Part 16

Constant familiarity with such contributions from foreign languages and with the general speech habits of foreign peoples has made American a good deal more hospitable to loan-words than English, even in the absence of special pressure. Let the same [Pg153] word knock at the gates of the two languages, and American will admit it more readily, and give it at once a wider and more intimate currency. Examples are afforded by /café/, /vaudeville/, /employé/, /boulevard/, /cabaret/, /toilette/, /exposé/, /kindergarten/, /dépôt/, /fête/ and /menu/. /Café/, in American, is a word of much larger and more varied meaning than in English and is used much more frequently, and by many more persons. So is /employé/, in the naturalized form of /employee/. So is /toilet/: we have even seen it as a euphemism for native terms that otherwise would be in daily use. So is /kindergarten/: I read lately of a /kindergarten/ for the elementary instruction of conscripts. Such words are not unknown to the Englishman, but when he uses them it is with a plain sense of their foreignness. In American they are completely naturalized, as is shown by the spelling and pronunciation of most of them. An American would no more think of attempting the French pronunciation of /depot/ or of putting the French accents upon it than he would think of spelling /toilet/ with the final /te/ or of essaying to pronounce /Anheuser/ in the German manner. Often curious battles go on between such loan-words and their English equivalents, and with varying fortunes. In 1895 Weber and Fields tried to establish /music-hall/ in New York, but it quickly succumbed to /vaudeville-theatre/, as /variety/ had succumbed to /vaudeville/ before it. In the same way /lawn-fete/ (without the circumflex accent, and commonly pronounced /feet/) has elbowed out the English /garden-party/. But now and then, when the competing loan-word happens to violate American speech habits, a native term ousts it. The French /crèche/ offers an example; it has been entirely displaced by /day-nursery/.

The English, in this matter, display their greater conservatism very plainly. Even when a loan-word enters both English and American simultaneously a sense of foreignness lingers about it on the other side of the Atlantic much longer than on this side, and it is used with far more self-consciousness. The word /matinée/ offers a convenient example. To this day the English commonly print it in italics, give it its French accent, and pronounce it with some attempt at the French manner. But in America it is entirely naturalized, and the most ignorant man [Pg154] uses it without any feeling that it is strange. The same lack of any sense of linguistic integrity is to be noticed in many other directions--for example, in the freedom with which the Latin /per/ is used with native nouns. One constantly sees /per day/, /per dozen/, /per hundred/, /per mile/, etc., in American newspapers, even the most careful, but in England the more seemly /a/ is almost always used, or the noun itself is made Latin, as in /per diem/. /Per/, in fact, is fast becoming an everyday American word. Such phrases as "as /per/ your letter (or order) of the 15th inst." are incessantly met with in business correspondence. The same greater hospitality is shown by the readiness with which various un-English prefixes and affixes come into fashion, for example, /super-/ and /-itis/. The English accept them gingerly; the Americans take them in with enthusiasm, and naturalize them instanter.[51]

The same deficiency in reserve is to be noted in nearly all other colonialized dialects. The Latin-American variants of Spanish, for example, have adopted a great many words which appear in true Castilian only as occasional guests. Thus in Argentina /matinée/, /menu/, /début/, /toilette/ and /femme de chambre/ are perfectly good Argentine, and in Mexico /sandwich/ and /club/ have been thoroughly naturalized. The same thing is to be noted in the French of Haiti, in the Portuguese of Brazil, and even in the Danish of Norway. Once a language spreads beyond the country of its origin and begins to be used by people born, in the German phrase, to a different /Sprachgefühl/, the sense of loyalty to its vocabulary is lost, along with the instinctive feeling for its idiomatic habits. How far this destruction of its forms may go in the absence of strong contrary influences is exhibited by the rise of the Romance languages from the vulgar Latin of the Roman provinces, and, here at home, by the decay of foreign languages in competition with English. The Yiddish that the Jews from Russia bring in is German debased with Russian, Polish and [Pg155] Hebrew; in America, it quickly absorbs hundreds of words and idioms from the speech of the streets. Various conflicting German dialects, among the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch and in the German areas of the Northwest, combine in a patois that, in its end forms, shows almost as much English as German. Classical examples of it are "es giebt gar kein /use/," "Ich kann es nicht /ständen/" and "mein /stallion/ hat über die /fenz gescheumpt/ und dem nachbar sein /whiet/ abscheulich /gedämätscht/."[52] The use of /gleiche/ for /to like/, by false analogy from /gleich/ (=/like/, /similar/) is characteristic. In the same way the Scandinavians in the Northwest corrupt their native Swedish and Dano-Norwegian. Thus, American-Norwegian is heavy with such forms as /strit-kar/, /reit-evé/, /nekk-töi/ and /staits-pruessen/, for /street-car/, /right away/, /necktie/ and /states-prison/, and admits such phrases as "det /meka/ ingen /difrens/."[53]

The changes that Yiddish has undergone in America, though rather foreign to the present inquiry, are interesting enough to be noticed. First of all, it has admitted into its vocabulary a large number of everyday substantives, among them /boy/, /chair/, /window/, /carpet/, /floor/, /dress/, /hat/, /watch/, /ceiling/, /consumption/, /property/, /trouble/, /bother/, /match/, /change/, /party/, /birthday/, /picture/, /paper/ (only in the sense of /newspaper/), /gambler/, /show/, /hall/, /kitchen/, /store/, /bedroom/, /key/, /mantelpiece/, /closet/, /lounge/, /broom/, /tablecloth/, /paint/, /landlord/, /fellow/, /tenant/, /shop/, /wages/, /foreman/, /sleeve/, /collar/, /cuff/, /button/, /cotton/, /thimble/, /needle/, /pocket/, /bargain/, /sale/, /remnant/, /sample/, /haircut/, /razor/, /waist/, /basket/, /school/, /scholar/, /teacher/, /baby/, /mustache/, /butcher/, /grocery/, /dinner/, /street/ and /walk/. And with them many characteristic Americanisms, [Pg156] for example, /bluffer/, /faker/, /boodler/, /grafter/, /gangster/, /crook/, /guy/, /kike/, /piker/, /squealer/, /bum/, /cadet/, /boom/, /bunch/, /pants/, /vest/, /loafer/, /jumper/, /stoop/, /saleslady/, /ice-box/ and /raise/, with their attendant verbs and adjectives. These words are used constantly; many of them have quite crowded out the corresponding Yiddish words. For example, /ingel/, meaning /boy/ (it is a Slavic loan-word in Yiddish), has been obliterated by the English word. A Jewish immigrant almost invariably refers to his son as his /boy/, though strangely enough he calls his daughter his /meidel/. "Die /boys/ mit die /meidlach/ haben a good time" is excellent American Yiddish. In the same way /fenster/ has been completely displaced by /window/, though /tür/ (=/door/) has been left intact. /Tisch/ (=/table/) also remains, but /chair/ is always used, probably because few of the Jews had chairs in the old country. There the /beinkel/, a bench without a back, was in use; chairs were only for the well-to-do. /Floor/ has apparently prevailed because no invariable corresponding word was employed at home: in various parts of Russia and Poland a floor is a /dill/, a /podlogé/, or a /bricke/. So with /ceiling/. There were six different words for it.

Yiddish inflections have been fastened upon most of these loan-words. Thus, "er hat ihm /abgefaked/" is "he cheated him," /zubumt/ is the American /gone to the bad/, /fix'n/ is to /fix/, /usen/ is /to use/, and so on. The feminine and diminutive suffix /-ké/ is often added to nouns. Thus /bluffer/ gives rise to /blufferké/ (=/hypocrite/), and one also notes /dresské/, /hatké/, /watchké/ and /bummerké/. "Oi! is sie a /blufferké/!" is good American Yiddish for "isn't she a hypocrite!" The suffix /-nick/, signifying agency, is also freely applied. /Allrightnick/ means an upstart, an offensive boaster, one of whom his fellows would say "He is all right" with a sneer. Similarly, /consumptionick/ means a victim of tuberculosis. Other suffixes are /-chick/ and /-ige/, the first exemplified in /boychick/, a diminutive of /boy/, and the second in /next-doorige/, meaning the woman next-door, an important person in ghetto social life. Some of the loan-words, of course, undergo changes on Yiddish-speaking lips. Thus, /landlord/ becomes /lendler/, /lounge/ becomes /lunch/, /tenant/ becomes /tenner/, and /whiskers/ loses its final /s/. "Wie gefällt dir sein /whisker/?" (=how do you like his beard?) [Pg157] is good Yiddish, ironically intended. /Fellow/, of course, changes to the American /feller/, as in "Rosie hat schon a /feller/" (=Rosie has got a /feller/, /i. e./, a sweetheart). /Show/, in the sense of /chance/, is used constantly, as in "git ihm a /show/" (=give him a chance). /Bad boy/ is adopted bodily, as in "er is a /bad boy/." To /shut up/ is inflected as one word, as in "er hat nit gewolt /shutup'n/" (=he wouldn't shut up). /To catch/ is used in the sense of to obtain, as in "/catch'n/ a gmilath chesed" (=to raise a loan). Here, by the way, /gmilath chesed/ is excellent Biblical Hebrew. /To bluff/, unchanged in form, takes on the new meaning of to lie: a /bluffer/ is a liar. Scores of American phrases are in constant use, among them, /all right/, /never mind/, /I bet you/, /no sir/ and /I'll fix you/. It is curious to note that /sure Mike/, borrowed by the American vulgate from Irish English, has gone over into American Yiddish. Finally, to make an end, here are two complete and characteristic American Yiddish sentences: "Sie wet /clean'n/ die /rooms/, /scrub'n/ dem /floor/, /wash'n/ die /windows/, /dress'n/ dem /boy/ und gehn in /butcher-store/ und in /grocery/. Dernoch vet sie machen /dinner/ und gehn in /street/ für a /walk/."[54]

