Tabu customs also underlie a phenomenon which is found in numerous countries, namely that women have a great many separate words and expressions not used by men ; in some places this is carried to such an extent that we may speak of a distinct women's language.
Religious festivals and likewise athletic gatherings—some of these, like the Olympic games in Greece, had also a religious significance—have been very important agencies for rubbing off local peculiarities ; and so have the wandering minstrels who, long before written literature began, visited successively the courts of petty kings and naturally wanted their songs or recitals to be understood everywhere. The language of Homer does not represent the speech of one district, but is highly composite, and the same is true with regard to common poetical languages among savage tribes. In recent times theatrical corn panies touring from one place to another have had a unifying influence on language in some countries, notably in Germany, where "Biihnendeutsch" (German of the stage) is largely con sidered the best German. Political unity is, of course, a factor of the utmost importance ; among its unifying consequences must be mentioned common military service and the moving of officials from one part of the realm to another. The common language is often in a marked degree an upper-class language, because the upper classes travel a good deal and mix with their equals from other districts; at school and in the universities their children have much intercourse with young people from all over the country. As a final factor of very great importance must be
mentioned the creation of big cities; in these, and especially in the capital of the country, immigrants from different parts get their dialect rubbed down in intercourse with one another. This, however, does not mean the same thing as adopting the local dialect of that particular town. The common French language, though largely developed in Paris, is not in the strict sense Parisian. Similar phenomena are to be observed in other coun tries ; standard English has to a great extent come into existence in London, but has not been created by born Londoners.
The upshot of all this is that the rise of great standard lan guages is due to a great many forces at play at the same time. And it is important to notice that several of these have never been so strong as they are nowadays—and we are now witnessing the rise of one new factor which may prove one of the most potent of them all, wireless broadcasting. We may therefore look f or ward to a great process of unification in the future.
The common language has two forms, one spoken and one written. At first people everywhere wrote their own local dialect, but the tendency towards unity quickly acts upon the way in which people write, and through the influence of schools the common language often makes greater progress in writing than in speaking. In languages with alphabetic systems of writing no one at first could think of anything else but trying to represent spoken words as phonetically as possible ; but soon tradition tended to fix accustomed spellings and to keep them in use even where the sound had changed ; thus the gap between the spoken and the written form of words grew wider and wider from gen eration to generation. In some languages the discord is further increased through the fact that numerous foreign words are taken over with their native spelling unchanged, as has been the case in English with French words. Time after time spelling re formers endeavour to bridge over the gulf, but some nations are extremely conservative in this respect, while in some other coun tries (Spain, Germany, Scandinavia) more or less thorough-going reforms have been successfully carried through.