The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe — John Shaqi
The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in EuropeWashington, Booker T.
History
The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe
Washington, Booker T.
Poor -- Europe; Working class -- Europe
On the other hand, I doubt whether the Negro people realize the
advantage which they have in speaking one of the great world languages,
the language, in fact, that is more largely used than any other by the
people who are most advanced in science, in the arts, and in all that
makes the world better. English is not only a great world language,
it is the language of a people and a race among whom the highest are
neither afraid nor ashamed to reach down and lift up the lowest, and
help them in their efforts to reach a higher and a better life.
In the south of Europe conditions are quite different. The languages
spoken there, so far from helping to bring people together, are the
very means by which the peoples are kept apart. Furthermore, the masses
of the people of Austria speak languages which, until a hundred years
ago, had almost no written literature. Up to the beginning of the last
century the educated people of Hungary spoke and wrote in Latin, and
down to the middle of the century Latin was still the language of the
Court. Until 1848 there were almost no schools in the Czech language in
Bohemia. Up to that time there were almost no newspapers, magazines, or
books printed in the language spoken by the masses of the people.
It has been said that the written or literary languages of the Slavic
people have been, with one or two exceptions, almost created during the
past hundred years. In fact, some of the Slavs, although they have a
rich oral literature, still have, I have been told, no written language
of their own.
A great change has been brought about in this respect in recent
years. At the present time, of the 5,000 periodicals printed in
Austria-Hungary, about 2,000 are printed in German, 938 in Magyar,
582 in Czech, and the remaining 1,480 are in some five or six other
languages. The Magyar language is now taught in all the schools of
Hungary, whether some other language is taught at the same time or not.
Outside of Hungary, in Austria proper, there are some 8,000 exclusively
German schools, 5,578 Czech, and 6,632 schools in which are taught
other Slav dialects, not to speak of the 645 schools in which Italian
is taught, the 162 schools in which Roumanian is taught, and the 5 in
which Magyar is taught.
To an outsider it seems as if the purpose of these schools must be to
perpetuate the existing confusion and racial animosities in the empire.
On the other side, it must be remembered that it has been an enormous
advantage to the masses of the people to be able to read the language
which they habitually speak. In fact, the multiplication of these
different written languages, and of schools in which they are taught,
seems to have been the only way of opening to the masses of the people
the learning which had been before that time locked up in languages
which they sometimes learned to read but rarely spoke.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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