I Once Found The Words, "Tommy, Make Room For Your Uncle," On A
Chapel Outside The Walls Of One Very Quiet Little Upland Hamlet.
The Writing Was In A Child's Scrawl, And In Like Fashion With All
Else That Was Written On The Same Wall.
I should have been much
surprised, if I had not already found out how many families return
to these parts with children to whom English is the native
language.
Many as are the villages in the Canton Ticino in which I
have sat sketching for hours together, I have rarely done so
without being accosted sooner or later by some one who could speak
English, either with an American accent or without it. It is
curious at some out-of-the-way place high up among the mountains,
to see a lot of children at play, and to hear one of them shout
out, "Marietta, if you do that again, I'll go and tell mother."
One English word has become universally adopted by the Ticinesi
themselves. They say "waitee" just as we should say "wait," to
stop some one from going away. It is abhorrent to them to end a
word with a consonant, so they have added "ee," but there can be no
doubt about the origin of the word. {5}
When we bear in mind the tendency of any language, if it once
attains a certain predominance, to supplant all others, and when we
look at the map of the world and see the extent now in the hands of
the two English-speaking nations, I think it may be prophesied that
the language in which this book is written will one day be almost
as familiar to the greater number of Ticinesi as their own.
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