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By the President's side, and on his right hand, sat W , who was to interpret my barbarous English into the elegant taal. If few of our caricaturists have done Mr Kruger justice, they have seldom been entirely unjust. He is heavy and ungainly, and though his face is strong it is utterly uncultivated.
The hills of Portugal were all blue and yellow like the Kalahari, and before we made the Tagus I was beginning to forget I had ever left Rhodesia. There was a Dutchman among the sailors with whom I used to patter the taal, and but for 'Good morning' and 'Good evening' in broken English to the captain, that was about all the talking I did on the cruise.
Volcanoes have played an important part in the formation of the Philippine Islands and have left traces of their former activity in all directions. Most of them, however, have long been dead and silent, only a few of the once numerous group being now active. Of these there are three of importance in the southern region of Luzon Taal, Bulusan and Mayon or Albay.
It not only recruited the Boers who had an ancient grievance against Great Britain, but many others who secretly resented the Botha and Smuts intimacy with "the conquerors." Some were sons and grandsons of the old "Vortrekkers," who not only delighted to speak the "taal" exclusively but who had never surrendered the ideal of independence.
A short sunburnt man came in and our friend sprang up and saluted, clicking his heels like a pair of tongs. 'These are the South African Dutch, Herr Captain, he said. The new-comer looked us over with bright intelligent eyes, and started questioning Peter in the taal.
Then he stepped down under the yawning gape of the chimney, and seemed to grope and fumble at the back of the hearth. He raised himself then, stepped back, and called out sharply in the Taal: "Wie is daar?" The man's voice dropped back dead out of the choked-up chimney-throat. A little sooty dust fell. There was no other answer.
If these Jewish scholars have succeeded, within a generation, in giving their masses a language of which they may feel proud, surely it should be an easy task for us to supply the needs of our own vernaculars which are cultured languages. South Africa teaches us the same lesson. There was a duel there between the Taal, a corrupt form of Dutch, and English.
She said, speaking in the Taal: "Hush, hush! Remember that He gave the joy before He sent the sorrow. And we must submit ourselves to the Holy Will." The Boer woman snorted: "As if I didn't know that better than a Papist. Look you, have I shed one tear?" She blinked hard bright eyes defiantly.
The city of Manila has repeatedly suffered from destroying shocks, and slight agitations are frequent. Within historic times a mountain in Luzon collapsed, and a river was filled up while the earth played fountains of sand. The great volcano Taal, 45 miles south of Manila, is only 850 feet high, and on a small island in a lake believed to be a volcanic abyss, having an area of 100 square miles.
Schoolmasters as a class know little of the language. In none of our schools, not even in the more efficient of our elementary schools, is English adequately taught. And these people expect the South African Dutch to take over their neglected tongue! As though the poor partial King's English of the British Colonist was one whit better than the Taal!
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