American Language (135 page)

The Census of 1930 revealed 174,526 persons of Greek birth in the United States, 101,668 persons born here of Greek parents, and 27,557 born here of parentage partly Greek, or 303,751 in all. Of these, 189,066 reported that Greek was their mother-tongue. The Greek-Americans are served by fifteen periodicals in Greek, of which four are daily newspapers.

As we have seen in Chapter XII, Section 1, the influence of English on Chinese, even in China, is already very considerable. Not only does Chinese absorb a great many English and American loan-words; it also tends toward grammatical and syntactical accord with English. In the United States these tendencies are naturally very noticeable, not only among the rank and file of Chinese-speaking immigrants, but also among the Chinese students who frequent American universities. Says Dr. Arthur W. Hummel, chief of the Division of Orien-talia in the Library of Congress:

There are, of course, difficulties in the way of English loan-words, for on the one hand some of their sounds are absent from Chinese, and on the other hand the lack of an alphabet in Chinese makes it necessary, in writing, to find whole syllables approximating their sounds, and sometimes that leads to absurdity, or, indeed, is downright impossible. Consider, for example, the Chinese handling of the word
America
, which is first encountered in writings of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). It is represented by hooking together the ideograph for
ya
, a common prefix to proper names, with those for
mei
(beautiful, admirable),
li
(clever, or interest on money),
chia
(a suffix), and
chou
(region, country). The result is
Ya-mei-li-chia-chou
, meaning the beautiful and clever (or interest-collecting) land. In everyday use this is abbreviated to
Mei-kuo
(beautiful land).
American
is similarly reduced to
Mei-kuo-jên
(beautiful-country man). Sometimes the effect is amusing, as when
New York
becomes
Niu
(to grasp, to seize) -yo (important, compendious),
i.e.
, the grasping, important city, or
Roosevelt
becomes
Lo
(a net)
-s-fu
(a blessing), or
-fou
(to revive). Many common English words have been taken into Chinese by the same process. The Southern Chinese (who are most numerous in the United States) find our
r
difficult, so they sometimes change it to
l
or
h
, but the Northern Chinese under Manchu influence, make a guttural of it. In both cases, loans often have to be changed radically in order to represent them in Chinese ideographs, which are extremely numerous (about 10,000 are in use) but still fall short of being innumerable. The following examples are listed by Professor Tsung-tse Yeh of Tsing Hua University, Peiping:
¹²⁷
k’a fei
(coffee),
sha-fa
(sofa),
sai-yin-ssŭ
(science),
fan-shih-ling
(vaseline),
fan-o-ling
(violin),
hu-lieh-la
(cholera),
wei-shih-chi
(whiskey),
nik-ko-lo
(negro),
mo-t’o
(motor),
t’o-la-ssŭ
(trust),
p’u-k’ê
(poker),
shui-mên-ting
(cement),
wa-ssŭ
, (gas),
tê-lü-fêng
(telephone),
hsüeh-ch’ieh
(cigar),
p’u-ou
(boy),
san-wei-chih
(sandwich),
su-ta
(soda),
ting
(tin),
ch’a-ssŭ-ta-ssŭ
(justice),
pi-k’o-ni-k’o
(picnic). In many cases, of course, translation takes the place of this onerous attempt at transliteration. Thus,
fork
becomes
ch’a-tzŭ
, from
ch’a
, a prong, with
tzŭ, a
common suffix, added, and
telephone
becomes
tien-hua
, literally, electricity talk. Other examples are:

Sometimes there is a combination of translation and transliteration,
e.g., yah-mee
(yard), in which the second syllable means rear in Chinese, and
ping-chi-ling
(ice-cream), in which the first syllable means ice. Many loans, of course, are taken in unchanged or almost so,
e.g., hello, kid, guy, nuts
and the universal
O.K
. The Americanized Chinese, even if he be a Cantonese, often masters the
r
, and is thus able to use such terms as
all right, girl, good-morning
and
dutch-treat
. In writing, they are represented, not by syllables of the same general sound, but by corresponding Chinese words. Thus,
all right
is represented by
shih
(yes), autumn by
chin
(autumn), and graft by
weila
(bribery). The third person pronoun
ta
is the same in Chinese in all genders, but under the influence of Western education the Chinese have begun to use slightly different ideographs to represent
he, she
and
it
, though all of them continue to be pronounced
ta
. There is a considerable difference of opinion as to the proper representation, in Chinese, of
God
. About a century ago the Catholic missionaries in China were ordered by a papal decree to use
T’ien-Chu
(Lord of Heaven), but most of the Protestant brethren use
Shang-Ti
(Emperor Above), with a minority preferring
Shén
(Spirit). The Chinese journalists of the United States incline toward purism in their writing, but their colleagues in China, following Liang Chi-chao (1869–1928), founder of Peiping’s first daily newspaper, are extremely hospitable to neologisms. At the time of the Revolution of 1911 such reformers as Liang Chi-chao, K’ang Yu-wei, and Chang Shih-chao brought in a great many novel political terms from English, and they promise to stick,
e.g., teh-moh-ka-la-si
(democracy),
p’u-lo-lieh-t’a-li-ya
(proletariat) and
pao-êrh-hsi-wei-k’ê
(bolshevik). The English honorifics,
Mr., Mrs
. and
Miss
, are in common use both in China and among Chinese in this country,
albeit they usually take the forms of
Mi-tse-te, Mi-hsi-tse
and
Mi-tse
. Their use is opposed by a faction of Chinese, led by Dr. Liu Fu, president of the Women’s College of Peiping, who ordained in 1931 that his charges should be called
Kuniang
, not
Miss
.
¹²⁹
The transliteration of Chinese words into English presents difficulties. The system ordinarily used is that devised by Sir Thomas Wade half a century ago, but of late it has a rival in a scheme for the complete romanization of Chinese writing proposed by Dr. Chao Yüan-jên.
¹³⁰

