American Language (38 page)

One of the characteristics of slang, as we shall see in Chapter XI, Section 1, is that its novelties are sometimes worked so hard and in so many situations that they lose all definite meaning. This is also true of certain popular words on higher levels: philologians call them vogue- or counter-words. The common adjectives and adverbs of intensification offer examples
e.g., grand, dreadful, nice
and
awfully
, and we have seen another in the verb
to fix
(
Chapter I
, Section 3) and yet another in the verb
to get
(
Chapter V
, Section 3). The noun
proposition
began to take on wide and often preposterous significances in American during the 90’s, and was soon in a lamentably swollen state. It meant a problem, proposal, person, parallel, premiss, postulate, parley, phenomenon, point, policy, philosophy, prospect, process, petition, paradox or possibility, to mention only a few of its meanings under its own first letter.
¹⁵³
It went into English with the movies, and was denounced by H. W. Fowler in “Modern English Usage,” but it remained distinctively American there, and is now fading out of both languages, at least in its character of counter-word. In 1910 or thereabout the more incompetent newspaper reporters of the United States began to use
angle
in the sense of any aspect of a person or an event,
¹⁵⁴
and ten years later they adopted
alibi
as a synonym for any word signifying an explanation or excuse. Both wore out very quickly, but not, alas, quickly enough. Other counter-words that have flourished since the beginning of the century are
gesture, service, reaction, complex, analysis, plus
and
dingus
, the verbs
to function
and
to claim
,
¹⁵⁵
and the adjectives
outstanding
,
meticulous, exciting, conscious
and
consistent
. Some of them began in the argot of a relatively small class, and then extended to the common tongue,
e.g., service
, which seems to have been launched by the visionaries of Rotary
c
. 1910.
Outstanding
began its career among the pedagogues, and they still overwork it cruelly,
¹⁵⁶
but it is now also used by politicians, the rev. clergy, newspaper editorial writers, and other such virtuosi of bad writing.
Consistent
came in
c
. 1925 as an adjective designating every sort of harmony or continuity, and for a while drove out a whole flock of better words.
Exciting
apparently arose in the jargon of art criticism, but in 1933 it was borrowed by the writers of book reviews, and presently had a great run in publishers’ advertising, especially on the slip-covers of books.
Plus
seems to have been the child of advertisement writers; it was noticed in
American Speech
for December, 1927, as in high favor among them.
Classic
followed a year or so later.
¹⁵⁷
Dingus
seems to have originated in the English of South Africa, but it has been in heavy use in the United States since the automobile and the radio brought in a host of novel contraptions, and with it have flourished a number of congeners,
e.g., jigger, gadget
and
doodad.
¹⁵⁸
Complex
, of course, owed its vogue,
c
. 1915, to the popularity of the Freudian rumble-bumble. The use of
gesture
as a general indicator of any sort of action, movement, offer, threat or deed began in 1925 or thereabout. The late George Philip Krapp believed that it was suggested by the French
beau geste
, the title of a popular movie of the period.
¹⁵⁹

The great flow of European immigration to the United States, perhaps the most significant event in human history since the close of the Middle Ages, began with the Irish potato famine of 1847 and the German political disturbances of the two years following. Between 1776 and 1846, a stretch of more than two generations, less than 1,600,000 immigrants from overseas had come into the country, though its population had increased nearly sevenfold, from 3,000,000 to 20,000,000. But after 1850 the movement began in earnest, and thereafter it continued for sixty-five years, with only two considerable interruptions, the first caused by the Civil War and the second by the Depression of 1893. In each of the years 1905, 1906, 1907, 1910, 1913 and 1914 more than a million immigrants were admitted, and by 1927 the total number arriving since 1820 reached 37,000,000. In 1930 there were 13,366,407 white persons in the United States who had been born in foreign countries, 16,999,221 whose parents were both foreign-born, and 8,361,965 of mixed parentage — a total of 38,727,593, or more than 35% of the whole white population. In addition, there were perhaps 200,000 Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Hindus and Koreans who were either foreign-born or the children of foreign-born parents, and nearly 1,500,000 Mexicans.
¹⁶⁰

