Multilingualism: Understanding

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Multilingualism
 ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY

World Englishes: A Critical Analysis by Mario Saraceni

Multilingualism in Public Spaces, edited by Robert Blackwood and
Deirdre A. Dunlevy
Linguanomics by Gabrielle Hogan-Brun

Other books by John Edwards

The Irish Language
Linguistic Minorities, Policies and Pluralism
Language, Society and Identity
Language and Disadvantage
Multilingualism
Un mundo de lenguas
Language and Identity
Language Diversity in the Classroom
Minority Languages and Group Identity
Language in Canada
Challenges in the Social Life of Language
Sociolinguistics
Multilingualism
Understanding linguistic diversity

Second Edition

JOHN EDWARDS
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­À la mémoire de Suzanne Aline Marie
DeLarichelière
vi
 ­Contents
List of figures viii
List of tables ix

Prologue 1

1 Language origins and language diversity 9

2 Interpreting language diversity 31
3 The emergence and measurement of multilingualism 43

4 Dialects and other language varieties 61

5 Multilingual abilities 75
6 The consequences of Babel: Lingua francas and
translation 93
7 Keeping languages pure 109
8 Languages and identities 123
9 Language decline and revival: Basic factors 137
10 Language decline and revival: Advocacy
and activism 149
11 Language planning and the ecology of language 165

12 Postmodern perspectives 183

Epilogue 197

Notes 200
References 220
Index 248
 List of figures
1.1 The Tower of Babel by Anton Joseph von Prenner (1683–1761) 10

1.2 Adam names the animals in the Garden of Eden 15

1.3 Sir William ‘Oriental’ Jones (1746–1794) 25

1.4 The global distribution of the major language families 26

1.5 The central branches of the Indo-European family tree 27

2.1 Dorothy (Dolly) Pentreath of Mousehole (1692–1777) 32

3.1 Taking the census (volkstelling) with the Theunisz family of caravan
dwellers, Amsterdam, 1925 51

3.2 Multilingual plaque at the entrance to the European Parliament,

Brussels 59

4.1 Cockney rhyming slang on an ATM in Hackney 73

5.1 Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) 87

5.2 The Mortlake mausoleum of Sir Richard and Lady Burton 88

7.1 Dr Samuel Johnson and his Dictionary of the English Language

(6th edition, 1785) 116

7.2 Sir James Murray (1837–1915) 118

7.3 Noah Webster (1758–1843) 120

10.1 Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858–1922) working on his dictionary of Hebrew

(c. 1915) 151
 List of tables
1.1 The ten most widely spoken languages 28

3.1 Pronunciation of postvocalic /r/ in New York and Reading 57

x
 Prologue

I­ ntroductory note
This is a second edition of a book (in English) that had earlier seen
the light of day, in rather different form, in Catalan and Spanish
editions. Even though it is now presented in a much revised and
enlarged version, it can still only touch upon many important topics
that are covered more thoroughly elsewhere. It does, however,
provide an overview of multilingualism that is reasonably complete,
if abbreviated, and it is meant for all those who find discussions of
language and languages both interesting and informative. It may also
prove useful for students, either by itself or in conjunction with other
linguistic resources.
I present here a picture of global linguistic diversity, with some of
its important ramifications and consequences, but I also try to show
that many of the most compelling aspects of this diversity are not
linguistic in any narrow or self-contained sense; rather, they have
to do with the symbolic and identity-marking features of language.
If languages were only instruments of communication, there
would still be a great deal to say in a world that contains several
thousand of them: why there are so many, how different they are
from one another, how they present reality in different ways to
their speakers, and so on. It would also be useful, particularly for
speakers of ‘big’ languages, to discuss in some detail the multilingual
capacities that characterize the majority of the world’s population,
the normality of multilingualism, and the statistically minor category
2 Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity

of monolingualism. There is a great deal more to say, however, when

we realize that languages are totems as well as tools. For then we
enter the highly charged psychological and social domains of group
attachments, the most powerful and the most historically interesting
categories here being ethnic and national affiliations. Even a cursory
glance at the table of contents of this book will reveal the attempts
to comment upon the intertwining of language and group identity.1
Many languages are mentioned in the book, but many more are
not. One cannot deal with all settings and all varieties, of course, and
for this reason I have tried wherever possible to make points and to
highlight situations that have clearly generalizable features. (I invite
readers to pause now and again, to consider how a description or
assessment of a particular language setting might or might not
find echoes in other circumstances, in other communities.) Since
social-scientific work generally reveals a lack of historical and cross-
disciplinary awareness, the topics and developments discussed here
are given some suitable contextualization, wherever feasible. I have
also been attentive to the most significant and coherent treatments
in the relevant scholarship. Whether one remains with the English-
language academic literature or ventures further afield, there is much
less serious work to be found on non-European contexts, despite
the obvious richness of multilingualism in Africa, Asia and South
America. Nonetheless, I have been able to make some mention of
this richness in the book. Given the current global linguistic picture,
a great deal of the discussion has to do with interactions between
‘larger’ and ‘smaller’ languages. More specifically – and as most
readers will know – these involve contact (and often conflict) between
English and other varieties. I should say something here, then, about
the unique status of English in the world, and some of its important
ramifications.2

