Николас Остлер - Empires of the Word - A language History of the World

Cursor Mundi , Assumption of Our Lady, II.51-4.

Chaucer, Troilus and Criseide , v, **II. 1793-9.

From William Caxton, Prologue to Eneydos , 1490.

The most celebrated was Johann Clajus, Grammatica Germanicae linguae…ex Bibliis Lutheri Germanicis et aliis ejus libris collecta , Leipzig, 1578. These last two paragraphs are heavily dependent on Febvre and Martin (1958: 481-91).

They are listed in Nicolson (2003: 247-50), along with many of their Continental contemporaries, starting with the first printed Bible in Czech in 1488.

By the 1620s, all the gentry could read. By the 1640s, so could 45 per cent of the yeomanry, and perhaps 5 per cent of labourers. Literacy was higher among men than women, and in London than in the provinces (Nicolson 2003: 122).

Sir John Seeley, The Expansion of England , Lecture I.

Keynes (1930: 156-7).

Ferguson (2003: 11).

ibid.: 13.

Williams (1643: chs i, vi, viii). The full title is: ‘A Key into the Language of America, or An help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America called New England. Together with brief Observations of the Customes, Manners and Worships, &c of the aforesaid Natives , in Peace and Warre, in Life and Death. On all of which are added Spirituall Observations, Generall and Particular, of the Authour , of chiefe and speciall use (upon all occasions,) to all the English Inhabiting those parts; yet pleasant and profitable to the view of all men.’ The author was expelled from Massachusetts for his liberal opinions, but went on to found Providence, Rhode Island.

Williams (1643: chs iii and xvii).

Examples derived from Silver and Miller (1997: 319). Penobscot, referred to there, is a variety of Abenaki.

Eliot (1666). Although a formal grammar, it does not pass up the odd opportunity for improving comments, e.g. p. 7: ‘And hence is that wise Saying, That a Christian must be adorned with as many Adverbs as Adjectives: He must as well do good , as be good. When a man’s virtuous Actions are well adorned with Adverbs, every one will conclude that the man is well adorned with virtuous Adjectives.’

Eliot (1663): this has the distinction of being the first translation of the Bible in the Americas, although the Spanish, with their Catholic approach to Christianity, had been publishing prayers and confessionals in American languages since 1539. See Chapter 10, ‘First chinks in the language barrier: Interpreters, bilinguals, grammarians’, p. 341.

Cotton Mather (1663-1728), quoted in (indirectly) Bailey (1992: 73).

Barraclough (1978: 221).

The border with Mexico was finalised a little later, by the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, which added a southern sliver to the modern states of Arizona and New Mexico to field a new route for the Southern Pacific Railroad.

Quoted in Milner et al. (1994:168). The acquisition of the west was immediately cemented by the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in northern California in January 1848, and the world’s most famous gold rush. The resulting jump in population accelerated California’s acquisition of statehood to a period of two years, a new record.

Quoted in ibid.: 146.

Quoted in Sharon Gangitano, Indian Language ().

US Census Bureau, quoted in Wright (2000: 266).

US Census Bureau 1989, 1994, quoted in Crawford (1998).

Slate (2001: 391).

Memorandum of M. Austin’s Journey, 1796-1797, Amer. Hist. Rev. , v, pp. 518-42.

Welling (2001).

US Census Bureau, quoted in Wright (2000:490); state populations likewise, pp. 169-201.

Gholam Hossein Khan (1902 [1789]: iii, 191-2).

Thomas Babington Macaulay, Minute of 2 February 1835 on Indian Education , 1835 (reprinted in Young 1957: 721-4). Although this a particularly pernicious example of cultural chauvinism on behalf of English, and played a major role in the withdrawal of support for Sanskrit education in India, Macaulay was thinking not of English’s own culture exclusively but rather of his belief that English could provide access (where necessary, through texts already translated) to every aspect of world culture. But his easy assurance that Indians could afford to neglect their own traditions is a monument to the kind of cultural overconfidence bred by successful imperialism.

J. J. Campos, The History of the Portuguese in Bengal , 1919, p. 173, cited in Sinha (1978:3).

Holden Furber, Bombay Presidency in the Mid-Eighteenth Century , 1965, p. 2, cited in Sinha (1978: 6).

Polier (2001). Characteristically, the work is called I’jāz-i Arsalānī , the ‘wonderment of Arsalān’, alluding to the author’s own Persianate title, Arsalān-i-Jang , ‘lion of battle’, bestowed by the Mughal emperor Shah Alam himself (p. 9). In their Introduction, p. 70, the modern translators point out Polier’s classic approach to a dispute between his two Indian wives, threatening one mother-in-law while appealing to her sense of shame for her daughter. Polier went on to marry a third wife after his return to France in 1788.

S. N. Mukherjee, History of Education in India , 1961, p. 30, cited in Sinha (1978: 27).

Ingram (1969: 235-6).

Sinha (1978: 28).

‘All Ministers shall be obliged to learn within one year after their arrival the Portuguese language and shall apply themselves to learn the native language of the country where they shall reside, the better to enable them to instruct the Gentoos that shall be the servants or the slaves of the company, or of their agents, in the Protestant Religion’ (J. W. Kaye, The Administration of the East India Company , 1853, p. 626, cited in Sinha (1978: 10).

Sinha (1978: 13); Kachru (1983: 21).

W. H. Carey, The Good Old Days of Honourable John Company , 1906, p. 397, cited in Sinha (1978: 10).

British Library, Additional Manuscripts, 13828, pp. 306v-308r; McKinnon goes on to propose setting up a seminary, teaching English and classical Greek, in Lucknow, on the basis of an existing library of classical books.

Parliament Debate (1813), 26: 562-3.

Selections from Educational Records I (H. Sharp, 1920), p. 22, and II (J. A. Richey), p. 152, cited in Sinha (1978: 32).

Sir Hyde East’s letter to J. Harrington, 18 May 1816, cited in Sinha (1978: 36).