Part 18

The /i/-sound presents several curious differences. The English make it long in all words of the /hostile/-class; in America it is commonly short, even in /puerile/. The English also lengthen it in /sliver/; in America the word usually rhymes with /liver/. The [Pg175] short /i/, in England, is almost universally substituted for the /e/ in /pretty/, and this pronunciation is also inculcated in most American schools, but I often hear an unmistakable /e/-sound in the United States, making the first syllable rhyme with /bet/. Contrariwise, most Americans put the short /i/ into /been/, making it rhyme with /sin/. In England it shows a long /e/-sound, as in /seen/. A recent poem by an English poet makes the word rhyme with /submarine/, /queen/ and /unseen/.[94] The /o/-sound, in American, tends to convert itself into an /aw/-sound. /Cog/ still retains a pure /o/, but one seldom hears it in /log/ or /dog/. Henry James denounces this "flatly-drawling group" in "The Question of Our Speech,"[95] and cites /gawd/, /dawg/, /sawft/, /lawft/, /gawne/, /lawst/ and /frawst/ as 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 the /e/ of /danger/, the /u/ of /suggest/, the second /o/ of /common/ and the /a/ of /prevalent/. This decay shows itself in many languages. In both English and High German, during their middle periods, all the terminal vowels degenerated to /e/--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 the /a/ is 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 Algonquin /cau-cau-as-u/, one who advises. But most other authorities, following Pickering, derive it from /caulkers/. The first caucuses, it would appear, were held in a caulkers' shop in Boston, and were called /caulkers' 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 a /caucus/, 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 the /New 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 the /Raccoon/ in 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 bluff/ has 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 as /los blofistas/. Meanwhile, /to bluff/ has 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-up/ and its verb, /to ball up/, were originally somewhat improper, no doubt on account of the slang significance of /ball/, 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 been /taxed paid/ as cigars of Class B as indicated by the Internal Revenue stamp affixed." Even /tax-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] /Bust/ seems to be driving out /burst/ completely when used figuratively. Even in a literal sense it creeps into more or less respectable usage. Thus I find "a /busted/ tire" in a speech by Gen. Sherwood, of Ohio, in the House, Jan. 24, 1918. The familiar American derivative, /buster/, as in /Buster 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. 92 /et seq./). Sir Edmund Head, governor-general of Canada from 1854 to 1861, wrote a whole book upon the subject: /Shall/ and /Will/, 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 "/Will/ I light the fire, ma'am?" is colloquially sound.

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

[34] "It is /I/" is quite as unsound historically. The correct form would be "it /am/ I" or "I am it." Compare the German: "ich /bin/ es," not, "es /ist/ ich."

[35] A common direction to motormen and locomotive engineers. The English form is "slow down." I note, however, that "drive slow/ly/" 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. /Vide/ /Congressional Record/ for that day, p. 8743. Two days later, "There is no question /but/ that" appeared in a letter by John Lee Coulter, A.M., Ph.D., dean of West Virginia University. It was read into the /Record/ of June 22 by Mr. Ashwell, one of the Louisiana representatives. Even the pedantic Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, oozing Harvard from every pore, uses /but that/. /Vide/ the /Record/ for 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 Contribution /Towards/, 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 German /nicht gefiedelt/ (=/not fiddled/=/not flustered/). But this seems to me to be fanciful. To the Jews /ish/ is obviously the first personal pronoun and /kaa/ probably corruption of /kann/. As for /bibble/ I suspect that it is the offspring of /bedibbert/ (=/embarrassed/, /intimidated/). The phrase thus has an ironical meaning, /I should be embarrassed/, almost precisely equivalent to /I 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 find /mazuma/ in 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 the /Congressional Record/ for April 3, 1918, p. 4928.

[50] /Paprika/ is in the Standard Dictionary, but I have been unable to find it in any English dictionary. Another such word is /kimono/, 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 of /super-/ to German influences, and is inclined to think that /-dom/ may be helped by the German /-thum/.

