THE " TAAL."
[TO TRH EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."
Stn,—Without entering into any controversial questions, I venture to send you a cutting from the Natal Witness of August 31st which takes a different view as to the pro- minence of the "Taal" from that which has appeared in your columns. The writer, Mr. H. P. Longlands, the editor of the paper, is an old Rugbeian and Balliol man, and has lived for the last thirty years in South Africa. As he is a good scholar and linguist, his views deserve attention. It is true that in the latter part of his article he quotes the success of the Dutch in stamping out French in the Cape Colony by legislative action, but is not the fact that Dutch is a language far more easily acquired than French quite sufficient to account for the extinction of the latter in an isolated com- munity ? Surely the whole history of the "Romance" and "Modern Greek" languages goes to show that the easier language will always in the long run take the place of the more difficult for speaking purposes, whilst even in England the written and printed language has not driven our country dialects out of existence. " Urdoo " was once on a time on the same footing as the "Taal"; it is now a, recognised language, whilst the miner of an Arizona mining camp does not speak the English he reads in his New York Herald. In any case Mr. Longlands' views are those of a very competent P.5.-1 am delighted to see that the Boers are already taking the initiative in enrolling themselves in our Indian Army on the lines first advocated in your columns, and sug- gested by the late Lord Loch. Culloden was fought in 1746, Quebec was taken with the aid of Highland regiments in 1759. The same history may yet repeat itself in Asia if only we have tact and patience, and venture to find some careers for the Boer generals.
" ' Nothing seems to please us more than to make the Empire a museum ot dialects.' Sir George Grey, in one of the earliest despatches which he wrote after arrival at the Cape, dwelt on the fact that in South Africa, in cOntradistinction to the course of events elsewhere, the Kafir maintained his position, and actually increased in numbers, in spite of the civilisation which has wrecked black and coloured races under similar conditions. We have noted this much—that the Dutch language, or the teal, as it is called, does not go under before English any more than the Kafir does. It has every advantage on its side. n is, from the very mongrelness of its nature, more easily. acquired than perfect and unique language, and. our experience is this, that men whose mother tongue is English, will take to it in common conversation in preference to their own. We have been one of a cartload of travellers, of whom every one was home-born, and yet every other person used the taal. They could give no reason for it, except that the habit had grown upon them, and that the habit increased because it was the only means of communication with the natives. If that was the case in the Cape Colony, how much more was it so in the Transvaal, where, if he happened to know English, he must have kept it secret."
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