English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day | Page 3

and
never continues in one stay.
In the very valuable Lectures on the Science of Language by Professor
F. Max Müller, the second Lecture, which deserves careful study, is
chiefly occupied by some account of the processes which he names
respectively "phonetic decay" and "dialectic regeneration"; processes to
which all languages have always been and ever will be subject.
By "phonetic decay" is meant that insidious and gradual alteration in
the sounds of spoken words which, though it cannot be prevented, at
last so corrupts a word that it becomes almost or wholly unmeaning.
Such a word as twenty does not suggest its origin. Many might perhaps

guess, from their observation of such numbers as _thirty, forty_, etc.,
that the suffix _-ty_ may have something to do with ten, of the original
of which it is in fact an extremely reduced form; but it is less obvious
that _twen-_ is a shortened form of twain. And perhaps none but
scholars of Teutonic languages are aware that twain was once of the
masculine gender only, while two was so restricted that it could only be
applied to things that were feminine or neuter. As a somewhat
hackneyed example of phonetic decay, we may take the case of the
Latin mea domina, i.e. my mistress, which became in French ma dame,
and in English _madam_; and the last of these has been further
shortened to mam, and even to _'m_, as in the phrase "Yes, 'm." This
shows how nine letters may be reduced to one. Similarly, our
monosyllable alms is all that is left of the Greek _ele{-e}mosyn{-e}_.
Ten letters have here been reduced to four.
This irresistible tendency to indistinctness and loss is not, however,
wholly bad; for it has at the same time largely contributed, especially in
English, to such a simplification of grammatical inflexions as certainly
has the practical convenience of giving us less to learn. But in addition
to this decay in the forms of words, we have also to reckon with a
depreciation or weakening of the ideas they express. Many words
become so hackneyed as to be no longer impressive. As late as in 1820,
Keats could say, in stanza 6 of his poem of Isabella, that "His heart
beat awfully against his side"; but at the present day the word awfully is
suggestive of schoolboys' slang. It is here that we may well have the
benefit of the principle of "dialectic regeneration." We shall often do
well to borrow from our dialects many terms that are still fresh and racy,
and instinct with a full significance. Tennyson was well aware of this,
and not only wrote several poems wholly in the Lincolnshire dialect,
but introduced dialect words elsewhere. Thus in The Voyage of
Maeldune, he has the striking line: "Our voices were thinner and fainter
than any flittermouse-shriek." In at least sixteen dialects a flittermouse
means "a bat."
I have mentioned Tennyson in this connexion because he was a careful
student of English, not only in its dialectal but also in its older forms.
But, as a matter of fact, nearly all our chief writers have recognised the

value of dialectal words. Tennyson was not the first to use the above
word. Near the end of the Second Act of his Sad Shepherd, Ben Jonson
speaks of:
Green-bellied snakes, blue fire-drakes in the sky, And giddy
flitter-mice with leather wings.
Similarly, there are plenty of "provincialisms" in Shakespeare. In an
interesting book entitled _Shakespeare, his Birthplace and its
Neighbourhood_, by J.R. Wise, there is a chapter on "The
Provincialisms of Shakespeare," from which I beg leave to give a short
extract by way of specimen.
"There is the expressive compound 'blood-boltered' in Macbeth (Act IV,
Sc. 1), which the critics have all thought meant simply blood-stained.
Miss Baker, in her Glossary of Northamptonshire Words, first pointed
out that 'bolter' was peculiarly a Warwickshire word, signifying to clot,
collect, or cake, as snow does in a horse's hoof, thus giving the phrase a
far greater intensity of meaning. And Steevens, too, first noticed that in
the expression in _The Winter's Tale_ (Act III, Sc. 3), 'Is it a boy or a
child?'--where, by the way, every actor tries to make a point, and the
audience invariably laughs--the word 'child' is used, as is sometimes the
case in the midland districts, as synonymous with girl; which is plainly
its meaning in this passage, although the speaker has used it just before
in its more common sense of either a boy or a girl."
In fact, the English Dialect Dictionary cites the phrase "is it a lad or a
child?" as being still current in Shropshire; and duly states that, in
Warwickshire, "dirt collected on the hairs of a horse's leg and forming
into hard masses is said to