[52] /Vide/ Pennsylvania 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] /Vide/ Notes 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 the /Jewish 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 change /porque/ into /poique/. /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. 11 /et seq./

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

[59] For an exhaustive discussion of these formations /cf./ 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. 100 /et seq./

[64] This use of /tenderloin/ is ascribed to Alexander (alias "Clubber") Williams, a New York police captain. /Vide/ the /New 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 the /Sun/, "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 deutschen /Kodaks/. /Kodak/, als Sammelname für photographische Erzeugnisse ist falsch und bezeichnet nur die Fabrikate der Eastman-/Kodak/-Company. Wer von einem /Kodak/ spricht 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 in /Christmas/ (from /Christ's mass/) and /daisy/ (from /day'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] /Vide/ his Handbook of Phonetics, p. xv, /et seq./

[73] It is given in Ellis' Early English Pronunciation, p. 1293 /et seq./ and in Sayce's The Science of Language, vol. i, p. 353 /et 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. 29 /et 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. 504 /et 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 as /extraordinary/ are often very amusing.

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

[91] Fashion and the Broad /A/, /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.

[Pg177]

VI

The Common Speech

§ 1

/Grammarians and Their Ways/--So far, in the main, the language examined has been of a relatively pretentious and self-conscious variety--the speech, if not always of formal discourse, then at least of literate men. Most of the examples of its vocabulary and idiom, in fact, have been drawn from written documents or from written reports of more or less careful utterances, for example, the speeches of members of Congress and of other public men. The whole of Thornton's excellent material is of this character. In his dictionary there is scarcely a locution that is not supported by printed examples.

It must be obvious that such materials, however lavishly set forth, cannot exhibit the methods and tendencies of a living speech with anything approaching completeness, nor even with accuracy. What men put into writing and what they say when they take sober thought are very far from what they utter in everyday conversation. All of us, no matter how careful our speech habits, loosen the belt a bit, so to speak, when we speak familiarly to our fellows, and pay a good deal less heed to precedents and proprieties, perhaps, than we ought to. It was a sure instinct that made Ibsen put "bad grammar" into the mouth of Nora Helmar in "A Doll's House." She is a general's daughter and the wife of a professor, but even professor's wives are not above occasional bogglings of the cases of pronouns and the conjugations of verbs. The professors themselves, in truth, must have the same habit, for sometimes they show plain signs of it in print. More than once, plowing through profound and interminable treatises of grammar and syntax in [Pg178] preparation for the present work, I have encountered the cheering spectacle of one grammarian exposing, with contagious joy, the grammatical lapses of some other grammarian. And nine times out of ten, a few pages further on, I have found the enchanted purist erring himself.[1] The most funereal of the sciences is saved from utter horror by such displays of human malice and fallibility. Speech itself, indeed, would become almost impossible if the grammarians could follow their own rules unfailingly, and were always right.

But here we are among the learned; and their sins, when detected and exposed, are at least punished by conscience. What are of more importance, to those interested in language as a living thing, are the offendings of the millions who are not conscious of any wrong. It is among these millions, ignorant of regulation and eager only to express their ideas clearly and forcefully, that language undergoes its great changes and constantly renews its vitality. These are the genuine makers of grammar, marching miles ahead of the formal grammarians. Like the Emperor Sigismund, each man among them may well say: "/Ego sum ... super grammaticam/." It is competent for any individual to offer his contribution--his new word, his better idiom, his novel figure of speech, his short cut in grammar or syntax--and it is by the general vote of the whole body, not by the verdict of a small school, that the fate of the innovation is decided. As Brander Matthews says, there is not even representative government in the matter; the /posse comitatus/ decides directly, and despite the sternest protest, finally. The ignorant, the rebellious and the daring come forward with their brilliant barbarisms; the learned and conservative bring up their objections. "And when both sides have been heard, there is a show of hands; and by this the irrevocable decision of the community itself is rendered."[2] Thus it was that the Romance languages were fashioned out of the wreck of Latin, the vast [Pg179] influence of the literate minority to the contrary notwithstanding. Thus it was, too, that English lost its case inflections and many of its old conjugations, and that our /yes/ came to be substituted for the /gea-se/ (=/so be it/) of an earlier day, and that we got rid of /whom/ after /man/ in /the man I saw/, and that our stark pronoun of the first person was precipitated from the German /ich/. And thus it is that, in our own day, the language faces forces in America which, not content with overhauling and greatly enriching its materials, now threaten to work changes in its very structure.