American Language (121 page)
Authors: H.L. Mencken
would be only a beginning of the general house-cleaning for which our precious heritage of English speech as we know it today provides a profitable opportunity. The language is burdened with quantities of useless lumber, which from the point of view of common sense and reason might just as well be burned on the rubbish heap.… Why should we permit an exceptional plural
feet
or
teeth
when we possess a perfectly good regular way of making
plurals by adding
s?
And why should verbs like
write
have two past forms,
wrote
and
written
, when most verbs of the language get along quite satisfactorily with only one?
There is yet another difficulty, and a very serious one. Of it Dr. Janet Rankin Aiken says:
This difficulty is idiom — idiom observable in a large part of what we say and write, but centering particularly in verb and preposition. It has been calculated
56
that including all phrase constructions there are well over a hundred different forms for even a simple, regular verb like
call
, besides extra or lacking forms for irregular verbs like
speak, be
and
set
. Each of these verb forms has several uses, some as high as a dozen or more, to express not only time but such other motions as possibility, doubt, habit, emphasis, permission, ability, interrogation, negation, generalization, expectation, duration, inception, and a bewildering number of other ideas. Native speakers of English have difficulty with verb constructions; how much more so the foreign student of the language!
57
Finally, there are the snarls of sentence order — naturally numerous in an analytical language. Says Dr. Aiken:
Each of the sentence types — declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory — has its own normal order, but there are many exceptional orders as well. In certain constructions the verb may or must come before the subject, and frequently the complement comes before the subject, or the subject is embedded within the verb phrase. All these orders, both normal and exceptional, must somehow be mastered before the student can be said to use English properly.
I introduce a foreign-born witness of high intelligence to sum up. He is Dr. Enrique Blanco, of the department of Romance languages at the University of Wisconsin, a native of Spain who has acquired a perfect command of English and writes it with vigor and good taste. He says:
English is not easy to learn. It is a puzzling, bewildering language; and the ambitious foreigner who sets himself to the task of learning it soon discovers that it can not be acquired in a short time. As Mr. Mencken quotes in his book: “The vowel sounds in English are comparatively independent of their surroundings.”
58
We would suggest that the word “comparatively” be changed to “absolutely.” That’s one of the greatest troubles in the English language; one never knows how to pronounce a vowel. The
a
, for instance,
that apparently inoffensive first letter of the alphabet, soon assumes, for the student of English, most terrifying proportions; it has a different sound in nearly every word. Beginning with
meat
and going on through
awful, alas, mat, ate, tall, jail, cap, said
, and so forth, one can run across nearly every conceivable sound in human speech. As soon as the enterprising would-be American has learned to pronounce
door
nicely, he is politely informed that
boor
must be pronounced differently.
Arch
and
march
sound very logical, but one gets a frown if he pronounces
patriarch
in the same manner. If a man goes to church he may sit on a humble
chair
, but the word
choir
must be pronounced with a greater degree of respectfulness; coming out of the sacred precinct, a man may be
robbed
, or just simply
robed
. An
egg
can take a mate unto itself and be
eggs
, but if a child has a friend they are not
childs
but
children
; a pastor may refer to
brother
Jones, but he is careful to speak to his
brethren
. Quotes Mr. Mencken: “Each English consonant belongs distinctly to its own type, a
t
is a
t
,… and there is an end.” Unfortunately, the end is far from being there, for the
t
in English is often not a
t
at all, but an
sh
, as in
intuition, constitution
, where the
t
has two different sounds in the same word, and
nation, obligation
, where the
t
is not a
t
but something else. Need I go on? Yet, this language is supposed to be “vastly easier” than any other.
59
As we have seen in
Chapter VIII
, efforts to remedy the irrationalities of English spelling have been under way for many years, but so far without much success. The improvement of English in other respects must await a revolutionist who will do for it what Mark Twain tried to do for German in “The Awful German Language” — but with much less dependence upon logic. “If English is to be a continuously progressive creation,” said Dr. Krapp,
60
“then it must escape from the tyranny of the reason and must regain some of the freedom of impulse and emotion which must have been present in the primitive creative origins of language.… Suppose the children of this generation and of the next were permitted to cultivate expressiveness instead of fineness of speech, were praised and promoted for doing something interesting, not for doing something correct and proper. If this should happen, as indeed it is already beginning to happen, the English language and literature would undergo such a renascence as they have never known.” Meanwhile, despite its multitudinous defects, English goes on conquering the world. I began this chapter with the pessimistic realism of Richard Mulcaster, 1582. I close it with the florid vision of Samuel Daniel, only seventeen years later:
And who in time knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
T’ enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
What worlds in th’ yet unformed Occident
May come refin’d with th’ accents that are ours?
61
1
See The Geography of Great Languages, by E. H. Babbitt,
World’s Work
, Feb., 1908; and The System of Basic English, by C. K. Ogden; New York, 1934, p. 5.
2
Cosmopolitan Conversation, by Herbert Newhard Shenton; New York, 1933, p. 315. When Dr. Shenton asked the secretary of the International Shipping Conference, representing 17 countries, what language was used at its meetings, the reply was: “The Conference is perhaps more fortunate than other bodies in that it has from the start [1921] adopted the simple unwritten rule that English is the only language to be employed, and as practically all the members are expert in that language we have no difficulty.”
3
See The American Language in Mexico, by H. E. McKinstry,
American Mercury
, March, 1930; Sports Slang in Latin-America, by Richard F. O’Toole, the same, Nov., 1930; and Spain’s Waning Cultural Influence Over Hispanic-America, by Earle K. James,
American Speech
, Sept., 1926.
4
English Influence on Japanese; Tokyo, 1928, p. 165. See also The Impact of English on Japanese, by Lionel Crocker,
English Journal
, April, 1928, and Anglicized Japanese, by Frederick W. Brown,
Quarterly Journal of Speech Education
, Feb., 1927.
5
4th ed.; Tokyo, 1930.
6
On Chinese Borrowings From English and French, in The Basic Vocabulary, by C. K. Ogden; London, 1930, pp. 86–95.
7
A lecture before the Literary and Social Guild of Peiping, Jan. 13, 1931. I borrow the quotation from C. K. Ogden’s Debabelization; London, 1931, p. 133.
8
Hispania
, May, 1935. I am indebted here to Dr. William H. Shoemaker of Princeton University.
9
I am indebted for the 1926 figures to Mr. S. S. Shipman of the Amtorg Trading Corporation, New York. During 1935 the newspapers reported from Moscow that the population of Russia was estimated to be 162,000,000, but Russian estimates are always likely to be optimistic. Outside the national boundaries, of course, Russian is spoken hardly at all, save by emigrants who are rapidly losing it.
10
The relative ranking of Italian and Portuguese is in dispute. Portugal itself, including Madeira and the Azores, had but 6,698,345 inhabitants in Dec., 1930, but Brazil was estimated officially, in 1935, to have 42,345,096. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine accurately how many of the people of Brazil really speak Portuguese, and how many of the people of the Portuguese colonies. Senhor Ed-gard Schwery of São Paulo, Brazil, sent me, under date of May 28, 1935, an estimate that there was then 56,460,128 Portuguese-speaking persons in the world, and Senhora Edith del Junco, also of São Paulo, ventured upon 57,514,856 on June 5. The Italian census of April 21, 1932, showed 41,176,671 persons in Italy, but it did not include the inhabitants of the Italian colonies, or the large number of Italian-speaking persons in Algiers, Tunis, Egypt, Malta and other Mediterranean countries and islands.
11
The population of India was 351,399,880 on Feb. 26, 1931. How many of its people speak some dialect of Hindi is not known precisely, but probably not more than half. Dr. George William Brown, in
Language
, Sept., 1935, p. 271, estimates the number at 100,000,000. The language, however, serves the commercial classes as a
lingua franca
, and efforts are under way, led by the Mahatma Gandhi, to make it universal. It is already either in use or optional in thirteen of the eighteen Indian universities.
12
In my third edition, 1923, p. 382
ff
, I printed various estimates of the number of persons speaking the principal languages at different periods, ranging from 1801 to 1921. Others for earlier periods, going back to 1500, will be found in Growth and Structure of the English Language, by O. Jespersen, 3rd ed.; Leipzig, 1919. F. Max Müller’s estimate,
c
. 1870, is in his On Spelling, p. 7. Other estimates are given in Debabelization, by C. K. Ogden; London, 1931, p. 41
ff
, and by Frank H. Vizetelly in the
World
Almanac, 1935, p. 242.
13
Eli B. Jacobson, professor of American literature and history at the Second Moscow University, 1929–30. The quotation is from his The American Language Fights for Recognition in Moscow,
American Mercury
, Jan., 1931.
14
The English Language for Estonia, London
Spectator
, July 6, 1929, p. 11. The anonymous author of this article says that German, which was formerly the second language of the country, would be displaced faster if it were not for the fact that German text-books are cheaper than English text-books.
