Lecture V

On the other hand, writing, too influences language; the further mankind progresses, the more significant is the effect of the printed word on spoken language. This comes about when folk dialects, which have nothing to do with writing, gradually disappear. A more elegant kind of speech takes their place, and this is even called “literary speech.” The name indicates how speech is influenced by writing, and you can still notice how this happens in many localities. I am often reminded how it happened to me and my schoolmates. In Austria where there are so many dialects all mixed up together, the schools insisted on the pupils' learning the “literary speech,” which the children to a great extent had never spoken. This had a peculiar result; I can describe it quite frankly, for I myself was exposed to this literary language over a long period of my life, and only with the greatest effort could I get rid of it. It sometimes even now slips through. Literary speech is peculiar in this: that one speaks all the short vowels long and all the long vowels short, whereas dialect, the language born out of the spoken word, pronounces them correctly. When you mean the Sonne, “sun” that is up there in the sky, dialect says d'Sunn. Someone, however, who has gone through an Austrian school is tempted to say, Die Soone. Dialect says, der Sun for Sohn (“son”); the school language says der Sonn.