language has been, the
speech of the whole world." We do not nowadays meet with these wild
statements.

[240] The stumbling-stones for the foreigner presented by English words in
"ough" have often been referred to, and are clearly set forth in the
verses in which Mr. C.B. Loomis has sought to represent a French
learner's experiences--and the same time to show the criminal impulses
which these irregularities arouse in the pupil.

"I'm taught p-l-o-u-g-h
Shall be pronounced 'plow,'
'Zat's easy when you know,' I say,
'Mon Anglais I'll get through.'

"My teacher say zat in zat case
O-u-g-h is 'oo,'
And zen I laugh and say to him
'Zees Anglais make me cough.'

"He say, 'Not coo, but in zat word
O-u-g-h is "off,"'
Oh, _sacre bleu_! such varied sounds
Of words make me hiccough!

"He say, 'Again, mon friend ees wrong!
O-u-g-h is "up,"
In hiccough,' Zen I cry, 'No more,
You make my throat feel rough,'

"'Non! non!' he cry, 'you are not right--
O-u-g-h is "uff."'
I say, 'I try to speak your words,
I can't prononz zem though,'

"'In time you'll learn, but now you're wrong,
O-u-g-h is "owe."'
'I'll try no more. I sall go mad,
I'll drown me in ze lough!'

"'But ere you drown yourself,' said he,
'O-u-g-h is "ock."'
He taught no more! I held him fast,
And killed him wiz a rough!"

[241] It is interesting to remember that at one period in European
history, French seemed likely to absorb English, and thus to acquire, in
addition to its own motor force, all the motor force which now lies
behind English. When the Normans--a vigorous people of Scandinavian
origin, speaking a Romance tongue, and therefore well fitted to
accomplish a harmonizing task of this kind--occupied both sides of the
English Channel, it seemed probable that they would dominate the speech
of England as well as of France. "At that time," says Meray (_La Vie aux
Temps des Cours d'Amour_, p. 367), who puts forward this view, "the
people of the two coasts of the Channel were closer in customs and in
speech than were for a long time the French on the opposite banks of the
Loire.... The influential part of the English nation and all the people
of its southern regions spoke the _Romance_ of the north of France. In
the Crusades the Knights of the two peoples often mixed, and were
greeted as Franks wherever their adven