ple, distributed all over
the earth.

The most ancient known language should be that of the nation most
anciently gathered together as a body of people. It should be, further,
that of the people which has been least subjugated, or which, having
been subjugated, has civilized its conquerors. And in this respect, it
is constant that Chinese and Arabic are the most ancient of all those
that are spoken to-day.

There is no mother-tongue. All neighbouring nations have borrowed from
each other: but one has given the name of "mother-tongue" to those from
which some known idioms are derived. For example, Latin is the
mother-tongue in respect of Italian, Spanish and French: but it was
itself derived from Tuscan; and Tuscan was derived from Celtic and
Greek.

The most beautiful of all languages must be that which is at once, the
most complete, the most sonorous, the most varied in its twists and the
most regular in its progress, that which has most compound words, that
which by its prosody best expresses the soul's slow or impetuous
movements, that which most resembles music.

Greek has all these advantages: it has not the roughness of Latin, in
which so many words end in _um_, _ur_, _us_. It has all the pomp of
Spanish, and all the sweetness of Italian. It has above all the living
languages of the world the expression of music, by long and short
syllables, and by the number and variety of its accents. Thus all
disfigured as it is to-day in Greece, it can still be regarded as the
most beautiful language in the universe.

The most beautiful language cannot be the most widely distributed, when
the people which speaks it is oppressed, not numerous, without commerce
with other nations, and when these other nations have cultivated their
own languages. Thus Greek should be less diffused than Arabic, and even
Turkish.

Of all European languages French should be the most general, because it
is the most suited to conversation: it has taken its character from that
of the people which speaks it.

The French have been, for nearly a hundred and fifty years, the people
which has best known society, which the first discarded all
embarrassment, and the first among whom women were free and even
sovereign, when elsewhere they were only slaves. The always uniform
syntax of this language, which admits no inversions, is a further
facility barely possessed by other tongues; it is more current coin than
others, even though it lacks weight. Th