America To-day, Observations and Reflections Part 9

Far be it from me to a.s.sert that Mr. Tucker makes no good points in his catalogue of English solecisms. I merely hint that this game of pot and kettle is neither dignified nor profitable; that purism is almost always over-hasty, and apt to ignore both the history and the psychology of language; and, finally, that nothing is gained by introducing acerbity (though I have admitted the frequent provocation) into a discussion which a little exercise of temper should render no less agreeable than instructive to both parties. "The speech of the lower orders of our people," says Mr. Tucker, "... differs from what all admit to be standard correctness in a much smaller degree[R] than we have every reason to believe to be the case in England, _our enemies themselves being judges_." Now I protest I am not Mr. Tucker's enemy, and I know of no reason why he should be mine. I cannot share the withering contempt with which he regards the extension of the term "traffic" from barter to movement to and fro, as in a street or on a railway; but if he prefers another word (he does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic on Broadway or on the New York Central, I shall not esteem him one whit the less.[S] Even when he tells me that "b.u.mper" is the English term for the American "buffer" (on a railway carriage) I do not feel my blood boil. A very slight elevation of the eyebrows expresses all the emotion of which I am conscious. So long as he does not insist on my saying a "b.u.mper state" when I mean a "buffer state," I see no reason whatever for any rupture of that sympathy which ought to subsist between two men who take a common interest and pride in the subject of his treatise--_Our Common Speech_.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote Q: See _English Past and Present_, ninth edition, pp. 63, 215.]

[Footnote R: "What great city of this country," Mr. Tucker inquires, "has developed, or is likely to develop, any peculiar cla.s.s of errors at all comparable in importance to those of the c.o.c.kney speech of London?"

The answer is pat: New York and Chicago--unless Mr. Townsend's _Chimmie Fadden_ and Mr. Ade's _Artie_ are sheer linguistic libels.]

[Footnote S: It must be very painful to Mr. Tucker to find Shakespeare talking of the "two hours' traffic of our stage." He was a hardened offender, was Shakespeare, against Mr. Tucker's ideal of one single, inelastic, cast-iron signification for every word in the language.]

II

It is not to be expected that an extremely English intonation should ever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation to Englishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English; why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like a banjo" is recognised as undesirable in America (and a.s.suredly it is), there is no reason why we in England should pretend to admire it. But a vulgar or affected intonation is clearly distinguishable, and ought to be clearly distinguished, from a national habit in the p.r.o.nunciation of a given letter, or accentuation of a particular word, or cla.s.s of words.

For instance, take the p.r.o.nunciation of the indefinite article. The American habitually says "[=a] man" (_a_ as in "game"); the Englishman, unless he wants to be emphatic, says, "[)a] man."[T] Neither is right, neither wrong; it is purely a matter of habit; and to consider either habit ridiculous is merely to exhibit that childishness or provincialism of mind which is moved to laughter by whatever is unfamiliar. Again, when I first read the works of the sagacious Mr. Dooley, I thought it a curiously far-fetched idea on the part of that philosopher to talk of Admiral Dewey as his "Cousin George," and a.s.sert that "Dewey" and "Dooley" were practically the same name. I had not then noticed that the American p.r.o.nunciation of "Dewey" is "Dooey," and that the liquid "yoo"

is very seldom heard in America. In the course of the five minutes I spent in the Supreme Court at Washington, I heard the Chief Justice of the United States make this one remark: "That, sir, is not _const.i.tootional_." To our ears this "oo" has an old-fashioned ring, like that of the "ee" in "obleeged;" but to call it wrong is absurd, and to find it ridiculous is provincial. Very possibly it can be proved that had Shakespeare used the word at all, he would have said "const.i.tootional;" but that would make the "oo" neither better nor worse in my eyes. There always have been, and always will be, changing fashions in p.r.o.nunciation; and the Americans have as good a right to their fashion as we to ours. Fifty years hence, perhaps, our grandsons will be saying "const.i.tootional," and theirs "const.i.tyootional." I confess that, in point of abstract sonority, I prefer the "yoo" to the dry "oo;" but that, again, is a pure matter of taste. If Americans choose to say,

"From morn To noon he fell, from noon to dooey eve, A summer's day."

