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Updated: June 22, 2025
French, Spanish and Italian are Pyrenean, much worn down. English is the Vosges. Chinese is hardly even the Welsh mountains. Every word is worn perfectly smooth and round. There is no sign left at all of prefix or suffix, root or stem. There are no parts of speech: any word without change can do duty for any part of speech.
The name of yon town with its Roman or Saxon suffix to British root hints at much. Many a strong man, wanting his vates sacer, passed silently to Hades for that suffix to obtain.
It would have shown better taste, however, to substitute for it a beautiful term of some sort, with a Greek root, a Latin suffix and an English termination, because in that case a large majority of people would never have found out that the whole phrase was blatant nonsense. What are internal relations?
In other words, the morphological influence exerted by foreign languages on English, if it is to be gauged by such examples as I have cited, is hardly different in kind from the mere borrowing of words. The introduction of the suffix -ize made hardly more difference to the essential build of the language than did the mere fact that it incorporated a given number of words.
Hyppish is the Englished form of hypochondriacal, its suffix carrying its usual diminutive value, so that its meaning is 'somewhat hypochondriacal'. Berkeley, Gray, and Swift used hyps or the hyp for hypochondriasis, and the adjective was apparently common.
Pilsdon is much more imposing than some of the "lumps" that are double its altitude on the table-land of central Wales, where the bed of the Upper Wye is not many feet below the height of the "Pen." That, by the way, is a Celtic suffix; it would be interesting to know if the word has continued in constant use since British times.
For the distribution of the suffix 'ham' and the frequency of Roman country-houses and farms do not coincide. As will be seen, this is not improbable. But I can find no definite proof of it. If northern Gaul were better known to us, it might provide a decisive analogy.
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