Questions at Issue in Our English Speech Edwin W. Bow en, Ph.D. LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class Questions at Issue in Our English Speech Edwin W. Bowen, Ph.D. Author of of American Literature " . Broadway Publishing Company PUBLISHERS JND BOOKSELLERS 835 Broadway, .*. #en> York COPYRIGHT. 1909 BY EDWIN W. BOWEN, Ph.D, All Rights Restrvtd ACKNOWLEDGMENT Practically all the matter in this collection of es- says has been printed elsewhere. Four of the arti- cles, "A Question of Preference in English Spell- ing/' " Authority in English Pronunciation" "What Is Slang?" and "Briticisms versus Americanisms" first appeared in the "Popular Science Monthly" and are here reproduced with the kind permission of the editor of that journal. The paper, "Vulgarisms with a Pedigree" is rewritten from three brief es- says on allied themes which were published in the "Atlantic Monthly" and the "North American Re- view" The essay on "Our English Spelling of Yes- terday Why Antiquated?" is reprinted from the "Methodist Review." I wish here to tliarik the pub- lishers of these periodicals for permission to reprint. s; CONTENTS. PAGE Our English Spelling of Yesterday. Why Antiquated. ... 1 A Question of Preference in English Spelling 25 Authority in English Pronunciation 88 Vulgarisms With a Pedigree 60 Briticisms Versus Americanisms 82 What is Slang? 108 Standard English. How it Arose and How it is Main- tained.. 130 OUK ENGLISH SPELLING OF YESTERDAY WHY ANTIQUATED ? There is a marked distinction between spoken and written language. In writing a system of conven- tional symbols is adopted to represent speech. At best such a system is ill-devised and incomplete. In many cases, as in our own tongue, the written lan- guage fairly bristles with innumerable inaccuracies and inconsistencies and with flagrant absurdities of orthography. Of course the written language is only an imperfect attempt to represent graphically the spoken speech and is a mere shadow of the real sub- stance, of the living tongue. No system of symbols has been adopted which represent with absolute ac- curacy and adequacy a spoken language at all periods of its history, (it is a matter of extreme doubt whether any living language is now, or ever has been, represented by its alphabet with absolute ac- curacy and precision."} It is quite probable that no living European tongue is today represented by its alphabet with more than approximate accuracy and completeness. As for the dead languages, like the classics, we may be reasonably certain that neither the Greek nor the Latin alphabet correctly and ade- quately represented those respective languages at all periods of their history. The body of Latin litera- at ture now extant is but a desiccated, lifeless mummy of the living, pulsating speech which was heard upon the lips of the ancient Romans. Of that robust and vigorous Latin vernacular, as employed by Cicero and Virgil in all its purity, we have only embalmed specimens, preserved to us in the stirring rhetorical periods of that prince of Roman orators and in the stately rhythmical hexameters of that famous Mantuan bard. Quantum mutatum db illo how unlike the spoken language, how unlike the burning eloquence which used to thrill the populace in the ancient Roman Foruin ! ( Small wonder we are accustomed now to speak of the tongue of the ancient Roman and of the tongue of the ancient Hellene as a "dead language," for those noble tongues perished, truly, centuries ago, when they ceased to be spoken by the inhabitants of Rome and Athens respectively.] However, the classics are not the only "dead lan- guages." There is a sense in which some of the modern languages may be said to be "dead." Even our own Saxon tongue, which good King Alfred employed in all its pristine purity both in conversa- tion and in the translations which he made for his people, is practically as "dead" as Latin or Greek, inasmuch as it is no longer possible for us to think in terms of the Anglo-Saxon or to speak with the accents and sounds of that rugged, unpolished idiom. Indeed, the speech of Chaucer and even of Shake- speare, no less than that of King Alfred, is to all intents and purposes a "dead" tongue to the Eng- lish-speaking people of the twentieth century, for we no longer employ the idiom and the sound values in SDut peec) 39 as now, men recognized no fixed and absolute stand- ard of English pronunciation. They followed their own tastes and individual preferences, despite the orthoepical suggestions and recommendations of their contemporaries. Prejudice and caprice, too, in those days, as in the present time, were factors to be reck- oned with, so that the path of the would-be author- ity on pronunciation was beset with no slight diffi- culty. It must not be inferred, however, that the or- thoepists themselves were a unit and in perfect har- mony as to current usage. On the contrary, they were frequently far apart in recording the pronun- ciation sanctioned by the best society and differed quite as much as their worthy successors of the pres- ent day. They sometimes indulged in vituperation and severe censure at each others' expense and made no attempt to conceal their disapproval of a rival's authority, which they expressed in plain, vigorous Anglo-Saxon. Some of their sarcastic remarks fur- nish spicy and entertaining reading to the student who is willing to plod his way through the dreary waste of those forgotten dust-covered tomes. The most conspicuous among the eighteenth cen- tury orthoepists were Baily, Johnson, Buchanan, Sheridan and Walker. Some of these were Scotch, and some Irish, and some, of course, English. Quite naturally it struck the fancy of an Englishman as somewhat humorous, not to say absurd, for an Irish- man or a Scotchman to pose as an authority on Eng- lish pronunciation. So the damaging taunt of for- eign nationality and consequent lack of acquaintance 40 IXttegtiong at Sastie with English usage was flaunted in the face of Bu- chanan and Sheridan, natives of Scotland and Ire- land, respectively. When Doctor Johnson was informed of Sheri- dan's plan of producing an English dictionary that was designed to indicate the pronunciation of each word, he ridiculed the idea of an Irishman's pre- suming to teach Englishmen how to speak their native language as utterly absurd. "Why, Sir," growled the autocrat of eighteenth century literature, a my dictionary shows you the accent of words, if you can but remember them." Then on being reminded that his dictionary does not give the pronunciation of the vowels, "Why, Sir," continued he, in his charac- teristic surly manner, "consider how much easier it is to learn a language by the ear than by any marks. Sheridan's dictionary may do very well ; but you can not always carry it about with you; and when you want the word, you have not the dictionary. It is like the man who has a sword that will not draw. It is an admirable sword, to be sure; but while your enemy is cutting your throat, you are unable to use it. Besides, Sir, what entitles Sheridan to fix the pronunciation of English? He has, in the first place, the disadvantage of being an Irishman ; and if he says he will fix it after the example of the best company, why they differ among themselves. I re- member an instance: when I published the plan of my dictionary, Lord Chesterfield told me that the word great should be pronounced to rhyme to state; and Sir William Yonge sent me word that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to seat, and that none in Dur peedb 47 and "bile." This is conclusively proved by the rhymes of Dry den and Pope.* It is further evident from the rhymes of the poets of the latter half of the eighteenth century that this archaic pronunciation persisted almost down to the beginning of the last century. This pronunciation was regarded by the orthoepists as antiquated and vulgar, and they did not fail to denounce it in strong terms, warning against its use. In 1773 Kenrick records with min- gled regret and disgust that it would appear affected to pronounce such words as 'boil, join and many oth- ers otherwise than as "bile" and "jine." But toward the close of the eighteenth century the present pro- nunciation began to prevail and "the banished diph- thong," as Nares records with triumphant delight, "seemed at length to be upon its return." This same orthoepist informs us, and we may well believe him, that it was the authority of the poets, who had pil- loried the offensive pronunciation in their verse, that retarded the progress of the received sound of the diphthong which finally triumphed. The early lexicographers were divided on the pro- nunciation of vase. Indeed, two centuries have not sufficed to unite their successors in perfect harmony on this question. The word to-day vacillates be- tween four received pronunciations. The great un- washed pronounce vase to rhyme with base and case. Some pronounce the word as if written "vaz" with "the broad a." Others, associating it with its French equivalent, pronounce the word "vauze." Others *See Vulgarisms With A Pedigree. 48 dilutions at still pronounce it so as to rhyme with amaze and gaze. Of these four pronunciations the first is the most prevalent to-day, as it also was two centuries ago. According to the Century Dictionary, the word was introduced into English during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and after the analogy of words of its class, it would naturally be pronounced so as to rhyme with case and base. But the recency of the word and its familiar association with art have given rise to the attempt to make it conform to the analogy of the French pronunciation and sound it as if written "vauze." The early occasional spelling of the word as vause doubtless contributed somewhat to the extension of this latter pronunciation. This French pronunciation, says the Century, is now affected by many. It is worth while to remark, how- ever, that while the Century recognizes the French pronunciation, it still gives the preference to the old historic pronunciation, viz., that rhyming with case and base. Now, in the eighteenth century some of the or- thoepists favored one pronunciation and some an- other. Sheridan, Scott, Kenrick, Perry and Bu- chanan declared for the pronunciation rhyming with case and base. On the other hand, Smith, Johnston and Walker expressed themselves in favor of a vaze." Walker says that he has uniformly heard it so pro- nounced, but adds the significant remark that the word is pronounced according to the French fashion "sometimes by people of refinement; but this, being too refined for the general ear, is now but seldom heard." This French pronunciation, however strange fit 2Pur dEttglfe!) Speed) 49 the comment may appear to us in view of his wide acquaintance with English usage, the late Mr. A. J. Ellis averred was the most familiar to him. So the struggle between the several pronunciations of vase continues still, and no one can say which will ulti- mately prevail. Another interesting illustration of