John Locke - The Importance of One’s Own Language 汉译

To write and speak correctly gives a Grace, and gains a favorable attention to what one has to say; and, since it is English that an English Gentleman will have constant use of, that is the Language he should chiefly cultivate, and wherein most care should be taken to polish and perfect his Style. To speak or write better Latin than English may make a man be talked of; but he would find it more to his purpose to express himself well in his own tongue, that he uses every moment, than to have the vain commendation of others for a very insignifi­cant quality. This I find universally neglected, and no care taken anywhere to improve Young Men in their own Language, that they may thoroughly understand and be Masters of it. If any one among us hath a facility or purity more than ordinary in his Mother Tongue, it is owing to Chance, or his Genius, or anything, rather than to his Education, or any care of his Teacher. To mind what English his Pupil speaks or writes is below the dignity of one bred up amongst Greek and Latin, though he hath but little of them himself. These are the learned Lan­guages, fit only for learned Men to meddle with and teach; English is the language of the illiterate Vulgar, though yet we see the policy of some of our neighbors hath not thought it beneath the public care to promote and reward the improvement of their own Lan­guage. Polishing and enriching their Tongue is no small Business amongst them: it hath colleges and stipends appointed it, and there is raised amongst them a great Ambition and Emulation of writing correctly; and we see what they are come to by it, and how far they have spread one of the worst Languages, possibly, in this part of the World; if we look upon it as it was in some few Reigns backwards, whatever it be now. The great Men amongst the Romans were daily exercising them­selves in their own language; and we find yet upon record the Names of Orators who taught some of their emperors Latin, though it were their Mother Tongue.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

It is plain the Greeks were yet nicer in theirs; all other Speech was barbarous to them but their own, and no Foreign Language appears to have been studied or valued amongst that learned and acute People; though it be past doubt, that they borrowed their Learn­ing and Philosophy from abroad.

I am not here speaking against Greek and Latin; I think they ought to be studied, and the Latin, at least, understood well, by every Gentleman. But whatever for­eign Languages a Young Man meddles with (and the more he knows the better), that which he should criti­cally study and labor to get a facility, clearness, and elegancy to express himself in, should be his own, and to this purpose he should daily be exercised in it.