With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1921 the flow of immigration was considerably reduced, and when the Immigration Act of 1924 followed it was virtually halted. Both acts were qualitative as well as quantitative in purpose and effect. The first limited the annual immigration from each country to 3% of “the number of foreign-born persons of such nationality resident in the United States” in 1910, and the second reduced the quota to 2% and changed the year to 1890. The aim of the latter amendment was to diminish the relative number of immigrants from Eastern and Southern
Europe. Down to 1890 the overwhelming majority of entrants had come from Great Britain, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, but after that year those from Italy, Russia and the Austrian dominions had taken the lead. In 1914, for example, 383,738 came in from Italy, 255,660 from Russia and 278,152 from Austria-Hungary, whereas the arrivals from Germany were but 35,734, from Scandinavia 29,391, and from the United Kingdom and Ireland 73,417. It was generally felt that immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe were harder to assimilate than those from the West and North, and that the country already had enough of them, and to spare. So the number of Italians admitted annually was reduced from 42,128 under the Act of 1921 to 3,845 under the Act of 1924, and the number of Poles from 30,977 to 5,977. A certain amount of anti-Semitism also got into the matter, for a large proportion of the immigrants from Eastern Europe were Jews. The two acts worked so well that by 1930 the year’s immigration was reduced to 241,700, and by 1933 to 23,068. Indeed, since 1930 the number of immigrants coming in annually has been more than once surpassed by the number of former immigrants returning home, and from 1930 to 1935 the total excess amounted to 229,363.
¹⁶¹

Of the 13,366,407 foreign-born whites in the country in 1930,
¹⁶²
13,216,928 were ten years old or older, and of this number only 3,907,021 spoke English as their native language. Nevertheless, all save 869,865 of the remainder managed to convince the census enumerators that they had acquired a workable command of the language. No doubt most of them spoke it badly, but at all events they tried to speak it, and their children were being taught it in the schools. The immigrants of the older immigrations had naturally made the most progress. The Scandinavians, about half of whom arrived before 1900, made the best showing, with hardly more than 2% of them unable to speak English, and less than 1% of the males. Next came the Germans: 58.3% of them arrived before 1900, and all save 2.9% (1.8% of males) could speak English. The Poles, Russians,
Italians, Greeks and Czechs, and the Baltic and Balkan peoples, most of whom came in between 1900 and 1914, fell much behind. Of the Poles, for example, 12.8% were still unable to speak English in 1930 (7.7% of males and 18.7% of females) and of the Italians 15.7% (8.9% and 25.1%). Here something more than mere duration of residence in the country seems to have had some influence, for though 12.7% of the Germans came in after 1925, only 2.9% were without English in 1930. These late-coming Germans were, on the whole, much better educated than the Eastern and Southern Europeans who arrived at the same time, and large numbers of them had probably received some instruction in English at home. Moreover, they dispersed themselves throughout the country, and did not collect in ghettoes, like a majority of the Italians, Slavs and Jews. Of the 1,808,289 Italians here in 1930 more than 1,500,000 were crowded into relatively few cities, and of the 1,222,658 Jews who reported Yiddish as their native language all save 19,000 were living in cities.
¹⁶³

This concentration of foreign-speaking people in limited areas has naturaly influenced the American of those areas, if only on its lower levels. Now that immigration has been virtually cut off, that influence will diminish, but how long it may be exerted is to be observed in the so-called Pennsylvania-Dutch region of Pennsylvania, where a dialect of German is still a living speech after more than 200 years of settlement, and the local dialect of English shows plain traces of it, both in vocabulary and in pronunciation. In the same way, the everyday speech of lower Louisiana is full of French terms not in use elsewhere,
e.g., brioche, praline, lagniappe, armoir, kruxingiol (croquignole), pooldoo (poule d’eau), jambalaya, bogue, gris-gris
and
briqué
.
¹⁶⁴

In Minnesota and the adjacent States many Swedish terms are in common use,
e.g., lutfisk
(a fish delicacy),
lingon
(a berry),
lefse
(a potato pancake),
fattigmand
(a pastry),
spruts
(another),
lag
(an association of Swedes from the same province), and
midsommarfest
(commonly Anglicized to
midsummer-feast
). There is also a considerable borrowing of Swedish idioms, as in
to cook coffee
(
koka kaffee
),
forth and back
(fram och tillbaka), and
to hold with
in place of
to agree with
(håller med). A recent observer collected the following among “English-speaking high-school and college graduates of Swedish descent” in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois:

To this list a correspondent
¹⁶⁶
adds the following:

