outside Hanover, which is only a small province,
nobody understands this best German. Thus you have to decide whether to
speak good German and remain in Hanover, or bad German and travel about.
Germany being separated so many centuries into a dozen principalities, is
unfortunate in possessing a variety of dialects. Germans from Posen
wishful to converse with men of Wurtemburg, have to talk as often as not
in French or English; and young ladies who have received an expensive
education in Westphalia surprise and disappoint their parents by being
unable to understand a word said to them in Mechlenberg. An
English-speaking foreigner, it is true, would find himself equally
nonplussed among the Yorkshire wolds, or in the purlieus of Whitechapel;
but the cases are not on all fours. Throughout Germany it is not only in
the country districts and among the uneducated that dialects are
maintained. Every province has practically its own language, of which it
is proud and retentive. An educated Bavarian will admit to you that,
academically speaking, the North German is more correct; but he will
continue to speak South German and to teach it to his children.

In the course of the century, I am inclined to think that Germany will
solve her difficulty in this respect by speaking English. Every boy and
girl in Germany, above the peasant class, speaks English. Were English
pronunciation less arbitrary, there is not the slightest doubt but that
in the course of a very few years, comparatively speaking, it would
become the language of the world. All foreigners agree that,
grammatically, it is the easiest language of any to learn. A German,
comparing it with his own language, where every word in every sentence is
governed by at least four distinct and separate rules, tells you that
English has no grammar. A good many English people would seem to have
come to the same conclusion; but they are wrong. As a matter of fact,
there is an English grammar, and one of these days our schools will
recognise the fact, and it will be taught to our children, penetrating
maybe even into literary and journalistic circles. But at present we
appear to agree with the foreigner that it is a quantity neglectable.
English pronunciation is the stumbling-block to our progress. English
spelling would seem to have been designed chiefly as a disguise to
pronunciation. It is a clever idea, calculated to check presumption on
the part of the foreigner; but