American Language (124 page)

The Swedes began to come to the United States before the Civil War, and there were many thousands of them in the upper Middle West by 1880. In 1930 there were 1,562,703 persons of Swedish stock in the country — 595,250 born in Sweden, 676,523 born here of Swedish parentage, and 290,930 born here of partly Swedish parentage. Of the whole number 615,465 gave their mother-tongue as Swedish. They were thus the seventh largest foreign
bloc
in the country, being surpassed only by the immigrants from England, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Poland and Russia. They have no daily papers, but they support twenty-seven weeklies (1935).
³³

The pioneer study of the Dano-Norwegian spoken by Norwegian immigrants to the United States was published by Dr. Nils Flaten, of Northfield, Minn., in 1900.
³⁴
Two years later Dr. George T. Flom, then of Iowa State University and now of the University of Illinois, followed with a study of the dialects spoken in the Koshkonong settlement in Southern Wisconsin,
³⁵
and since then he has continued his investigation of the subject.
³⁶
The immigration of Danes and
Norwegians began more than a century ago, and has been heaviest into the farming areas of the upper Middle West, though there are also large settlements of both peoples in some of the big cities, especially Chicago and Brooklyn. In 1930 there were 347,852 natives of Norway in the country, 476, 663 persons of Norwegian parentage, and 275,583 of partly Norwegian parentage, or 1,100,098 in all. In the same year there were 179,474 natives of Denmark, 219,152 persons of Danish parentage and 130,516 of partly Danish parentage, or 529,142 in all. The Dano-Norwegian language, of course, shows considerable dialectical variations, but they are not important for the present purpose. About thirty-five periodicals in it are published in the United States, including one daily paper.

Dr. Flom’s admirable studies deal mainly with the spoken language, and his examples of loan-words are given in a phonetic alphabet which often differs considerably from the alphabet used in Norwegian-American publications. When a word beginning with an unstressed initial vowel is borrowed, he says, the vowel is often lost. Thus,
account
becomes
kaunt, election
becomes
leckshen
, and
assessor
becomes
sessar
. “The dissyllabic noun
efekt
(effect) is an exception, as is also the word
aper ashen
(operation).” The word
edzukashen
(education) likewise keeps its initial vowel, for the consonantal sound
dz
would be hardly admissible in Norwegian at the beginning of a word. The vowel in an unstressed initial syllable is commonly suppressed, even when it is not the first letter, as in
spraisparti
(surprise-party) and
stiffiket
(certificate). In the latter case a transition form,
settifiket
, has been lost. There is also some loss of vowels in medial syllables, as in
bufflo
(buffalo),
fektri
(factory),
lakris
(licorice) and
probishen
(prohibition). Consonants are lost less often, but there are examples in
paler
(parlor),
korna
(corner),
potret
(portrait) and
blaekbor
(blackboard). In the last case the final
-bor
is not the English
board
but the Norwegian
bord
, having the same meaning and pronounced
bor
. In
insurance
the last syllable is changed to
ings
. The sound of
h
often disappears in compounds, as in
brikkus
(brick-house),
fremus
(frame-house) and
purus
(poor-house). In cases where consonants are duplicated they may be reduced to a single consonant, as in
fretren
(freight-train), or separated by a vowel, as in
fensestrefcher
(fence-stretcher). Sometimes an inorganic consonant appears, as in
hikril
(hickory),
gofert
(gopher) and
brand
(bran). The sound of
th
commonly becomes
t
, as in
latt
(lath) and
timoti
(timothy);
rs
becomes
ss
, as in
hosspaur
(horsepower); and final
dz
becomes
s
, as in
launs
(lounge) and in the proper name
Kemris
(Cambridge).
³⁷
Miss Anne Simley, in a report on Norwegian phonology in Minnesota,
³⁸
says that the common impression that
y
is always substituted for
j
and
dj
is not well founded. “The error is most often made,” she says, “by Norwegians who have learned to read English after learning to read Norwegian, in which language the letter
j
has the sound usually expressed in [English] writing by y.” For the same reason
v
is substituted for
w
.

Dr. Flaten supplies the following examples of American-Norwegian, gathered near Northfield, Minn.:
³⁹

This dialect, says Dr. Flaten, is “utterly unintelligible to a Norseman recently from the old country. In the case of many words the younger generation cannot tell whether they are English or Norse. I was ten years old before I found that such words as
paatikkel
(particular),
staebel
(stable),
fens
(fence) were not Norse, but mutilated English. I had often wondered that
poleit, trubble, söp-peréter
were so much like the English words
polite, trouble, separator
. So common is this practice of borrowing that no English word is refused admittance into this vocabulary provided it can stand the treatment it is apt to get. Some words, indeed, are used without any appreciable difference in pronunciation, but more generally the root, or stem, is taken and Norse inflections are added as required by the rules of the language.” Sometimes the English loan-word and a corresponding Norwegian word exist side by side, but in such cases, according to Dr. Flom,
⁴⁰
“there is a prevalent and growing tendency” to drop the latter, save in the event that it acquires a special
meaning. “Very often in such cases,” he continues, “the English word is shorter and easier to pronounce or the Norse equivalent is a purely literary word — that is, does not actually exist in the dialect of the settlers.… In the considerable number of cases where the loan-word has an exact equivalent in Norse dialect it is often very difficult to determine the reason for the loan, though it would be safe to say that it is frequently due simply to a desire on the part of the speaker to use English words, a thing that becomes very pronounced in the jargon that is sometimes heard.”

Dr. Flom’s vocabulary of loan-words includes 735 nouns, 235 verbs, 43 adjectives and 7 verbs, or 1025 words in all — a very substantial part of the total vocabulary of the Norwegian-Americans of rural Wisconsin. Dr. Flaten’s earlier vocabulary runs to almost 550 words. The Dano-Norwegian
øl
is abandoned for the English
beer
, which becomes
bir. Tønde
succumbs to
baerel, barel
or
baril
(barrel),
frokost
to
brekkfaest
(breakfast),
skat
to
taex
(tax), and so on. The verbs yield in the same way:
vaeljuéte
(valuate),
titsche
(teach),
katte
(cut),
klém
(claim),
savére
(survey),
refjuse
(refuse). And the adjectives:
plén
(plain),
jelös
(jealous),
kjokfuldt
(chock-full),
krésé
(crazy),
aebel
(able),
klir
(clear),
pjur
(pure),
pur
(poor). And the adverbs and adverbial phrases:
isé
(easy),
reit evé
(right away),
aept to
(apt to),
allreit
(all right). Dr. Flaten lists some grotesque compound words,
e.g., nekk-töi
(necktie),
⁴¹
kjaens-bogg
(chinch-bug),
gitte long
(get along),
staets-praessen
(state’s prison),
traevling-maen
(traveling-man),
uxe-jogg
(yoke of oxen). Pure Americanisms are not infrequent,
e.g., bösta
(busted),
bés-baal
(baseball),
dipo
(depot),
jukre
(to euchre),
kaemp-mid’n
(camp-meeting),
kjors
(chores),
magis
(moccasin),
malasi
(molasses),
munke-rins
(monkey-wrench),
raad-bas
(road-boss),
sjante
(shanty),
strit-kar
(street-car),
tru trin
(through train). The decayed American adverb is boldly absorbed, as in
han file baed
(he feels bad). “That this lingo,” says Dr. Flaten, “will ever become a dialect of like importance with the Pennsylvania-Dutch is hardly possible.… The Norwegians are among those of our foreign-born citizens most willing to part with their mother tongue.” But meanwhile it is spoken by many thousands of them, and it will probably
linger in isolated farming regions of the upper Middle West for years.
⁴²

The only study of American Icelandic in English that I have been able to unearth is a paper on its loan-nouns, published more than thirty years ago by Vilhjálmar Stefánsson, the Arctic explorer, who was born in the Icelandic colony at Árnes, Manitoba, on Lake Winnipeg.
⁴³
But there is considerable interest in the subject among the Icelanders, both at home and in this country, and Dr. Stefan Einars-son of the Johns Hopkins University, a native of Iceland, has been, for some years past, collecting materials relating to it, and has in contemplation a treatise on it. The dialect is called Vestur-íslenska, and shows many of the characters that we have found in American-Swedish and American-Dano-Norwegian. But, since it is a much more ancient language than the tongues of the Scandinavian mainland, it is more highly inflected, and its inflections are almost invariably fastened upon its borrowings from American English. “No word,” says Mr. Stefánsson, “can be used in Icelandic without being assigned a gender-form distinguished by the post-positive article.” Thus
river
becomes
rifurinn
(masculine),
road
becomes
rótin
(feminine) and
depot
becomes
dípóidh
⁴⁴
(neuter). In general, either formal or semantical similarities to Icelandic words determine the gender of the loan-words. The effect is sometimes curious. Thus the American
candy, ice-cream, saloon, sidewalk, township
and
cornstarch
are all neuter, but
beer, boss, cowboy
and
populist
are masculine, and
tie
(railroad),
prohibition
and
siding
are feminine. In the case of some words usage varies. Thus
caucus
has no fixed gender; different speakers make it masculine, feminine or neuter.
Cracker, automobile, field, telephone
and
turkey
are other such words.
Banjo
may be either feminine or neuter,
bicycle
may be either masculine or neuter, and
bronco
may be either masculine or feminine. The gender of loan-words tends to be logical, but it is not always so.
Farmer
is always masculine and so is
engineer
, and
nurse
is always feminine, but
dressmaker
is given the masculine post-positive article, becoming
dressmakerinn
. However, when the pronoun is substituted, in speaking of a dressmaker,
hún
, which is feminine, is commonly used. Words ending in
l
or
ll
are usually considered neuter,
e.g., baseball, corral, hotel, hall
. “A striking example,” says Mr. Stefánsson, “is the term
constable
. The natural gender is evidently masculine and the Icelandic equivalent,
lögreglumathur
, is masculine; yet
constable
is usually employed as a neuter, though occasionally as a masculine.” Words in
-er
fall under the influence of the Icelandic masculine nouns in
-art
, denoting agency, and so usually become masculine,
e.g., director, ginger, mower, parlor, peddler, reaper, separator. Republican
and
socialist
are masculine, but
democrat
is neuter.
Cash-book, clique, contract, election
and
grape
are feminine for the reasons stated on
this page
. Of the 467 loan-nouns listed by Mr. Stefánsson, 176 are neuters and 137 are masculines. There are but 44 clear feminines, though 80 others are sometimes feminine. Here are some specimens of Vestur-íslenska in action: