Processes of Word Formation

Hola, amigo.Komusta kayo.Porque were you hablaing with ese señorita?She wanted a job as lavandera.Cuanto?Ten cents, conant, a piece, so I told her no kerry.Have you had chow? Well, spera till I sign this chit and I'll take a paseo with you.

Hola, amigo.

Komusta kayo.

Porque were you hablaing with ese señorita?

She wanted a job as lavandera.

Cuanto?

Ten cents, conant, a piece, so I told her no kerry.

Have you had chow? Well, spera till I sign this chit and I'll take a paseo with you.

[Pg158]

Here we have an example of Philippine American that shows all the tendencies of American Yiddish. It retains the general forms of American, but in the short conversation, embracing but 41 different words, there are eight loan-words from the Spanish (hola,amigo,porque,ese,señorita,lavandera,cuantoandpaseo), two Spanish locutions in a debased form (speraforesperaandno kerryforno quiro), two loan-words from the Taglog (komustaandkayo), two from Pigeon English (chowandchit), one Philippine-American localism (conant), and a Spanish verb with an English inflection (hablaing).

The immigrant in the midst of a large native population, of course, exerts no such pressure upon the national language as that exerted upon an immigrant language by the native, but nevertheless his linguistic habits and limitations have to be reckoned with in dealing with him, and the concessions thus made necessary have a very ponderable influence upon the general speech. In the usual sense, as we have seen, there are no dialects in American; two natives, however widely their birthplaces may be separated, never have any practical difficulty understanding each other. But there are at least quasi-dialects among the immigrants—the Irish, the German, the Scandinavian, the Italian, the Jewish, and so on—and these quasi-dialects undoubtedly leave occasional marks, not only upon the national vocabulary, but also upon the general speech habits of the country, as in the case, for example, of the pronunciation ofyes, already mentioned, and in that of the substitution of the diphthongoifor theur-sound in such words asworld,journalandburn—a Yiddishism now almost universal among the lower classes of New York, and threatening to spread.[56]More important, however, is the support given to a native tendency by the foreigner's incapacity for employing (or even comprehending) syntax of any complexity, or words not of the simplest. This is the tendency toward succinctness[Pg159]and clarity, at whatever sacrifice of grace. One English observer, Sidney Low, puts the chief blame for the general explosiveness of American upon the immigrant, who must be communicated with in the plainest words available, and is not socially worthy of the suavity of circumlocution anyhow.[57]In his turn the immigrant seizes upon these plainest words as upon a sort of convenient Lingua Franca—his quick adoption ofdamnas a universal adjective is traditional—and throws his influence upon the side of the underlying speech habit when he gets on in the vulgate. Many characteristic Americanisms of the sort to stagger lexicographers—for example,near-silk—have come from the Jews, whose progress in business is a good deal faster than their progress in English. Others, as we have seen, have come from the German immigrants of half a century ago, from the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch (who are notoriously ignorant and uncouth), and from the Irish, who brought with them a form of English already very corrupt. The same and similar elements greatly reinforce the congenital tendencies of the dialect—toward the facile manufacture of compounds, toward a disregard of the distinctions between parts of speech, and, above all, toward the throwing off of all etymological restraints.

§ 5

Processes of Word Formation—Some of these tendencies, it has been pointed out, go back to the period of the first growth of American, and were inherited from the English of the time. They are the products of a movement which, reaching its height in the English of Elizabeth, was dammed up at home, so to speak, by the rise of linguistic self-consciousness toward the end of the reign of Anne, but continued almost unobstructed in the colonies. For example, there is what philologists call the habit of back-formation—a sort of instinctive search, etymologically unsound, for short roots in long words. This habit, in Restoration days, precipitated a quasi-English word,mobile, from the Latin[Pg160]mobile vulgus, and in the days of William and Mary it went a step further by precipitatingmobfrommobile.Mobis now sound English, but in the eighteenth century it was violently attacked by the new sect of purists,[58]and though it survived their onslaught they undoubtedly greatly impeded the formation and adoption of other words of the same category. But in the colonies the process went on unimpeded, save for the feeble protests of such stray pedants as Witherspoon and Boucher.Rattlerforrattlesnake,pikeforturnpike,drawfordrawbridge,coonforraccoon,possumforopossum,cussforcustomer,cuteforacute,squashforaskutasquash—these American back-formations are already antique;SabbadayforSabbath-dayhas actually reached the dignity of an archaism. To this day they are formed in great numbers; scarcely a new substantive of more than two syllables comes in without bringing one in its wake. We have thus witnessed, within the past two years, the genesis of scores now in wide use and fast taking on respectability;phonefortelephone,gasforgasoline,co-edforco-educational,popforpopulist,fratforfraternity,gymforgymnasium,movieformoving-picture,prep-schoolforpreparatory-school,autoforautomobile,aeroforaeroplane. Some linger on the edge of vulgarity:pepforpepper,fluforinfluenza,pluteforplutocrat,penforpenitentiary,conforconfidence(as incon-man,con-gameandto con),convictandconsumption,defifordefiance,beautforbeauty,repforreputation,stenogforstenographer,ambishforambition,vagforvagrant,champforchampion,pardforpartner,cokeforcocaine,simpforsimpleton,difffordifference. Others are already in perfectly good usage:smokerforsmoking-car,dinerfordining-car,sleeperforsleeping-car,oleoforoleomargarine,hypoforhyposulphite of soda,YankforYankee,confabforconfabulation,memoformemorandum,pop-concertforpopular-concert.Adforadvertisementis struggling hard for recognition; some of its compounds,e. g.,ad-writer,want-ad,display-ad,ad-card,ad-rate,column-adandad-man, are already accepted in technical terminology.Boobforboobypromises to become sound American in a few years; its synonyms are no more respectable than it is. At[Pg161]its heels isboforhobo, an altogether fit successor tobumforbummer.[59]

A parallel movement shows itself in the great multiplication of common abbreviations. "Americans, as a rule," says Farmer, "employ abbreviations to an extent unknown in Europe.... This trait of the American character is discernible in every department of the national life and thought."[60]O. K.,C. O. D.,N. G.,G. O. P.(get out and push) andP. D. Q., are almost national hall-marks; the immigrant learns them immediately afterdamnandgo to hell. Thornton tracesN. G.to 1840;C. O. D.andP. D. Q.are probably as old. As forO. K., it was in use so early as 1790, but it apparently did not acquire its present significance until the 20's; originally it seems to have meant "ordered recorded."[11]During the presidential campaign of 1828 Jackson's enemies, seeking to prove his illiteracy, alleged that he used it for "oll korrect." Of late the theory has been put forward that it is derived from an Indian word,okeh, signifying "so be it," and Dr. Woodrow Wilson is said to support this theory and to useokehin endorsing government papers, but I am unaware of the authority upon which the etymology is based. Bartlett says that the figurative use ofA No. 1, as inan A No. 1 man, also originated in America, but this may not be true. There can be little doubt, however, aboutT. B.(fortuberculosis),G. B.(forgrand bounce),23,on the Q. T., andD. & D.(drunk and disorderly). The language breeds such short forms of speech prodigiously; every trade and profession has a host of them; they are innumerable in the slang of sport.[61]

What one sees under all this, account for it as one will, is a double habit, the which is, at bottom, sufficient explanation of the gap which begins to yawn between English and American, particularly on the spoken plane. On the one hand it is a habit of verbal economy—a jealous disinclination to waste two words on what can be put into one, a natural taste for the brilliant and[Pg162]succinct, a disdain of all grammatical and lexicographical daintiness, born partly, perhaps, of ignorance, but also in part of a sound sense of their imbecility. And on the other hand there is a high relish and talent for metaphor—in Brander Matthews' phrase, "a figurative vigor that the Elizabethans would have realized and understood." Just as the American rebels instinctively against such parliamentary circumlocutions as "I am not prepared to say" and "so much by way of being,"[62]just as he would fret under the forms of English journalism, with its reporting empty of drama, its third-person smothering of speeches and its complex and unintelligible jargon,[63]just so, in his daily speech and writing he chooses terseness and vividness whenever there is any choice, and seeks to make one when it doesn't exist. There is more than mere humorous contrast between the famous placard in the wash-room of the British Museum: "These Basins Are For Casual Ablutions Only," and the familiar sign at American railroad-crossings: "Stop! Look! Listen!" Between the two lies an abyss separating two cultures, two habits of mind, two diverging tongues. It is almost unimaginable that Englishmen, journeying up and down in elevators, would ever have stricken the teens out of their speech, turningsixteenthinto simplesixandtwenty-fourthintofour; the clipping is almost as far from their way of doing things as the climbing so high in the air. Nor have they the brilliant facility of Americans for making new words of grotesque but penetrating tropes, as incorn-fed,tight-wad,bone-head,bleachersandjuice(forelectricity); when they attempt such things the result is often lugubrious; two hundred years of schoolmastering has dried up their inspiration. Nor have they the fine American hand for devising new verbs;to maffickandto limehouseare their best specimens in twenty years, and both have an almost pathetic flatness. Their business with the language, indeed, is not in this department. They are[Pg163]not charged with its raids and scoutings, but with the organization of its conquests and the guarding of its accumulated stores.

For the student interested in the biology of language, as opposed to its paleontology, there is endless material in the racy neologisms of American, and particularly in its new compounds and novel verbs. Nothing could exceed the brilliancy of such inventions asjoy-ride,high-brow,road-louse,sob-sister,nature-faker,stand-patter,lounge-lizard,hash-foundry,buzz-wagon,has-been,end-seat-hog,shoot-the-chutesandgrape-juice-diplomacy. They are bold; they are vivid; they have humor; they meet genuine needs.Joy-ride, I note, is already going over into English, and no wonder. There is absolutely no synonym for it; to convey its idea in orthodox English would take a whole sentence. And so, too, with certain single words of metaphorical origin:barrelfor large and illicit wealth,porkfor unnecessary and dishonest appropriations of public money,jointfor illegal liquor-house,tenderloinfor gay and dubious neighborhood.[64]Most of these, and of the new compounds with them, belong to the vocabulary of disparagement. Here an essential character of the American shows itself: his tendency to combat the disagreeable with irony, to heap ridicule upon what he is suspicious of or doesn't understand.

The rapidity with which new verbs are made in the United States is really quite amazing. Two days after the first regulations of the Food Administration were announced,to hooverizeappeared spontaneously in scores of newspapers, and a week later it was employed without any visible sense of its novelty in the debates of Congress and had taken on a respectability equal to that ofto bryanize,to fletcherizeandto oslerize.To electrocuteappeared inevitably in the first public discussion of capital[Pg164]punishment by electricity;to taxicame in with the first taxi-cabs;to commuteno doubt accompanied the first commutation ticket;to insurgeattended the birth of the Progressive balderdash. Of late the old affix-ize, once fecund of such monsters asto funeralize, has come into favor again, and I note, among its other products,to belgiumize,to vacationize,to picturizeandto scenarioize. In a newspaper headline I even findto s o s, in the form of its gerund.[65]Many characteristic American verbs are compounds of common verbs and prepositions or adverbs, with new meanings imposed. Compare, for example,to giveandto give out,to go backandto go back on,to beatandto beat it,to lightandto light out,to buttandto butt in,to turnandto turn down,to showandto show up,to putandto put over,to windandto wind up. Sometimes, however, the addition seems to be merely rhetorical, as into start off,to finish up,to open upandto hurry up.To hurry upis so commonplace in America that everyone uses it and no one notices it, but it remains rare in England.Upseems to be essential to many of these latter-day verbs,e. g.,to pony up,to doll up,to ball up; without it they are without significance. Nearly all of them are attended by derivative adjectives or nouns;cut-up,show-down,kick-in,come-down,hang-out,start-off,run-in,balled-up,dolled-up,wind-up,bang-up,turn-down,jump-off.

In many directions the same prodigal fancy shows itself—for example, in the free interchange of parts of speech, in the bold inflection of words not inflected in sound English, and in the invention of wholly artificial words. The first phenomenon has already concerned us. Would an English literary critic of any pretensions employ such a locution as "all by herlonesome"? I have a doubt of it—and yet I find that phrase in a serious book by the critic of theNew Republic.[66]Would an English M. P. use "he has anotherthinkcoming" in debate? Again I doubt it—but even more anarchistic dedications of verbs and adjectives to substantival use are to be found in theCongressional Recordevery day.Jitneyis an old American substantive lately[Pg165]revived; a month after its revival it was also an adjective, and before long it may also be a verb and even an adverb.To lift upwas turned tail first and made a substantive, and is now also an adjective and a verb.Joy-ridebecame a verb the day after it was born as a noun. And what oflivest? An astounding inflection, indeed—but with quite sound American usage behind it. TheMetropolitan Magazine, of which Col. Roosevelt is an editor, announces on its letter paper that it is "thelivestmagazine in America," andPoetry, the organ of the new poetry movement, prints at the head of its contents page the following encomium from theNew York Tribune: "thelivestart in America today is poetry, and thelivestexpression of that art is in this little Chicago monthly."

Now and then the spirit of American shows a transient faltering, and its inventiveness is displaced by a banal extension of meaning, so that a single noun comes to signify discrete things. Thuslaundry, meaning originally a place where linen is washed, has come to mean also the linen itself. So, again,gunhas come to mean fire-arms of all sorts, and has entered into such compounds asgun-manandgun-play. And in the same waypartyhas been borrowed from the terminology of the law and made to do colloquial duty as a synonym forperson. But such evidences of poverty are rare and abnormal; the whole movement of the language is toward the multiplication of substantives. A new object gets a new name, and that new name enters into the common vocabulary at once.Sundaeandhokumare late examples; their origin is dubious and disputed, but they met genuine needs and so they seem to be secure. A great many more such substantives are deliberate inventions, for example,kodak,protectograph,conductorette,bevo,klaxon,vaseline,jap-a-lac,resinol,autocar,postum,crisco,electrolier,addressograph,alabastine,orangeade,pianola,victrola,dictagraph,kitchenette,crispette,cellarette,uneeda,triscuitandpeptomint. Some of these indicate attempts at description:oleomargarine,phonographandgasolineare older examples of that class. Others represent efforts to devise designations that will meet the conditions of advertising psychology and the trade-marks law, to wit, that they[Pg166]be (a) new, (b) easily remembered, and (c) not directly descriptive. Probably the most successful invention of this sort iskodak, which was devised by George Eastman, inventor of the portable camera so called.Kodakhas so far won acceptance as a common noun that Eastman is often forced to assert his proprietary right to it.[67]Vaselineis in the same position. The annual crop of such inventions in the United States is enormous.[68]The majority die, but a hearty few always survive.

Of analogous character are artificial words of thescalawagandrambunctiousclass, the formation of which constantly goes on. Some of them are shortened compounds:grandificent(fromgrandandmagnificent),sodalicious(fromsodaanddelicious) andwarphan(age) (fromwarandorphan(age)).[69]Others are made up of common roots and grotesque affixes:swelldoodle,splendiferousandpeacharino. Yet others are mere extravagant inventions:scallywampus,supergobsloptiousandfloozy. Most of these are devised by advertisement writers or college students, and belong properly to slang, but there is a steady movement of selected specimens into the common vocabulary. The words in-doodlehint at German influences, and those in-inoowe something to Italian, or at least to popular burlesques of what is conceived to be Italian.

