A considerable body of adult persons, suddenly introduced into a population whose language they are abruptly and by force compelled to use as their own if, as in the case of the French Huguenots, they are socially the equals, and intellectually the superiors, of the people among whom they settle, and if they at once proceed to intermarry with them, may, and almost must, powerfully influence and disintegrate the speech of the majority. The Taal is precisely such a speech as the adult Huguenots, arbitrarily and suddenly forced to forsake their own language and to adopt the Dutch, must have spoken. And that they should have imposed their broken language on their fellow colonists seems far more probable than that the slave should have done so. In language, yet more than in other human concerns, imitation is the expression of an unconscious admiration. The mannerisms, accent, and intonation of an individual, admired or loved, are almost inevitably caught; those of the despised unconsciously though carefully avoided. The cultured woman, labouring from philanthropic motives for ten years in the slums of a city among the outcast poor, finds her speech become almost more punctiliously correct through shrinking from the lower forms used about her; but were the same woman to love and admire a man of an uncultured class and live ten years with him, her speech would inevitably be tinged by his. The child follows the speech of its mother; the lover of the loved.[20] [20] This view with regard to the possible origin of the Taal (whether it be of any or of no value) was first suggested to us by a somewhat curious case which came under our own observation. A young man from one of the German-speaking Swiss cantons arrived in South Africa, and immediately married a Dutch girl. Both parents could speak a little English. They went immediately to live in a remote and out of the world spot among the mountains, where they seldom came into contact with other Europeans. Here their children were born. Neither of the parents were educated people. When I came into contact with them a most curious phenomenon had developed itself; the whole family spoke a language which was not Dutch nor German nor English, but a most curious blending of all three, and the words, from whichever language taken, had exactly the same clipt form we find in the Taal. There was not one member of the family who could speak a single sentence correctly in any of the three languages. They had, in fact, developed a new language for themselves. No doubt their children learnt English and Dutch later when they went into the world; but, had the descendants of that family been preserved distinct for a couple of generations, a new and astounding variety of human speech would have been formed. One of the most remarkable points was that each member of the family spoke