American Language (80 page)
Authors: H.L. Mencken
After we have decided that the foreign word we find knocking at the doors of English [he really meant American, as the context shows] is likely to be useful, we must fit it for naturalization by insisting that it shall shed its accents, if it has any; that it shall change its spelling, if this is necessary; that it shall modify its pronunciation, if this is not easy for us to compass; and that it shall conform to all our speech-habits, especially in the formation of the plural.
59
This counsel is heeded by many patriotic Americans. So far as I can find,
bozart
(for beaux-arts) is not in any dictionary, but it is used as the name of “America’s second-largest verse magazine,” published at Box 67, Station E, Atlanta, Ga., as the name of a lead-pencil very popular in the South, and in the titles of a number of business firms, including one with quarters in Radio City, New York.
60
Exposé
long since lost its accent and is now commonly pronounced to rhyme with
propose. Schmierkäse
has become
smearkase
, and the
sauer
in
sauer-kraut
and
sauer-braten
is often spelled
sour.
61
Coleslaw
, by folk-etymology, has become
cold-slaw. Führer
is
fuhrer, cañon
is
canyon
, and
vaudeville
is sometimes
vodvil
. I have even seen
jonteel
, in a trade name, for the French
gentil
, and
parfay
for
parfait
. In derivatives of the Greek
haima
it is the almost invariable American custom to spell the root syllable
hem
, but the more conservative English make it
hœm
—
e.g.
, in
hœmorrhage
and
hœmophilia
. In an exhaustive list of diseases issued by the United States Public Health Service
62
the
hœm-
form does not appear once. In the same way American usage prefers
esophagus, diarrhea
and
etiology
to the English
œsophagus, diarrhœa
and
œtiology
. In the style-book of the
Journal of the American Medical Association
I find many other spellings that would shock an English medical author, among them
curet
for
curette, cocain
for
cocaine, gage
for
gauge, intern
for
interne, lacrimal
for
lachrymal
, and a whole group of words ending in
-er
instead of in
-re
.
63
American newspapers seldom distinguish between the masculine and feminine forms of common loan-words.
Blond
and
blonde
are used indiscriminately. The majority of papers, apparently mistaking
blond
for a simplified form of
blonde
, use it to designate both sexes. So with
employée, divorcee, fiancée
, etc. Here the feminine form is preferred; no doubt it has been helped into use in the case of the
-ee
words by the analogy of
devotee
.
64
In all cases, of course, the accents are omitted. In the formation of the plural American adopts native forms much more quickly than English. All the English authorities that I have consulted advocate retaining the foreign plurals of most of the loan-words in daily use, e. g.,
sanatoria, appendices, indices, virtuosi, formulœ, libretti, media, thés-dansants, monsignori
. But American usage favors plurals of native design, and sometimes they take quite fantastic forms. I have observed
delicatessens, monsignors, virtuosos, rathskellers, vereins, nucleuses
and
appendixes. Banditti
, in place of
bandits
, would seem an affectation to an American, and so would
soprani
for
sopranos
and
soli
for
solos
. Both English and American labor under the lack of native plurals for the two everyday titles,
Mister
and
Missus
. In the written speech, and in the more exact forms of the spoken speech, the French plurals,
Messieurs
and
Mesdames
, are used, but in the ordinary spoken speech, at least in America, they are avoided, whenever possible, by circumlocution. When
Messieurs
has to be spoken it is pronounced
messers
, and in the same way
Mesdames
becomes
mezdames
, with the first syllable rhyming with
sez
and the second, which bears the accent, with
games
. In place of
Mesdames
a more natural form,
Madames
, seems to be gaining ground in America. Thus, I have found
Dames du Sacré Coeur
translated as
Madames, of the Sacred Heart
in a Catholic paper of wide circulation,
65
and the form is apparently used by American members of the community.
Dr. Louise Pound
66
notes that a number of Latin plurals tend to become singular nouns in colloquial American, notably
curricula, data, dicta, insignia
and
strata
, and with them a few Greek plurals,
e.g., criteria
and
phenomena
. She reports hearing the following uses of them: “The
curricula
of the institution is being changed,” “This
data
is very significant,” “The
dicta
, ‘Go West,’ is said to have come from Horace Greeley,” “What is that
insignia
on his sleeve?”, “This may be called the Renaissance
strata
of loan-words,” “That is no
criteria
,” and “What a strange
phenomena!
