Introduction
Hilaire Belloc ran in the same head-spinning literary company as GK Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. In this essay, he urges us to think of the English language as our most prized possession, neither to be put under glass in a museum, nor to be mangled in the media, but used thoughtfully and responsibly, because one day it will be the only record of what kind of people the English were.
THE inheritance of the English tongue is the greatest inheritance we have. People hesitate to believe this because the thing is not visibly and tangibly great, but even more because it does not stand outside ourselves. It is part of us. Yet it is true that the language bequeathed to us is, of all the things we have, the most essential for our posterity and for our own name. It is even more important than the English landscape. [...]
To preserve his language which has come from the past, to prevent its sterilisation from mere repetition, but much more to prevent its dissolution, is as much the duty of a citizen as is the defence of the soil, and in a sense it is a greater duty, for its effects are more permanent. The language of a people outlives their political form, and testifies to them even after they have disappeared as a separate group among the changing groups of this world.
Now the English language is threatened to-day in more than one way.
* See also Question More, where NL Clay (who admired Belloc’s essay) addresses the same concerns.
Précis
The English language, wrote Hilaire Belloc, is the most precious inheritance of the English people. One day it will be all that is left of them, and the dutiful citizen will want to leave to posterity something worthy of them; but in spreading to become a global language, English had opened itself up to serious threats. (56 / 60 words)
The English language, wrote Hilaire Belloc, is the most precious inheritance of the English people. One day it will be all that is left of them, and the dutiful citizen will want to leave to posterity something worthy of them; but in spreading to become a global language, English had opened itself up to serious threats.
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Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, although, because, despite, or, until, whereas, whether.