Aw know when furst aw coom to th' leet But come, tha 's never towd thi dad What's thi name? Hush! hush! tha munno cry this way, But get this sope o' cinder tay While it's warm; Mi mother us'd to give it me, When aw wur sich a lad as thee, Hush a babby, hush a bee— Here's a bit o' sugar, sithee; Howd thi noise, an' then aw'll gie thee We'n nobbut getten coarsish fare, Aw hope tha 'll never want a meel, While tha 'rt here. Thi feyther's noan bin wed so long, Besides thi little brother, Ted, We 'n one up-steers, asleep i' bed Wi' eawr Joe. But though we 'n childer two or three, We'll mak' a bit o' reawm for thee Bless thee, lad! Tha 'rt th' prattiest brid we han i̇' th' nest; Aw 'm thi dad. Samuel Laycock. NOTE: Some of these dialect words look strange only at first glance. Here are the English forms of a part of the words in this poem : Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Charles Kingsley. 1 CHAPTER VII THE MACHINERY OF ENGLISH: WORDS English has countless idioms which we need to know, but it has very little machinery. By machinery we mean the formal rules which govern speech; and English has so few of these that many of its greatest masters scarcely knew of rules at all. They learned to use English nobly by trying to use it nobly, as I hope you of today are doing. Centuries ago, English, like German and Russian of the present time, was full of troublesome little endings tagged on the end of words to tell just what sort of words they were. But at last it has dropped nearly all these, about as a snake sheds its old slough, or skin. Those old-fashioned endings were like fetters to free and easy speech, and as English has grown more simple it has become of greater usefulness. We now can hardly call it a machine at all, for it is more like a simple instrument, or handy tool. or " In order that you may have a glimpse at the machinery which is found in some other languages not yet so perfect as our own, I may tell you that German, French, and most other European children must be careful as to whether they say "he," or "she," it," in regard to any given person or thing. Now, we users of English say "it" when talking about almost everything on earth that does not belong to the male or the female sex, and we often say "it" of animals also. But the German child may not thus say of most common objects; he must learn in every case just what he should say. In the Appendix to "A Tramp Abroad," Mark Twain tells a little story, using the words he, she, and it as it do the Germans. how he rattles; 99 He says, "the fishwife has dropped its basket of fishes; “the mother-dog deserts his puppies ;" and so on thru a long list which sounds to our ears very odd. In English, as you have been told in a previous lesson, the order of the words is more important than any other one thing. Thus, for example, the word well, standing alone, tells you nothing certain; but used with other words, it may carry any one of several meanings. This you may see in the following sentences: The well is deep. Well, well! I am surprised. The waters of the spring well up. Do as well as you can. What is true of the word well is also true of thousands of other English words which lend themselves to different meanings without the least objection, if they be but properly placed. Change in the form of words—such as from man to men, from has to have, from child to children, and so on-is a part of the machinery of language; but it is not a hard thing to master, and this you will some day study under the name of English grammar. Every subject of study has its grammar, or body of rules, but these rules are always found out long after the machinery itself has been made to run smoothly and with good results. In so far as language is living, no rules can be made for it; in so far as it is fixed, or dead, rules may govern it. Its grammar relates to it as fixed, or dead, without chance for change. All languages, in their beginning, started with a rather small number of early roots, or first syllables. Oddly enough, as it may seem to you, these earliest roots are often found to be the same, or similar, in widely different languages. Only very wise scholars know much about these roots, which they delight to dig for in the ancient history of language as if indeed seeking buried jewels. You will see the importance of these roots when I tell you that from each of certain Latin root-words we have between one hundred fifty and two hundred English derivatives, and that from twelve Latin roots alone we have about twenty-five hundred words. Nearly all words are derived, or drawn, from ancient roots. The principal method of making new words from root-words has been by the use of prefixes and suffixes. A prefix is a syllable fixed, or placed, before a root-word, as, unkind; and a suffix is a syllable placed after a root-word; as, kindness. At first, all prefixes and suffixes stood alone as independent words, but they gradually grew to be parts of the words they were used with. Manlike and like man are the same thing in fact, and manly is the descendant of an ancient manlike which, rubbing against other words, wore off part of its letters. For, just as pebbles come to be worn smooth by being year after year rubbed along together in the gravel drift, or under the moving stream, so words when long rubbed together in everyday speech wear off their sharp corners and rough edges, and become smooth and easy to the tongue, hence more and more fitted for constant use. We call a word (1) simple when not derived from another word in the same language; (2) derivative when it is thus derived; (3) compound when made up of two or more words. Thus from the simple root-word man we have the derivative words manly, mankind, mannish, manhood, and the compound words manlike, man-made, and others. Many compounds are hidden away in words which look simple at first glance, as in holiday (holy day), furlong (furrowlong), fortnight (fourteen night), forehead (fore head), breakfast (break fast), and so on. And, as we have just seen, the dividing line between derivatives and compound words is not always a plain one. To the Saxon King Alfred manly, manhood, and king |