American itself, in the Philippines, and to a lesser extent in Porto Rico and on the Isthmus, has undergone similar changes under the influence of Spanish and the native dialects. Maurice P. Dunlap[55] offers the following specimen of a conversation between two Americans long resident in Manila:

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/, /cuanto/ and /paseo/), two Spanish locutions in a debased form (/spera/ for /espera/ and /no kerry/ for /no quiro/), two loan-words from the Taglog (/komusta/ and /kayo/), two from Pigeon English (/chow/ and /chit/), 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 of /yes/, already mentioned, and in that of the substitution of the diphthong /oi/ for the /ur-/sound in such words as /world/, /journal/ and /burn/--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 of /damn/ as 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 precipitating /mob/ from /mobile/. /Mob/ is 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. /Rattler/ for /rattlesnake/, /pike/ for /turnpike/, /draw/ for /drawbridge/, /coon/ for /raccoon/, /possum/ for /opossum/, /cuss/ for /customer/, /cute/ for /acute/, /squash/ for /askutasquash/--these American back-formations are already antique; /Sabbaday/ for /Sabbath-day/ has 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; /phone/ for /telephone/, /gas/ for /gasoline/, /co-ed/ for /co-educational/, /pop/ for /populist/, /frat/ for /fraternity/, /gym/ for /gymnasium/, /movie/ for /moving-picture/, /prep-school/ for /preparatory-school/, /auto/ for /automobile/, /aero/ for /aeroplane/. Some linger on the edge of vulgarity: /pep/ for /pepper/, /flu/ for /influenza/, /plute/ for /plutocrat/, /pen/ for /penitentiary/, /con/ for /confidence/ (as in /con-man/, /con-game/ and /to con/), /convict/ and /consumption/, /defi/ for /defiance/, /beaut/ for /beauty/, /rep/ for /reputation/, /stenog/ for /stenographer/, /ambish/ for /ambition/, /vag/ for /vagrant/, /champ/ for /champion/, /pard/ for /partner/, /coke/ for /cocaine/, /simp/ for /simpleton/, /diff/ for /difference/. Others are already in perfectly good usage: /smoker/ for /smoking-car/, /diner/ for /dining-car/, /sleeper/ for /sleeping-car/, /oleo/ for /oleomargarine/, /hypo/ for /hyposulphite of soda/, /Yank/ for /Yankee/, /confab/ for /confabulation/, /memo/ for /memorandum/, /pop-concert/ for /popular-concert/. /Ad/ for /advertisement/ is struggling hard for recognition; some of its compounds, /e. g./, /ad-writer/, /want-ad/, /display-ad/, /ad-card/, /ad-rate/, /column-ad/ and /ad-man/, are already accepted in technical terminology. /Boob/ for /booby/ promises to become sound American in a few years; its synonyms are no more respectable than it is. At [Pg161] its heels is /bo/ for /hobo/, an altogether fit successor to /bum/ for /bummer/.[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) and /P. D. Q./, are almost national hall-marks; the immigrant learns them immediately after /damn/ and /go to hell/. Thornton traces /N. G./ to 1840; /C. O. D./ and /P. D. Q./ are probably as old. As for /O. 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 use /okeh/ in endorsing government papers, but I am unaware of the authority upon which the etymology is based. Bartlett says that the figurative use of /A No. 1/, as in /an A No. 1 man/, also originated in America, but this may not be true. There can be little doubt, however, about /T. B./ (for /tuberculosis/), /G. B./ (for /grand bounce/), /23/, /on the Q. T./, and /D. & 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, turning /sixteenth/ into simple /six/ and /twenty-fourth/ into /four/; 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 in /corn-fed/, /tight-wad/, /bone-head/, /bleachers/ and /juice/ (for /electricity/); 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 maffick/ and /to limehouse/ are 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 as /joy-ride/, /high-brow/, /road-louse/, /sob-sister/, /nature-faker/, /stand-patter/, /lounge-lizard/, /hash-foundry/, /buzz-wagon/, /has-been/, /end-seat-hog/, /shoot-the-chutes/ and /grape-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: /barrel/ for large and illicit wealth, /pork/ for unnecessary and dishonest appropriations of public money, /joint/ for illegal liquor-house, /tenderloin/ for 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.