” — all by speakers
presumed to be of some education. The error leads to the creation of double plurals,
e.g., curriculas, insignias, stratas, stimulis, alumnis, bacillis, narcissis
. The Latin names of plants lead to frequent blunders.
Cosmos
and
gladiolus
are felt to be plurals, and from them, by folk-etymology, come the false singulars,
cosma
and
gladiola
. Dr. Pound notes many other barbarous plurals, not mentioned above,
e.g., antennas, cerebras, alumnas, alumnuses, narcissuses, apparatuses, emporiums, opuses, criterions, amoebas, cactuses, phenomenons
.
In capitalization the English are much more conservative than we are. They invariably capitalize such terms as
Government, Prime Minister, Church
and
Society
, when used as proper nouns; they capitalize
Press, Pulpit, Bar
, etc., almost as often. Some of the English newspapers, in their leading articles (Am.: editorials), print all names of persons in capitals and small capitals,
e.g.
, M
R.
R
AMSAY
M
ACDONALD
, and also such titles as the K
ING
and the P
RIME
M
INISTER.
In the London
Times
this is also done in news articles. But in the United States only the New York
Times
appears to do so, and it confines the practise to its editorials. In the Eighteenth Century there was a fashion for reducing all capitals to small letters, and Lord Chesterfield thus denounced it in a letter to his son, April 13, 1752:
It offends my eyes to see
rome, france, caesar, henry the fourth
, etc. begin with small letters; and I do not conceive that there can be any reason for doing it half so strong as the reason of long usage to the contrary. This is an affectation below Voltaire.
But Thomas Jefferson thought otherwise, and in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence
nature
and
creator
, and even
god
are in lower case.
67
During the 20’s and 30’s of the succeeding century, probably as a result of French influence, the movement against the capitals went so far that the days of the week were often spelled with small initial letters, and even
Mr
. became
mr
. Curiously enough, the most striking exhibition of this tendency of late years is offered by an English work of the highest scholarship, the Cambridge History of English Literature. It uses the lower case for all
titles, even
baron
and
colonel
, before proper names, and also avoids capitals in such words as
presbyterian, catholic
and
christian
, and in the second parts of such terms as Westminster
abbey
and Atlantic
ocean
.
There are also certain differences in punctuation. The English, as everyone knows, usually put a comma after the street number of a house, making it, for example,
34, St. James’s Street
.
68
They insert a comma instead of a period after the hour when giving the time in figures,
e.g.
, 9,27, and omit the
o
when indicating less than 10 minutes,
e.g.
, 8,7 instead of 8.07. They do not use the period as the mark of the decimal, but employ a dot at the level of the upper dot of a colon, as in 3.1416. They commonly write 8
th October
instead of
October
8
th
, and when they write 8/10/35 they mean October 8, 1935, not August 10, 1935, as we should usually mean. They cling to the hyphen in
to-day, to-night
and
to-morrow
; it is fast disappearing in America.
69
They are far more careful than we are to retain the apostrophe in possessive forms of nouns used in combination,
e.g., St. Mary’s Church, ladies’ room
. In geographical names they sometimes use it and sometimes omit it; in the United States the Geographic Board endeavors to obliterate it, and most American newspapers do so. The English newspapers usually spell out
street, avenue
, etc., print them as separate words, and give them capital initials, but in the United States they are commonly abbreviated and printed in small letters, and sometimes they are hooked to the preceding proper names with hyphens. “Some of our papers,” says the Scripps-Howard Style Book, “abbreviate streets and avenues thus: Prospect-
st
., Euclid-
av
., Bulkley-
blvd
, Wanamaker-
pl
. Notwithstanding certain objections, we approve of this abbreviated style, for space reasons.” Many papers abbreviate
county
and
company
in the same way,
e.g.
, Grady-
co
. and Pullman-
co
. The Chicago
Tribune
does not abbreviate such words, but it prints them in lower case, and treats even
hall, house, mansion, building, park
and
palace
likewise.
70
There remains a class of differences that may as well be noticed under spelling, though they are not strictly orthographical.
Specialty, aluminum
and
alarm
offer examples. In English they are
speciality, aluminium
and
alarum
, though
alarm
is also an alternative form.
