American Language (125 page)

The Icelanders sometimes borrow the sense of English loan-words which resemble Icelandic words of quite different meaning. For example, in the phrase “adh ganga
brotinn
á
gemlingshús
” (to go broke in a gambling-house),
brotinn
is an Icelandic word which always means broken, not broke, and
gemlings
is the genitive of the Icelandic noun
gemlingur
, meaning a yearling sheep. Similarly, the English verb
to beat
, which has been generally taken in, collides with the Icelandic verb
bíta
(to bite). Dr. Einarsson tells me
that there have been a number of discussions of Vestur-íslenska in
Heimskringla
and
Lögberg
, the Icelandic weeklies published at Winnipeg. It has also been put to literary use by the Icelandic American novelist, J. M. Bjarnason,
⁴⁶
and by Kristján N. Júlíus, “the Icelandic Bobby Burns.”
⁴⁷
The first Icelanders to come to the United States settled in Utah in 1855. The Census of 1930 showed 7413 persons of Icelandic stock in the country — 2768 born in Iceland, 3177 born here of Icelandic parentage, and the rest born here of partly Icelandic parentage. There are many more across the Canadian border, especially in Manitoba. The American Icelanders print no periodicals, but at Winnipeg, in addition to the two weeklies that I have mentioned, there are various other publications.

Yiddish, though it is spoken by Jews, and shows a high admixture of Hebrew,
⁴⁸
and is written in Hebrew characters, is basically a Middle High German dialect, greatly corrupted, not only by Hebrew, but also by Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, and, in the United States, English. At the Census of 1930, 1,222,658 Jews gave Yiddish as their mother-tongue; in all probability another million could then speak it, or, at all events, understand it. Since the cutting off of immigration from Eastern Europe it has been declining, and there are many Jews who view it hostilely as a barbaric jargon, and hope to see it extirpated altogether; nevertheless, there are still thirty-seven Yiddish periodicals in the country, including twelve daily newspapers, and one of the latter, the Jewish
Daily Forward
of New York, had a circulation of nearly 125,000 in 1935.

The impact of American-English upon Yiddish has been tremendous;
in fact, it has been sufficient to create two Yiddishes. “The one,” says Dr. Ch. Zhitlowsky, “is the wild-growing Yiddish-English jargon, the potato-chicken-kitchen language; the other is the cultivated language of Yiddish culture all over the world.”
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But though Dr. Zhitlowsky and his fellow Yiddishists may rail against that potato-chicken-kitchen language, it is the Yiddish of the overwhelming majority of American Jews. In it such typical Americanisms as
sky-scraper, loan-shark, graft, bluffer, faker, bood-ler, gangster, crook, guy, kike, piker, squealer, bum, cadet, boom, bunch, pants, vest, loafer, jumper, stoop, saleslady, ice-box
and
raise
are quite as good Yiddish as they are American. For all the objects and acts of everyday life the Jews commonly use English terms,
e.g., 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, table-cloth, paint, landlord, fellow, tenant, bargain, sale, haircut, razor, basket, school, scholar, teacher, baby, mustache, butcher, grocery, dinner, street
and
walk
. In the factories there is the same universal use of
shop, wages, foreman, boss, sleeve, collar, cuff, button, cotton, thimble, needle, machine, pocket, remnant, piece-work, sample
, etc. Many of these words have quite crowded out the corresponding Yiddish terms, so that the latter are seldom heard. For example,
ingle
, meaning
boy
(Ger.
jungel
, a diminutive of
junge
, a boy), has been wholly obliterated by the English word. A Yiddish-speaking Jew 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
pod-logé
, or a
bricke
. So with
ceiling
. There were six different words for it.

