ting--so many
"can'ts" and "won'ts" and "don'ts," which suit English taciturnity, but
slur and ruin English speech--that English, as spoken, is almost a
different language from that which excites admiration when written. So
that the exclusive use of English for international purposes would not
be the survival of the fittest so far as a language for speaking
purposes is concerned.

Moreover, it must be remembered that English is not a democratic
language. It is not, like the chief Romance languages and the chief
Teutonic languages, practically homogeneous, made out of one block. It
is formed by the mixture of two utterly unlike elements, one
aristocratic, the other plebeian. Ever since the Norman lord came over
to England a profound social inequality has become rooted in the very
language. In French, _boeuf_ and _mouton_ and _veau_ and _porc_ have
always been the same for master and for man, in the field and on the
table; the animal has never changed its plebeian name for an
aristocratic name as it passed through the cook's hands. That example is
typical of the curious mark which the Norman Conquest left on our
speech, rendering it so much more difficult for us than for the French
to attain equality of social intercourse. Inequality is stamped
indelibly into our language as into no other great language. Of course,
from the literary point of view, that is all gain, and has been of
incomparable aid to our poets in helping them to reach their most
magnificent effects, as we may see conspicuously in Shakespeare's
enormous vocabulary. But from the point of view of equal social
intercourse, this wealth of language is worse than lost, it is
disastrous. The old feudal distinctions are still perpetuated; the "man"
still speaks his "plain Anglo-Saxon," and the "gentleman" still speaks
his refined Latinized speech. In every language, it is true, there are
social distinctions in speech, and every language has its slang. But in
English these distinctions are perpetuated in the very structure of the
language. Elsewhere the working-class speak--with a little difference in
the quality--a language needing no substantial transformation to become
the language of society, which differs from it in quality rather than in
kind. But the English working man feels the need to translate his common
Anglo-Saxon speech into foreign words of Latin origin. It is difficult
for the educated person in England to understand the struggle which the
uneducat