American Language (49 page)

But this Englishman failed in his attempt to write correct American, despite his fine pedagogical passion. No American would ever use
take the first turning
; he would use
turn at the first corner
. As for
right away
, R. O. Williams argues that “so far as analogy can make good English, it is as good as one could choose.”
⁶³
Nevertheless, the Concise Oxford Dictionary admits it only as an Americanism, and avoids all mention of the other American uses of
right. Good
is
almost as protean. It is not only used as a general synonym for all adverbs connoting satisfaction, as in
to feel good, to be treated good, to sleep good
, but also as an adjectival reinforcement to adjectives, as in “I hit him
good
and hard” and “I am
good
and tired.” The American use of
some
as an adjective indicating the superlative, as in “She is
some
girl,” is now common in England, but its employment as an adverb to indicate either moderation or intensification, as in “I play golf
some
” and “That’s lying
some,
” is still looked upon as an Americanism there. The former usage has respectable English precedents, but the latter seems to be American in origin. Thornton has traced it to 1785. It enjoyed a revival during the World War, and produced a number of counter-phrases,
e.g., going some
. In 1918 a writer in the
Atlantic Monthly
hailed
some
as “
some
word — a true super-word.”
⁶⁴
But a year later an Englishman writing in
English
(London) was denouncing it as “a pure vulgarism, which answers no real need.”
⁶⁵
The same word often has different meanings in the United States and England. Thus, a
davenport
, which is a couch here, is a desk or escritoire there; a
dumb-waiter
, which is an elevator here, is a revolving-table there; and a
bureau
, which is a chest of drawers here, is a desk or writing-table with drawers there.
Haberdashery
, in the United States, means men’s wear (excluding shoes and outer clothes); in England it designates what we call
notions
. A
guy
, in England, is a ridiculous figure, and the word is thus opprobrious; in the United States the word is hardly more than an amiable synonym for
fellow
. The English
guy
owes its origin to the effigies of
Guy
Fawkes, leader of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which used to be burnt in public on November 5; the American word seems to be derived from the
guy-rope
of a circus tent, and first appeared in the complimentary form of
head-guy
. When G. K. Chesterton made his first visit to the United States he was much upset when an admiring reporter described him as a
regular guy
. But the English sense of the word is preserved in the American verb
to guy
. In this country
luggage
is coming to have the special meaning of the bags in which
baggage
is packed; in England it means their contents, though
baggage
is still used by military men. A
lobbyist
, in England, is not a legislative wire-puller, but a journalist who frequents the lobby of
the House of Commons, looking for news and gossip.
⁶⁶
A
veteran
always means a soldier of long service; not, as with us, any ex-soldier.
Pussyfoot
, according to Horwill, means “a temperance propagandist” in England, obviously because of a misunderstanding of the nickname of William E. (
Pussyfoot
) Johnson, who set up shop in London in 1916 and proposed to convert the English to Prohibition. In the United States, of course, the word has a quite different meaning, and Johnson himself explains in “Who’s Who in America” that it was applied to him “because of his catlike policies in pursuing lawbreakers in the Indian Territory,” 1906–7. The English use the same measures that we do, but in many cases their values differ. Their bushel, since 1826, has contained 2,218.192 cubic inches, whereas we retain the old Winchester bushel of 2,150.42 inches. Their peck, of course, follows suit. So with their gallon, quart, pint and gill, all of which are larger than ours. Their hundredweight is 112 pounds, whereas ours is 100 pounds. Of their
quarter
of wheat we know nothing, nor have we their
quartern-loaf
or their
quarter-days
. A billion, in England, is not 1,000,000,000, but 1,000,000,000,000; for the former the word is
milliard
. According to Alistair Cooke, it is these words of differing meaning in England and the United States that give a visiting Englishman most trouble. He says:

Very few English authors, even those who have made lengthy visits to the United States, ever manage to write American in a realistic manner. At the time the American movies were first terrorizing English purists the late W. L. George undertook a tour of this country
, and on his return home wrote a paper dealing with his observations.
⁶⁸
George was a very competent reporter, and he had no prejudice against Americanisms; on the contrary, he delighted in them. But despite his diligent effort to write them he dropped into many Briticisms, some almost as unintelligible to the average American reader as so many Gallicisms. On page after page of his paper they display the practical impossibility of the enterprise:
back-garden
for
back-yard, perambulator
for
baby-carriage; corn-market
for
grain-market, coal-owner
for
coal-operator, post
for
mail, petrol
for
gasoline
, and so on. And to top them there were English terms that had no American equivalents at all, for example,
kitchen-fender
. Every English author who attempts to render the speech of American characters makes the same mess of it. H. G. Wells’s American in “Mr. Britling Sees It Through “is only matched by G. K. Chesterton’s in “Man Alive.” Even Kipling, who submitted the manuscript of “Captains Courageous” to American friends for criticism, yet managed to make an American in it say: “He’s
by way of being
a fisherman now.”
⁶⁹
The late Frank M. Bicknell once amassed some amusing examples of this unanimous failing.
⁷⁰
Sir Max Pemberton, in a short story dealing with an American girl’s visit to England, made her say: “I’m right glad … You’re as pale as spectres, I guess … Fancy that, now!… You are my guest, I reckon,… and here you are, my word!” C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne, in depicting a former American naval officer, made him speak of
saloon-corner men
(corner-loafers?). E. W. Hornung, in one of his “Raffles” stories, introduced an American prize-fighter who went to London and regaled the populace with such things as these: “Blamed if our Bowery boys ain’t cock-angels to scum like this … By the holy tinker!… Blight and blister him!… I guess I’ll punch his face into a jam pudding … Say, sonny, I like you a lot, but I sha’n’t like you if you’re not a good boy.” The American use of
way
and
away
seems to have daunted many of the authors quoted by Mr. Bicknell; several of
them agree on forms that are certainly never heard in the United States. Thus H. B. Marriott Watson makes an American character say: “You ought to have done business with me
away
in Chicago,” and Walter Frith makes another say: “He has gone
way
off to Hol-born,” “I stroll a block or two
way
down the Strand,” “I’ll drive him
way
down home by easy stages,” and “He can pack his grip and be
way
off home.” The American use of
gotten
also seems to present difficulties to English authors. For example, in “Staying with Relations” (1930), by Rose Macaulay, American characters are made to say “The kid’s the only one who’s
gotten
sense,” “You’ve
gotten
but one small grip apiece,” “That about uses up all the energy they’ve
gotten,
” and “That’s what’s wrong with Mexico, they’ve
gotten
no public spirit.”
⁷¹

“No Englishman,” says Bruce Bliven, “really understands our native tongue; interpreters are ever so much more needed than they are between French or Germans and ourselves. That is why British authors never put into the mouth of an American character anything other than weird gibberish — presumably deriving from a faint, incorrect memory of Bret Harte and George Ade, with a touch of erroneous Josh Billings.”
⁷²
The late John Galsworthy, who frequently visited the United States, never came within miles of writing sound American. His stock device for indicating American characters was to lard his dialogue with
I
judge, gee, cats
(as an exclamation),
vurry
(for very),
dandy
and
cunning
. He almost invariably confused
have got
and
have gotten
, the latter of which is used by Americans only in the sense of
have acquired, received
or
become
, not in the sense of simple
have
. Rather curiously, he sometimes put good American phrases into the mouths of English characters,
e.g., good egg
and
to say a mouthful
.
⁷³
Arnold Bennett, like Galsworthy, was fond of making American he-men use
lovely
in such sentences as “It was a
lovely
party.” Another shining offender was the late Edgar Wallace, and yet another was the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose American, Bill Scanlon, in “Maracot Deep” has been described as “one of the most extraordinary linguists ever known to fiction; the Bowery, Vermont, Whitechapel, Texas: all of these
tongues are his, not to mention a few fragments of Pennsylvania Dutch.”
⁷⁴
“Mannerisms of speech that to an American would identify the speaker as from the Middle West, South, Boston, or Philadelphia,” says Miss Mildred Wasson,
⁷⁵
“are mixed freely in the speeches of American characters as interpreted by English writers. Ridiculous uses of words, never to be heard from the tongue of an American man, are invariably ascribed to him.” She continues:

Miss Anna Branson Hillyard once offered publicly, in an article in the London
Athenœum,
⁷⁶
to undertake the revision of English manuscripts dealing with American people and speech for “fees carefully and inversely scaled by the consultant’s importance.” Miss Hillyard, in the same article, cited a curious misunderstanding of American by Rupert Brooke. When Brooke was in the United States he sent a letter to the
Westminster Gazette
containing the phrase “You bet your —.” The editor, unable to make anything of it, inserted the word
boots
in place of the dash. Brooke thereupon wrote a letter to a friend, Edward Marsh, complaining of this botching of his Americanism, and Marsh afterward printed it in his memoir of the poet. Miss Hillyard says that she was long puzzled by this alleged Americanism, and wondered where Brooke had picked it up. Finally, “light dawned by way of a comic cartoon. It was the classic phrase,
you betcha
(accent heavily on the
bet
) which Brooke was spelling conventionally!” And, as Miss Hillyard shows, incorrectly, as usual, for
you betcha
is not a collision form of
you bet your
but a collision form of
you bet you
— an imitative second person of
I bet you
, which in comic-cartoon circles is pronounced and spelled
I betcha
.
⁷⁷

When they venture to deal with Americanisms humorously the British literati do even worse. The contributors to
Punch
often try their hands at the business, and with melancholy results. From their efforts an American pathologist of language has recovered the following: