American Language (132 page)

But some of the commonest coins of American speech,
e.g., yes, no, well, sure
and
O.K.
, are taken into Lithuanian bodily and without substantial change, and this is true also of most adjectives,
e.g., busy (bìzi), particular (partìkli), nice (nais), ready (rèdi), big (big), crazy (kréize), good
(gud). Dr. Senn says he knows of but two loan-adjectives that are regularly declined, to wit,
dórtinas
(dirty) and
fòniškas
(funny). Lithuanian is extraordinarily rich in diminutives; the word
brother
alone has fifteen.
¹¹¹
Some of these are attached to loan-words; thus,
lady
has produced
leidùke
, and
miss
has produced
misẽle
. A few masculine loan-nouns have feminine forms,
e.g., bùtlegeris-bùtlegere
(bootlegger-ess) and
týčeris-týčerka
(teacher-ess). When English combinations of sounds happen to be difficult to Lithuanian lips they are sometimes changed. Thus
picnic
becomes
pìtnikas, order
becomes
òrdelis
, and
dóllar
is often
dórelis
instead of
dóleria
. Loan-verbs, avoiding the complicated conjugations of correct Lithuanian, are all conjugated like
jùdinu
(to move). Among those in most frequent use are
álpinu
(to help),
dòrtinu
(to dirty),
dráivinu
(to drive),
júzinu
(to use),
láikunu
(to like),
mùvinu
(to move),
pùšinu
(to push) and
tròstinu
(to trust). But
to fix
becomes
fìksyt
, and
to spend
is
spéndyt
. When an English verb ends in a vowel it presents difficulties. Sometimes it is fitted with the
-inu
ending notwithstanding, e.g.,
trãjinu
(to try); at other times it is given a final
n
and some other ending,
e.g., pléinina
(to play) and
mònkina
(to monkey). The verb
lúzinu
(to lose) becomes
lòstinu
in the past tense, obviously under the influence of
lost
. A few loan-verbs take the
-uoti
ending,
e.g., bãderiuoti
(to bother),
čenčiúoti
(to change) and
faitúotis
(to fight). American-Lithuanian has borrowed many English and American idioms,
e.g., to catch cold, half past six
, and
I have got
, and they are translated literally. Other
phrases are taken over bodily. Thus
gudtaim
is
good time, big sur-praiz
is
big surprise
, and
kréizauze
is
crazy-house, i.e., lunatic asylum
.
¹¹²

In September, 1933, at a meeting of the Syndykatu Dziennikarzy Polskich w Ameryce (Society of Polish-American Journalists) at Chicago, Mr. Ernest Lilien read a paper on “The Polish Language and Polish-American Writers.” It was devoted mainly to the sins of the speaker’s fellow-journalists, and was full of amusing stories. There was the one, for example, about the Polish-American telegraph-editor who received a press dispatch one night (in English, of course) about a storm that had knocked over fifty telegraph-poles, and who translated
poles
as
Polacks
, to the consternation of his Polish readers. And there was the one about the other Polish-American editor who, trusting the dictionary too much, translated
sewer
as
szwacska
(seamstress,
i.e., sew-er
). Mr. Lilien handled these brethren somewhat roughly, but his very exposure of their crimes also revealed their defense. For they have to work at high pressure translating the words and idioms of American-English into a quite unrelated and far more formal language, and it is no wonder that they occasionally perpetrate astonishing howlers, and deface Polish with fantastic new growths. All the foreign-language editors of the United States labor under the same difficulty, and fall into the same snares. They try to follow the canons of the language they are writing, but only too often it is impossible, and in consequence they promote the development of a bilingual jargon.