§ 6

Pronunciation—"Language," said Sayce, in 1879, "does not consist of letters, but of sounds, and until this fact has been brought home to us our study of it will be little better than an[Pg167]exercise of memory."[70]The theory, at that time, was somewhat strange to English grammarians and etymologists, despite the investigations of A. J. Ellis and the massive lesson of Grimm's law; their labors were largely wasted upon deductions from the written word. But since then, chiefly under the influence of Continental philologists, and particularly of the Dane, J. O. H. Jespersen, they have turned from orthographical futilities to the actual sounds of the tongue, and the latest and best grammar of it, that of Sweet, is frankly based upon the spoken English of educated Englishmen—not, remember, of conscious purists, but of the general body of cultivated folk. Unluckily, this new method also has its disadvantages. The men of a given race and time usually write a good deal alike, or, at all events, attempt to write alike, but in their oral speech there are wide variations. "No two persons," says a leading contemporary authority upon English phonetics,[71]"pronounce exactly alike." Moreover, "even the best speaker commonly uses more than one style." The result is that it is extremely difficult to determine the prevailing pronunciation of a given combination of letters at any time and place. The persons whose speech is studied pronounce it with minute shades of difference, and admit other differences according as they are conversing naturally or endeavoring to exhibit their pronunciation. Worse, it is impossible to represent a great many of these shades in print. Sweet, trying to do it,[72]found himself, in the end, with a preposterous alphabet of 125 letters. Prince L.-L. Bonaparte more than doubled this number, and Ellis brought it to 390.[73]Other phonologists, English and Continental, have gone floundering into the same bog. The dictionary-makers, forced to a far greater economy of means, are brought into obscurity. The difficulties of the enterprise, in fact, are probably unsurmountable. It is, as White says, "almost impossible for one person to express to another by signs the[Pg168]sound of any word." "Only the voice," he goes on, "is capable of that; for the moment a sign is used the question arises, What is the value of that sign? The sounds of words are the most delicate, fleeting and inapprehensible things in nature.... Moreover, the question arises as to the capability to apprehend and distinguish sounds on the part of the person whose evidence is given."[74]Certain German orthoepists, despairing of the printed page, have turned to the phonograph, and there is a Deutsche Grammophon-Gesellschaft in Berlin which offers records of specimen speeches in a great many languages and dialects, including English. The phonograph has also been put to successful use in language teaching by various American correspondence schools.

In view of all this it would be hopeless to attempt to exhibit in print the numerous small differences between English and American pronunciation, for many of them are extremely delicate and subtle, and only their aggregation makes them plain. According to a recent and very careful observer,[75]the most important of them do not lie in pronunciation at all, properly so called, but in intonation. In this direction, he says, one must look for the true characters "of the English accent." I incline to agree with White,[76]that the pitch of the English voice is somewhat higher than that of the American, and that it is thus more penetrating. The nasal twang which Englishmen observe in thevox Americana, though it has high overtones, is itself not high pitched, but rather low pitched, as all constrained and muffled tones are apt to be. The causes of that twang have long engaged phonologists, and in the main they agree that there is a physical basis for it—that our generally dry climate and rapid changes of temperature produce an actual thickening of the membranes concerned in the production of sound.[77]We are, in brief, a somewhat snuffling[Pg169]people, and much more given to catarrhs and coryzas than the inhabitants of damp Britain. Perhaps this general impediment to free and easy utterance, subconsciously apprehended, is responsible for the American tendency to pronounce the separate syllables of a word with much more care than an Englishman bestows upon them; the American, in givingextraordinarysix distinct syllables instead of the Englishman's grudging four, may be seeking to make up for his natural disability. Marsh, in his "Lectures on the English Language,"[78]sought two other explanations of the fact. On the one hand, he argued that the Americans of his day read a great deal more than the English, and were thus much more influenced by the spelling of words, and on the other hand he pointed out that "our flora shows that the climate of even our Northern States belongs ... to a more Southern type than that of England," and that "in Southern latitudes ... articulation is generally much more distinct than in Northern regions." In support of the latter proposition he cited the pronunciation of Spanish, Italian and Turkish, as compared with that of English, Danish and German—rather unfortunate examples, for the pronunciation of German is at least as clear as that of Italian. Swedish would have supported his case far better: the Swedes debase their vowels and slide over their consonants even more markedly than the English. Marsh believed that there was a tendency among Southern peoples to throw the accent back, and that this helped to "bring out all the syllables." One finds a certain support for this notion in various American peculiarities of stress.Advertisementoffers an example. The prevailing American pronunciation, despite incessant pedagogical counterblasts, puts the accent on the penult, whereas the English pronunciation stresses the second syllable.Paresisillustrates the same tendency. The English accent the first syllable, but, as Krapp says, American usage clings to the[Pg170]accent on the second syllable.[79]There are, again,pianist,primarilyandtelegrapher. The English accent the first syllable of each; we commonly accent the second. Intemporarilythey also accent the first; we accent the third. Various other examples might be cited. But when one had marshalled them their significance would be at once set at naught by four very familiar words,mamma,papa,inquiryandally. Americans almost invariably accent each on the first syllable; Englishmen stress the second. For months, during 1918, the publishers of the Standard Dictionary, advertising that work in the street-cars, explained thatallyshould be accented on the second syllable, and pointed out that owners of their dictionary were safeguarded against the vulgarism of accenting it on the first. Nevertheless, this free and highly public instruction did not suffice to exterminateal´ly. I made note of the pronunciations overheard, with the word constantly on all lips. But one man of my acquaintance regularly accented the second syllable, and he was an eminent scholar, professionally devoted to the study of language.

Thus it is unsafe, here as elsewhere, to generalize too facilely, and particularly unsafe to exhibit causes with too much assurance. "Man frage nicht warum," says Philipp Karl Buttmann. "Der Sprachgebrauch lässt sich nur beobachten."[80]But the greater distinctness of American utterance, whatever its genesis and machinery, is palpable enough in many familiar situations. "The typical American accent," says Vizetelly, "is often harsh and unmusical, but it sounds all of the letters to be sounded, and slurs, but does not distort, the rest."[81]An American, for example, almost always sounds the firstlinfulfill; an Englishman makes the first syllablefoo. An American sounds every syllable inextraordinary,literary,military,secretaryand the other words of the-ary-group; an Englishman never pronounces theaof the penultimate syllable.Kindness, with thedsilent, would attract notice in the United States; in England, according to[Pg171]Jones,[82]thedis "very commonly, if not usually" omitted.Often, in America, commonly retains a fullt; in England it is actually and officiallyoffen. Let an American and an Englishman pronounceprogram(me). Though the Englishman retains the long form of the last syllable in writing, he reduces it in speaking to a thick triple consonant,grm; the American enunciates it clearly, rhyming it withdamn. Or try the two with any word ending in-g, saysportingorripping. Or with any word havingrbefore a consonant, saycard,harbor,lordorpreferred. "The majority of Englishmen," says Menner, "certainly do not pronounce ther...; just as certainly the majority of educated Americans pronounce it distinctly."[83]Henry James, visiting the United States after many years of residence in England, was much harassed by this persistentr-sound, which seemed to him to resemble "a sort of morose grinding of the back teeth."[84]So sensitive to it did he become that he began to hear where it was actually non-existent, save as an occasional barbarism, for example, inCuba-r,vanilla-randCalifornia-r. He put the blame for it, and for various other departures from the strict canon of contemporary English, upon "the American common school, the American newspaper, and the American Dutchman and Dago." Unluckily for his case, the full voicing of thercame into American long before the appearance of any of these influences. The early colonists, in fact, brought it with them from England, and it still prevailed there in Dr. Johnson's day, for he protested publicly against the "rough snarling sound" and led the movement which finally resulted in its extinction.[85]Today, extinct, it is mourned by English purists, and the Poet Laureate denounces the clergy of the Established Church for saying "thesawedof theLaud" instead of "the sword of the Lord."[86]