English in the world

Since so many modern multilingual scenes take place on a stage for
which English provides the general backdrop, I thought it useful to set
out a few contextual details in this short section. And, since so much
 Prologue 3

attention has been given to resisting the global pervasiveness of

English, and to improving the fortunes of ‘small’ languages, it is also
useful to bear in mind – from the outset – Abram de Swaan’s simple
observation: ‘the more languages, the more English’. The implication
is that increases in linguistic diversity may actually strengthen the
need for a cross-cultural lingua franca. Something to bear in mind for
all opponents of linguistic ‘imperialism’.3
In 1578, John Florio published First Fruites, a book that provided
‘familiar speech, merie Prouerbes, wittie Sentences, and golden
sayings’ to teach Italian to English gentlemen. In Florio’s time
(c.1550–1625), French, Italian and Spanish were the powerful
‘international’ varieties, widely studied in Tudor and Stuart England.
Italian challenged the supremacy of French in both the cultural and
the commercial worlds, and many prominent Elizabethans learned it.
Indeed, the queen herself was a student, along with luminaries like
Edmund Spenser and the Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesly – a
literary patron to Florio and, more famously, to Shakespeare. Few
people in the sixteenth century would have predicted global status
for English, a language with 4 or 5 million speakers, and well back in
the linguistic sweepstakes. One of Florio’s set conversation pieces
makes the point that, once across the Channel, English loses most of
its usefulness. The first speaker notes that English is a language that
‘wyl do you good in England, but passe Douer, it is woorth nothing’.
Then, in reply to a question about the state of the language itself,
he adds: ‘Certis if you wyl beleeue me, it doth not like me at al,
because it is a language confused, bepeesed with many tongues: it
taketh many words of the latine, & mo from the French, & mo from
the Italian, and many mo from the Duitch.’ A mixed and bastardized
variety, of only insular value.4
I mention Florio’s work here as a salutary general example of the
changing fortunes of language and, in the case of what is now the
major global lingua franca – often described as an agent of cultural and
linguistic imperialism – a reminder that English has not always been a
linguistic power-house. The reasons for its growth are familiar enough
to require no special attention here; all languages owe their fortunes
to the status of their speakers and, even when Florio was writing his
manual, the seeds of English global dominance were being planted
and nurtured. The language did not follow the usual course, however.
4 Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity

Historical precedent would have suggested that the decline of British

power meant the waning of English, but the language received a
renewed lease of life as America took centre stage. More unusually
still, there may be a third act to the drama, since English has now so
thoroughly penetrated the non-anglophone world. Rising economies
everywhere are already well used to English, and to its lingua-franca
value, both within and between countries. One hesitates to predict
that even the dramatic surge in Chinese power and influence will lead
to the widespread replacement of English by Mandarin.
While there is now a considerable literature examining the allegedly
baleful effects of English linguistic imperialism, there are also voices
from beyond the traditional ‘anglosphere’ that not only accept the
place of English, but also see it as a medium that has grown far from
its original roots and is no longer ‘owned’ by its original speakers. In
1996, Sridath Ramphal, the Guyanese Secretary-General of the British
Commonwealth, wrote that English had become a world language,
not a language of imperialism. More recent comments along the
same lines have come from Farzad Sharifian, an Iranian linguist who
claimed English as an international language; from Sung-Yul Park,
writing about the ‘local construction of a global language’ in Korea; and
from the Japanese sociolinguist Nobuyuki Honna, who sees English
as ‘a multicultural language’. Suresh Canagarajah has noted that the
use of English as a lingua franca in non-native contexts may facilitate
a desirable unity of action in movements for national liberation, for
instance. Fuller arguments have been made by Philippe van Parijs,
who sees the desirable lingua-franca status of English arising ‘from
no hidden conspiracy . . . but [as] the spontaneous outcome of a huge
set of decentralised decisions, mainly by non-anglophones, about
which language to learn and which language to use’.5

Multiculturalism, nationalism and

language
Readers may wonder why I merely touch on multiculturalism and
nationalism in this very brief section. Large literatures exist for
each of them and, within that extensive coverage much mention is
 Prologue 5

made of their relationships with language. That is one reason why

I do not delve more deeply into them here. The more important
reason is that the principal ways in which matters of ethnicity,
nationalism and culture intertwine with language are made quite
clear throughout this book, and this is particularly evident in those
many places where I discuss contacts between bigger and smaller
languages and communities. Here, then, I wish only to emphasize
the point I made at the beginning of the book about the powerful
symbolic value that languages possess, which so often comes to the
fore when ethnic and national contacts become especially salient or
problematic, and whose contribution to the marking of group borders
is considerable. I shall return to language-as-symbol in several of the
later chapters here.
The mundane instrumental aspects of language provide, in
themselves, rich material for study and analysis, and contribute a
major pillar to individual and group identity. Most speakers of big
languages do not reflect on this contribution very often, simply
because it is an unremarkable ‘given’. Indeed, the daily language of
many such speakers is also the language of their culture; there is
thus a continuity between the past, with its literary and historical
associations, and the present. You read poetry in the same language
you use to buy apples. What is of immediate instrumental value also
carries symbolic freight, and the language-and-identity linkages are
clear, if not always uppermost in the mind. They often become very
central, however, when linguistic instrumentality is waning or has,
indeed, been lost. It is hardly surprising, then, that symbolic aspects
of an ancestral language may help to sustain a sense of ‘groupness’
when that language is on an instrumental decline. Not only that: the
powerful cultural associations of a language no longer widely spoken
may provide a base for vernacular revival – or so linguistic nationalists
hope and believe. The upshot here is that much of the subject matter
of this book – language and languages in all their forms – deals
either explicitly or implicitly with the relationship between language
and cultural identity. And this means that, if there were sufficient
time and space, it would make a great deal of sense to discuss
multiculturalism together with multilingualism. Instead, I can only
remind the reader that multiculturalism often implies multilingualism.
Indeed, if we accept that languages that have come to possess only
6 Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity

symbolic value for a cultural community might still be discussed

under the heading of ‘multilingualism’, then we could replace that
‘often’ with something close to ‘always’.
In most countries – particularly, of course, those immigrant-
receiving countries of the new world – multiculturalism has long had
de facto status. Canada was the first to give it de jure status, however,
to make multiculturalism official. The idea of a ‘mosaic’ of indigenous
and immigrant populations was introduced by a journalist in 1922.
Four years later, a worker for the YWCA in Canada used the word in
the title of her book – she went on to become the secretary of the
organization’s ‘Council of Friendship’, set up to assist the integration
of newcomers to the country. ‘Mosaic’ then appeared in the title of
a 1938 book which compared the Canadian arrangement to that of
the American ‘melting pot’, and which can be seen as introducing the
concept of multiculturalism – although not the word, which began
to emerge during the 1960s. The findings of the Royal Commission
on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (established in 1963) led to the
Official Languages Act (1969) and the adoption of a federal policy of
multiculturalism followed in 1971, later enshrined in an Act of 1988.6
Officially supported multiculturalism is a rare bird. A recent summary
of multicultural policy in twenty-one democratic countries shows that
only Canada and Australia enshrine such a policy in legislative terms.
Since Canada is officially bilingual, and given the sometimes fraught
relationship between its francophone and anglophone populations,
the multicultural policy exists within a bilingual framework. The
French were particularly opposed to endorsing any ‘ethnic’ language,
for fear that that would act against the maintenance of French. At the
same time, some of those immigrant groups for whom multicultural
accommodations were made have regretted (to put it mildly) that
their languages were not included under the federal cultural umbrella.
A succinct account of the basic objection here – of the difficulty of
reconciling official linguistic dualism with ethnocultural pluralism –
was provided by a Ukrainian scholar, who described the federal policy
as one of ‘political pragmatism’ which:

pleased no one . . . The failure to provide multiculturalism with

a linguistic base especially displeased the Ukrainians; the
loosening of the ties between language and culture angered the
 Prologue 7

francophones who disliked any suggestion that the status of their

culture was on a par with that of other ethnic groups.

The summary study found that, besides the country-wide policies of

Canada and Australia, some states do make partial or regionally based
multicultural accommodations for immigrant communities. Every
reader will be aware, of course, that a heady mixture of concerns
about the non-integration of immigrants and refugees, Islamophobia,
right-wing activism, racism and political populism has meant that,
over the past decade, many European leaders have declared their
multicultural efforts to be failures.7
Nationalism is a second important topic in which languages play a
central role, but – as with multiculturalism – I have not broken it out
for separate examination. Again, however, the matter of language-as-
national-marker is implicit throughout the text. In fact, if we realize
that the ethnic affiliations that define and fuel multicultural dynamics
are nationalisms writ small, if we understand that the demands for
cultural recognition and respect are essentially the same at both levels
(leaving aside nationalist demands for accreditations as independent
states, of course), then the two topics I bring up in this section are
reflections of one another.8

Notes and references

I have included a great many references and endnotes, although
the flow of the text does not require that they be consulted. I may
have rather over-egged the pudding here, but I thought it valuable to
provide the fullest documentation for readers who may be concerned
to follow up on some parts of the discussion. I apologize for the large
number of references to my own work – if nothing else, readers will
gather that virtually all of the topics treated in this book have been
matters of great interest to me over a long time.
8
 ­1
Language origins and
language diversity

Introductory note
Readers may think it odd that I have devoted the next two sections
to biblical and, more generally, ‘spiritual’ aspects of language –
especially since I go on to give only cursory attention to modern
views of language origins. My reasoning here is twofold. First,
the story of the Tower of Babel and its ramifications is intrinsically
interesting, particularly as it leads us towards the odd phenomenon
of glossolalia. Second, the debates about the language of Eden are
also fascinating in themselves (and not without some humorous
and/or bizarre asides), besides telling us something of both religious
and secular arguments involving language. The specifics of most of
these are now mainly of historical interest, but desires to associate
one’s group with a particular language are still very much with us.
Arguments claiming that one language is above others in terms of
‘purity’, or greater internal logic, or aesthetic superiority, also have
modern representations. While various aspects of these matters are
taken up in this book, I can anticipate a little by repeating that the
central and unifying feature of them all is the relationship between
language and group identity.
10 Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity

Spiritual language I: Babel and Babble1

­In the Genesis story of the Tower of Babel, the divine punishment
for human temerity was the confusion of languages. Of course,
many scholars have long felt that linguistic diversity does not reflect a
punishment at all but, rather, comprises a vital component of a larger
and entirely desirable human diversity. Einar Haugen, for example,
thought that it was hard to see Babel as a ‘curse’ and later, in a
paean to bilingualism and diversity, he wrote about the ‘blessings’
of Babel. A possible interpretation of Babel suggests, in fact, that
neither punishment nor blessing is the best characterization; instead,
God’s action can be seen as a judgement and a reminder (none too
subtle, of course) of the divine injunction to disperse and multiply.
Among others, Marianne Moyaert has pointed out that it was not the
supposed arrogance of the tower builders – seeking to climb too close
to heaven – that disturbed the divine mind, but rather their cultural
and linguistic continuity: ‘one people and one language’ intending to

FIGURE 1.1 The Tower of Babel by Anton Joseph von Prenner (1683–1761),
after the 1563 painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569),
­Metropolitan Museum of Art (Public Domain).
 Language origins and language diversity 11