In the same way Czech words have got into American and Czech idioms have influenced usage in the regions wherein Bohemian immigrants are numerous. One of the former is listed in “Webster’s New International Dictionary” (1934). It is
kolach
, and it is defined as “variety of kuchen made esp. by Bohemians.” Why the German word
kuchen
is used in this definition I don’t know.
Kolach
is the Czech
kolác
, with its accent lost in the melting-pot. Other Czech loan-words and phrases that are in local use are
rohlík
(a roll brushed with egg-yolk, salted, and sometimes sprinkled with caraway or poppy seeds),
povidla
(a prune marmalade),
buchta
(a coffee-cake),
počkij
(wait, hold on),
sokol
(literally, a falcon, but used to designate an athletic association),
na zdar
(good luck), and
to soc
(from the verb
sočiti
, meaning to scold or grumble). Another is
pantáta
(literally,
Mr. Father
, and signifying a father-in-law). This last was apparently in use in New York at the time of the Lexow investigation to designate a corrupt police-captain, but it has gone out.
¹⁶⁷
In Bristol county, Massachusetts, where there are many Portuguese immigrants, a number of Portuguese loan-words are encountered,
e.g., cabeca
(head),
Hngreese
(Port,
linguica
, a sausage), and
jick
or
jickie
(Englishman).
¹⁶⁸
If
cuspidor
is actually an Americanism, which seems probable, then it most likely came from the Portuguese verb
cuspir
(to spit). The Oxford Dictionary’s first example of its use (spelled
cuspadore
) is taken from Forrest’s “Voyage to New Guinea,” dated 1779, but after that there is no quotation until 1871, at which time an Englishman named Heath took out a patent for “an improvement in
cuspidores.
” The word seems to have been in general use in the United States before 1870.
¹⁶⁹
In New York City the high density of Eastern Jews in the population has made almost every New Yorker familiar with a long list of Yiddish words,
e.g., kosher, shadchan, matzoth, mazuma,
¹⁷⁰
yom kippur, meshuggah
and
gefilte-fisch
, and many non-Jewish New Yorkers have added others that are not generally familiar,
e.g., schul, bar-mitzva, blintzes, kaddish, trefa, day yan, goy, dokus, schochet, schmus, schicker, schiksa, mohel, get, hesped, kishkes, kittl, meshummad
and
pesach
. The Yiddish exclamation,
oi-yoi
, is common New Yorkese, and the Yiddish greetings,
mazzaltov
and
scholom aleichim
, are pretty well known and understood. There is also some translation of Yiddish idioms, as in “That’s something else again” and “Did I say no?” In 1915 or thereabout “I should worry” came into use in New York, and quickly spread throughout the country. It was said at the time to be a translation of a Yiddish phrase,
ish ka bibble
, but about this there is still some mystery. The common Yiddish saying is actually “
Es is mein daige
” (It is my worry).
¹⁷¹
There are not a few Yiddish loan-words in German, and some of them have probably been helped into American by that fact,
e.g., kosher, mazuma
(money),
matzoth, meshuggah
(crazy), and
dokus
(backside). I find
mazuma
in a word list from Kansas.
¹⁷²
Contrariwise, there are many German words in Yiddish, and one of them,
kibitzer
, has come into American by the Yiddish route. In German
kiebitz
signifies the peewit or lapwing (
Vancellus cristallus
), and has long been in figurative use to designate a looker-on at cards, and especially one who offers unsolicited advice.
¹⁷³
The word apparently acquired the agent suffix,
-er
, on coming into American. Yiddish has greatly enriched the vocabulary of those trades in which Jews are numerous. In the retail shoe business, “a customer who shops from store to store, trying on shoes but not buying, is known as a
schlepper
. In Yiddish the word means a mean fellow. Those who bargain in a one-price store are called
schnorrers
,
from the Yiddish for a beggar. The most derogatory of all terms in shoe lingo is the word
momzer
, also derived from the Yiddish and meaning a bastard. A
momzer
is one who, after working the salesman to death, decides to buy in a store down the block.”
¹⁷⁴
The instalment furniture stores have also borrowed from the Yiddish. They are called by their salesmen
borax-houses
, and the
borax
apparently comes from the Yiddish
borg
, meaning credit.” When business is bad it’s
shofle
, and a sucker is always a
schnookel.”
When the credit department offers a customer such unfavorable terms that the sale is killed, it is said to be
schmiessed
.
¹⁷⁵
In the garment trade Yiddish is probably used more than English, and such English as is employed is full of Yiddish terms.
¹⁷⁶