IV ROLAND G. KENT: The Inscription of Dvenos.. 207 E. H. STURTEVANT: Commodian and Medieval Rhythmic Verse... 223 NOTE 7.13 A WORLD LANGUAGES* BY HERMANN COLLITZ JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY T A time when nearly every nook and corner of the globe has been made accessible and when international relations are becoming from year to year more general and more intimate, it seems only natural that the idea of a universal language, as a means of common intercourse for all mankind, should have been revived, so as to be hailed in many quarters with delight and enthusiasm. "Revived," I said, for we must not imagine that the present generation is the first to embrace a similar idea. Every one of us is familiar with the story of the tower of Babel, as told in Genesis, chapter 11, beginning with the statement "And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech." This condition was contrary to the will of the Lord, especially after the people had begun to build a city and a tower whose top was to reach unto heaven. "So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore was the name of it called Babel: because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth." Evidently we find here the notion of a world language; not, to be sure, as an end to be looked forward to and to be striven for, but as a condition existing in the remote past, at the beginnings of mankind. The point we are especially interested in is the fact that the scene of these early beginnings is laid in Babylon. For it is to an early period in the history of the Babylonian empire that we can trace the very first attempt to bring about, if not a universal language, at least something resembling it closely. Light has been thrown on these matters some forty years ago quite unexpectedly, and not from Babylon but from a neighboring country. It was in the winter of 1887 that at Tell el Amarna The Presidential Address delivered at the joint session of the Modern Language Association of America and the Linguistic Society of America at the University of Chicago, December 29, 1925. in Upper Egypt some 300 clay tablets were discovered, inscribed with cuneiform characters. They proved to date back to the fourteenth century B. C., and to contain the diplomatic correspondence of King Amenophis IV and his father with the kings of Babylon, Assyria and other Asiatic empires, as well as with the Egyptian governors in Syria and neighboring districts. The greater part of these documents are written in Babylonian, only a few of the Asiatic rulers preferring to use the language of their own people. All of them, however, are employing the Babylonian script. In order to understand the situation we must remember that not only Babylon was at that time the most powerful monarchy of the Eastern world, but that the cuneiform writing, however clumsy and complicated it may appear to us, obviously was looked at as the most suitable method of reducing the spoken language to a written form. It is noteworthy that from the outset the use of a common alphabet was deemed no less important than that of a common language. Consequently the ideal of a world language assumes a different aspect when in the course of many centuries the use of the cuneiform writing was generally abandoned in favor of the so-called Phoenician or Semitic alphabet. The latter, no doubt, marked, in every respect, a step in advance as compared with the earlier primitive ways of writing, notwithstanding the fact that in its initial stages it is not a strictly phonetic script but rather a simplified method of syllabic writing. Its bearing on the history of the alphabet may be realized from the fact that, with the modifications introduced chiefly by the Greeks and Romans, we are using this very alphabet to this day, the arrangement of our ABC being, with but a few exceptions, in agreement with that of the ancient Hebrew alphabet. Interesting as it might be to follow up the development of this alphabet more in detail, I must be satisfied here to state that the Early Greek alphabet is made up of a large number of local varieties, one of which gave rise to the Roman alphabet and to those of ancient Italy generally. The latter accordingly share the most essential innovation made by the Greeks, namely the systematic designation of the vowel sounds, in addition to the consonants. It is due chiefly to this feature of the ancient Graeco-Roman alphabets that in the spelling of the modern European languages the syllabic character of the early Phoenician alphabet is no longer apparent, and that it has been possible to approach more or less the ideal of a strictly phonetic method of writing. Owing to the enterprising spirit of the ancient Greeks in commerce and colonization the Greek language together with the Greek alphabet had spread at an early date East and West of the mainland. Alexander's march into Asia, resulting in the overthrow in 333 B. C. of the Persian empire, as well as the subsequent conquests, in Asia and Egypt, of his generals, lent an even greater impetus to Greek influence. Alexander's dream of a world empire dominated by Greek civilization appeared to be at least partly realized. Greek, no doubt, must be regarded as the leading world language from the time of Alexander to that of the Roman world dominion, holding its own even alongside of Latin during the early centuries of the Christian era. In order to realize its predominant position we need but cast a glance at Alexandria, the centre at the Hellenistic period, of literary culture, or at Pergamos in Asia Minor, the rival for a while of Alexandria in literature and art, or at Antioch, in order to mention only one more seat among many of the Greek learning. Let us remember that the Septuagint, the well-known Greek version of the Old Testament, written in Egypt apparently in the third century B. C., was followed later on by three more Greek translations, all of which found a place, alongside of the Septuagint, in Origen's Hexapla. Nor should we forget that St. Paul, although priding himself on being a Roman citizen, wrote his epistles in Greek, that Greek is the language generally of the New Testament as well as of the early Fathers of the Church, and that at the beginning of the third century three different schools, as it were, existed of New Testament text criticism. At the very time, however, when Greek seemed destined to become the literary and commercial language of at least Eastern Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa, it began to suffer from the competition of Latin. Even in the Balkan peninsula, especially its northern portion, Latin had, in the first centuries of our era gained a strong foothold, notwithstanding the vicinity of Constantinople. Rumania, e. g., had become a Roman province at the beginning of the second century, and has ever since counted as one of the Latin countries. In addition to the two leading languages we find in the same regions a large variety of vernaculars. This state of affairs naturally served as a stimulus toward acquiring a command of more than one language. We have it on good authority that Ulfilas, the author of the Gothic Bible and the inventor of the Gothic alphabet, wrote and preached in three languages, i. e., in Gothic, Greek, and Latin. A contemporary of his, about thirty years younger, was St. Jerome, the famous scholar whose Latin version of the Scriptures is the only one accepted as authentic by the Roman Catholic Church. Born about the year 340 at Strido, a town on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia, he was educated in Rome and later on spent much of his time in the East. Before being entrusted by Pope Damasus with the revision of the Latin versions of the Scriptures, he had gained the reputation of being as much of a Ciceronian as of a Christian and of possessing at the same time a profound knowledge of Hebrew and many other languages. I have always felt that the Catholic Church deserves much credit for having granted a place among its saints to a scholar chiefly in recognition of his accomplishments along the lines of linguistics and philology. At St. Jerome's time Latin had no lesser claim to the title of a world language than Greek. We can say, moreover, of Latin, what could hardly be maintained with regard to Greek, that it has remained a world language ever since. At this point, however, a distinction proves necessary with regard to Latin no less than to similar instances generally. While at the time of the Roman world dominion Latin could on the whole be regarded as a uniform language, the breaking up of the Empire resulted in an independent development of its former provinces, together with a steadily increasing number of local varieties. As a result of this development we find, a few centuries afterwards, a number of new national languages, often, to be sure, designated by force of habit as Latin, yet differing from genuine Latin no less than the various branches of the Indo-European family differ from the parent tongue. On the other hand, Latin as the language of the Roman Church, as a literary and learned language used by scholars all over the world and in |