American Language (73 page)

109
Pronunciation in the Ozark Dialect (with Anna A. Ingleman),
American Speech
, June, 1928.

110
On the Ozark Pronunciation of
It
, by Vernon C. Allison,
American Speech
, Feb., 1929. Word-lists from the Ozark dialect are to be found in A List of Words From Northwest Arkansas, by J. W. Carr,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. II, Pt. VI, 1904; Vol. III, Pt. I, 1905; Pt. II, 1906; Pt. III, 1907; Pt. V, 1909; and in Snake County Talk [McDonald county, Mo.], by Jay L. B. Taylor, the same, Vol. V, Pt. VI, 1923.

111
American Speech as Practised in the Southern Highlands,
Century
, March, 1929.

112
See Variation in the Southern Mountain Dialect, by Charles Carpenter,
American Speech
, Feb., 1933. Mr. Carpenter says that the dialect of Northern and Central West Virginia has been much modified by the opening of coal-mines. The literature down to the end of 1922 is listed in A Bibliography of Writings on the English language, by Arthur G. Kennedy, above cited, pp. 413–16. See also The Southern Mountaineer and His Homeland, by John C. Campbell; New York, 1921; Dialect Words and Phrases From West-Central West Virginia, by Carey Woofter,
American Speech
, May, 1927; West Virginia Dialect by Lowry Axley, the same, Aug., 1928; Elizabethan America, by Charles M. Wilson,
Atlantic Monthly
, Aug., 1929; How the Wood Hicks Speak, by Paul E. Pendleton,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. VI, Pt. II, 1930; Folk Speech in the Kentucky Mountain Cycle of Percy Mackaye, by B. A. Botkin,
American Speech
, April, 1931; Folk Speech of the Cumberlands, by Bess Alice Owens, the same, Dec., 1931; Remnants of Archaic English in West Virginia, by Charles Carpenter,
West Virginia Review
, Dec., 1934; Southern Mountain Accent, by C. G.,
American Speech
, Dec., 1934.

113
Southern Speech, in Culture in the South; Chapel Hill, N. C., 1934, p. 614.

114
Southern Speech, just cited. It is the best general survey of Southern American so far published. Other papers that will be found useful are The Vowel System of the Southern United States, by William A. Read,
Englishe Studien
, Vol. XLI, 1910; The Southern
R
, by the same,
Louisiana State University Bulletin
, Feb., 1910; Some Variant Pronunciations in the New South, by the same,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. III, Pt. VII, 1911; Who Lost the Southern
R?
by H. P. Johnson,
American Speech
, June, 1928; Southern American Dialect, by C. M. Wise, the same, April, 1933; Southern Standards, by Katherine E. Wheatley, the same, Feb., 1934; Some Unrecorded Southern Vowels, by George P. Wilson, the same, Oct., 1934; Southern Long
I
, by Med-ford Evans, the same, Oct., 1935; and Another Note on the Southern Pronunciation of Long
I
, by William B. Edgerton, the same, Oct., 1935.

115
The Relation of the Alabama-Georgia Dialect to the Provincial Dialects of Great Britain,
Louisiana State University Studies
, No. XX, 1935.

116
Vol. I, p. 226.

117
The English of the Negro,
American Mercury
, June, 1924.

118
The prevailing conjugation, according to Bertram H. Brown (
American Mercury
, May, 1933, p. 116) is
I
is, you is, he is; us is, you-all
(or
y’al
l)
is, they is
. Mr. Brown says that
he am
is never heard.

119
Dr. Krapp traces its literary development in The English Language in America, above cited, Vol. I, p. 246
ff.
See also Notes on Negro Dialect in the American Novel to 1821, by Tremaine McDowell,
American Speech
, April, 1930; The Use of Negro Dialect by Harriet Beecher Stowe, by the same, the same, June, 1931; and The Vocabulary of the American Negro as Set Forth in Contemporary Literature, by Nathan Van Patten, the same, Oct., 1931.

120
Atlantic Monthly
, April, 1904.

121
Negro speech has been little investigated by philologians. Kennedy lists but nine discussions of it before 1922, and only three of them are of any interest. There are some intelligent remarks upon it in the preface to The Book of American Negro Spirituals, by James Weldon Johnson; New York, 1925. See also The Study of the Alabama-Georgia dialect by Cleanth Brooks, Jr., above cited; The Negro Dialects along the Savannah River, by Elisha K. Kane,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Pt. VIII, 1925; Negro Dialect, by C. M. Wise,
Quarterly Journal of Speech
, Nov., 1933; and Aesop in Negro Dialect,
American Speech
, June, 1926. Gullah, spoken on the Sea Islands and along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina, has been described by Reed Smith in Gullah,
Bulletin of the University of South Carolina
, Nov. 1, 1926, and there is a glossary of it in The Black Border, by Ambrose E. Gonzales; Columbia, S. C., 1922. See also Folk Culture on St. Helena Island, S. C., by Guy B. Johnson; Chapel Hill, N. C., 1930, pp. 3
ff
, and The Old Types Pass, by Mar-cellus S. Whaley; Boston, 1925. The dialect of Hatteras Island was described by one signing himself Marcel in the
Nation
, 1865, pp. 744–5, and his observations were reprinted in Lectures on the Science of Language, by F. Max Müller, 6th ed.; London, 1871, Vol. I, p.75
ff
.

122
There have been many studies of local pronunciation in the South, mainly divided (somewhat irrationally) by States. Most of them will be found in the files of
Dialect Notes
. The following are of special interest:
Georgia:
Provincialisms, in A Gazeteer of the State of Georgia, by Adiel Sherwood, 3rd ed.; Washington, 1837, reprinted in The Beginnings of American English, by M. M. Mathews; Chicago, 1931; Tales of the Okefinokee, by Francis Harper,
American Speech
, May, 1926 (a study of the dialect of a remote corner of Georgia);
North Carolina:
Early English Survivals on Hatteras Island, by Collier Cobb,
University of North Carolina Magazine
, Feb., 1910;
South Carolina:
Charleston Provincialisms, by Sylvester Primer,
American Journal of Philology
, Vol. IX, 1888; The Huguenot Element in Charleston’s Pronunciation,
Publications of the Modern Language Association
, Vol. IV, 1889;
Tennessee:
A Tennesseean’s Pronunciation in 1841, by Rebecca W. Smith,
American Speech
, Dec., 1934;
Virginia:
Word-Book of Virginia Folk-Speech, by Bennett W. Green; Richmond, 1899; new ed., 1912; English Pronunciation in Virginia, by Edwin F. Shewmake; Charlottesville, Va., 1927; Philip Vickers Fithian’s Observations on the Language of Virginia (1774), by Claude M. Newlin,
American Speech
, Dec., 1929; A Phonographic Expedition to Williamsburg, Va., by W. Cabell Greet, the same, Feb., 1931; Dialect Notes on Records of Folk-Songs From Virginia, by A. K. Davis, Jr. and A. A. Hill, the same, Dec., 1933. The literature down to the end of 1922 is listed in Kennedy’s Bibliography, above cited. For the period since 1922 the bibliographies in
American Speech
are useful, though they are by no means complete. It is a pity that no one has ever investigated Tidewater Southern American historically, on the plan of Krapp’s investigation of New England American. The way to some promising material is pointed in E. G. Swem’s Virginia Historical Index; Roanoke, 1934.

123
The English Language in America, above cited, Vol. I, p. 233.

124
A chapter in Old and New; Cambridge, Mass., 1920.

125
For publications down to the end of 1922 see Kennedy’s Bibliography, above cited, pp. 413–16. Most of those of later date are to be found in either
Dialect Notes
or
American Speech
. The following are of special interest: New England Dialect, by Windsor P. Daggett,
Billboard
, March 3, 1928 (a guide for actors cast for Yankee parts); The Real Dialect of Northern New England, by George A. England,
Writer’s Monthly
, March, 1926 (a guide for writers of fiction); Vanishing Expressions of the New England Coast, by Anne E. Perkins,
American Speech
, Dec., 1927; New England Words for the
Earthworm
, by Rachel S. Harris, the same, Dec., 1933; New England Expressions For Poached Eggs, by Herbert Penzl, the same, April, 1934.

126
Ann Arbor, Mich., 1927.

127
Other publications worth consulting are A Sidelight on Eighteenth Century American English, by Henry Alexander,
Queen’s Quarterly
(Kingston, Ont.) Nov., 1923; Early American Pronunciation and Syntax, by the same,
American Speech
, Dec., 1925; A Comparison of the Dialect of The Biglow Papers with the Dialect of Four Yankee Plays, by Marie Killheffer, the same, Feb., 1928; The Language of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, by Henry Alexander, the same, June, 1928; Die Volkssprache im Nordosten der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika dargestellt auf Grund der Biglow Papers von James Russell Lowell, by J. A. Heil; Breslau, 1927.

128
The Pronunciation of English in New York State,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Pt. IX, 1896.

129
See The Ithaca Dialect, by O. F. Emerson; Boston, 1891; Dialect of Northeastern New York, by Gerald Crowninshield,
American Speech
, April, 1933; Pronunciation in Upstate New York, by C. K. Thomas, the same, April and Oct., 1935. Word-lists have appeared in
Dialect Notes
, Vol. III, Pt. VI, 1910, and Pt. VIII, 1912, and there is a list of colloquial expressions from Madison county in
American Speech
, Dec., 1929.

130
The English of the Lower Classes in New York City and Vicinity,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Pt. IX, 1896.

131
Soiving
the
Ersters, American Speech
, Feb., 1926. See also Popular Phonetics, by Robert J. Menner, the same, June, 1929, and Standards of Pronunciation in New York City, by C. K. Thomas,
Quarterly Journal of Speech
, April, 1935.

132
For example, in the Chimmie Fadden stories of E. W. Townsend.

133
The Origin of a Dialect, by Howard K. Hollister,
Freeman
, June, 1923.

134
The speech of the New York Jews is discussed in Jewish Dialect and the New York Dialect, by C. K. Thomas,
American Speech
, June, 1932; in Re Jewish Dialect and New York Dialect, by Robert Sonkin, the same, Feb., 1933, and More on New York Jewish Dialect, by C. K. Thomas, the same, Oct., 1933. “None of the Jews who supplied my data,” says Mr. Thomas in the last article, “were immigrants; all were at least second generation, the children, in some cases the grandchildren, of immigrants; yet they retain the dialect. On the other hand, the second Gentile generation ordinarily has no trace of its fathers’ foreign dialect.” The Yiddo-American of New York has produced a considerable literature, the chief contributors to which have been Montague Glass, Milt Gross and Arthur Kober. Its peculiarities were amusingly exaggerated in various Notes For an East Side Dictionary, written for the
New Yorker
during 1934 and 1935 by John J. Holzinges over the signature of J. X. J. There was a time when it was heard often on the comic stage, but it has gone out of fashion there, along with the German, Irish and Scandinavian dialects. See Yiddish in American Fiction, by Alter Brody,
American Mercury
, Feb., 1926.

135
Notions of the Americans, Vol. II, p. 175.

136
Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the United States; New Haven, 1826, p. 58.

137
Dissertations on the English Language; Boston, 1789, II.

138
The Speech of South-Western Pennsylvania,
American Speech
, Oct., 1931.

139
See also Provincialisms of the Dutch Districts of Pennsylvania, by Lee L. Grumbine,
Proceedings of the American Philological Association
, Vol. XVII, 1886; Dialectical Peculiarities in the Carlisle, Pa., Vernacular, by William Prettyman,
German-American Annals
, Vol. IX, 1907; Dialects of the Western Pennsylvania Frontier, by Claude M. Newlin,
American Speech
, Dec., 1928; The English of the Pennsylvania Germans, by George G. Struble, the same, Oct., 1935.

140
See Jerseyisms, by F. B. Lee,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Pt. VII, 1894, and some notes correcting and enlarging the foregoing, the same, Pt. VIII, 1895.

141
The literature dealing with localisms, down to the end of 1922, is listed in Kennedy’s Bibliography, above cited, pp. 414–16. Later publications worth consulting include the following:
Indiana:
Eggleston’s Notes on Hoosier Dialect, by Margaret Bloom,
American Speech
, Dec., 1934 (a reprint of the short glossary published with the 1899 edition of The Hoosier Schoolmaster, by Edward Eggleston);
Iowa:
Some Iowa Locutions, by Katherine Buxbaum,
American Speech
, April, 1929;
Kansas:
Jottings From Kansas, by J. C. Ruppenthal,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Pt. VI, 1923;
Missouri:
“It’s In St. Louis That Americanese is Spoken,” New York
World
, Nov. 9, 1928; The Strategic Position of Missouri in Dialect Study, by Allen Walker Read,
Missouri Alumnus
, April, 1932; Folk-Speech in Missouri, by the same,
Arcadian Magazine
, June, 1932;
Nebraska:
Nebraska Sandhill Talk, by Melvin Van den Bark,
American Speech
, Dec., 1928; Expressions From Boyd County, Neb., by M. A. Burwell, the same, Feb., 1931; Nebraska Pioneer English, by Melvin Van den Bark,
American Speech
, April and Oct., 1931, Feb., 1932, and Dec., 1933;
Oregon:
Wallowa County, Ore., Expressions, by T. Josephine Hausen, the same, Feb., 1931. The following more general discussions are also of interest: Westernisms, by Kate Mullen,
American Speech
, Dec., 1925; Some Observations Upon Middle Western Speech, by Josephine M. Burnham,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Pt. IX, 1926; The English Language in the Southwest,
New Mexico Historical Review
, July, 1932; The Length of the Sounds of a Middle Westerner, by C. E. Parmenter and S. N. Treviño,
American Speech
, April, 1935.