"obsolescent," "deliquescent," "segregation," for example, must be
abandoned by the man who would write down to the general reader; he
must use "impertinent" as if it were a synonym for "impudent" and
"indecent" as the equivalent of "obscene." And in the face of this wide
ignorance of English, seeing how few people can either read or write
English with any subtlety, and how disastrously this reacts upon the
general development of thought and understanding amidst the English-
speaking peoples, it would be preposterous even if the attempt were
successful, to complicate the first linguistic struggles of the infant
with the beginnings of a second language. But people deal thus lightly
with the mother-tongue because they know so little of it that they do
not even suspect their own ignorance of its burthen and its powers.
They speak a little set of ready-made phrases, they write it scarcely
at all, and all they read is the weak and shallow prose of popular
fiction and the daily press. That is knowing a language within the
meaning of their minds, and such a knowledge a child may very well be
left to "pick up" as it may. Side by side with this they will presently
set themselves to erect a similar "knowledge" of two or three other
languages. One is constantly meeting not only women but men who will
solemnly profess to "know" English and Latin, French, German and
Italian, perhaps Greek, who are in fact--beyond the limited range of
food, clothing, shelter, trade, crude nationalism, social conventions
and personal vanity--no better than the deaf and dumb. In spite of the
fact that they will sit with books in their hands, visibly reading,
turning pages, pencilling comments, in spite of the fact that they will
discuss authors and repeat criticisms, it is as hopeless to express new
thoughts to them as it would be to seek for appreciation in the ear of
a hippopotamus. Their linguistic instruments are no more capable of
contemporary thought than a tin whistle, a xylophone, and a drum are
capable of rendering the Eroica Symphony.