vacillation of usage two centuries ago is furnished in the pronun- ciation of either and neither. Like the word vase, these words show incidentally how long a time two pronunciations of the same word may linger in good usage before either supplants the other. There is to-day probably as much variation in the pronuncia- tion of either and neither as there was a century and a half ago. Early in the eighteenth century the i sound was conceded by some of the orthoepists as permissible in these words. Two authorities, Bu- chanan and Johnston, declared for the new pronun- ciation, that is, "ither' ' and "nither." But since they were both Scotchmen, their authority was discounted. On the other hand, Sheridan and Walker recom- mended the e sound and used their influence to be- speak for it general endorsement. They recognized the i sound, to be sure, but only on sufferance. From that day to the present the battle has waged more or less fiercely between the advocates of these respec- tive pronunciations of either and neither. Which will ultimately prevail, it is impossible to determine. It may be said, however, that analogy and history are on the side of the e sound. Yet the i sound ap- pears to be encroaching at present on the former pro- nunciation. There is still another pronunciation of 50 Uie0tion0 at 300ue these words which we now rarely hear. I refer to the old dialectical pronunciation as "ather" and "nather." This pronunciation was current in Doc- tor Johnson's time, though it probably did not enjoy the sanction of good usage. On being asked one day whether he regarded "ither," or "ether" as the proper pronunciation of either, the old Doctor is said to have blurted out in his characteristic crabbed man- ner, "Nather, Sir!" This pronunciation survives now only as an Irishism. Another class of former pronunciations surviving now as an Irishism, or at best as a provincialism merely, is exemplified by such words as nature, creat- ure and picture. In Dryden's and Pope's time these words were pronounced "nater," "crater" and "picter."* These pronunciations are preserved still in the Yankee dialect, as shown in Lowell's inimita- ble Biglow Papers, and of course they are frequently heard on Irish lips. But they long ago dropped out of the speech of polite society. There is one notable exception found in the word figure. The variant pronunciation of this word as "figer" survives in standard English as a heritage from the seventeenth century. Quite as instructive an illustration of survivals in pronunciation, is furnished by the British pronun- ciation of clerk and Derby. The English, as is well known, pronounce these words as if written "dark" and "Darby." They used to pronounce clergy with the same vowel sound, and many other words be- *See Vulgarisms With A Pedigree. in 2Dut peec& 51 sides. But it is a significant sign of the approaching change in British usage in respect to these words that a recent British dictionary, the New Historical, in commenting on clerk admits that the American pronunciation of this word has become somewhat frequent of late in London and its neighborhood. (Are we to look upon this as a result of the much- discussed American invasion ?) But our British cousins are still wedded to their Derby (Darby) and show no sign of abandoning either the old pronun- ciation or the custom. Even we Americans cling tenaciously to Serjeant and show but little inclina- tion to make that conform speedily to the analogy of other words of its class and to pronounce it in accordance with the spelling. But, no doubt, this word, also, in the course of time, will yield to the pressure of analogy, and our time-honored serjeant, with the flight of years, is destined to be classed among those pronunciations that have lost caste. The ,early orthoepists uniformly pronounced this entire class of words as our British cousins pronounce them at the present time, that is, as if they were written "clark," "sarjeant" and so on. Indeed, it is the spelling that has been the main factor in effecting the change in the pronunciation of these words. There is a strong tendency in English to pronounce a w r ord as it is written, and this tendency has been asserting itself with ever increasing force since Eng- lish spelling has been crystallized and thereby ren- dered less subject to preference or caprice. A constantly recurring question, which never ceased to vex the spirit of the early orthoepists, was, 52 Xuc0tion$ at where to place the accent in the case of contemplate, demonstrate, illustrate and similar words of classical origin. The question at issue here is whether the stress shall fall upon the antepenultimate or the penultimate. Even with all the accumulated knowl- edge of the centuries we are no nearer a solution of this perplexing question than were the Elizabethans. Shakespeare could say indifferently confiscate or con- fiscate, demonstrate or demonstrate. Here the battle has been waged between the scholars, on the one hand, who insist upon strict propriety, and the uninitiated, on the other, who follow the line of least resistance and by intuition place the accent upon the initial syllable. As is evident at a glance, these words come to us from the classics. The scholars there- fore, somewhat pedantically, insist upon retaining the stress on the syllable which bore it in the original Latin or Greek. Per contra, the common people, who know "little Latin and less Greek" and care not a fig for the original accent, instinctively throw the stress upon the first syllable, in