I came across this whilst leafing through Looking at the Mermaid and was struck by the following description, of the benefits of bilingualism: It may seem paradoxical, but I contend that for intellectual matters it is a great loss to the Cornish to have abandoned their native tongue. To be bi-lingual is educative to the intellect in a very marked degree. In their determination not to abandon their tongue, the Welsh show great prudence. I have no hesitation in saying that a Welsh peasant is much ahead, intellectually, of the English peasent of the same social position, and I attribute this mainly to the fact of the greater agility given to his brain in having to think and speak in two languages. When he gives up one of these he abandons mental gymnastics as well as the exercise of the vocal organs in two different modes of speech. [...] By Gods mercy, the Welsh child is so situated that from infancy it has to acquire simultaneously two tongues, and that in the lowest class of life; and and this I contend is an advantage of a very high order, which is not enjoyed by children of even a class above it in England. from A Book of the West by Sabine Baring-Gould (1899)
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 13:04:48 +0000
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