Specialty
, in America, is always accented on the first syllable;
speciality
, in England, on the third. The result is two distinct words, though their meaning is identical. How
aluminium
, in America, lost its fourth syllable I have been unable to determine, but all American authorities now make it
aluminum
and all English authorities stick to
aluminium
. Perhaps the
boric-boracic
pair also belongs here. In American
boric
is now almost universally preferred, but it is also making progress in England. How the difference between the English
behove
and the American
behoove
arose I do not know.
1
Dr. Miles L. Hanley of the University of Wisconsin, with the aid of various other scholars, has unearthed a large number of such forms from “forty diaries and ten sets of town and parish records,… chiefly from Massachusetts and Connecticut.” His list of them was mimeographed in June, 1935, and he has kindly placed a copy at my disposal.
2
They are described in George H. McKnight’s Modern English in the Making; New York, 1928, especially pp. 119–20, 191–2, and 229.
3
The Scheme is reprinted in Franklin’s Words, edited by John Bige-low; New York, 1887–8; Vol. IV, p. 198
ff
. The six new characters were a modified
a
for the long
a
in
ball
, an
h
upside down for the
u
in
unto
, a combination of long
s
and
i
for the
sh
in
wish
, a
y
with a curled tail for
ng
, an
h
with a curled tail for the
th
in
think
, and a somewhat similar
h
, but with a wavy appendage at the top, for the
th
of
thy
. Franklin expunged
c, w, y
and
j
from the alphabet as unnecessary. He proposed that the vowels be differentiated by using one letter for the short ones and two for the long ones. He made trial of his new alphabet in a letter to Miss Stephenson of London, apparently a bluestocking of the time. She replied on Sept. 26, 1768, saying that she could
si meni inkanviiniensis
in it. He defended it in a letter from
Kreven striit
, London, Sept. 28.
4
For his letter to Pickering, dated May 12, see American Projects for an Academy to Regulate Speech, by Allen Walker Read,
Publications of the Modern Language Association
, 1936. He said: “The idea is well received in New York, and many of the most discerning gentlemen in Congress are its warmest advocates.” Timothy Pickering (1745–1829) was the father of John Pickering.
5
New York, 1925, Vol. I, p. 332
ff
.
6
I find
soveran
in the London
Times Literary Supplement
for Aug. 5, 1920, p. 1,
art
. Words for Music, but it seems to have no support elsewhere.
7
Their influence was described by Allen Walker Read in The Development of Faith in the Dictionary in America, a paper read before the Present Day English Section of the Modern Language Association at Philadelphia, Dec. 29, 1934. So late as 1851 the deputy superintendent of the common schools of Massachusetts reported after he had made a tour through the State: “In many towns the dictionary was the only authoritative judge and umpire in literary matters.” Webster’s and its rivals were sold very cheaply. The following is from a letter by Bemis and Ward, booksellers of Canandaigua, N. Y., Jan. 16, 1833: “We published Walker’s until last year, but … the market was crowded with them at 20 to 25 cents. Our country merchants get their supplies of them in the cities, and we have sold our plates, not being able or willing to make the book
poor
enough to compete with
such
editions. We retail Webster’s [School Dictionary] at 87 cents — Walker’s at 50. The
poorer
editions are probably sold at 37½.”
8
A Critical Review of the Orthography of Dr. Webster’s Series of Books …; New York, 1831. A modern and more moderate review of Webster’s inconsistences is in A Linguistic Patriot, by Kemp Malone,
American Speech
, Oct., 1925.
9
Modern English in the Making, p. 490.
10
Democratic Review
, March, 1856. In Good English New York, 1867, p. 145
ff
, Gould gloated over the fact that in the Webster’s Dictionaries of 1854 and 1866, brought out after Webster’s death, many of his spellings were withdrawn, or reduced to the estate of variants.
11
See his English Spelling and Spelling Reform; New York, 1909, p. 229.
12
Americanisms and Briticisms; New York, 1892, p. 37.
13
This Nu Speling, by C. R. Prance; London
Times
, April 24, 1930.
14
Authors’ & Printers’ Dictionary … an attempt to codify the best typographical practices of the present day, by F. Howard Collins; 4th ed., revised by Horace Hart; London, 1912.
15
Horace Hart: Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford: 23rd ed.; London, 1914. I am informed by Mr. Humphrey Davy, of the London
Times
, that, with one or two minor exceptions, the
Times
observes the rules laid down in this book.
16
Edited by Dr. Ernest A. Baker; London, 1919.
17
On English Homophones;
S.P.E. Tracts
, No. II, 1919, p. 7.
18
This note appeared in
English
, May–June, 1919, p. 88: “By the way, the
Nation
now spell
labor, honor, favor
” Note the plural verb.
19
Shaw is, in general, an advanced speller. He was spelling
program
without the final
-me
when it still seemed barbaric in England, and he also prefers
catalog, toilet
and
eti
quet. But he clings to
to shew
(as in The
Shewing
Up of Blanco Posnet), though it is going out, and the Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary recommends
to show
“except in Sc. law, and Bib. and Prayer Book citations.”
20
In Christopher Morley’s Thunder on the Left; New York, 1925, the name of Deep Harbor, a place supposedly near New York City, is spelled
Harbour
. This natural slip by a Rhodes scholar is rebuked by Clifford H. Bissell in Is It Pedantry?,
Saturday Review of Literature
, Aug. 13, 1927.
21
Handbook of Style in Use at the Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass.; Boston, 1913.
22
Boston, 1930.
23
Preparation of Manuscript, Proof Reading, and Office Style at J. S. Cushing Company’s; Norwood, Mass., n.d. Under date of Sept. 19, 1935, Mr. Robert T. Barr, one of the directors of the company, writes: “In practically all of the new books that are now being published we have been requested by the several publishers to follow the new Webster’s International Dictionary (1934) in regard to spelling. With the few English books we have been doing lately our orders have been to follow copy.”
24
The Authors’ Book; New York, 1925. I am indebted here to Mr. H. S. Latham, vice-president of the Macmillan Co.
25
Text, Type and Style: A Compendium of
Atlantic
usage, by George B. Ives; Boston, 1921.
26
This form is used by the Chatham and
Phenix
National Bank, in New York. But the
Phœnix
Insurance Company, of Hartford, Conn., retains the old spelling. About 100 corporations having the word in their names are listed in the New York telephone directory. A fifth of them use
phenix
.
27
The Fowlers in The King’s English, 2nd ed.; London, 1908, p. 23, say that “when it was proposed to borrow from France what we [
i.e.
, the English] now know as the
closure
, it seemed certain for some time that with the thing we should borrow the name,
clôture
; a press campaign resulted in
closure
” But in the
Congressional Record
it is still
cloture
, though with the loss of the circumflex accent, and this form is generally retained by American newspapers — that is, when they do not use
gag
.
28
Webster’s New International prefers
offense
and
defense
. In
license, advice, device, prophecy, practise
, etc. the English rule is that the nouns shall take
c
and the verbs
s
. But the American Medical Association Press “has always spelled
practice
with
c
, whether for noun or for verb.”
Journal of the American Medical Association
, April 26, 1930, p. 1342.
29
Says H. W. Fowler in Modern English Usage; Oxford, 1926, p. 415: “The American abolition of
-our
in such words as
honour
and
favour
has probably retarded rather than quickened English progress in the same direction. Our first notification that a book we are reading is not English but American is often, nowadays, the sight of an
-or
. ‘Yankee’ we say, and congratulate ourselves on spelling like gentlemen; we wisely decline to regard it as a matter for argument; the English way cannot but be better than the American way; that is enough. Most of us, therefore, do not come to the question with an open mind.” “The Americans,” says Basil de Sélincourt in Pomona, or The Future of English; London, 1928, p. 40, “have dropped a
u
out of
humour
and other words; possibly we should have done so,
if they had not.
” My italics.
30
American English; New York, 1921, p. 37.
31
Canada Won’t Even Import American Spelling, Baltimore
Evening Sun
, Aug. 5, 1931.
32
5th ed., 1928.
33
He was in favor of what he called a “clean and pure” English, and opposed the excessive use of loanwords, then very popular. In a translation of the Gospel of Mark, published in 1550, he substituted
hunderder
for
centurion
, and
crossed
for
crucified
.
34
A good account of the early reformers is in Every-Day English, by Richard Grant White; Boston, 1881, Ch. X. See also Introduction to the Science of Language, by A. H. Sayce, 4th ed.; London, 1900, p. 330
ff
Modern English in the Making, by George H. McKnight; New York, 1928, p. 117
ff
and the various passages listed under Spelling in his index; The Development of Modern English, by Stuart Robertson; New York, 1934, pp. 271–80; and Handbook of Simplified Spelling; New York, 1920, p. 5.
35
A partial list of the books on the subject printed in the United States between 1807 and 1860 is in The English Language in America, by George Philip Krapp; New York, 1925, Vol. I, p. 330. Most of those printed down to the end of 1922 are listed in Arthur G. Kennedy’s Bibliography of Writings on the English Language; Cambridge (Mass.), 1927.
36
First and last, he is said to have spent $283,000 on the movement.
37
In 1920 it organized a Simplified Spelling Leag [
sic
] to raise funds. Members were asked to contribute $10 a year and associates $1. A fellow made a single payment of $100, and a patron one of $1000. But apparently not many customers came to the cashier’s desk, and the Leag now seems to be moribund.
38
Reasons and Rules For Simplified Spelling, April, 1919.
39
The English Alphabet: What It Is, What I Should Be – and What It Could Be; Freiburg i. B., 1930.
40
Among Spelling Reformers, by Frederick S. Wingfield,
American Speech
, Oct., 1931. Mr. Wingfield also gives specimens of the spelling of other reformers.
41
Anglic: A New Agreed Simplified English Spelling, final rev. ed.; Upsala, 1931.
42
There is a brief but cogent criticism of Anglic, and of all like systems, in a review of the Anglic textbook in
American Speech
, June, 1931, p. 378
ff
. It is signed A. G. K. and is apparently by Dr. Arthur G. Kennedy. Another devastating criticism is in Or Shall We Go Anglic?, by Janet Rankin Aiken,
Bookman
, Feb., 1931.
43
Collected Essays, Papers, Etc.; London, 1927,
pref
.
44
All of the articles announcing and arguing for these changes were written by James O’Donnell Bennett. The dates of two have been given. The others appeared on Feb. 25, March 4, March 18 and March 25.
45
In a letter from the Lake Placid Hindenburg Line, dated “14 Je 34.”
46
Modern English; New York, 1910, p. 181.
47
Nite
, says Blanche Jennings Thompson in Our Vanishing Vocabulary,
Catholic World
, Aug., 1934, “connotes speakeasies, gin, cheapness and vulgarity.”
Night
“suggests quiet, rest and beauty.”
48
The Craze for
K
, by Louise Pound,
American Speech
, Oct., 1925; Spelling-Manipulation and Present-Day Advertising, by the same,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Pt. VI, 1923; and Word-Coinage and Modern Trade-Names, by the same,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. IV, Pt. I, 1913, especially p. 35.
49
For example, in Teepee Neighbors, by Grace Coolidge; Boston, 1917, p. 220; Duty and Other Irish Comedies, by Seumas O’Brien; New York, 1916, p. 52; Salt by Charles G. Norris; New York, 1918, p. 135, and The Ideal Guest, by Wyndham Lewis,
Little Review
, May, 1918, p. 3. O’Brien is an Irishman and Lewis an Englishman, but the printer in each case was American. I find
allright
, as one word but with two
l’s
, in Diplomatic Correspondence with Belligerent Governments, etc. European War, No. 4; Washington, 1918, p. 214.
50
Viscount Harberton, in How to Lengthen Our Ears, London, 1917, p. 28.
51
May 16, 1921, p. 1478, col. 2.
52
In Why Not
U
for
You?, American Speech
, Oct., 1929, Donald M. Alexander of Ohio Wesleyan University argues seriously that this substitution should be made, just as
I
has been substituted for various earlier forms of the first person pronoun.
53
See The Spelling of
Naphtha
, by J. J. Jones,
American Speech
, Dec., 1930, p. 154. Mr. Jones prints the following letter from Fels and Company of Philadelphia, manufacturers of
Fels-Naptha
soap: “
Fels-Naptha
has been manufactured for almost forty years, and since the very beginning, when we wedded the name
Fels
and the word
naptha
we recognized that the first
h
was superfluous, and we merely discarded it. Since that time our spelling of
naptha
has found favor and it is now listed in all large and up-to-date dictionaries.” This last seems to have been an exaggeration. I can’t find
naptha
in Webster’s New International (1934). The decay of
ph
to
p
is discussed in Chapter VII, Section 3.