I am perfectly willing that they should do so, reserving always my own right to say "dyooey." It would not at all surprise me to learn that Milton said "dooey;" but neither would it lead me to alter the p.r.o.nunciation which, as one of the present generation of Englishmen, I have learnt to prefer.

It is said that when Mr. Daly's company returned to New York, after a long visit to England, they p.r.o.nounced "lieutenant" according to the English fashion, "leftenant," but were called to order by an outburst of protest. Though, for my own part, I say "leftenant," I heartily sympathise with the protesters. "Leftenant," though a corruption of respectable antiquity, is a corruption none the less, and since it has died out in America, it would be mere sn.o.bbery to reintroduce it.

So, too, with questions of accentuation. We say "prim-arily" and "tem-porarily;" most (or at any rate many) Americans say "primar-ily"

and "temporar-ily." Here there is no question of right or wrong, refinement or vulgarity. The one accentuation is as good as the other.

It may be argued, indeed, that our accentuation throws into relief the root, the idea, the soul of the word, not the mere grammatical suffix, the "limbs and outward flourishes;" but on the other hand, it may be contended with equal truth that the American accentuation has the Latin precedent in its favour. Neither advantage is conclusive; neither, indeed, is, strictly speaking, relevant; for Englishmen do not make a principle of accentuating the root rather than the prefix or suffix, else we should say "inund-ation," "resonant," "admir-able;" and the Americans do not make a principle of following the Latin emphasis, else they would say "ora-tor" and "gratui-tous," and the recognised p.r.o.nunciation of "theatre" would be "theayter." It is argued that there is a general tendency among educated Englishmen to throw the accent as far back as possible; that, for instance, the educated speaker says "in-teresting," the uneducated, "interest-ing." True; but until this tendency can be proved to possess some inherent advantage, there is not a shadow of reason why Americans should be reproached or ridiculed for obeying their own tendency rather than ours. The English tendency is a matter of comparatively recent fashion. "Con-template," said Samuel Rogers, "is bad enough, but bal-cony makes me sick." Both forms have maintained themselves up to the present; but will they for long? I think one may already trace a reaction against the universal throwing backward of the accent. I myself say "per-emptory" and "ex-emplary;" but it would take very little encouragement to make me say "peremp-tory" and "exemp-lary," which seem to me much more expressive words. There is surely no doubt that, in accenting a prefix rather than the root of the word, we lose a certain amount of force. "Con-template," for instance, is not nearly so strong a word as "contemp-late." We say an "il-l.u.s.trated" book or the "_Il-l.u.s.trated London News_" because we do not require any particular force in the epithet; but when the sense demands a word with colour and emotion in it, we say the "illus-trious"

statesman, the "illus-trious" poet, throwing into relief the essential element in the word, the "l.u.s.tre." What a paltry word would "tri-umphant" be in comparison with "trium-phant!" But the larger our list of examples, the more capricious does our accentuation seem, the more evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion. There is scarcely a trace of consistent or rational principle in the matter. To make a merit of one practice, and find in the other a subject for contemptuous criticism, is simply childish.

Mere slovenliness of p.r.o.nunciation is a totally different matter. For instance, the use of "most" for "almost" is distinctly, if not a vulgarism, at least a colloquialism. It may be of ancient origin; it may have crossed in the _Mayflower_ for aught I know; but the overwhelming preponderance of ancient and modern usage is certainly in favour of prefixing the "al," and there is a clear advantage in having a special word for this special idea. If American writers tried to make "most"

supplant "almost" in the literary language, we should have a right to remonstrate; the two forms would fight it out, and the fittest would survive. But as a matter of fact I am not aware that any one has attempted to introduce "most," in this sense, into literature. It is perfectly recognised as a colloquialism, and as such it keeps its place.