‘stay together at one place’. In this view, God intervenes to restore

the diversity previously ordained. Incidentally, as with stories of great
floods, dramatic language dispersals are described in the mythologies
of many cultures. George Steiner thus writes that ‘no civilization but
has its version of Babel, its mythology of the primal scattering of
languages’ or, as he put it elsewhere, a ‘remembrance of a primal
severance, of a brutal weaning’. One of the most comprehensive
treatments is Arno Borst’s Der Turmbau von Babel, a work in six
volumes.2
In biblical terms, the linguistic confusion at Babel was remedied,
albeit only in a spiritual context, by the miracle that occurred at the
first Pentecost – a word meaning ‘fiftieth’, thus marking a holiday
celebrated seven weeks, or fifty days, after the Jewish Passover. We
read in Acts that, at this first celebration after Christ’s martyrdom,
the apostles were suffused with the holy spirit and ‘began to speak
with other tongues’. Those who listened were amazed, ‘because
that every man heard them speak in his own language . . . how hear
we every man in our own tongue?’ But Peter and the apostles said
that this new mutual intelligibility was partial fulfilment of a prophecy,
one that foresaw the ‘pouring out’ of God’s holy spirit. The result is a
double miracle, inasmuch as the speakers were in receipt of divine
inspiration, and the listeners required some heavenly interpretation
service to make sense of what would otherwise be gibberish.
In some interpretations, the passage in Acts suggests xenoglossia,
the ability to speak in a language one does not know, but which is
nevertheless an existing variety. Those listening to the apostles were
members of more than a dozen groups – from Parthians and Medes
to Cretans and Arabians – and they were astonished to find that they
understood the speakers (all of them ‘Galilæans’). Were the apostles
actually speaking in the many languages of their listeners, then? Or
were the latter able to understand what was said – however it was
said – in their own tongue? Is the miracle in the speaking or in the
hearing? A third possibility is that the ‘other tongues’ produced by the
holy spirit were indeed a type of glossolalic speech – no real language
at all – in which case the miracle was indeed a double one.
The word glossolalia derives from a Greek compound uniting
‘language’ with ‘speech’ and was coined by Frederic Farrar in his life
of St Paul. He referred to ‘soliloquies of ecstatic spiritual emotion’,
12 Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity

but also suggested caution in both practice and interpretation. Here

he drew inferences from the apostle’s own admonitions, as found in I
Corinthians, where Paul says that prophecy is preferable to speaking
in tongues – indeed, if such speech is not based in revelation or
divine prediction, if it does not flow from the holy spirit, then it is a
false quantity. There is, Farrar wrote, a possible ‘rivalry of unmeaning
sounds among the glossolalists’, and of a ‘manifestation at first both
sacred and impressive, but liable to easy simulation and grave abuse’.
This ‘gift of tongues’ appears throughout Christian history, but Farrar
and others – both within and without the church – have described its
hysterical symptoms, which often lead to ‘disorderly and deplorable’
consequences.3
In the contemporary western world, glossolalia is found most
often in some of the smaller branches of modern Pentecostalism,
but it also occurs in larger charismatic and evangelistic settings. The
redoubtable Billy Graham gave it his imprimatur in the 1970s, as did
the Southern Baptist Convention in 2015. Glossolalia has also been
important in the Mormon tradition. While Joseph Smith, the founder
of Mormonism, cautioned that there is nothing ‘more easily imitated
by the devil than the gift of tongues’, he nevertheless acknowledged
its usefulness in missionary work.4
Glossolalia is perceived as one of the revelations of the holy spirit.
In fact, five such manifestations are mentioned in Mark, the other
four being the ability to heal the sick, to cast out devils, to handle
venomous snakes and to drink deadly poison. Some or all of these
divine gifts can be found in current Christian sects. The Appalachian
‘Signs Followers’ exhibit all five, with a notice in its West Virginian
church pointing out (in uncorrected copy here) that:

The Paster and Congregation are not Responsible for anyone that
handles the Serpent’s and get’s bit. If you get bit the Church will
stand by you and pray with you. And the same goes with drinking
the poision.5

Glossolalists themselves obviously believe that speaking in tongues

is a sign of divine and desirable possession, but more disinterested
assessments reveal psychological and neurological underpinnings.
From a linguistic point of view, it is clear that, while glossolalic ‘words’
 Language origins and language diversity 13

are ‘semantically empty and lacking in grammatical patterning . . .

they do have phonological patterns, and these are derived from
the speaker’s native language and from any other language(s) s/he
has heard.’ With affective or emotional force, but without rational
meaning, historical and contemporary manifestations of speaking
in tongues clearly do not have the semantic characteristics that
appeared at Pentecost. Modern glossolalists may assume that the
infusion of the holy spirit produces ‘real’ language, but they do not
expect either transmission or reception of logically or grammatically
understandable information.6

Spiritual language II: From the

Garden of Eden
If linguistic diversity first occurred because of some celestial
intervention, some deliberate confusion, what came before? What
was the original language? There are one or two quite well-known
experimental investigations – perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not – based
on the assumption that, if left uninfluenced, children would somehow
come out with that first variety. Herodotus reports that the Egyptian
pharaoh Psamtik arranged for two babies to be nurtured without
hearing any language: at the age of two, the infants apparently said
becos, a Phrygian word meaning bread. Early in the thirteenth century,
the Holy Roman Emperor attempted a similar experiment, but without
success, for it was found that ‘the children could not live without
clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance,
and blandishments’. Later on, James IV of Scotland put two infants
with a dumb woman, and ‘some say they spoke good Hebrew’. The
assumptions underpinning these regal enquiries went unsupported,
of course, not least by the naturally occurring ‘experiments’ provided
throughout history by ‘wolf-children’ and ‘bear-children’. None of these
feral youngsters have been able to speak, and most efforts to teach
them language have been failures. Victor, the ‘wild boy of Aveyron’,
discovered in 1799 aged about eleven, is the best known case here.7
Dubious empiricism aside, the question of the primal human
language has always been important, in both religious and secular
14 Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity

settings. In terms of the great monotheisms of the classic world, it

has generally taken the form of enquiry into the language of Eden.
This was once important (although hardly evidentiary, of course) and
the early speculations, while quite without linguistic or historical
merit, remain of some psychological and social interest. This is
simply because they are a manifestation of the place that language
has always had in our sense of who we are. And what, after all,
could be more important than being able to show that your language
was, in fact, the very first one (or, at least, a lineal descendant of
that ‘Adamic’ variety)? The implications for group and individual
identity, for relations with other people, and for communication,
are considerable. Any ‘winner’ here could claim both linguistic and
cultural superiority. The search for the divine language, then, is the
earliest example of something that has a continuing resonance in
discussions of multilingual contact and conflict. These commonly
involve languages of greater or lesser social force, languages with
which speakers have very close affiliations, languages about which
strong opinions are held.
­Genesis tells us that after God had made all the birds and beasts,
he ‘brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and
whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name
thereof.’ Or, as John Milton has the first man say, in Paradise Lost:

I nam’d them, as they pass’d, and understood Thir Nature, with

such knowledge God endu’d My sudden apprehension . . .

Once, then, there was an original and ideal language and, unlike all
languages since, there was a mystical but perfect correspondence
between words and the things that they named. Many believed that
that blissful language of Eden, the divinely inspired lingua humana,
was necessarily a perfect medium – but to identify it and to make a
case for some relationship with an existing human language proved
rather more difficult. In fact, more than three centuries before Milton,
in the Divine Comedy, Dante’s Adam says that his language was long
extinct before the time of Babel, which rather complicates the matter.
Earlier, however, Dante had held (in De vulgari eloquentia) that the
language of Eden was Hebrew, and that this remained the common
language until the great confusion of tongues.8
 Language origins and language diversity 15

FIGURE 1.2 Adam names the animals in the Garden of Eden, Truro
­Cathedral © Wellcome Images (CC BY 4.0).

From about the second century BCE, Jewish literature gave pride
of place to Hebrew: this was the medium of revelation, the language
in which God spoke to Adam, the language used by all creatures until
the fall, and all people until Babel. Hebrew had the support of most
of the Christian community, too. Virtually all of the Greek, Latin and
(later) Byzantine patriarchs supported its primary status, as did most
of the Arabic-speaking Christian theologians. Among other things,
this support was itself a buttress of the Christian claim to be the
‘new Israel’. Simply put, ‘until the sixteenth century, most Western
thinkers assumed that [the] first language was Hebrew.’9
Still, Hebrew did not have it all its own way. Theodoret of Antioch
and Gregory of Nyssa, for example, both prominent religious figures
of the fourth century, were dubious. Theodoret plumped for Syriac,
and argued that since God gave Hebrew to Moses – that Hebrew
had only come into being at the time of the exodus from Egypt – it
could hardly be the language of creation. Aramaic, a variety widely
spoken throughout the middle east generally, and within the Jewish
community specifically, was also a continuing rival for top honours. Its
16 Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity

primacy was proclaimed by the Syriac church fathers – unsurprisingly,

as Syriac is essentially an Aramaic dialect.10
Even if Hebrew were the Adamic language, many felt that its
modern varieties must surely have lost the essential ‘character’
that allowed that first perfect fit between words and things. In the
seventeenth century, John Wilkins made that argument, pointing out
that so-called ‘deficiencies’ in the contemporary Hebrew indicated
that it was not ‘the same which was con-created with our first
Parents, and spoken by Adam in Paradise’. At about the same time,
Thomas Hobbes (in his Leviathan) wrote that, whatever Adam’s
speech capacities may have been, all of his linguistic invention
was ‘lost at the tower of Babel, when by the hand of God, every
man was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former
language.’ Strengthening these reasonable cautions is the fact that
no specific claim is made in the Old Testament for Hebrew as the
Edenic language. So, Wilkins, Hobbes, Athanasius Kircher, and many
other prominent philosophers of the early Enlightenment argued that
no attempt to rediscover the lingua humana could possibly succeed.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Giambattista Vico was
pouring scorn on the wasted discussions about the primal variety,
pointing to ‘opinions so uncertain, inept, frivolous, pretentious or
ridiculous, and so numerous, that we need not relate them.’ And
yet . . . even the great Gottfried Leibniz was not above engaging in
linguistic speculation, supporting a ‘Celto-Scythian’ hypothesis that
would embrace German. He approved the sentiment expressed
by a correspondent: ‘there is nothing in our Saxon language that is
random or confused . . . not one word which naturally and properly
denotes any vice or moral defect; which is a proof that our language
was founded at the time of those first men and is the very ancient
tongue they spoke.’ Not surprising, then, that the nineteenth-century
philologist, Max Müller, deeply regretted how much such conjectures
had retarded the progress of linguistic science.11
While support for Hebrew generally rested upon quite specific
religious conjectures, many other languages were suggested as
the original, often because of more secular political and nationalistic
developments and aspiration. Contenders here included the Celtic
varieties, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Basque, Hungarian, Breton,
German and Chinese.The lack of any meaningful comparative linguistics,
 Language origins and language diversity 17

linked with the decline of Latin and the rising importance of national
vernaculars, allowed speculations that now seem ludicrous. Some
Persian scholars – perhaps not entirely seriously – felt that Adam and
Eve spoke their language, that the snake spoke Arabic, and that the
angel Gabriel spoke Turkish. We may assume that other assertions
were intentionally silly. One seventeenth-century writer argued that
God spoke Spanish to Adam, the Devil spoke Italian, and Adam and
Eve subsequently apologized to God in French. A satirist of the time
wrote that God spoke Swedish and Adam Danish, and that Eve was
seduced by a French-speaking snake.12

Language origins in current perspective

Linguistic speculations that hoped to link, however tenuously, the
language of Eden with some existing human variety can be safely
put aside. Current religious accounts, to the extent that they find the
question relevant at all, generally accept – with the sixteenth-century
mystic, John Dee – that Adam and Eve no doubt spoke in tongues
and/or in some now-forever-lost ‘angelic’ or ‘celestial’ variety. If
we turn from the spiritual to the scientific, however, we find that
returning to origins, in terms of any specific language or group of
languages, remains a fraught journey. Perhaps there was, in fact,
one original language from which all others evolved (the principle
of monogenesis), but it is equally possible that several emerged
more or less simultaneously, in different places (polygenesis). And,
in either case, just how did language arise? These waters are deep
enough that, in 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris forbade any
further discussions on language origins, on the grounds that all would
be fruitless.13
In 1922, the great Danish linguist and anglicist Otto Jespersen
outlined several common hypotheses, in which language was
seen to arise from emotional exclamations, or rhythmical grunts,
or songs. Onomatopoeia was another suggestion: the first words
were representations of sounds in nature. Two immediate problems
present themselves, of course. The first is that most objects in the
world do not make characteristic noises – something of a limitation,
to be sure. Also annoying is the fact that animals (for example) make
18 Multilingualism: Understanding Linguistic Diversity

different sounds in different parts of the world. In English, roosters

go ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ and dogs go ‘woof’, but in Romanian they say
‘cucurigu’ and ‘ham’. There are cross-cultural similarities, of course.
Cats everywhere say (more or less) ‘miaow’, and a lot of dog speech
varies only at the level of dialect: in German and Icelandic, they say
‘wuff’ and ‘voff’, respectively.
Only relatively recently have questions about language origins been
given renewed attention. Virtually all modern ideas are embedded
in an evolutionary picture in which the development of speech had
survival value. Perhaps this development was made possible by some
internal predisposition of the evolved brain, some innate ‘readiness’
to learn language, or perhaps the contribution of the environmental
context – obviously necessary, in any event, to give predisposition
a specific linguistic form – has greater explanatory value. Perhaps
language first arose as a refinement of rather primitive noises, perhaps
it translated and expanded gesture into sound. A very recent theory,
one that is of some particular relevance to group solidarity, holds
that the utility of language was originally linked to social bonding.
Gossip, the banal exchange of social experiences, is seen as a sort
of human ‘mutual grooming’. Perhaps the most proficient speakers
might have improved their survival chances by being more informed
and more manipulative. Like all theories, this one is controversial,
but the universality of gossip – which accounts for about 70 per cent
of everyday talk – is indisputable. Origin theories, and the evolved
complexity of human language in comparison with any other animal
communication system, are of great significance, but we need
not attend further to them here. Suffice it to say that, although we
are still in the realm of speculation, it is an increasingly informed
speculation, and the nature, underpinnings and assumptions of
current hypotheses are quite different from those of the church
patriarchs and the pre-scientific natural philosophers.14

Comparing languages
­ herever and whenever human language first arose, and whatever
W
form (or forms) it initially took, the scholarly community is virtually
as one in the assertion that all known varieties are of considerable
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Moxon's
mechanick exercises, volume 1 (of 2)
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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Title: Moxon's mechanick exercises, volume 1 (of 2)

The doctrine of handy-works applied to the art of printing

Annotator: Theodore Low De Vinne

Author: Joseph Moxon

Release date: November 24, 2023 [eBook #72217]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Typothetæ of the city of New

York, 1896

Credits: deaurider, Brian Wilsden and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOXON'S

MECHANICK EXERCISES, VOLUME 1 (OF 2) ***
This certifies that four hundred and fifty
copies only, all on hand-made Holland
paper and printed from types, of this
edition of Moxon’s “Mechanick
Exercises,” in two volumes, were
completed in August, 1896, and that the
types have been distributed.

Joseph J. Little.
S. P. Avery.
Walter Gilliss.
Douglas Taylor.
Theo. L. DeVinne.
David Williams.
W. W. Pasko.
Committee of the
Typothetæ.
 MOXON’S

MECHANICK EXERCISES
 The true Effigies of Laurenz Ians Kofter
Delineated from his Monumentall Stone Statue, Erected at
Harlem.
 The true Effigies of Iohn Guttemberg
Delineated from the Original Painting at Mentz in Germanie.

MOXON’S
MECHANICK EXERCISES

OR THE DOCTRINE OF HANDY-WORKS

APPLIED TO THE ART OF

PRINTING
A LITERAL REPRINT IN TWO VOLUMES OF
THE FIRST EDITION PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR 1683

WITH PREFACE AND NOTES BY

THEO. L. DE VINNE

VOLUME I

NEW-YORK
THE TYPOTHETÆ OF THE CITY OF NEW-YORK
MDCCCLXXXXVI
 PREFACE
JOSEPH MOXON was born at Wakefield in Yorkshire, England,
August 8, 1627. There is no published record of his parentage or his
early education. His first business was that of a maker and vender of
mathematical instruments, in which industry he earned a memorable
reputation between the years 1659 and 1683. He was not content
with this work, for he had leanings to other branches of the mechanic
arts, and especially toward the designing of letters and the making of
printing-types.
In 1669 he published a sheet in folio under the heading of “Prooves
of the Several Sorts of Letters Cast by Joseph Moxon.” The imprint
is “Westminster, Printed by Joseph Moxon, in Russell street, at the
Sign of the Atlas, 1669.” This specimen of types seems to have been
printed, not to show his dexterity as a type-founder, but to advertise
himself as a dealer in mathematical and scientific instruments. The
reading matter of the sheet describes “Globes Celestial and
Terrestrial, Large Maps of the World, A Tutor to Astronomie and to
Geographie”—all of his own production. Reed flouts the typography
of this sheet: “It is a sorry performance. Only one fount, the Pica, has
any pretensions to elegance or regularity. The others are so clumsily
cut or badly cast, and so wretchedly printed, as here and there to be
almost undecipherable.”[1] The rude workmanship of these early
types proves, as he afterward admitted, that he had never been
properly taught the art of type-founding; that he had learned it, as he
said others had, “of his own genuine inclination.”
It was then a difficult task to learn any valuable trade. The Star
Chamber decree of 1637 ordained that there should be but four type-
founders for the kingdom of Great Britain, and the number of their
apprentices was restricted. When the Long Parliament met in 1640,
the decrees of the Star Chamber were practically dead letters, and
for a few years there was free trade in typography. In 1644 the Star
Chamber regulations were reimposed; in 1662 they were made more
rigorous than ever. The importation of types from abroad without the
consent of the Stationers’ Company was prohibited. British printers
were compelled to buy the inferior types of English founders, who,
secure in their monopoly, did but little for the improvement of
printing.[2]
It is probable that the attention of Moxon was first drawn to type-
founding by the founders themselves, who had to employ mechanics
of skill for the making of their molds and other implements of type-
casting. In this manner he could have obtained an insight into the
mysteries of the art that had been carefully concealed. He did not
learn type-making or printing in the usual routine. The records of the
Company of Stationers do not show that he was ever made a
freeman of that guild, yet he openly carried on the two distinct
businesses of type-founding and printing after 1669. It is probable
that he had a special permit from a higher authority, for in 1665 he
had been appointed hydrographer to the king, and a good salary was
given with the office. He was then devoted to the practical side of
scientific pursuits, and was deferred to as a man of ability.
He published several mathematical treatises between the years
1658 and 1687; one, called “Compendium Euclidis Curiosi,” was
translated by him from Dutch into English, and printed in London in
1677. Mores supposes that he had acquired a knowledge of Dutch
by residence in Holland, but intimates that he was not proficient in its
grammar.[3]
In 1676 he published a book on the shapes of letters, with this
formidable title: “Regulæ Trium Ordinum Literarum
Typographicarum; or the Rules of the Three Orders of Print Letters,
viz: the Roman, Italick, English—Capitals and Small; showing how
they are Compounded of Geometrick Figures, and mostly made by
Rule and Compass. Useful for Writing Masters, Painters, Carvers,
Masons and others that are Lovers of Curiosity. By Joseph Moxon,
Hydrographer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty. Printed for
Joseph Moxon on Ludgate Hill, at the Sign of Atlas, 1676.” He then
dedicated the book to Sir Christopher Wren, “as a lover of rule and
proportion,” or to one who might be pleased with this attempt to
make alphabetical letters conform to geometric rules.
There is no intimation that the book was intended for punch-cutters.
It contains specific directions about the shapes of letters, covering
fifty-two pages, as proper introduction to the thirty-eight pages of
model letters that follow, rudely drawn and printed from copper
plates. Moxon says that these model letters are his copies of the
letters of Christopher Van Dijk, the famous punch-cutter of Holland.
He advises that each letter should be plotted upon a framework of
small squares—forty-two squares in height and of a proportionate
width, as is distinctly shown in the plates of letters in this book.[4]
Upon these squares the draftsman should draw circles, angles, and
straight lines, as are fully set forth in the instructions.
These diagrams, with their accompanying instruction, have afforded
much amusement to type-founders. All of them unite in saying that
the forming of letters by geometrical rule is absurd and
impracticable. This proposition must be conceded without debate,
but the general disparagement of all the letters, in which even Reed
joins, may be safely controverted. It is admitted that the characters
are rudely drawn, and many have faults of disproportion; but it must
not be forgotten that they were designed to meet the most important
requirement of a reader—to be read, and read easily. Here are the
broad hair-line, the stubby serif on the lower-case and the bracketed
serif on the capitals, the thick stem, the strong and low crown on
letters like m and n, with other peculiarities now commended in old-
style faces and often erroneously regarded as the original devices of
the first Caslon. The black-letter has more merit than the roman or
italic. Some of the capitals are really uncouth; but with all their faults
the general effect of a composition in these letters will be found more
satisfactory to the bibliophile as a text-type than any form of pointed
black that has been devised in this century as an improvement.
Moxon confesses no obligation to any one for his geometrical
system, but earlier writers had propounded a similar theory. Books
on the true proportions of letters had been written by Fra Luca
Paccioli, Venice, 1509; Albert Dürer, Nuremberg, 1525; Geofroy Tory,
Paris, 1529; and Yciar, Saragossa, 1548. Nor did the attempt to
make letters conform to geometrical rules end with Moxon. In 1694,
M. Jaugeon, chief of the commission appointed by the Academy of