Yiddish inflections have been fastened upon most of these loanwords. Thus, “Er hat ihm
abgefaked
” is “He cheated him,”
zubunt
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
bluff erké
(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 Jewish social life. Some of the loan-words, of course, undergo changes on Yiddish-speaking lips. Thus
landlord
becomes
lendler, certificate
becomes
stiff-ticket, lounge
becomes
lunch, tenant
becomes
tenner
, and
whiskers
loses its final
s
. “Wie gefällt dir sein
whisker?
” (How do you like his beard?) is good Yiddish, ironically intended.
Fellow
, of course, changes to the American
fella
, as in “Rosie hat schon a
fella
” (Rosie has got a
fella, 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 vul-gate from Irish-English, has also gone over into American-Yiddish. Finally, to make an end, here are two complete American-Yiddish sentences: “Sie wet
clear’n
die
rooms, scruh’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.
”
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For some time past there has been a movement among the New York Jews for the purification of Yiddish, and it has resulted in the
establishment of a number of Yiddish schools. Its adherents do not propose, of course, that English be abandoned, but simply that the two languages be kept separate, and that Jewish children be taught Yiddish as well as English. The Yiddishists insist that it is more dignified to say
a gooten tog
than
good-bye
, and
billet
instead of
ticket
. But the movement makes very poor progress. “The Americanisms absorbed by the Yiddish of this country,” says Abraham Cahan, “have come to stay. To hear one say ‘Ich hob a
billet
für heitige vorschtellung’ would be as jarring to the average East Side woman, no matter how illiterate and ignorant she might be, as the intrusion of a bit of Chinese in her daily speech.” Yiddish, as everyone knows, has produced a very extensive literature during the past two generations; it is, indeed, so large and so important that I can do no more than refer to it here.
⁵¹
Much of it has come from Jewish authors living in New York. In their work, and particularly their work for the stage, there is extensive and brilliant evidence of the extent to which American-English has influenced the language.
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Ever since the close of the Eighteenth Century patriotic French-Canadians have been voicing fears that the French language would be obliterated from their country, soon or late, by the growth of English, but so far it has not happened. At the present moment probably 25% of all the Canadians continue to speak French and to think of it as their mother-tongue, though most of them, of course, also speak more or less English. But the French they speak is by no means that of Paris. Dr. E. C. Hills, who spent five Summers in a French-speaking community near Montreal, studying the local speechways, came away convinced that “a Parisian would not understand the common language of the district.”
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It differs considerably from place to place, but all over Canada it is heavily shot with English,
and especially with American. “The effect of English on the French,” says A. Marshall Elliott,
⁵⁴
“has been immeasurably greater than that of French on the English.… The French has made use of all the productive means — suffixes, prefixes — at its disposal to incorporate the English vocables in its word-supply … and to adapt them by a skilful use of the inflectional apparatus to all the requirements of a rigid grammatical system.” On one page of N. E. Dionne’s “Le Parler Populaire des Canadiens Français”
⁵⁵
I find
barkeeper, bargaine, barroom, bullseye, buckwheat, buggy, buckboard, bugle, bully, bum, business
and
bus —
most of them, it will be observed, American rather than English, and one of them,
bum
, an American loan from the German. In Sylva Chapin’s “Dictionnaire Canadien-Français”
⁵⁶
are many more,
e.g., lager
(another German loan),
overalls, cracker, gerrymander, baseball, blizzard, blue-nose, bluff, boodle
(from the Dutch originally),
boss
(also from the Dutch),
brakeman, cocktail, C.O.D., cowboy, greenback, johnny-cake, peanut, sleigh
(a third Dutch loan),
squatter, teetotaler, township
and
trolley
. A larger number have been Gallicized,
e.g., boodlage
(boodle),
boodleur
(boodler),
conducteur, lyncher
(to lynch),
elevateur
and
engin
(locomotive), and some appear in two forms,
e.g., bum
and
bommeur
, which have produced the verb
bommer
, and
loafer
and
lôfeur
, which have produced the verb
lôfer
. Here are some quotations from current Canadian-French newspapers: “sur le
scrîne
” (screen), “les effets du
vacouomme-clîneaur
,” “Le
typewriter
empêche d’embrouiller les textes,” “Les Goglus sont
wise
” (a headline), and “
Hold-up
de M. Houde” (another).
⁵⁷
Louvigny de Montigny, in “La Langue Française au Canada”
⁵⁸
complains bitterly that American words and phrases are driving out French words and phrases, even when the latter are quite as clear and convenient. Thus,
un patron
, throughout French Canada, is now
un boss, petrole
is
l’huile de charbon
(coal-oil),
une bonne à tout faire
is
une servante générate
, and
un article d’occasion
is
un article de seconde main!
“
Vous regardez bien, Monsieur
,” which means “Your eyesight is good,” or “You look in the right direction” in Standard French, means “You are looking well”
in Canadian-French. The latter is full of French dialect words inherited from the early settlers, and unknown in Standard French,
e.g.
, the Norman verbs
chouler
(to tease a dog),
fafiner
(to hesitate) and;
aspiner
(to gossip). The influence of the dialects is also responsible for numerous differences in grammatical gender between the two languages,
e.g., hôtel, examen, arc
and
éclair
, which are masculine in Standard French, are feminine in Canada, and
garantie
and
écritoire
, which are feminine in Standard French, are masculine. It has also produced some peculiarities in phonology,
e.g., a
for
elle, i
for
il, ils, lui
and
y, ah
for
e, aw
for
ah
, and
dz
for
d
. The final
d, r, s
and
t
are often sounded where they are now mute in Standard French.
⁵⁹