Again, such p.r.o.nunciations as "mebbe" for "maybe" and "I'd ruther" or "I druther" for "I'd rather" are obvious slovenlinesses. No American would defend them as being correct, any more than an Englishman would defend "I dunno" for "I don't know" or "atome" for "at home." If an actor, for instance, were to say,

"I druther be a dog and bay the moon Than such a Roman,"

American and English critics alike could not but protest against the solecism; for in poetry absolute precision of utterance is clearly indispensable. But in everyday speech a certain amount of colloquialism is inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is chemically free from localism or slovenliness cast the first stone even at "mebbe" and "ruther."

A curious American colloquialism, of which I certainly cannot see the advantage, in the subst.i.tution of "yep," or "yup" for "yes," and of "nope" for "no." No doubt we have in England the coster's "yuss;" but one hears even educated Americans now and then using "yep," or some other corruption of "yes," scarcely to be indicated by the ordinary alphabetical symbols. It seems to me a pity.

Much more respectable in point of antiquity is the habit which obtains to some extent even among educated Americans, of saying "somewheres" and "a long ways." Here the "s" is an old case-ending, an adverbial genitive. "He goes out nights," too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is so severe, is a form as old as the language and older. I turn to Dr. Leon Kellner's _Historical English Syntax_ (p. 119) and find that the Gothic for "at night" was "nahts," and that the form (with its correlative "days ") runs through old Norse, old Saxon, old English, and middle English: for instance, "dages endi nahtes" _(Heliand)_, "daeges and nihtes" _(Beowulf)_, "daeies and nihtes" (Layamon), all meaning "by day and by night." In all, or almost all, words ending in "ward," the genitive inflection, according to modern English practice, can either be retained or dropped at will. It is a mere pedantry to declare "toward"

better English than "towards," "upward" than "upwards." Thus we see that here again there is neither logical principle nor consistent practice to be invoked. At the same time, as "somewheres" has become irremediably a vulgarism in England, it would, I think, be a graceful concession on the part of educated Americans to drop the "s." After all, "somewhere" does not jar in America, and "somewheres" very distinctly jars in England.

An insidious laxity of p.r.o.nunciation (rather than of grammar), which is taking great hold in America, is the total omission of the "had" or "have," in such phrases as "You'd better," "we've got to." Mr. Howells's Willis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in _The Albany Depot_, "I guess we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "I have got:" the locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me"

for "so help me." It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to face the infinitesimal difficulty of p.r.o.nouncing, "d" and "b" together. As a colloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm, for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget the logical and grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to its last letter, a word still a.s.serts its existence; but when even the last letter has vanished its state is parlous indeed.

An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is "different to." As a Scotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little or no guide to us; and that within the same language the conventions are always changing. You may easily nonplus even a good grammarian by asking him suddenly, "What preposition should you use in such-and-such a context?" just as you may puzzle a man by asking him to spell a word which, if he wrote it without thinking about it, would present no difficulty to him. Some very good American writers always say, "at the North," and "at the South," where an Englishman would certainly say "in." "At," to my mind, suggests a very narrow point of s.p.a.ce. I should say "at" a village, but "in" a city--"at Concord," but "in Boston." I recognise, however, that this is a mere matter of convention, and do not dream of condemning "at the North" as an error. In the same way I would claim tolerance, though certainly not approval, for "different to."

As a general rule, I think, educated Americans are more apt to err on the side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a long list of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the _New York Press_, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem to me captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man; she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both." The grammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say to the blushing fair, "Will you marry me?" but "Will you be married to me?"

Again, you not only must not split infinitives, but you must not separate an auxiliary from its verb; you must say "probably will be,"

not "will probably be." This is English by the card indeed.

I will not waste s.p.a.ce upon discussing the different fashions of spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in "program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews'

_Americanisms and Briticisms_. Let me only put in a plea for the retention of such abnormal spellings as serve to distinguish two words of the same sound. For instance, it seems to me useful that we should write "story" for a tale and "storey" for a floor, and in the plural "stories" and "storeys."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote T: "Surely, on Mr. Archer's own showing," writes Mr. A.B.

Walkley, "the Englishman has the advantage here, for 'when he wants to be emphatic' he can be, whereas the American cannot." This is a misapprehension on Mr. Walkley's part. The American a can be spoken with or without emphasis, just as the speaker pleases. It is because we are accustomed always to a.s.sociate this particular sonority with emphasis that even when it is spoken without emphasis, we imagine it to be emphatic.]

III

Pa.s.sing now from questions of p.r.o.nunciation and grammar to questions of vocabulary, I can only express my sense of the deep indebtedness of the English language, both literary and colloquial, to America, for the old words she has kept alive and the new words and phrases she has invented.

It is a sheer pedantry--nay, a misconception of the laws which govern language as a living organism--to despise pithy and apt colloquialisms, and even slang. In order to remain healthy and vigorous, a literary language must be rooted in the soil of a copious vernacular, from which it can extract and a.s.similate, by a chemistry peculiar to itself, whatever nourishment it requires. It must keep in touch with life in the broadest acceptation of the word; and life at certain levels, obeying a psychological law which must simply be accepted as one of the conditions of the problem, will always express itself in dialect, provincialism, slang.

America doubles and trebles the number of points at which the English language comes in touch with nature and life, and is therefore a great source of strength and vitality. The literary language, to be sure, rejects a great deal more than it absorbs; and even in the vernacular, words and expressions are always dying out and being replaced by others which are somehow better adapted to the changing conditions. But though an expression has not, in the long run, proved itself fitted to survive, it does not follow that it has not done good service in its time.

Certain it is that the common speech of the Anglo-Saxon race throughout the world is exceedingly supple, well nourished, and rich in forcible and graphic idioms; and a great part of this wealth it owes to America.

Let the purists who sneer at "Americanisms" think for one moment how much poorer the English language would be to-day if North America had become a French or Spanish instead of an English continent.

I am far from advocating a breaking down of the barrier between literary and vernacular speech. It should be a porous, a permeable bulwark, allowing of free filtration; but it should be none the less distinct and clearly recognised. Nor do I recommend an indiscriminate hospitality to all the linguistic inspirations of the American fancy. All I say is that neologisms should be judged on their merits, and not rejected with contumely for no better reason than that they are new and (presumably) American. Take, for instance, the word "scientist." It was originally suggested by Whewell in 1840; but it first came into common use in America, and was received in England at the point of the bayonet. Huxley and other "scientists" disowned it, and only a few years ago the _Daily News_ denounced it as "an ign.o.ble Americanism," a "cheap and vulgar product of transatlantic slang." But "scientist" is undoubtedly holding its own, and will soon be as generally accepted as "retrograde,"

"reciprocal," "spurious," and "strenuous," against which Ben Jonson, in his day, so--strenuously protested. It holds its own because it is felt to be a necessity. No one who is in the habit of writing will pretend that it is always possible to fall back upon the c.u.mbrous phrase "man of science."[U] On the other hand, the purist objection to "scientist"--that it is a Latin word with a Greek termination, and that it implies the existence of a non-existent verb--may be urged with equal force against such harmless necessary words as deist, aurist, dentist, florist, jurist, oculist, somnambulist, ventriloquist, and--purist. Much more valid objection might be made to the word "scientific," which is not hybrid indeed, but is, if strictly examined, illogical and even nonsensical. The fact is that three-fourths of the English language would crumble away before a purist a.n.a.lysis, and we should be left without words to express the commonest and most necessary ideas.

Contrast with the case of "scientist" a vulgarism such as the use of "transpire" in the sense of "happen." I do not quote it as an Americanism; it is probably of English origin; it occurs, I regret to note, in d.i.c.kens. I select it merely as an example of a demonstrably vicious locution which ought indubitably to be banished from the language. It has its origin in sheer blundering. Some one, at some time, has come upon the phrase "such-and-such a thing has transpired"--that is, leaked out, become known--and, ignorantly mistaking its meaning, has noted and employed the word as a finer-sounding synonym for "occurred"

or "happened." The blunder has been pa.s.sed on from one penny-a-liner to another, until at last it has crept into the pages of writers, on both sides of the Atlantic, who ought to know better. If it served any purpose, expressed any shade of meaning, it might be tolerated; but being at once a useless pedantry and an obvious blunder, it deserves no quarter.

My point, then, is that "scientist" ought to live on its merits, "transpire" to die on its demerits. With regard to every neologism we ought first to inquire, "Does it fill a gap? Does it serve a purpose?"

And if that question be answered in the affirmative, we may next consider whether it is formed on a reasonably good a.n.a.logy and in consonance with the general spirit of the language. "Truthful," for example, is said to be an Americanism, and at one time gave offence on that account. It is not only a vast improvement on the stilted "veracious," but one of the prettiest and most thoroughly English words in the dictionary.

The above-quoted writer in the _New York Press_ is a purist in vocabulary, no less than in grammar. He will not allow us to be "unwell," we must always be "ill;" an inhuman imperative. Why should we sacrifice this clear and useful gradation: unwell, very unwell, ill, very ill? On "sick" he does not deliver judgment. The American use of the word is ancient and respectable, but the English limitation of its meaning seems to me convenient, seeing we have the general terms "unwell" and "ill" ready to hand. Again, the _New York Press_ authority follows Freeman in wishing to eject the word "ovation" from the language; surely a ridiculous literalism. It is true we do not sacrifice a sheep at a modern "ovation," but neither (for example) do we judge by the flight of birds when we declare the circ.u.mstances to be "auspicious"

for such and such an undertaking. Again, we are never to "retire" for the night, but always to "go to bed." If, as is commonly alleged, Americans say "retire" because they consider it indelicate to go to bed, the feeling and the expression are alike foolish. But I do not believe that either is at all common in America. On the other hand, one may retire for the night without going to bed. In the case of ladies especially, the interval between retiring and going to bed is reputed to be far from inconsiderable. If, then, one really means "retired for the night" and does _not_ definitely mean "went to bed," I see no crime in employing the expression that conveys one's exact meaning. Finally the _New York Press_ will not let us use the word "commence;" we must always "begin." This is an excellent example of unreflecting or half-reflecting purism. "Commence" is a very old word; it is used by the best writers; it is easily p.r.o.nounceable and not in the least grandiloquent; indeed it has precisely the length and cadence of its compet.i.tor. But somebody or other one day observed that it was Latin, whereas "begin" was Saxon; and since then there has been a systematic attempt, in several quarters, to hound the innocent and useful synonym out of the language. Whence comes this rage for impoverishing our tongue! The more synonyms we possess the better. Wherefore (by the way) I for my part should not be too rigorous in excluding a forcible Americanism merely because it happens to duplicate some word or expression already current in England. The rich language is that which possesses not only the necessaries of life but also an abundance of superfluities.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote U: Mr. Andrew Lang says: "Plenty of other words are formed on the same a.n.a.logy: the Greeks, in the verb 'to Medize,' set the example.

But we happen to have no use for 'scientist.'" It is not quite clear whether Mr. Lang employs "have no use" in the American sense, expressing sheer dislike, or in the literal and English sense. In the latter case I can only say that he has been fortunate in never coming across conjunctures in which "man of science" came in awkwardly and inelegantly.]

IV