But even in the matter of elided consonants American is not always the conservator. We cling to ther, we preserve the final[Pg172]g, we givenephewa clearf-sound instead of the clouded Englishv-sound, and we boldly nationalizetraitand pronounce its finalt, but we drop the secondpfrompumpkinand change themton, we change theph(=f)-sound to plainpindiphtheria,diphthongandnaphtha,[87]we relieverindof its finald, and, in the complete sentence, we slaughter consonants by assimilation. I have heard Englishmen saybrand-new, but on American lips it is almost invariablybran-new. So nearly universal is this nasalization in the United States that certain American lexicographers have sought to found the term uponbranand not uponbrand. Here the national speech is powerfully influenced by Southern dialectical variations, which in turn probably derive partly from French example and partly from the linguistic limitations of the negro. The latter, even after two hundred years, has great difficulties with our consonants, and often drops them. A familiar anecdote well illustrates his speech habit. On a train stopping at a small station in Georgia a darkey threw up a window and yelled "Wah ee?" The reply from a black on the platform was "Wah oo?" A Northerner aboard the train, puzzled by this inarticulate dialogue, sought light from a Southern passenger, who promptly translated the first question as "Where is he?" and the second as "Where is who?" A recent viewer with alarm[88]argues that this conspiracy against the consonants is spreading, and that English printed words no longer represent the actual sounds of the American language. "Like the French," he says, "we have a markedliaison—the borrowing of a letter from the preceding word. We invite one another to 'c'meer' (=come here) ... 'Hoo-zat?' (=who is that?) has as good aliaisonas the Frenchvois avez." This critic believes that American tends to abandontford, as inSadd'y(=Saturday) andsiddup(=sit up), and to get rid ofh, as in "ware-zee?" (=where is he?). But here we invade the vulgar speech, which belongs to the next chapter.[Pg173]

Among the vowels the most salient difference between English and American pronunciation, of course, is marked off by the flat Americana. This flata, as we have seen, has been under attack at home for nearly a century. The New Englanders, very sensitive to English example, substitute a broadathat is even broader than the English, and anaof the same sort survives in the South in a few words,e. g.,master,tomatoandtassel, but everywhere else in the country the flataprevails. Fashion and the example of the stage oppose it,[89]and it is under the ban of an active wing of schoolmasters, but it will not down. To the average American, indeed, the broadais a banner of affectation, and he associates it unpleasantly with spats, Harvard, male tea-drinking, wrist watches and all the other objects of his social suspicion. He gets the flat sound, not only into such words aslast,calf,danceandpastor, but even intopianoanddrama.Dramais sometimesdraymawest of Connecticut, but almost neverdrahmaordrawma.Tomatowith theaofbat, may sometimes borrow theaofplate, buttomahtois confined to New England and the South.Hurrah, in American, has also borrowed theaofplate; one hearshurraymuch oftener thanhurraw. Evenamenfrequently shows thata, though not when sung. Curiously enough, it is displaced inpatentby the true flata. The English rhyme the first syllable of the word withrate; in America it always rhymes withrat.

The broadais not only almost extinct outside of New England; it begins to show signs of decay even there. At all events, it has gradually disappeared from many words, and is measurably less sonorous in those in which it survives than it used to be. A century ago it appeared, not only indance,aunt,glass,past, etc., but also inDaniel,imagine,rationalandtravel.[90]And in 1857 Oliver Wendell Holmes reported it inmatter,handsome,caterpillar,appleandsatisfaction. It has been displaced in virtually all of these, even in the most remote reaches of the back country,[Pg174]by the national flata. Grandgent[91]says that the broadais now restricted in New England to the following situations:

1. when followed bysorns, as inlastanddance.2. when followed byrpreceding another consonant, as incart.3. when followed bylm, as incalm.4. when followed byf,sorth, as inlaugh,passandpath.

1. when followed bysorns, as inlastanddance.

2. when followed byrpreceding another consonant, as incart.

3. when followed bylm, as incalm.

4. when followed byf,sorth, as inlaugh,passandpath.

Theu-sound also shows certain differences between English and American usage. The English reduce the last syllable offiguretoger; the educated American preserves theu-sound as innature. The English make the first syllable ofcourteousrhyme withfort; the American standard rhymes it withhurt. The English give anoo-sound to theuofbrusque; in America the word commonly rhymes withtusk. Au-sound, as everyone knows, gets into the American pronunciation ofclerk, by analogy withinsert; the English cling to a broada-sound, by analogy withhearth. Even the latter, in the United States, is often pronounced to rhyme withdearth. The American, in general, is much less careful than the Englishman to preserve the shadowyy-sound beforeuin words of theduke-class. He retains it infew, but surely not innew. Nor induke,blue,stew,due,dutyandtrue. Nor even inTuesday. Purists often attack the simpleoo-sound. In 1912, for example, the Department of Education of New York City warned all the municipal high-school teachers to combat it.[92]But it is doubtful that one pupil in a hundred was thereby induced to insert theyininduced. Finally there islieutenant. The Englishman pronounces the first syllableleft; the American invariably makes itloot. White says that the prevailing American pronunciation is relatively recent. "I never heard it," he reports, "in my boyhood."[93]He was born in New York in 1821.

Thei-sound presents several curious differences. The English make it long in all words of thehostile-class; in America it is commonly short, even inpuerile. The English also lengthen it insliver; in America the word usually rhymes withliver. The[Pg175]shorti, in England, is almost universally substituted for theeinpretty, and this pronunciation is also inculcated in most American schools, but I often hear an unmistakablee-sound in the United States, making the first syllable rhyme withbet. Contrariwise, most Americans put the shortiintobeen, making it rhyme withsin. In England it shows a longe-sound, as inseen. A recent poem by an English poet makes the word rhyme withsubmarine,queenandunseen.[94]Theo-sound, in American, tends to convert itself into anaw-sound.Cogstill retains a pureo, but one seldom hears it inlogordog. Henry James denounces this "flatly-drawling group" in "The Question of Our Speech,"[95]and citesgawd,dawg,sawft,lawft,gawne,lawstandfrawstas horrible examples. But the English themselves are not guiltless of the same fault. Many of the accusations that James levels at American, in truth, are echoed by Robert Bridges in "A Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation." Both spend themselves upon opposing what, at bottom, are probably natural and inevitable movements—for example, the gradual decay of all the vowels to one of neutral color, represented by theeofdanger, theuofsuggest, the secondoofcommonand theaofprevalent. This decay shows itself in many languages. In both English and High German, during their middle periods, all the terminal vowels degenerated toe—now sunk to the aforesaid neutral vowel in many German words, and expunged from English altogether. The same sound is encountered in languages so widely differing otherwise as Arabic, French and Swedish. "Its existence," says Sayce, "is a sign of age and decay; meaning has become more important than outward form, and the educated intelligence no longer demands a clear pronunciation in order to understand what is said."[96]

All these differences between English and American pronunciation, separately considered, seem slight, but in the aggregate they are sufficient to place serious impediments between mutual[Pg176]comprehension. Let an Englishman and an American (not of New England) speak a quite ordinary sentence, "My aunt can't answer for my dancing the lancers even passably," and at once the gap separating the two pronunciations will be manifest. Here only theais involved. Add a dozen everyday words—military,schedule,trait,hostile,been,lieutenant,patent,nephew,secretary,advertisement, and so on—and the strangeness of one to the other is augmented. "Every Englishman visiting the States for the first time," said an English dramatist some time ago, "has a difficulty in making himself understood. He often has to repeat a remark or a request two or three times to make his meaning clear, especially on railroads, in hotels and at bars. The American visiting England for the first time has the same trouble."[97]Despite the fact that American actors imitate English pronunciation to the best of their skill, this visiting Englishman asserted that the average American audience is incapable of understanding a genuinely English company, at least "when the speeches are rattled off in conversational style." When he presented one of his own plays with an English company, he said, many American acquaintances, after witnessing the performance, asked him to lend them the manuscript, "that they might visit it again with some understanding of the dialogue."[98]

FOOTNOTES:[1]In Passing English of the Victorian Era; London, n. d., p. 68.[2]The Oxford Dictionary, following the late J. H. Trumbull, the well-known authority on Indian languages, derives the word from the Algonquincau-cau-as-u, one who advises. But most other authorities, following Pickering, derive it fromcaulkers. The first caucuses, it would appear, were held in a caulkers' shop in Boston, and were calledcaulkers' meetings. The Rev. William Gordon, in his History of the Rise and Independence of the United States, Including the Late War, published in London in 1788, said that "more than fifty years ago Mr. Samuel Adams' father and twenty others, one or two from the north end of the town [Boston], where the ship business is carried on, used to meet, make acaucus, and lay their plans for introducing certain persons into places of trust and power."[3]Americanisms Old and New; p. vii.[4]A. Cleveland Coxe: Americanisms in England,Forum, Oct. 1886.[5]Reprinted, in part, in theNew York Sun, May 12, 1918.[6]Vol. xiv. pp. 507, 512.[7]In this connection it is curious to note that, though the raccoon is an animal quite unknown in England, there was, until lately, a destroyer called theRaccoonin the British Navy. This ship was lost with all hands off the Irish coast, Jan. 9, 1918.[8]The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage; London, 1913, p. 9.To bluffhas also gone into other languages, notably the Spanish. During the Cuban revolution of March, 1917, the newspapers of Havana, objecting to the dispatches sent out by American correspondents, denounced the latter aslos blofistas. Meanwhile,to bluffhas been shouldered out in the country of its origin, at least temporarily, by a verb borrowed from the French,to camouflage. This first appeared in the Spring of 1917.[9]Book iv, ch. iii. The first of the six volumes was published in 1858 and the last in 1865.[10]Words and Their Use, new ed.; New York, 1876, p. 198.[11]Boston, 1918, pp. 1-43.[12]Green Book Magazine, Nov., 1913, p. 768.[13]An interesting note on this characteristic is in College Words and Phrases, by Eugene H. Babbitt,Dialect Notes, vol. ii, pt. i, p. 11.[14]America's Coming of Age; p. 15.[15]March 26, 1918, pp. 4376-7.[16]Jan. 14, 1918, p. 903.[17]Mr. Campbell, of Kansas, in the House, Jan. 19, 1918, p. 1134.[18]Mr. Hamlin, of Missouri, in the House, Jan. 19, 1918, p. 1154.[19]Mr. Kirby, of Arkansas, in the Senate, Jan. 24, 1918, p. 1291; Mr. Lewis, of Illinois, in the Senate, June 6, 1918, p. 8024.[20]Mr. Weeks of Massachusetts, in the Senate, Jan. 17, 1918, p. 988.[21]Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, in the Senate, Jan. 17, 1918, p. 991.[22]Mr. Borland, of Missouri, in the House, Jan. 29, 1918, p. 1501.[23]May 4, 1917, p. 1853.[24]Mr. Snyder, of New York, Dec. 11, 1917.[25]Balled-upand its verb,to ball up, were originally somewhat improper, no doubt on account of the slang significance ofball, but of late they have made steady progress toward polite acceptance.[26]After the passage of the first War Revenue Act cigar-boxes began to bear this inscription: "The contents of this box have beentaxed paidas cigars of Class B as indicated by the Internal Revenue stamp affixed." Eventax-paid, which was later substituted, is obviously better than this clumsy double inflection.[27]Mr. Bankhead, of Alabama, in the Senate, May 14, 1918, p. 6995.[28]Bustseems to be driving outburstcompletely when used figuratively. Even in a literal sense it creeps into more or less respectable usage. Thus I find "abustedtire" in a speech by Gen. Sherwood, of Ohio, in the House, Jan. 24, 1918. The familiar American derivative,buster, as inBuster Brown, is unknown to the English.[29]Pp. 133-154.[30]L. Pearsall Smith, in The English Language, p. 29, says that "the differentiation is ... so complicated that it can hardly be mastered by those born in parts of the British Islands in which it has not yet been established"—e. g., all of Ireland and most of Scotland.[31]Quoted by White, in Words and Their Uses, pp. 264-5. White, however, dissented vigorously and devoted 10 pages to explaining the difference between the two auxiliaries. Most of the other authorities of the time were also against Marsh—for example, Richard Meade Bache (See his Vulgarisms and Other Errors of Speech, p. 92et seq.). Sir Edmund Head, governor-general of Canada from 1854 to 1861, wrote a whole book upon the subject:ShallandWill, or Two Chapters on Future Auxiliary Verbs; London, 1856.[32]The probable influence of Irish immigration upon the American usage is not to be overlooked. Joyce says flatly (English As We Speak It in Ireland, p. 77) that, "like many another Irish idiom this is also found in American society chiefly through the influence of the Irish." At all events, the Irish example must have reinforced it. In Ireland "WillI light the fire, ma'am?" is colloquially sound.[33]Often with such amusing results as "whomis your father?" and "whomspoke to me?" The exposure of excesses of that sort always attracts the wits, especially Franklin P. Adams.[34]"It isI" is quite as unsound historically. The correct form would be "itamI" or "I am it." Compare the German: "ichbines," not, "esistich."[35]A common direction to motormen and locomotive engineers. The English form is "slow down." I note, however, that "drive slowly" is in the taxicab shed at the Pennsylvania Station, in New York.[36]I quote from a speech made by Senator Sherman, of Illinois, in the United States Senate on June 20, 1918.VideCongressional Recordfor that day, p. 8743. Two days later, "There is no questionbutthat" appeared in a letter by John Lee Coulter, A.M., Ph.D., dean of West Virginia University. It was read into theRecordof June 22 by Mr. Ashwell, one of the Louisiana representatives. Even the pedantic Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, oozing Harvard from every pore, usesbut that.VidetheRecordfor May 14, 1918, p. 6996.[37]June 15, 1918, p. 62.[38]The English Language, p. 79.[39]This phrase, of course, is a Briticism, and seldom used in America. The American form is "to take a matter up."[40]P. 30.[41]A ContributionTowards, etc., by Prof. H. Tallichet, vol. 1, pt. iv.[42]Yale Review, April, 1918, p. 545.[43]I Speak United States,Saturday Review, Sept. 22, 1894.[44]Our Dictionaries, pp. 84-86.[45]Should Language Be Abolished? by Harold Goddard,Atlantic Monthly, July, 1918, p. 63.[46]In Yiddish,ish ka bibble. The origin and meaning of the phrase have been variously explained. The prevailing notion seems to be that it is a Yiddish corruption of the Germannicht gefiedelt(=not fiddled=not flustered). But this seems to me to be fanciful. To the Jewsishis obviously the first personal pronoun andkaaprobably corruption ofkann. As forbibbleI suspect that it is the offspring ofbedibbert(=embarrassed,intimidated). The phrase thus has an ironical meaning,I should be embarrassed, almost precisely equivalent toI should worry.[47]All of which, of course, are coming into American, along with many other Yiddish words. These words tend to spread far beyond the areas actually settled by Jews. Thus I findmazumain A Word-List from Kansas, from the collectanea of Judge J. C. Ruppenthal, of Russell, Kansas,Dialect Notes, vol. iv. pt. v, 1916, p. 322.[48]Louise Pound: Domestication of the Suffix-fest,Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. v, 1916. Dr. Pound, it should be mentioned, has also printed a brief note on-inski. Her observation of American is peculiarly alert and accurate.[49]For example, see theCongressional Recordfor April 3, 1918, p. 4928.[50]Paprikais in the Standard Dictionary, but I have been unable to find it in any English dictionary. Another such word iskimono, from the Japanese.[51]Cf.Vogue Affixes in Present-Day Word-Coinage, by Louise Pound,Dialect Notes, vol. v, pt. i, 1918. Dr. Pound ascribes the vogue ofsuper-to German influences, and is inclined to think that-dommay be helped by the German-thum.[52]VidePennsylvania Dutch, by S. S. Haldeman; Philadelphia, 1872. Also, The Pennsylvania German Dialect, by M. D. Learned; Baltimore, 1889. Also Die Zukunft deutscher Bildung in Amerika, by O. E. Lessing,Monatshefte für deutsche Sprache und Pedagogik, Dec., 1916. Also, Where Do You Stand? by Herman Hagedorn; New York, 1918, pp. 106-7. Also, On the German Dialect Spoken in the Valley of Virginia, by H. M. Hays,Dialect Notes, vol. iii, pt. iv, 1908, pp. 263-78.[53]VideNotes on American-Norwegian, by Nils Flaten,Dialect Notes, vol. ii, 1900. Also, for similar corruptions, The Jersey Dutch Dialect, by J. Dyneley Prince,ibid., vol. iii, pt. vi, 1910, pp. 461-84. Also, see under Hempl, Flom, Bibaud, Buies and A. M. Elliott in the bibliography.[54]For all these examples of American Yiddish I am indebted to the kindness of Abraham Cahan, editor of theJewish Daily Forward. Mr. Cahan is not only editor of the chief Yiddish newspaper of the United States, but also an extraordinarily competent writer of English, as his novel, The Rise of David Levinsky, demonstrates.[55]What Americans Talk in the Philippines,American Review of Reviews, Aug., 1913.[56]Cf.The English of the Lower Classes in New York City and Vicinity,Dialect Notes, vol. i, pt. ix, 1896. It is curious to note that the same corruption occurs in the Spanish spoken in Santo Domingo. The Dominicans thus changeporqueintopoique.Cf.Santo Domingo, by Otto Schoenrich; New York, 1918, p. 172. See also High School Circular No. 17, Dept. of Education, City of New York, June 19, 1912, p. 6.[57]The American People, 2 vols.; New York, 1909-11, vol. ii, pp. 449-50. For a discussion of this effect of contact with foreigners upon a language see also Beach-la-Mar, by William Churchill; Washington, 1911, p. 11et seq.[58]VideLounsbury: The Standard of Usage in English, pp. 65-7.[59]For an exhaustive discussion of these formationscf.Clipped Words, by Elizabeth Wittman,Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. ii, 1914.[60]Americanisms Old and New, p. 1.[61]Cf.Semi-Secret Abbreviations, by Percy W. Long,Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. iii, 1915.[62]The classical example is in a parliamentary announcement by Sir Robert Peel: "When that question is made to me in a proper time, in a proper place, under proper qualifications, and with proper motives, I will hesitate long before I will refuse to take it into consideration."[63]Cf.On the Art of Writing, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch; p. 100et seq.[64]This use oftenderloinis ascribed to Alexander (alias "Clubber") Williams, a New York police captain.VidetheNew York Sun, July 11, 1913. Williams, in 1876, was transferred from an obscure precinct to West Thirtieth Street. "I've been having chuck steak ever since I've been on the force," he said, "and now I'm going to have a bit of tenderloin." "The name," says theSun, "has endured more than a generation, moving with the changed amusement geography of the city, and has been adopted in all parts of the country."[65]New York Evening Mail, Feb. 2, 1918, p. 1.[66]Horizons, by Francis Hackett; New York, 1918, p. 53.[67]It has even got into the Continental languages. In October, 1917, the Verband Deutscher Amateurphotographen-Vereine was moved to issue the following warning: "Es gibt kein deutschenKodaks.Kodak, als Sammelname für photographische Erzeugnisse ist falsch und bezeichnet nur die Fabrikate der Eastman-Kodak-Company. Wer von einemKodakspricht und nur allgemein eine photographische Kamera meint, bedenkt nicht, dass er mit der Weiterverbreitung dieses Wortes die deutsche Industrie zugunsten der amerikanisch-englischen schädigt."[68]Cf.Word-Coinage and Modern Trade Names, by Louise Pound,Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. i, 1913, pp. 29-41. Most of these coinages produce derivatives,e. g.,bevo-officer,to kodak,kodaker.[69]This conscious shortening, of course, is to be distinguished from the shortening that goes on in words by gradual decay, as inChristmas(fromChrist's mass) anddaisy(fromday's eye).[70]The Science of Language, vol. ii, p. 339.[71]Daniel Jones: The Pronunciation of English, 2nd ed.; Cambridge, 1914, p. 1. Jones is lecturer in phonetics at University College, London.[72]Videhis Handbook of Phonetics, p. xv,et seq.[73]It is given in Ellis' Early English Pronunciation, p. 1293et seq.and in Sayce's The Science of Language, vol. i, p. 353et seq.[74]Every-Day English, p. 29.[75]Robert J. Menner: The Pronunciation of English in America,Atlantic Monthly, March, 1915, p. 366.[76]Words and Their Uses, p. 58.[77]The following passage from Kipling's American Notes, ch. i, will be recalled: "Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the Yankee schoolmarm, the cider and the salt codfish of the Eastern states are responsible for what he calls a nasal accent. I know better. They stole books from across the water without paying for 'em, and the snort of delight was fixed in their nostrils for ever by a just Providence. That is why they talk a foreign tongue today."[78]Lecture xxx. The English Language in America.[79]Modern English, p. 166.Cf.A Desk-Book of 25,000 Words Frequently Mispronounced, by Frank H. Vizetelly, p. 652.[80]Lexilogus, 2nd ed.; Berlin, 1860, p. 239. An English translation was published in London in 1846.[81]A Desk-Book of 25,000 Words Frequently Mispronounced, p. xvi.[82]The Pronunciation of English, p. 17.[83]The Pronunciation of English in America,op. cit., p. 362.[84]The Question of Our Speech, p. 29et seq.[85]Cf.The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. xiv, p. 487.[86]Robert Bridges: A Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation; Oxford, 1913.[87]An interesting discussion of this peculiarity is in Some Variant Pronunciations in the New South, by William A. Read,Dialect Notes, vol. iii, pt. vii, 1911, p. 504et seq.[88]Hugh Mearns: Our Own, Our Native Speech,McClure's Magazine, Oct., 1916.[89]The American actor imitates, not only English pronunciation in all its details, but also English dress and bearing. His struggles with such words asextraordinaryare often very amusing.[90]Cf.Duncan Mackintosh: Essai Raisonné sur la Grammaire et la Pronunciation Anglais; Boston, 1797.[91]Fashion and the BroadA,Nation, Jan 7, 1915.[92]High School Circular No. 17, June 19, 1912.[93]Every-Day English, p. 243.[94]Open Boats, by Alfred Noyes, New York, 1917, pp. 89-91.[95]P. 30.[96]The Science of Language, vol. i, p. 259.[97]B. MacDonald Hastings,New York Tribune, Jan. 19, 1913.[98]Various minor differences between English and American pronunciation, not noted here, are discussed in British and American Pronunciation, by Louise Pound,School Review, vol. xxiii, no. 6, June, 1915.

[1]In Passing English of the Victorian Era; London, n. d., p. 68.

[2]The Oxford Dictionary, following the late J. H. Trumbull, the well-known authority on Indian languages, derives the word from the Algonquincau-cau-as-u, one who advises. But most other authorities, following Pickering, derive it fromcaulkers. The first caucuses, it would appear, were held in a caulkers' shop in Boston, and were calledcaulkers' meetings. The Rev. William Gordon, in his History of the Rise and Independence of the United States, Including the Late War, published in London in 1788, said that "more than fifty years ago Mr. Samuel Adams' father and twenty others, one or two from the north end of the town [Boston], where the ship business is carried on, used to meet, make acaucus, and lay their plans for introducing certain persons into places of trust and power."

[3]Americanisms Old and New; p. vii.

[4]A. Cleveland Coxe: Americanisms in England,Forum, Oct. 1886.

[5]Reprinted, in part, in theNew York Sun, May 12, 1918.

[6]Vol. xiv. pp. 507, 512.

[7]In this connection it is curious to note that, though the raccoon is an animal quite unknown in England, there was, until lately, a destroyer called theRaccoonin the British Navy. This ship was lost with all hands off the Irish coast, Jan. 9, 1918.

[8]The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage; London, 1913, p. 9.To bluffhas also gone into other languages, notably the Spanish. During the Cuban revolution of March, 1917, the newspapers of Havana, objecting to the dispatches sent out by American correspondents, denounced the latter aslos blofistas. Meanwhile,to bluffhas been shouldered out in the country of its origin, at least temporarily, by a verb borrowed from the French,to camouflage. This first appeared in the Spring of 1917.

[9]Book iv, ch. iii. The first of the six volumes was published in 1858 and the last in 1865.

[10]Words and Their Use, new ed.; New York, 1876, p. 198.

[11]Boston, 1918, pp. 1-43.

[12]Green Book Magazine, Nov., 1913, p. 768.

[13]An interesting note on this characteristic is in College Words and Phrases, by Eugene H. Babbitt,Dialect Notes, vol. ii, pt. i, p. 11.

[14]America's Coming of Age; p. 15.

[15]March 26, 1918, pp. 4376-7.

[16]Jan. 14, 1918, p. 903.

[17]Mr. Campbell, of Kansas, in the House, Jan. 19, 1918, p. 1134.

[18]Mr. Hamlin, of Missouri, in the House, Jan. 19, 1918, p. 1154.

[19]Mr. Kirby, of Arkansas, in the Senate, Jan. 24, 1918, p. 1291; Mr. Lewis, of Illinois, in the Senate, June 6, 1918, p. 8024.

[20]Mr. Weeks of Massachusetts, in the Senate, Jan. 17, 1918, p. 988.

[21]Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, in the Senate, Jan. 17, 1918, p. 991.

[22]Mr. Borland, of Missouri, in the House, Jan. 29, 1918, p. 1501.

[23]May 4, 1917, p. 1853.

[24]Mr. Snyder, of New York, Dec. 11, 1917.

[25]Balled-upand its verb,to ball up, were originally somewhat improper, no doubt on account of the slang significance ofball, but of late they have made steady progress toward polite acceptance.

[26]After the passage of the first War Revenue Act cigar-boxes began to bear this inscription: "The contents of this box have beentaxed paidas cigars of Class B as indicated by the Internal Revenue stamp affixed." Eventax-paid, which was later substituted, is obviously better than this clumsy double inflection.

[27]Mr. Bankhead, of Alabama, in the Senate, May 14, 1918, p. 6995.

[28]Bustseems to be driving outburstcompletely when used figuratively. Even in a literal sense it creeps into more or less respectable usage. Thus I find "abustedtire" in a speech by Gen. Sherwood, of Ohio, in the House, Jan. 24, 1918. The familiar American derivative,buster, as inBuster Brown, is unknown to the English.

[29]Pp. 133-154.

[30]L. Pearsall Smith, in The English Language, p. 29, says that "the differentiation is ... so complicated that it can hardly be mastered by those born in parts of the British Islands in which it has not yet been established"—e. g., all of Ireland and most of Scotland.

[31]Quoted by White, in Words and Their Uses, pp. 264-5. White, however, dissented vigorously and devoted 10 pages to explaining the difference between the two auxiliaries. Most of the other authorities of the time were also against Marsh—for example, Richard Meade Bache (See his Vulgarisms and Other Errors of Speech, p. 92et seq.). Sir Edmund Head, governor-general of Canada from 1854 to 1861, wrote a whole book upon the subject:ShallandWill, or Two Chapters on Future Auxiliary Verbs; London, 1856.

[32]The probable influence of Irish immigration upon the American usage is not to be overlooked. Joyce says flatly (English As We Speak It in Ireland, p. 77) that, "like many another Irish idiom this is also found in American society chiefly through the influence of the Irish." At all events, the Irish example must have reinforced it. In Ireland "WillI light the fire, ma'am?" is colloquially sound.

[33]Often with such amusing results as "whomis your father?" and "whomspoke to me?" The exposure of excesses of that sort always attracts the wits, especially Franklin P. Adams.

[34]"It isI" is quite as unsound historically. The correct form would be "itamI" or "I am it." Compare the German: "ichbines," not, "esistich."

[35]A common direction to motormen and locomotive engineers. The English form is "slow down." I note, however, that "drive slowly" is in the taxicab shed at the Pennsylvania Station, in New York.

[36]I quote from a speech made by Senator Sherman, of Illinois, in the United States Senate on June 20, 1918.VideCongressional Recordfor that day, p. 8743. Two days later, "There is no questionbutthat" appeared in a letter by John Lee Coulter, A.M., Ph.D., dean of West Virginia University. It was read into theRecordof June 22 by Mr. Ashwell, one of the Louisiana representatives. Even the pedantic Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, oozing Harvard from every pore, usesbut that.VidetheRecordfor May 14, 1918, p. 6996.

[37]June 15, 1918, p. 62.

[38]The English Language, p. 79.

[39]This phrase, of course, is a Briticism, and seldom used in America. The American form is "to take a matter up."

[40]P. 30.

[41]A ContributionTowards, etc., by Prof. H. Tallichet, vol. 1, pt. iv.

[42]Yale Review, April, 1918, p. 545.

[43]I Speak United States,Saturday Review, Sept. 22, 1894.

[44]Our Dictionaries, pp. 84-86.

[45]Should Language Be Abolished? by Harold Goddard,Atlantic Monthly, July, 1918, p. 63.

[46]In Yiddish,ish ka bibble. The origin and meaning of the phrase have been variously explained. The prevailing notion seems to be that it is a Yiddish corruption of the Germannicht gefiedelt(=not fiddled=not flustered). But this seems to me to be fanciful. To the Jewsishis obviously the first personal pronoun andkaaprobably corruption ofkann. As forbibbleI suspect that it is the offspring ofbedibbert(=embarrassed,intimidated). The phrase thus has an ironical meaning,I should be embarrassed, almost precisely equivalent toI should worry.

[47]All of which, of course, are coming into American, along with many other Yiddish words. These words tend to spread far beyond the areas actually settled by Jews. Thus I findmazumain A Word-List from Kansas, from the collectanea of Judge J. C. Ruppenthal, of Russell, Kansas,Dialect Notes, vol. iv. pt. v, 1916, p. 322.

