Word: foreigner
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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...here a nation is conquered by an invading army, where the dynasty or governing class alone is changed; only so much of the language of the conqueror infuses itself as is absolutely necessary to the commerce of life, and the speech of the people gradually absorbs into itself these foreign elements and assimilates them. During the period of manuscripts, the influence of literature upon language was comparatively small; languages continued in a state of solution, and it was the invention of printing which finally precipitated them in crystals of homogeneous and enduring forms...
...veal, pork, all Norman-French-to indicate the thing consumed. In the same way while the names of the various grains continue Saxon as well as the product of the inferier kinds when ground, as oatmeal, barleymeal, ryemeal, yet that which was used by the higher classes gets a foreign name-flour. Thus we find a principle of caste established in our language by the mere necessities of the case. To bury remains Saxon, because everybody must at last be put in the earth, but as only the rich and noble could afford any pomp in that sad office...
...measured cadence, a musical quality, to which rhetorical composition carefully attends, so that certain sequences are approved and others not. This difference of effect has until lately been almost entirely disregarded. And even now though many schools teach the proper method of utterance theoretically, yet it is so foreign to English modes that very rarely is a person found who knows anything about the quantitative pronunciation of Latin practically. Boys know that some syllables are long and others short, but what that difference means to the ear they can very feebly realize. But in a considerable part of the play...
...this ultra perversion of the Roman sounds that led to the adoption of the present system. As a change was necessary there seemed no better course than to adopt the pronunciation which according to sufficient evidence was, so far as any approximation can be made to a foreign tongue, really used by the Romans. We may be sure that a Roman could understand the words of the Latin play, though he might think they were spoken by a very barbarous people...
This plan does not, however, receive support at Oxford. The Oxford Magazine says that the result of this postgraduate study would be "that we shall be overrun with foreign persons introducing their strange ideas of society, and any further advance in that direction would certainly be regretted in after years...