, unless the several forms of it were