15
English in Portugal, by J. Da Providéncia Costa and S. George West, London
Times Literary Supplement
, Feb. 28, 1935, p. 124.
16
English for the Turks, London
Nation and Athenaeum
, Nov. 16, 1929.
17
For this I am indebted to Dr. José Padín, commissioner of education for Puerto Rico. He says: “On the whole, I should say that about 400,000 people out of a total population of 1,600,000 speak and read English and, in a lesser degree, write it.” See also his English in Puerto Rico; San Juan, 1935.
18
The English Language in the Philippines, by Emma Sarepta Yule,
American Speech
, Nov., 1925.
19
New York, 1933. This is a large work. A brief statement of Dr. Shenton’s findings, prepared by himself, is to be found in International Communication, edited by C. K. Ogden; London, 1931.
20
The consequences of this situation, and of like situations elsewhere, are discussed by Dr. Otto Jespersen in An International Language; London, 1928, p. 15
ff
. Clemenceau, says Dr. Jespersen, “gained an undue ascendancy because he was practically the only one who had complete command of both languages.”
21
English
, Aug., 1919, p. 122. He adds: “Before the war German was widely spread among medical men, university professors, scientists, the army officers, and politicians. The political ideas of those who built modern Japan were inspired by German thought.… Apart from this, everything is English (British or American). The foreign language for the Navy, of course, is English. There is little use for the French language.” At the first World’s Congress of Engineering, held in Tokyo in 1929, all the sessions were conducted in English, and not a single one of the 900 papers, including 400 presented by Japanese delegates, was translated into Japanese.
22
The English in India; London, 1932, p. 18.
23
Some Notes on Indian English,
S.P.E. Tracts
, No. XLI, 1934, p. 22.
24
For a more detailed account of the spread of English see Debabelization, by C. K. Ogden; London, 1931. p.53
ff
.
25
How many persons are studying it today it is not easy to determine. Dr. Janet Rankin Aiken (
American Mercury
, April, 1933, p. 426) puts the number at 80,000,000, counting in the children in the English-speaking countries, but this is probably an overestimate. Dr. Aiken says that 500,000,000 people, “or more than one-fourth of all on earth,” now live under governments which use English.
26
Alexander M. Thompson: Japan For a Week; Britain Forever!; London, 1910.
27
English as Europe’s Esperanto, by Harold Callender, New York
Times Magazine
, Aug. 24, 1930.
28
Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache, a lecture delivered before the Berlin Academy of Sciences, Jan. 9, 1851. Reprinted in Auswahl aus den kleineren Schriften; Berlin, 1871.
29
Growth and Structure of the English Language, 3rd ed.; Leipzig, 1919, p. 2.
30
But certainly not in that of the United States, save maybe in the Boston area and parts or the South.
31
Linguistic Laconism,
American Journal of Philology
, Vol. XLVIII, 1927, p. 34.
32
When I printed a brief account of Dr. Kirkconnell’s research in The Future of English,
Harper’s Magazine
, April, 1935, a number of correspondents challenged his conclusion. One of these was Mr. Louis Rittenberg, editor of the
American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune
, who put in a plea for Hungarian. “Whenever,” he said, “I am called upon to estimate the length of a Hungarian novel for translation into English, there is invariably an increase in wordage of between 20% and 25%, and this is so recognized by publishers for whom I have performed such tasks at one time or another.” (Private communication, June 6, 1935.) Similar caveats were filed in behalf of French, Russian, Spanish, and even German. I leave Dr. Kirkconnell to fight it out with his critics.
33
Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards; London, 1928.
34
Mark Twain’s comparison of English and German, in A Tramp Abroad, Appendix D; Hartford, 1880, will be recalled: “Our descriptive words have a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their German equivalents seem thin and mild.
Boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, ex-plosion
: they have a force and magnitude of sound befitting the things which they describe. But their German equivalents would be ever so nice to sing the children to sleep with. Would any man want to die in a battle called by so tame a term as
schlacht?
Would not a consumptive feel too much bundled up in a shirt-collar and a seal ring who was about to go out into a storm which the bird-song word
gewitter
was employed to describe? If a man were told in German to go
hölle
, could he rise to the dignity of feeling insulted?”
35
W. R. Inge: More Lay Thoughts of a Dean; London, 1932.
36
The Measurement of Spelling Ability; New York, 1915.
37
The literature of Basic is already extensive. The most comprehensive textbook is The System of Basic English, by C. K. Ogden; New York, 1934.
38
Among its most ardent partisans is Mr. Crombie Allen, one of the dignitaries of Rotary International. He printed its 850 words on the back of his New Year’s card for 1935, and says under, date of May 6, 1935: “Alighting from a plane on a 20,000-mile airplane tour of Rotary Clubs in Latin-America after flying across the Andes, I found the club at Mendoza (Argentina) studying Basic from my New Year’s greeting.”
39
The sharpest criticism is in A Critical Examination of Basic English, by M. P. West, E. Swenson and others; Toronto, 1934. The authors argue that the vocabulary of Basic, when all the various forms and different meanings of its words are counted in, really runs to 3925 words. See also Thought and Language, by P. B. Ballard; London, 1934, p. 166
if
, and Basic and World English, by Janet Rankin Aiken,
American Mercury
, April, 1933. In A New Kind of English,
American Mercury
, April, 1933, Dr. Aiken takes what seems to be a rather more favorable view. The latter article is written in Basic.
40
One is Swenson English, invented by Miss Elaine Swenson, chief of the Language Research Institute at New York University. Another is the invention of H. E. Palmer, educational adviser to the Japanese Department of Education and chief of the Institute for Research in English Teaching, Tokyo. The latter has been called Iret, after the initials of the institute. Both are examined critically in English as the International Language, by Janet Ranjdn Aiken,
American Speech
, April, 1934. Dr. Aiken has herself lately (1935) put forward a rival to Basic under the name of Little English. It has a vocabulary of 800 words, or 50 less than Basic.
41
The latest is Panamane (1934), invented by Manuel E. Amador, P. O. Box 1055, Panama, R. P., son of the first President of Panama. It seems to be a mixture of English and Spanish. Here is the first sentence of Lincoln’s
Gettisburgo Adress
, translated by Señor Amador himself: “Kat skori ed sept yaryen ahgeo, nos padri brenguuh foth aupan esty kontinente un noe nasione konsibo na libertya ed dediso am propossya ke tui manni son kreo egale.”
42
The most persuasive argument that I am aware of against the feasibility of setting up an artificial international language is to be found in Interlanguage, by T. C. Macaulay,
S.P.E. Tracts
, No. XXXIV, 1930. And the best argument for it is in An International Language, by Otto Jespersen; London, 1928, Pt. I. English as a World Language, by Michael West,
American Speech
, Oct., 1934, is a judicious discussion of the elements that must enter into any international language, whether purely artificial or an adaptation of English. See also English as the International Language, by Janet Rankin Aiken, above cited, and English as an International Language: A Selected List of References, by Lois Holladay; Chicago, 1926.
43
English as Esperanto,
English
, Feb., 1921, p. 451.
44
Anglic: A New Agreed Simplified English Spelling, by R. E. Zachris-son; Upsala (Sweden), 1931, p. 7.
45
English As She Will be Spoke,
Atlantic Monthly
, May, 1932. The quotation following is from The English Language, by the same author; New York, 1929, p. 9.
46
Esperanto,
American Speech
, Sept., 1926.
47
The process is described at length in Modern English in the Making, by George H. McKnight; New York, 1928. See also Modern English, by George Philip Krapp; New York, 1910, especially Ch. IV; and A History of the English Language, by T. R. Lounsbury; rev. ed.; New York, 1894. “English,” says Harold Cox in English as a World Language, London
Spectator
, May 10, 1930, “has the great advantage that it more or less represents an amalgam of languages. It is largely Scandinavian in origin, but it also embodies a vast number of words directly derived from Latin, and many others coming to us from French and Italian, besides not a few coming from German.”
48
Its influence upon the English of Australia and of South Africa is already marked. In a glossary of Australianisms appended by the Australian author, C. T. Dennis, to his Doreen and the Sentimental Bloke; New York, 1916, I find the familiar verbs and verb-phrases,
to beef, to biff, to bluff, to boss, to break away, to chase one’s self, to chew the rag, to chip in, to fade away, to get it in the neck, to back and fill, to plug along, to get sore, to turn down
and
to get wise
; the substantives,
dope, boss, fake, creek, knockout-drops
and
push
(in the sense of
crowd)
; the adjectives,
hitched
(in the sense of
married
) and
tough
(as before
luck
), and the adverbial phrases,
for keeps
and
going strong
. In South Africa many Americanisms have ousted corresponding English forms, even in the standard speech.