Even the basest and most recent loans have, however, their interest. In their exaggerated reflection of the corruptions and reductions of careless speech, they remind one of the divergence between Latin and the 'Vulgar' or 'Spoken Latin' that we deduce from Welsh or French. Potatoes has produced tatws; and in recent loans submit >smit-io, and cement >sment. But this is a large subject with numerous problems, and I am not competent to do more than point out to the English that it is one worthy of their attention. For myself, as a West-Midlander, the constant reflection, in the Welsh borrowings of older date, of the forms of West-Midland English is an added attraction.
But no language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.
It is recorded in the tale of Lludd a Llefelys that King Lludd had the island measured in its length and its breadth, and in Oxford (very justly) he found the point of centre. But none the less the centre of the study of Welsh for its own sake is now in Wales; though it should flourish here, where we have not only a chair of Celtic graced by its occupant, but in Jesus College a society of Welsh connexions by foundation and tradition, the possessor among other things of one of the treasures of Medieval Welsh: The Red Book of Hergest. [28] For myself I would say that more than the interest and uses of the study of Welsh as an adminicle of English philology, more than the practical linguist's desire to acquire a knowledge of Welsh for the enlargement of his experience, more even than the interest and worth of the literature, older and newer, that is preserved in it, these two things seem important: Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.
I will not attempt to say now what I mean by calling a language as a whole 'beautiful’, nor in what ways Welsh seems to me beautiful; for the mere recording of a personal and if you will subjective perception of strong aesthetic pleasure in contact with Welsh, heard or read, [29] is sufficient for my conclusion.
The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature. Though it may be allied to some of the elements in the appreciation of verse, it does not need any poets, other than the nameless artists who composed the language. It can be strongly felt in the simple contemplation of a vocabulary, or even in a string of names.
If I were to say ' Language is related to our total psycho-physical make-up', I might seem to announce a truism in a priggish modern jargon. I will at any rate say that language – and more so as expression than as communication – is a natural product of our humanity. But it is therefore also a product of our individuality. We each have our own personal linguistic potentiaclass="underline" we each have a native language. But that is not the language that we speak, our cradle-tongue, the first-learned. Linguistically we all wear ready-made clothes, and our native language comes seldom to expression, save perhaps by pulling at the ready-made till it sits a little easier. But though it may be buried, it is never wholly extinguished, and contact with other languages may stir it deeply.
My chief point here is to emphasize the difference between the first-learned language, the language of custom, and an individual's native language, his inherent linguistic predilections: not to deny that he will share many of these with others of his community. He will share them, no doubt, in proportion as he shares other elements in his make-up. [30]
Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.
The nature of this pleasure is difficult, perhaps impossible, to analyse. It cannot, of course, be discovered by structural analysis. No analysis will make one either like or dislike a language, even if it makes more precise some of the features of style that are pleasing or distasteful. The pleasure is possibly felt most strongly in the study of a 'foreign' or second-learned language; but if so that may be attributed to two things: the learner meets in the other language desirable features that his own or first-learned speech has denied to him; and in any case he escapes from the dulling of usage, especially inattentive usage.
But these predilections are not the product of second-learned languages; though they may be modified by them: experience must affect the practice or appreciation of any art. My cradle-tongue was English (with a dash of Afrikaans). French and Latin together were my first experience of second-learned language. Latin – to express now sensations that are still vivid in memory though inexpressible when received – seemed so normal that pleasure or distaste was equally inapplicable. French [31] has given to me less of this pleasure than any other language with which I have sufficient acquaintance for this judgement. The fluidity of Greek, punctuated by hardness, and with its surface glitter, captivated me, even when I met it first only in Greek names, of history or mythology, and I tried to invent a language that would embody the Greekness of Greek (so far as it came through that garbled form); but part of the attraction was antiquity and alien remoteness (from me): it did not touch home. Spanish came my way by chance and greatly attracted me. It gave me strong pleasure, and still does – far more than any other Romance language. But incipient 'philology' was, I think, an adulterant: the preservation in spite of change of so great a measure of the linguistic feeling and style of Latin was certainly an ingredient in my pleasure, an historical and not purely aesthetic element.
Gothic was the first to take me by storm, to move my heart. It was the first of the old Germanic languages that I ever met. I have since mourned the loss of Gothic literature. I did not then. The contemplation of the vocabulary in A Primer of the Gothic Language was enough: a sensation at least as full of delight as first looking into Chapman's Homer. Though I did not write a sonnet about it. I tried to invent Gothic words.
28
It also possesses in MS. Jesus Coll. Oxford 29 a copy of the early Middle English
29
For there is concomitant pleasure of the eye in an orthography that is home-grown with a language, though most spelling-reformers are insensitive to it.
30
A difficult proportion to discover without knowing his ancestral history through indefinite generations. Children of the same two parents may differ markedly in this respect.
31
I refer to Modern French; and I am speaking primarily of word-forms, and those in relation to meaning, especially in basic words.