ust
have been towards an unbounded variety. To this there was, however, a
natural check, which prepared from the very beginning the growth of
national and literary languages. The language of the father became the
language of a family; the language of a family that of a clan. In one and
the same clan different families would preserve among themselves their own
familiar forms and expressions. They would add new words, some so fanciful
and quaint as to be hardly intelligible to other members of the same clan.
Such expressions would naturally be suppressed, as we suppress provincial
peculiarities and pet words of our own, at large assemblies where all
clansmen meet and are expected to take part in general discussions. But
they would be cherished all the more round the fire of each tent, in
proportion as the general dialect of the clan assumed a more formal
character. Class dialects, too, would spring up; the dialects of servants,
grooms, shepherds, and soldiers. Women would have their own household
words; and the rising generation would not be long without a more racy
phraseology of their own. Even we, in this literary age, and at a distance
of thousands of years from those early fathers of language, do not speak
at home as we speak in public. The same circumstances which give rise to
the formal language of a clan, as distinguished from the dialects of
families, produce, on a larger scale, the languages of a confederation of
clans, of nascent colonies, of rising nationalities. Before there is a
national language, there have always been hundreds of dialects in
districts, towns, villages, clans, and families; and though the progress
of civilization and centralization tends to reduce their number and to
soften their features, it has not as yet annihilated them, even in our own
time.

Let us now look again at what is commonly called the history, but what
ought to be called, the natural growth, of language, and we shall easily
see that it consists chiefly in the play of the two principles which we
have just examined, _phonetic decay_ and _dialectical regeneration_ or
_growth_. Let us take the six Romance languages. It is usual to call these
the daughters of Latin. I do not object to the names of parent and
daughter as applied to languages; only we must not allow such apparently
clear and simple terms to cover obscure and vague conceptions. Now if we
call Italian the daughter of Latin, we do not mean to ascribe to Italian a
new v