The Polish-American journalists are rather more careful than most, but, as Mr. Lilien showed in his paper, their writings are full of Americanisms, in both word and idiom. Instead of writing
obchód
or
šwięcenie
they turn the English
celebration
(a term they have to use incessantly) into the facile
celebracja
, instead of
zderzenie
(collision) they write
kolizja
, and instead of
wypytywać
or
przesluchi-wać
(to question) they make it
kwestjonować
. In Polish the word for street (
ulica
) should precede the proper name,
e.g., Ulica Kościuszkowska
or
Ulica Kościuszki
, but in American-Polish it is usually
Kosciuszko ulica
(or
sztryta
), and that is what it promises to remain. The American-Polish housewife, on setting out for the grocery-store, never says “Idę do
sklepu korzennego
(or
kolonial-nego
),” which is Standard Polish; she says “Idę do
groserni
,” with
groscernia
correctly inflected for case. Other nouns that have thus come into the language, displacing Polish terms, are
szapa
(shop),
sztor
(store),
buczernia
(butcher),
salun
(saloon),
salwak
or
sajdwok
(sidewalk),
pajpa
(pipe),
kołt
(coat),
owerholce
(overalls),
pajnt
(paint),
strytkara
(street-car),
wiska
(whiskey),
trok
(truck) and
piciosy
(peaches).
¹¹³
In
sklad-departamentowy
the first half is good Polish for a large store, but the second half is the English
department
, outfitted with a Polish tail. To Mr. Adam Bartosz, editor of
Jednosc-Polonia
(Baltimore), I am indebted for the following account of a Polish immigrant’s rapid introduction to American-Polish:

In 1930 there were 3,342,198 persons of Polish origin in the United States —1,268,583 born in the territories now included in Poland, 1,781,280 born here of Polish-born parents, and 292,335 born here of mixed parentage. All these, of course, were not Poles; many, and perhaps a good half, were Polish Jews. But the Polish element in the population is still very large. The Polish National Alliance has 350,000 members and assets of $28,000,000, and the Polish Roman Catholic Union has 250,000 members and assets of $13,000,000. There are large Polish colonies in Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit, and in the last-named the population of the enclave of Hamtramck is said to be 80% Polish. In Buffalo the Poles are so thick on the East Side that less than ½ of 1% of the population is non-Polish. The early Polish immigrants set up parochial schools for the purpose of preserving the language as well as the faith, but of late the Catholic bishops have been Americanizing them. The Polish National Church, which separated from the Catholic Church thirty years ago, conducts its services in Polish and teaches the language in its schools. There are seventy-five Polish periodicals in the country, of which fifteen are daily newspapers.
¹¹⁴

In 1930, according to the census of that year, there were 142,478 persons of Finnish birth in the United States, 148,532 who had been born here of Finnish parents, and 29,526 of partly Finnish parentage — a total of 320,536. Of these, 124,994 reported that Finnish was their mother-tongue. The Finns are scattered through the country from Massachusetts to the Pacific Coast, with their largest colonies in Michigan and Minnesota. They support twenty-one publications
in their ancestral language, including five dailies. That language has been so greatly modified in the United States that Professor Nisonen, of Suomi College, Hancock, Mich., has proposed that it be called Finglish. Says Mr. John E. Rantamaki, editor of the
Amerikan Suometar
, a tri-weekly published at Hancock:

Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugrian group of languages, along with Hungarian, Lapp, Estonian and a number of minor dialects. It appears to be more closely related to Turkish and Mongolian than to the prevailing languages of Europe. It has fifteen cases, and all of them save the nominative are indicated by adding postpositions to the root. The root itself must always end in a vowel or diphthong. A loan-word, if it ends in a consonant, has a vowel-ending attached to it. Thus
house
, in the nominative, becomes
haussi, from the house
(elative) is
haussista
, and
into the house
(translative) is
haussiksi
. Proper names are subjected to the same inflections. Thus,
to Kenton
is
Kentoniin
, and
from Kenton
is
Kentonista
. The Finnish papers in the United States are full of such curious forms as
Ann Arborissa, Kalamazoon
and
New York Mills’ista
. Here is the paradigm of
haussi
(house), which has generally displaced the correct Finnish
talo:

Under the influence of English there is some decay of these case-endings, especially in the genitive and the accusative. Even perfectly good Finnish words tend to lose some of their inflections. Here, for example, is the way
kirja
(book) changes for person, in the genitive case, in Finnish and Finglish: