Our Children's Language

OUR CHILDREN’S LANGUAGE When the All-wise Creator saw fit to confound the pride of man, and send him away baffled from the half-finished tower, whose name and memory was to commemorate the creature’s foolish audacity. He chose the diversity of tongues as the means of defeating their senseless endeavor. Ever since that memorable occasion, men have been divided up into different families, each speaking a different tongue to express and communicate their ideas. When the early French explorers landed on the banks of the St. Lawrence, or settled ‘mid the smiling pastures of our own fair Province, they spoke the language of court and of romance – the language of their own dear France. Through subsequent years of proud possession or of humiliating bondage, they and their descendants, clung with wonderful tenacity to the two priceless treasures which they had brought with them from outre mer – their religion and their language. Through the sad years of their exile and their wanderings among the strangers, they still loved to count their beads or sing the praises of Jehovah in the musical accents of their childhood’s tongue; and when they drifted back eventually, and settled down by “the shores of the mournful and misty Atlantic,” they still told the tale of their past sorrows, and expressed the hope of better days in that same language, with whose melody they had grown familiar since childhood’s hours. And now that the mustard seed of those days has grown into a goodly tree, whose branches cover a mighty expanse, they have not forgotten their mother-tongue. Still around the fireside and in the family circle, as well as in the House of God, and at the forge or the bench, they used this self-same medium of communication; only in one place, and there, only to a certain extend, is another language gradually usurping the rightful owners place. We would speak of the school. Far be it from us to deny the truth of the great Spanish Emperor’s dictum, that for “every new language a man was conversant with, he was every time another man in the extent and capacity of his vision,” but here ‘tis not a question of a mere intellectual loss or gain, but a question of the loss or gain of a nations life and nationality. Each day that passes makes this question of what language shall be taught in our Acadian schools, of still greater moment. If religion and language were the great heirlooms which the French pioneers left to their posterity, they should be invariably guarded; but take away one and you place the other in immenent danger – we will not say of total destruction – but of serious injury. French-Acadians are our people, and French-Acadians they should remain, not only in sympathy with all that the name implies, but also in thought and word. All lies in the hands of our local trustees and those to whose care the interest of education have been confided. English is a noble language, but before they master its intricacies, our people should have their children taught thoroughly the language through whose medium they will receive their knowledge of God and His law. In those sister-counties of Yarmouth and Digby the French-Acadian is a “power in the land,” and a very important and increasing force, both socially and politically. Let him then insist upon his children’s language being preserved to them in the school as well as in the home. The body who manage so fairly and so honorably the educational matters of this fair province, must be brought sooner or later to see the advisability of appointing men to the positions of importance within its gift, who are not merely as we might say, “amateurs in French,” but who are possessed of a sound, working capability for understanding the needs and the language of our children. The question is a serious and vital one, which cannot be contemptuously waved aside or passed over in silence. Woe betide the day when the descendants of men who fought so bravely under the Fleur de Lys, and gave their hearts-blood for the honour of the mere-patrie la belle France, will be ashamed to confess that they can speak the language of a Bossuet or a Napoleon. A greater number of French teachers, and well-educated ones, is also a need – teachers who may impart a useful knowledge of other languages also, but who first, last, and all the time will be French in idea on sentiment and religion. When we see the most famous men in the world of arts, of letters, and of society, consider themselves as wanting in polite education, if their ac-acquaintance with French is limited, shall our people question the truth of the matter? No! show those who are interested in the matter of schools that near (?) twenty thousand people have rights which ought and which must be respected; and that second only to his love for his religion is the love deep-buried in the Acadian’s heart for his mother-tongue, for the gentle, sweet and harmonious language in which he first lisped at his mother’s knee, the sublime prayers of his church’s ritual; in which he listened to the words of the gospel of love and hope that was expounded to him in his own village church; in which, as his father has done before him, he expects, again a child, to lisp out a faltering supplication for mercy to His Father in Heaven, when the shades of death will be gathering thick and near. Show them all this, and then point to your chileren and demand, not as a favor, but as your right, that the French language should be held in honor in our own schools by all concerned, from the highest official of the board down to the lowest in grade among the teachers, in our French-speaking districts. ALPHA