keeping with their feeling for their mother tongue. This feeling for the language, which the Germans call "Sprachge- fuhl" is, after all, a safer guide than the rules laid down by the pedants. Candor compels us to admit that the popular tendency is more in harmony with the genius of our vernacular. But the scholars have made a brave fight for what we may demoniate ab- stract propriety, and the result, thus far, is a drawn battle. Each side has scored some points, and each side has had to make some concessions. Thus bal- cony, academy, decorous and metamorphosis, to cite in flDttr OEngltef) Speecft 53 a few concrete examples, have finally triumphed over the earlier pedantic pronunciations, which required the accent on the penult of these words. Horizon, on the other hand, stands as a monument of a concession to the learned, since this word in Elizabethan times had the stress on the initial syllable, as had also the name of the month July. Popular usage in favor of the received pronunciation of auditor, senator, vic- tory, orator and many similar words has achieved a decided triumph over the early orthoepists, who, it was very obvious, were fighting a losing battle in their efforts to retain the classical accent. It follows that pronunciation is the resultant product of several forces which are silently but con- stantly acting upon the living language. There are, to be sure, various methods of pronunciation, but the standard is that sanctioned by the most cultivated circles of society. Now, it is the function of the pronouncing dictionary, and its sole reason for exist- ence, to determine and record the usage of the most cultured classes. But here is where the rub comes. This is the stumbling-block in the way of the lexicog- raphers. It may seem, upon first blush, that the task of the orthoepist is easy enough. But not so in actual practice. Countless and insuperable difficul- ties soon begin to loom up a little ahead in the path of the intending orthoepist, and he finds, to his re- gret and his occasional disgust, that the way he has marked out for himself is not strewn with roses. It is an arduous undertaking which holds out but meager hope of successful accomplishment, 'to make an accurate record of the pronunciation received in 54 fXue0tion0 at 300ue any large class of society. The labor and trouble are multiplied many times when an attempt is made to determine the best orthoepical usage in a democracy. There is really no absolute standard of pronuncia- tion in English and there can not be, from the very nature of the case, as Professor Lounsbury has clearly demonstrated in his recent luminous book on this subject. Yet it is unquestionably true that the pronouncing dictionary is constantly making for uniformity of pronunciation. There is far less difference in Eng- lish orthoepy at the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury, even despite the present diversity of good usage, than there was at the beginning of the eigh- teenth century. A glance at the history of the usage, if we may trust Professor Lounsbury, an eminent au- thority on English pronunciation, will readily con- vince the reader of this fact. This result is the direct outgrowth of the increased facilities for inter- course between communities, and of the gradual dif- fusion of education which the last two centuries have witnessed. With the spread of education there go along those habits of speech which are generally rec- ognized to be in accord with best usage and which therefore have most to commend them to popular favor. But till men cease to exercise the right of choice in the mode of utterance, till men prefer, for the sake of uniformity, to say exclusively "hostile" and not "hostile," "servile" and not "servile," "rise" and not "rice," to mention an example of variant usage, so long will there probably be a diversity of pronunciation and the consequent need for the pro- in fiDtit dBnglfeft @pcec|) 55 nouncing dictionary. This consummation so devoutly to be wished we may expect at the Greek Kalends. We may rest assured, therefore, that the pronouncing dictionary is here to stay. Every man has his preference as to his pronounc- ing dictionary, which he regards with more or less confidence and, may be, reverence, as his final au- thority. To this he resorts in all orthoepical ques- tions, for final solution. This, of course, is a legiti- mate function of the pronouncing dictionary. The fact is, the vocabulary of the average educated man is so extremely limited and the vocabulary of the language so extremely copious that there are thou- sands of words of a technical character which even the most accomplished scholars have never once heard tittered. The average educated man who knows that English spelling is a very untrustworthy guide to pronunciation is perforce driven to consult his Webster, or his Worcester, or his Standard, or mayhap his Century. Only then can he pronounce an unfamiliar English word with any assurance of propriety. Notwithstanding the fact that every educated man has his favorite dictionary, it is probably true that no man's pronunciation is in entire accord with the dictionary he habitually follows. The late Mr. Ellis gave a suggestive test which I believe has never been successfully challenged. "I do not remember," said he, "ever meeting with a person of general educa- tion, or even literary habits, who could read off, with- out hesitation, the whole of such a list of words as: bourgeois, demy, actinism, velleity, batman, beaufin, at brevier, rowlock, fusil, flugleman, vase, tassel, buoy, oboe, archimandrite, etc., and give them in each case the same pronunciation as is assigned in any given pronouncing dictionary now in use." Let the reader try these test words and see whether he pronounces this short list according to any received authority in use at the present day. It may not prove an altogether unprofitable in- quiry how our pronouncing dictionaries are made. Such an inquiry, if pursued, may teach us somewhat of the methods of the orthoepists to ascertain good usage. The method formerly adopted was very much after this fashion: The lexicographer studies in his own library the pronouncing dictionary of everybody who has taken the pains to compile one, whether he be an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotch- man, or an American. He compares these several dictionaries and records their variations. From these he selects those pronunciations which, for any special reason, commend themselves to his individual taste or judgment. These are usually such pronun- ciations as he is accustomed to hear or himself to use. These are published with the stamp of the lexicogra- pher's authority and approval, and the dictionary is sent out into the world as so-and-so's record of the most approved usage. This was doubtless the way pronouncing diction- aries used to be compiled. But we may believe that this method is not the course ordinarily followed by the authors of our best modern dictionaries. If our best standard dictionaries to-day were made in this fashion, their authority would richly deserve to be in 2Dut OEngifeft Speecfi 57 heavily discounted for such carelessness of method. But greater efforts are made by the most recent or- thoepists, we may believe, to determine the accepted usage in polite society. Yet, after all, the personal equation enters as an important factor into the com- pilation of every pronouncing dictionary. The author or authors who compile the dictionary natu- rally follow their own preferences and prejudices in the matter of pronunciation; and their results, even at best, repose on very restricted and imperfect ob- servation. An orthoepist ought not to be cocksure and dogmatic. Indeed, the proper attitude of the author of a dictionary is that of the late Mr. Ellis. It was quite natural that a man of his superior schol- arship and rare orthoepical attainments should have been frequently asked as to the proper pronunciation of a particular word. "It has not unfrequently happened," observes Mr. Ellis in his monumental work on "Early English Pronunciation," in reference to his practice, when appealed to as an authority, "It has not unfrequently happened that the present writer has been appealed to respecting the pronunciation of a word. He gen- erally replies that he is accustomed to pronounce it in such or such a way, and has often to add that he has heard others pronounce it differently, but that he has no means of deciding which pronunciation ought to be adopted, or even of saying which is the more cus- tomary." This attitude will, no doubt, commend itself to the favor of the reflecting and judicious man much more forcibly than that spirit of assumed infalli- 58 tue0tiort$ at 300tte bility which is a sure sign, in an orthoepist, of in- sufficient knowledge and lack of preparation for his work. The business of a lexicographer is to record what good usage authorizes, not to tell us what we shall not use. The orthoepist who goes farther, and dogmatically asserts that a given pronunciation is correct and another incorrect, transcends the legiti- mate bounds of his province. Moreover, he arouses suspicion in the minds of the thoughtful as to his trustworthiness as a guide in matters of pronuncia- tion. For no orthoepist records all the pronuncia- tions sanctioned by good usage, and no one therefore can affirm positively that a given pronunciation of a word may not be warranted by reputable usage in some quarter. Even so high an authority and care- ful an observer as Ellis lapsed into error in his com- ment upon the pronunciation of trait, claiming that the silent final t was an unfailing shibboleth of Brit- ish practice. As a matter of fact, the pronuncia- tion of the final letter of trait, as Professor Louns- bury has clearly shown,* had been recognized by Eng- lish orthoepists as allowable for more than a cen- tury. It is manifest that one can not afford to be very positive in English orthoepy : if he is, he will be compelled either to retract or to qualify some of his sweeping statements. The pronouncing dictionary is, as a general rule, a good guide to standard usage, though it can not be relied upon implicitly. When the orthoepists are all agreed upon a particular pronunciation, one ought to "The Standard of Pronunciation in English, p. 230. in 2Dur OEnglisi) Speecfi 59 be very chary of using one's customary or pet pro- nunciation that differs. The chances are that it is not in good repute. But when, on the contrary, the orthoepists themselves differ, one may reasonably infer that no statement of any one of them about the proper pronunciation of a word, however positive it may be, ought to be recognized as a binding authority. For no pronouncing dictionary is an absolutely final authority. Nor can it ever justly claim to be, since the pronouncing dictionary purports to record only such pronunciations as are sanctioned by good usage, and good usage ever varies with the living speech, which, like all living things, is always slowly chang- ing from century