The Census of 1930 disclosed 74,954 Chinese in the United States, of whom 30,868 had been born here. There are 27,179 in Hawaii. There were more in the Continental United States at earlier periods, but of late, because of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1882 and its successors, the flow of immigrants has been toward South America and the Malay Archipelago, not toward the United States. There are now twenty Chinese periodicals in the country, of which eight are daily newspapers.

Standard Japanese, even more than Chinese, has been hospitable to English loan-words, and in Chapter XII, Section 1, I have described some of their effects upon the language. The Japanese spoken in this country, of course, is full of them. On account of the differences between the Japanese phonetic system and that of English many have to be changed materially. Every Japanese word ends either in a vowel or in
n
. Thus, Japanization produces such forms as the following:
aisukurimu
(ice-cream),
bata
(butter),
bazarin
(violin),
bifuteki
or
bisuteki
(beefsteak),
biru
(beer),
bisuketto
(biscuit),
bi-
yahoru
(beer-hall),
botan
(button),
chokoretto
(chocolate),
daia-mondo
(diamond),
dansu
(dance),
dainamaito
(dynamite),
ereki
(electricity),
gasu
(gas),
hankachi
or
hankechi
(handkerchief),
kat-suretsu
(cutlet),
kakuteiru
(cocktail),
kohi
(coffee),
kosumechikku
(cosmetics),
kyabetsu
(cabbage),
naifu
(knife),
penki
(paint),
ranpu
(lamp),
renkoto
(raincoat),
resu
(lace),
renzu
(lens),
risurin
(glycerin),
seruroido
(celluloid),
shatsu
(shirt),
sosu
(sauce),
suponji
(sponge),
taouru
(towel) and
toranpu
(tramp).
¹³¹
There are many substitutions of one vowel for another. The
ah
of
father
is commonly substituted for the
er
of
river
, the
ure
of
measure
, the
ir
of
girl
and the
or
of
labor
. An
i
like that of
police
is added to many words,
e.g., match, edge
, and the
oo
(or
u
) of
book
is added to others,
e.g., block, club, crab, map
. An
ee
-sound is substituted for the short
i
in
sit, it, miss, ship
, and for the
ai
-sound in
crime
and
guide
. The
g
is commonly nasalized, so that
Chicago
becomes
Chi-cango
, and
cigar
is
cingah
. Before
i, s
changes to
sh
and
z
to
dzh
, and before
i
and
u, t
and
d
become
ch
(tsh) and
j
(dzh). In words beginning with
hi
there is often a change to
shi
. There is a considerable confusion between
r
and
l
, and most Japanese find it hard to distinguish between such pairs as
grow-glow, broom-bloom, royal-loyal
. After
f
an
h
is often inserted, as in
fhence
(fence), and
o
frequently appears in compounds,
e.g., good-o-morningu, good-o-bye
. The sounds of
th
(both as in
the
and as in
thin
),
pl, bl
and
ks
are almost impossible to a Japanese.
¹³²
There are two systems of transcribing Japanese into English, the Hepburn system and that of the Nippon Romazikwai (Roman Letter Association of Japan), which proposes to abolish the ancient Japanese use of modified Chinese ideographs. The Japanese government appears to be unable to decide between the two.

There were 138,834 Japanese in the Continental United States in 1930, of whom 68,357 had been born either in the United States or in its possessions. In addition, there were 139,631 in Hawaii. There are fourteen Japanese periodicals in the United States and eleven in
Hawaii, including nine daily newspapers in the former and three in the latter.
¹³³

Armenian is an independent Indo-European language lying between the Indo-Iranian group and Greek. In 1930 there were 51,741 persons in the United States who gave it as their mother-tongue. There are ten Armenian periodicals in the country, of which two are daily newspapers, both published in Boston. I can find no published study of the American dialect of the language. For the following brief note I am indebted to Mr. R. Darbinian, editor of
Hairenik
, the elder of the two Boston dailies: