சிறுவர்க்கான செந்தமிழ்
5
which renders them indifferent to a correct pronunciation of words and sentences. And is close association with this principle of laziness which inwardly undermines the structure and stability of a language, another equally baneful, springing from the desire for imitation, comes rather outwardly from the contact of two peoples speaking or using two different languages, and induces them to import the words and phrases of the one into the other. Unless the mischief played by these two evil principles is checked strongly and in time, a language cannot live long but will quickly pass away and with it all scope for culture and civilisation will also pass away.
Now where can we look for a potent power to come from and check the operation of the two evils but from the small but active and intelligent section of a people which forms the centre radiating knowledge and civilisation al around. If a people could be so fortunate, like the Tamilians or the Egyptians, as to possess early among them an intelligent class who, by creating a literature and committing it to writing, made a persistent effort to check the decay of their language and the promiscuous mixture of foreign elements in it, their language, theirs alone, would acquire a vitality that would keep it permanently living, But for the creation and existence of a large and rich literature possessing a many-sided interest for its people, it would not have been possible to arrest the change and decay of a language. Prof. Sayce pertinently well observes: "Destroy literature and facility of intercommunication, and the languages of England and America would soon be as different as those of France and Italy" (The science of Languageï 1900, Vol p 210).
When one grasps the importance of this circumstance which controls the fate and destiny of a language it would become clear to his or her mind why Tamil has lived so long and still continues to live in all its youthful vigour, even after such cultured languages of high antiquity as the Egyptian, the Accadian, the Assyrian, the Hebrew, the Aryan and so on have ceased to exist. So far as we can compute on historical grounds, it is for more than ten thousand years that the Tamil language is being spoken and written. And to invigorate its constitution in addition to its innate vitality it possesses a vast, varied, original, useful and highly interesting literatue produced from 5000 B.C. up to
