American Language (74 page)
Authors: H.L. Mencken
142
Canadian English, by W. D. Light-hall, Toronto
Week
, Aug. 16, 1889.
143
Ontario Speech, by Evelyn R. Ahrend,
American Speech
, April, 1934. The first treatise on Canadian English was written by A. S. Geikie and appeared in the
Canadian Journal
so long ago as 1857. There have been few additions to the literature since. Those appearing down to the end of 1922 are listed in Kennedy’s Bibliography, above cited, p. 404. Among the later ones, all fragmentary, are Newfoundland Dialect Items, by George Allen England,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Pt. VIII, 1925; Montreal English, by Helen C. Munroe,
American Speech
, Oct., 1929; A Note on Canadian English, by W. S. W. McLay, the same, April, 1930 (a correction of errors by Miss Munroe); Terms From the Labrador Coast, by Mary S. Evans, the same, Oct., 1930; More Labrador Survivals, by W. D. Strong, the same, April, 1931.
144
Parliament Goes Hollywood, April 7, 1934.
145
Bermudian English,
American Speech
, Feb., 1933.
146
See Beach-la-Mar, by William Churchill; Washington, 1911.
147
There is a good account of it in Pidgin English in Hawaii, by William C. Smith,
American Speech
, Feb., 1933.
148
The English Dialect of Hawaii, by John E. Reinecke and Aiko Tokimasa,
American Speech
, Feb., 1934, p. 50.
149
For what follows I am chiefly indebted to the paper by Mr. Reinecke and Miss Tokimasa, just cited. It appeared in
American Speech
in two parts, Feb. and April, 1934. The two authors, who are husband and wife, are teachers in Hawaii. Mr. Reinecke, who is an American, went there in 1926. Miss Tokimasa, who is a Japanese, was educated at the Honolulu Normal School. I am also indebted to the Rev. Henry P. Judd, associate secretary of the Board of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, who kindly answered a number of questions; to Mr. Frederick B. Withington, who gave me access to his paper, The Hawaiian Language: Its Modern History as a Means of Communication; and to Mr. N. B. Beck, assistant professor of English in the University of Hawaii.
150
Reinecke and Tokimasa, above cited, Art. II, p. 130.
151
During the first years of the American occupation a great many American teachers went to the islands, but by 1925 they had been reduced in number to 305 in a corps of 25,530. The survivors taught only in the high-schools. In the primary grades virtually all the teachers of English were natives. See Bamboo English, by George G. Struble,
American Speech
, April, 1929, pp. 277–78.
152
I am indebted here and below to Struble, just cited, to The English Language in the Philippines, by Emma Sarepta Yule,
American Speech
, Nov., 1925, and to A Little Brown Language, by Jerome B. Barry, the same, Oct., 1927.
153
Struble, above cited, p. 284.
154
This is borrowed from What Americans Talk in the Philippines, by Maurice P. Dunlap,
Review of Reviews
, Aug., 1913.
155
But here
komusta
may be borrowed from the Spanish
como está
(how are you?).
156
Unfortunately, I have mislaid my memorandum of the date and the author’s name.
157
That is, American;
through
, in this sense, is seldom used by the English.
158
I am indebted here to A Philologist’s Paradise, by Thomas R. Reid, Jr.,
Opportunity
, Jan., 1926.
159
For a specimen of the dialect see Negro Dialect of the Virgin Islands, by Henry S. Whitehead,
American Speech
, Feb., 1932.
