this position often only by an arbitrary exclusion of other possible bests. In the lack of any universal best, in a world of conflicting aspirations, one is driven to an individual choice in the light of as much wisdom and charity as one can bring to bear. Perhaps the conclusion one may come to, and by no means a desperate conclusion, is that the whole search for a supremely best pronunciation) is futile, and that after all is said, the best pronunciation is only a good one, that is, any pronunciation which passes current in cultivated conversation. By this standard, the best pronunciation is the speech of the community, however broadly one may define the word community, in which one finds oneself most satisfactorily and happily at home. Other persons in other communities may have different conceptions of the best, but in the end every person must live within the circle of his own experiences, even of his own limitations, must use the speech therefore which most adequately fits into the circle of his experiences.

A moment ago, in speaking of the professional diction of actors and actresses, the question of the value of a disciplined and trained pronunciation was touched upon. The actor, the orator, or any person who addresses a large audience from a platform undoubtedly must have a technique of his own that can be developed and mastered only by assiduous application. Does a similar necessity rest upon every person, even in the more intimate associations of cultivated conversation, or should speech on this level be left to take care of itself? In effect this is the old question of nature and nurture, and we need not dwell again upon the fact that no person has language, English \ or any other language, as a direct gift of nature. The child is disciplined in the formation of the sounds of speech

from his earliest speaking moments, partly self-disciplined through the impulse to imitate, partly through the definite direction he receives from his parents. Normally this discipline is continued until the child learns to recognize the sounds of English speech and to produce them in their proper places. Sometimes, however, the discipline is remitted too soon, and the child then carries over to his adult years some of his childish imperfections, lisping for example, or a tendency to confuse the sound of tl with kl, causing him to say something like brickle for brittle, or of th and f, resulting in fing for thing, or of s and sh, producing a mushy kind of pronunciation, yesh for yes, thish for this, not infrequent even among educated adults. That these defects, and others of a more pathological nature, like stuttering and stammering, 'should be corrected by discipline, as most of them can be, goes without saying. The main question at present, however, is not whether manifest defects should be corrected by training, but whether positive virtues, not merely a normal but a super-normal, a best pronunciation should be inculcated in the same way. This question can be answered most readily by drawing a parallel between speech and certain other aspects of personal deportment — the car-riage of the body for example. If left to themselves children and others may carry themselves well, easily and unconsciously. Such persons are said to have a natural grace, the best kind, possibly, that anyone could have. Yet such persons seem to be unfortunately the exceptions, not the rule. Every parent knows how insistently children must be directed to sit straight, not to shuffle, shamble, and slouch. It has been said that the final test of good breeding is the ability to walk gracefully

A

across a floor before the eyes of an assemblage. supremely unconscious person might do this, or a supremely self-conscious person, that is, one who by training has acquired complete control of the motions of the body. So also in speech, a well-bred, natural undisciplined pro- ! nunciation may be the gift of the fortunate few, but ordinarily, and in whatever associations one's type of speech is formed, a certain amount of training is necessary to secure that certainty and fineness of control in speech which distinguishes the speech of the cultivated person from that of the boor. Just when this training should stop is a matter to be determined by observation of the subtle proprieties of cultivated speech. Certainly it should stop before it produces an impression of professionalism. Carrying the body well for the average person does not mean carrying it with a military carriage. So also training in pronunciation and the use of the voice should stop before it turns cultivated conversational speech into an elocutionary, or theatrical, or any other kind of professional diction. The highly trained manner of speaking which is so highly trained that it calls attention to itself is out of place on the plane of colloquial use. It may arouse admiration, but admiration is a poor substitute for the sense of intimate sympathy which a merely adequate use of speech may enable two speakers to attain. Good taste demands that speech shall be as unobtrusive as dress and as any other form of social conduct. To find the proper balance between carelessness and uncouthness in speech, on the one hand, and a finical precision or florid amplitude on the other is not always easy. It can be found only when the true character of cultivated speech is kept in mind as neither a self-determining natural

growth nor a fine art, with a technique like that of singing or acting, to be cultivated as an end in itself, but rather as a social convention of many adaptations, all the demands of which are satisfied when each fits its own circumstances. A single best pronunciation is therefore not to be expected, but many bests, conversation being always at its best when human minds are brought into intelligible and kindly relations to each other, "without heat and without vulgarity," through the forms of human speech.

XXIII

THE RELATIONSHIPS OF ENGLISH

THE Confusion of tongues among the races of men is one of the wonders of the world. Where did all these

languages come from? Where does English belong among them? And how many altogether are there of them? But before this third question can be answered, or an attempt made to answer it, some definition of what is meant by the term a language must be made. By any method of counting, the number of languages in the world will be large, but just how large will depend upon the strictness with which it is determined that this or the other form of speech shall be regarded as a language by itself.

One of the most illuminating results of the modern scientific study of language, carried on by the methods of comparative grammar, has been the division of the languages of the world into groups or families. Those languages which are different enough to count as separate languages, but at the same time are sufficiently alike to justify the student in holding them together as probably derived from the same source, are regarded as constituting a family group or a language stock. Of these language stocks some have been more completely studied and described than others, and quite naturally in European scholarship the language stocks of the white race have received more attention than those of the yellow, red, and black races. The two chief families of languages that have been studied in European scholarship are the Indo