Sciences of Paris, formulated a system that required a plot of 2304
little squares for the accurate construction of every full-bodied capital
letter. The manuscript and diagrams of the author were never put in
print, but are still preserved in the papers of the Academy.
This essay on the forms of letters seems to have been sent out as
the forerunner of a larger work on the theory and practice of
mechanical arts. Under the general title of “Mechanick Exercises,” in
1677, he began the publication, in fourteen monthly numbers, of
treatises on the trades of the smith, the joiner, the carpenter, and the
turner. These constitute the first volume of the “Mechanick
Exercises.” The book did not find as many buyers as had been
expected. Moxon attributed its slow sale to political excitement, for
the Oates plot put the buying and study of trade books away from
the minds of readers. He had to wait until 1683 before he began the
publication of the second volume, which consists of twenty-four
numbers, and treats of the art of printing only. It is this second
volume that is here reprinted, for the first volume is of slight interest
to the printer or man of letters.
Moxon’s book has the distinction of being not only the first, but the
most complete of the few early manuals of typography. Fournier’s
“Manuel Typographique” of 1764 is the only book that can be
compared with it in minuteness of detail concerning type-making, but
he treats of type-making only. Reed says: “Any one acquainted with
the modern practice of punch-cutting cannot but be struck, on
reading the directions laid down in the ‘Mechanick Exercises,’ with
the slightness of the changes which the manual processes of that art
have undergone during the last two centuries. Indeed, allowing for
improvements in tools, and the greater variety of gauges, we might
almost assert that the punch-cutter of Moxon’s day knew scarcely
less than the punch-cutter of our day, with the accumulated
experience of two hundred years, could teach him.... For almost a
century it remained the only authority on the subject; subsequently it
formed the basis of numerous other treatises both at home and
abroad; and to this day it is quoted and referred to, not only by the
antiquary, who desires to learn what the art once was, but by the
practical printer, who may still on many subjects gather from it much
advice and information as to what it should still be.”[5]
During his business life, Moxon stood at the head of the trade in
England. He was selected to cut a font of type for an edition of the
New Testament in the Irish language, which font was afterward used
for many other books. He cut also the characters designed by
Bishop John Wilkins for his “Essay towards a Real Character and a
Philosophical Language,” and many mathematical and astronomical
symbols. Rowe Mores, who describes him as an excellent artist and
an admirable mechanic, says that he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society in 1678.[6] There is no known record of the date of his
death. Mores gives the year 1683 as the date of his relinquishment
of the business of type-making, but he was active as a writer and a
publisher for some years after.
The first volume of the “Mechanick Exercises,” concerning carpentry,
etc., went to its third edition in 1703, but the second volume, about
printing, has been neglected for two centuries. During this long
interval many copies of the first small edition of five hundred copies
have been destroyed. A perfect copy is rare, and commands a high
price, for no early book on technical printing is in greater request.[7]
The instruction directly given is of value, but bits of information
indirectly furnished are of greater interest. From no other book can
one glean so many evidences of the poverty of the old printing-
house. Its scant supply of types, its shackly hand-presses, its mean
printing-inks, its paper-windows and awkward methods, when not
specifically confessed, are plainly indicated. The high standard of
proof-reading here exacted may be profitably contrasted with its
sorry performance upon the following pages. The garments worn by
the workmen are shown in the illustrations. Some of the quainter
usages of the trade are told in the “Customs of the Chappel,” and
those of the masters, in the ceremonies of the Stationers’ Company,
and in the festivals in which masters and workmen joined. To the
student of printing a reading of the book is really necessary for a
clear understanding of the mechanical side of the art as practised in
the seventeenth century.
 NOTE BY THE PRINTER
This edition of the “Mechanick Exercises” is a line-for-line and page-for-page reprint of the
original text. The only suppression is that of the repetition of the words “Volume II” in the
running title and the sub-titles, which would unnecessarily mislead the reader, and of the old
signature marks that would confuse the bookbinder. Typographic peculiarities have been
followed, even to the copying of gross faults, like doublets, that will be readily corrected by
the reader. The object of the reprint is not merely to present the thought of the author, but to
illustrate the typographic style of his time with its usual defects. A few deviations from copy
that seemed to be needed for a clearer understanding of the meaning of the author have
been specified at the end of the second volume. The irregular spelling and punctuation of
the copy, its capricious use of capitals and italic, its headings of different sizes of type, have
been repeated. At this point imitation has stopped. Turned and broken letters, wrong font
characters, broken space-lines, and bent rules have not been servilely reproduced. These
blemishes, as well as the frequent “monks” and “friars” in the presswork, were serious
enough to prevent an attempt at a photographic facsimile of the pages.
The two copies of Moxon that have served as “copy” for this reprint show occasional
differences in spelling and punctuation. Changes, possibly made in the correction of batters,
or after the tardy discovery of faults, must have been done while the form was on press and
partly printed. The position of the plates differs seriously in the two copies; they do not
follow each other in the numerical order specified. In this reprint the plates that describe
types and tools have been placed near their verbal descriptions.
The type selected for this work was cast from matrices struck with the punches (made about
1740) of the first Caslon. It is of the same large English body as that of the original, but a
trifle smaller as to face, and not as compressed as the type used by Moxon; but it repeats
many of his peculiarities, and fairly reproduces the more important mannerisms of the
printing of the seventeenth century.
The portraits have been reproduced by the artotype process of Bierstadt; the descriptive
illustrations are from the etched plates of the Hagopian Photo-Engraving Company.
 Joseph Moxon.
Born at Wakefeild August. 8.
Anno 1627.