160
See Surinam Negro-English, by John Dyneley Prince,
American Speech
, Oct., 1934, and Colonial Survivals in Bush-Negro Speech, by A. G. Barnett, the same, Aug., 1932. The dialects spoken in Australia, India and South Africa lie outside the bounds of the present inquiry, but some reference to the literature may be useful. All of it down to the end of 1922 is listed in Kennedy’s Bibliography, above cited, pp. 404–5. The following, too late for Kennedy or overlooked by him, are also of interest: South African English Pronunciation, by David Hopwood; Cape Town, 1928; The Pronunciation of English in South Africa, by W. E. C. Clarke; Johannesburg, 1913; Cockney English and Kitchen Dutch, by C. M. Drennan; Johannesburg, 1920; Some Notes on Indian English, by R. C. Goffin,
S.P.E. Tracts
, No. XLI, 1934; The Australian Accent,
Triad
(Sydney, N. S. W.), Nov. 10, 1920; How English is Spoken Here, by B. Sc., Sydney
Evening News
, May 5, 1925; Words, Words, Words, by Guy Innes, Melbourne
Herald
, Nov. 11, 1933. Vulgar Australian-English shows the Cockney whine, and is altogether a dreadful dialect. The vocabulary is heavy with loans from American, but there are also some picturesque native inventions,
e.g., wowser
(a kill-joy),
bullsh
(a false report),
to go hostile
(to become angry), and
woop-woop
(a country district). There is a brief glossary of it in Slang Today and Yesterday, by Eric Partridge, 2nd ed.; London, 1935. The Australian dialect is uniform throughout the country. In New Zealand a form of Southern English free from Cockney vowels is spoken.
AMERICAN SPELLING
I. THE INFLUENCE OF NOAH WEBSTER
At the time of the first English settlements in America the rules of English orthography were beautifully vague, and so we find the early documents full of spellings that seem quite fantastic today.
Aetaernall
, for
eternal
, is in the Acts of the Massachusetts General Court for 1646,
adjoin
is spelled
adioyne
in the Dedham Records for 1637,
February
is
Ffebrewarie
in the Portsmouth, R. I. Records for 1639–97, and
general
is
jinerll
in the Hartford Town Votes for 1635–1716.
1
There had been attempts in England since the middle of the Sixteenth Century to put the spelling of the language upon a more or less rational basis,
2
but their effects were only slowly realized. It was not, indeed, until about 1630, nearly a quarter of a century after the landing at Jamestown, that English printers began to differentiate clearly between
u
and
v, i
and
j
. The two pairs were still confused in the First Folio of Shakespeare, printed in 1623, and Sir John Cheke, one of the first English spelling reformers, was quite content to write
mijn
for
mine
and
vnmixt
for
unmixed
. The redundant final
e
, usually a relic of a long-lost inflection, was much oftener encountered then than now, and a glance through almost any Seventeenth Century American public document will show
toune
for
town, halfe
for
half, smale
for
small
, and
ye are
for
year
.
There were no dictionaries in those days — or, at all events, none of any generally admitted authority — but as printing increased, a movement toward uniformity in spelling, if not toward rationality,
began to show itself. By the beginning of the Eighteenth Century all the principal English authors were spelling pretty much alike, and by 1711, when the first number of the
Spectator
appeared, they were spelling substantially as we spell now. But it was not until the publication of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, in 1755, that the English had a real guide to orthography, of universal acceptance. Johnson, in the presence of conflicting usages, always took the conservative side. He preferred what he called “Saxon” spellings for what he conceived to be old English words, and thus ordained that
music, critic
and even
prosaic
should have a final
k
, though all three were actually borrowings from the Latin through the French. He decided for the
-our
ending in words of the
honor
class, and it remains in vogue in England to this day. When there was doubt, he proceeded with “a scholar’s reverence for antiquity,” and gave his imprimatur to many spellings based upon false etymologies and pointless analogies. Naturally enough, he fell into a number of contradictions, and it was easy for Lindley Murray to point them out,
e.g.
, such pairs as
deceit
and
receipt, moveable
and
immovable, sliness
and
slyly, deign
and
disdain
. Even among the
-our
words he permitted
exterior
to slip in alongside
interiour
, and
posterior
alongside
anteriour
. He also undertook occasional reforms that failed to make their way,
e.g.
, the reduction of final -
ll
to -
l
, leading to such forms as
downhil, catcal, unrol
and
forestal
. But on the whole, his professed respect for “the genius of the language” showed a very keen feeling for it, and his decisions ratified what had become customary usage far oftener than they sought to change it. His influence was tremendous, both in England and in America.
There is no evidence that his mandates were ever challenged on this side of the water until the Revolution. In 1768, to be sure, the ever busy and iconoclastic Benjamin Franklin had published “A Scheme for a New Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling,” and induced a Philadelphia type-founder to cut the six new characters that it demanded, but this project was too extravagant to be adopted anywhere, or to have any appreciable influence.
3
It was
Noah Webster who finally achieved a divorce between English precept and example and American practice. In his “Grammatical Institute of the English Language,” published in Hartford in 1783, he was content to follow and even to praise Johnson’s spellings,
e.g.
, in the
-our
words, but soon thereafter he was launched upon his grandiose plan to establish an independent “Federal” language in the new Republic, and in 1786 he approached Franklin and Timothy Pickering
4
with a project for reducing its orthography “to perfect regularity, with as few new characters and alterations of the old ones as possible.” Franklin was receptive, and Webster seems to have submitted his ideas to the other “distinguished characters” of the time, including Washington and Jefferson. During the succeeding three years he carried on his campaign with his usual pertinacity, but it does not appear that he made many converts. In 1789 he published his “Dissertations on the English Language,” and in an appendix thereto he printed his proposals in some detail. They were as follows:
1. The omission of all superfluous or silent letters; as
a
in
bread
. Thus
bread, head, give, breast, built, meant, realm, friend
would be spelt
bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment, relm, frend
. Would this alteration produce any inconvenience, any embarrassment or expense? By no means. On the other hand, it would lessen the trouble of writing, and much more, of learning the language; it would reduce the true pronunciation to a certainty; and while it would assist foreigners and our own children in acquiring the language, it would render the pronunciation uniform, in different parts of the country, and almost prevent the possibility of changes.
2. A substitution of a character that has a certain definite sound for one that is more vague and indeterminate. Thus by putting
ee
instead of
ea
or
ie
, the words
mean, near, speak, grieve, zeal
would become
meen, neer, speek, greev, zeel
. This alteration could not occasion a moment’s trouble; at the same time it would prevent a doubt respecting the pronunciation; whereas the
ea
and
ie
, having different sounds, may give a learner much difficulty. Thus
greef
should be substituted for
grief; kee
for
key; beleev
for
believe; laf
for
laugh; dawter
for
daughter; plow
for
plough; tuf
for
tough; proov
for
prove; blud
for
blood
; and
draft
for
draught
. In this manner
ch
in Greek derivatives should be changed into
k
; for the English
ch
has a soft sound, as in
cherish
, but
k
always a hard sound. Therefore
character, chorus, cholic, architecture
, should be written
karacter, korus, kolic, arkitecture
; and were they thus written, no person could mistake their true pronunciation. Thus
ch
in French derivatives should be changed into
sh; machine, chaise, chevalier
should be written
masheen, shaze, shevaleer
; and
pique, tour, oblique
should be written
peek, toor, obleek
.
3. A trifling alteration in a character, or the addition of a point, would distinguish different sounds, without the substitution of a new character. Thus a very small stroke across
th
would distinguish its two sounds. A point over a vowel, in this manner:
à
, or
ò
, or
ī
, might answer all the purposes of different letters. And for the diphthong
ow
, let the two letters be united by a small stroke, or both engraven on the same piece of metal, with the left hand line of the
w
united to the
o
.
These changes, said Webster, “with a few other inconsiderable alterations, would answer every purpose, and render the orthography sufficiently correct and regular.” They would “diminish the number of letters about one sixteenth or eighteenth,” they would tend to “render the pronunciation of the language as uniform as the spelling in books,” and they would “facilitate the learning of the language.” The greatest argument, however, was the patriotic one: