Holland's Influence on English Language and Literature

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Part I Holland's Influence on the Development of Comparative Philology

Chapter I The English Language and Comparative Philology

More than any other the English language is a mixture of many languages¹. Consequently there is no language for which a knowledge of the development of comparative philology is so important. Everybody who knows what is meant by the term comparative philology must see this immediately. Comparative philology, as the first part of this term indicates, is the study which emphasizes the comparison of different languages, makes a research for their relationship, tries to find out what they have in common and in which points they differ, along which lines and according to which laws these languages changed their words, their grammar, and their syntax; how under the influence of climate, soil, way of living, and other circumstances from dialects they became languages; how in their roots, in their sound system, in their etymology, in their grammar and syntax they can be traced so as to discover their relationship and their

1 ‘Certainly no language was ever composed of such numerous and such diverse elements.’ Walter W. Skeat. Principles of English Etymology, First Series, Second edition, Oxford, 1892, p. 3.

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differences, and consequently how every one of them has to be looked at in its historical development. A more beautiful way to get a thorough knowledge of a language than along these lines certainly never could be chosen. For every language this comparative, this genealogical, this historical, this etymological method is exceedingly interesting. But especially for the English language, the study of which brings the philologist into a veritable labyrinth of so many different parts of numerous languages, that a thorough knowledge of the whole mixture in all its constituent elements can hardly be considered possible without those historical, genealogical and etymological studies, which we call comparative philology.

England, which was first inhabited by the Celts with their own language, and then conquered by the Romans, who during four centuries employed there their soldier's Latin, was after that time conquered by the Saxons, Jutes and Angles who brought their own languages or dialects. Later on England was conquered by the Danes, and finally by the Normans under William the Conqueror. These latter were Northmen who had acquired the language of France. England under the subsequent and abiding influences of all these conquests, and in later time by its own prevailing trade in permanent contact with many nations of Europe, and of the whole world, finally developed a language in which so many different elements had secured a permanent place, that for the full and thorough knowledge of the present English language the study of comparative philology must be of more importance than for any other language in the world, because no other language contains such a variety of different elements.