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

surely changing, 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