[48]Louise Pound: Domestication of the Suffix-fest,Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. v, 1916. Dr. Pound, it should be mentioned, has also printed a brief note on-inski. Her observation of American is peculiarly alert and accurate.

[49]For example, see theCongressional Recordfor April 3, 1918, p. 4928.

[50]Paprikais in the Standard Dictionary, but I have been unable to find it in any English dictionary. Another such word iskimono, from the Japanese.

[51]Cf.Vogue Affixes in Present-Day Word-Coinage, by Louise Pound,Dialect Notes, vol. v, pt. i, 1918. Dr. Pound ascribes the vogue ofsuper-to German influences, and is inclined to think that-dommay be helped by the German-thum.

[52]VidePennsylvania Dutch, by S. S. Haldeman; Philadelphia, 1872. Also, The Pennsylvania German Dialect, by M. D. Learned; Baltimore, 1889. Also Die Zukunft deutscher Bildung in Amerika, by O. E. Lessing,Monatshefte für deutsche Sprache und Pedagogik, Dec., 1916. Also, Where Do You Stand? by Herman Hagedorn; New York, 1918, pp. 106-7. Also, On the German Dialect Spoken in the Valley of Virginia, by H. M. Hays,Dialect Notes, vol. iii, pt. iv, 1908, pp. 263-78.

[53]VideNotes on American-Norwegian, by Nils Flaten,Dialect Notes, vol. ii, 1900. Also, for similar corruptions, The Jersey Dutch Dialect, by J. Dyneley Prince,ibid., vol. iii, pt. vi, 1910, pp. 461-84. Also, see under Hempl, Flom, Bibaud, Buies and A. M. Elliott in the bibliography.

[54]For all these examples of American Yiddish I am indebted to the kindness of Abraham Cahan, editor of theJewish Daily Forward. Mr. Cahan is not only editor of the chief Yiddish newspaper of the United States, but also an extraordinarily competent writer of English, as his novel, The Rise of David Levinsky, demonstrates.

[55]What Americans Talk in the Philippines,American Review of Reviews, Aug., 1913.

[56]Cf.The English of the Lower Classes in New York City and Vicinity,Dialect Notes, vol. i, pt. ix, 1896. It is curious to note that the same corruption occurs in the Spanish spoken in Santo Domingo. The Dominicans thus changeporqueintopoique.Cf.Santo Domingo, by Otto Schoenrich; New York, 1918, p. 172. See also High School Circular No. 17, Dept. of Education, City of New York, June 19, 1912, p. 6.

[57]The American People, 2 vols.; New York, 1909-11, vol. ii, pp. 449-50. For a discussion of this effect of contact with foreigners upon a language see also Beach-la-Mar, by William Churchill; Washington, 1911, p. 11et seq.

[58]VideLounsbury: The Standard of Usage in English, pp. 65-7.

[59]For an exhaustive discussion of these formationscf.Clipped Words, by Elizabeth Wittman,Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. ii, 1914.

[60]Americanisms Old and New, p. 1.

[61]Cf.Semi-Secret Abbreviations, by Percy W. Long,Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. iii, 1915.

[62]The classical example is in a parliamentary announcement by Sir Robert Peel: "When that question is made to me in a proper time, in a proper place, under proper qualifications, and with proper motives, I will hesitate long before I will refuse to take it into consideration."

[63]Cf.On the Art of Writing, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch; p. 100et seq.

[64]This use oftenderloinis ascribed to Alexander (alias "Clubber") Williams, a New York police captain.VidetheNew York Sun, July 11, 1913. Williams, in 1876, was transferred from an obscure precinct to West Thirtieth Street. "I've been having chuck steak ever since I've been on the force," he said, "and now I'm going to have a bit of tenderloin." "The name," says theSun, "has endured more than a generation, moving with the changed amusement geography of the city, and has been adopted in all parts of the country."

[65]New York Evening Mail, Feb. 2, 1918, p. 1.

[66]Horizons, by Francis Hackett; New York, 1918, p. 53.

[67]It has even got into the Continental languages. In October, 1917, the Verband Deutscher Amateurphotographen-Vereine was moved to issue the following warning: "Es gibt kein deutschenKodaks.Kodak, als Sammelname für photographische Erzeugnisse ist falsch und bezeichnet nur die Fabrikate der Eastman-Kodak-Company. Wer von einemKodakspricht und nur allgemein eine photographische Kamera meint, bedenkt nicht, dass er mit der Weiterverbreitung dieses Wortes die deutsche Industrie zugunsten der amerikanisch-englischen schädigt."

[68]Cf.Word-Coinage and Modern Trade Names, by Louise Pound,Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. i, 1913, pp. 29-41. Most of these coinages produce derivatives,e. g.,bevo-officer,to kodak,kodaker.

[69]This conscious shortening, of course, is to be distinguished from the shortening that goes on in words by gradual decay, as inChristmas(fromChrist's mass) anddaisy(fromday's eye).

[70]The Science of Language, vol. ii, p. 339.

[71]Daniel Jones: The Pronunciation of English, 2nd ed.; Cambridge, 1914, p. 1. Jones is lecturer in phonetics at University College, London.

[72]Videhis Handbook of Phonetics, p. xv,et seq.

[73]It is given in Ellis' Early English Pronunciation, p. 1293et seq.and in Sayce's The Science of Language, vol. i, p. 353et seq.

[74]Every-Day English, p. 29.

[75]Robert J. Menner: The Pronunciation of English in America,Atlantic Monthly, March, 1915, p. 366.

[76]Words and Their Uses, p. 58.

[77]The following passage from Kipling's American Notes, ch. i, will be recalled: "Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the Yankee schoolmarm, the cider and the salt codfish of the Eastern states are responsible for what he calls a nasal accent. I know better. They stole books from across the water without paying for 'em, and the snort of delight was fixed in their nostrils for ever by a just Providence. That is why they talk a foreign tongue today."

[78]Lecture xxx. The English Language in America.

[79]Modern English, p. 166.Cf.A Desk-Book of 25,000 Words Frequently Mispronounced, by Frank H. Vizetelly, p. 652.

[80]Lexilogus, 2nd ed.; Berlin, 1860, p. 239. An English translation was published in London in 1846.

[81]A Desk-Book of 25,000 Words Frequently Mispronounced, p. xvi.

[82]The Pronunciation of English, p. 17.

[83]The Pronunciation of English in America,op. cit., p. 362.

[84]The Question of Our Speech, p. 29et seq.

[85]Cf.The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. xiv, p. 487.

[86]Robert Bridges: A Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation; Oxford, 1913.

[87]An interesting discussion of this peculiarity is in Some Variant Pronunciations in the New South, by William A. Read,Dialect Notes, vol. iii, pt. vii, 1911, p. 504et seq.

[88]Hugh Mearns: Our Own, Our Native Speech,McClure's Magazine, Oct., 1916.

[89]The American actor imitates, not only English pronunciation in all its details, but also English dress and bearing. His struggles with such words asextraordinaryare often very amusing.

[90]Cf.Duncan Mackintosh: Essai Raisonné sur la Grammaire et la Pronunciation Anglais; Boston, 1797.

[91]Fashion and the BroadA,Nation, Jan 7, 1915.

[92]High School Circular No. 17, June 19, 1912.

[93]Every-Day English, p. 243.

[94]Open Boats, by Alfred Noyes, New York, 1917, pp. 89-91.

[95]P. 30.

[96]The Science of Language, vol. i, p. 259.

[97]B. MacDonald Hastings,New York Tribune, Jan. 19, 1913.

[98]Various minor differences between English and American pronunciation, not noted here, are discussed in British and American Pronunciation, by Louise Pound,School Review, vol. xxiii, no. 6, June, 1915.

Back to Index Next