to century. The change is some- times so gradual that hardly the lapse of a century will reveal it. Again, for one reason or another, it is so rapid in development that even a generation suf- fices to record it. at VULGAKISMS WITH A PEDIGKEE. Never before was there so much enthusiasm man- ifested in linguistic studies as during the last quar- ter of a century, and even yet there is no indica- tion of a waning interest. Not only have languages been studied in their relation to one another, but dia- lects also have come in for their share of attention in the pursuit of these studies. Nor has our own coun- try been backward in contributing, through its dia- lectal and various philological associations, its quota to the science of philology. Authors in different parts of the country have written long and (it must be confessed, sometimes) tedious stories in the indi- vidual dialects of their respective localities. There are books in the dialect of the negro, as, for exam- ple, Thomas Nelson Page's, to mention only one writer of a large class, those in the dialect of the Tennessee mountains, as, for example, Miss Mur- fee's books, those in the dialect of the "Georgia cracker," as the stories of Joel Chandler Harris, and a host of others in various parts of the country. These books are almost like the sands of the seashore for number. So numerous and varied are the local dialects in this country that a contributor to the North Ameri- in ut OEngH0f) ^peecf) 61 can Review, some few years ago, ventured the thesis that from the very nature of the diverse and varied character of our local dialects, there can not be any such thing as a great national novel in the United States. While this, it must be admitted, is a some- what extreme view, to which many do not feel pre- pared to subscribe, the fact yet remains that there are marked dialectal peculiarities in the spoken language of certain localities. These dialectal pe- culiarities, however, are fast disappearing before the onward march of the unifying influence of educa- tion, the printing press, and the railroad. When the leavening power of education has permeated the entire population of the country, there will result uniformity of speech, and dialectal variations from the common norm will linger but as a tradition. The dialect authors, in the meantime, are doing the reading public a service in furnishing it with entertaining stories of an elevating character. More- over, some of them at least, as for example, Page, Harris and others, are rendering literature and sci- ence an ulterior service, consciously or unconsciously, in preserving in their books types of a people and their speech which a wave of oblivion is rapidly sweeping away. If one will examine the speech of the negro and the native-born illiterate white, it matters not whether the latter be from New England, or from the South, one will find that, excepting certain pro- vincialisms peculiar to their respective homes, their language has much in common, and to the student of historic English, it exhibits indisputable evidence 62 fXite0tion0 at of its affinity with the English of the seventeenth century. This is obvious from such words as hand- kercher, ar (air), pint (point), pison (poison), gwine (going), arrant (errand), cratur (creature), arth (earth), all of which are common alike to the "Yankee dialect" and to the negro dialect. The student who is familiar with the development of the English tongue will at once recognize these as stand- ard, according to the received pronunciation of the seventeenth century. But in the development of the language, these pronunciations subsequently fell into disuse and were discarded by standard English. They still survived, however, in the lower stratum of society among the poor and illiterate who, denied the privileges and advantages of an education and there- fore ignorant of the most elementary principles of grammar, inherited this speech from their ances- tors and handed it down, with but little change, from generation to generation to their children. The language of the seventeenth century was brought to America by the early settlers and was taught the slaves, and the tongue which the illiterate negroes then learned to speak they have preserved, without any material change, down to the present generation. Since this is the case, we can not then be surprised to find upon examination that many of their dialectal pronunciations and locutions are to be traced back to classic authors of an earlier period, yea, to Shakespeare himself. In this sense it is doubtless true that many of the fossilized pro- nunciations of our illiterates are much nearer the language of, and would therefore be more intelligible fn 2Dur peec& 63 to, Shakespeare and Milton than present standard English. Every one who has ever heard the old negro preacher giving an "exhortation" at the close of his fervid "sarmon" knows very well that, though the old man's heart was perhaps right and himself on the way to the kingdom, his conscience never for a moment troubled him about his loose grammar. Notwithstanding his sanctification and his ecstatic anticipation of the joys of the kingdom for which he was bound, he had no conscientious scruples about "axin 7 " his "ole marster" if the latter was at all tardy in offering him the desired help. Perhaps many of those who were so familiar with the lingo of the old preacher never reflected that his language, like his heart, was, after all, not very far wrong and entirely without precedent when he "axed" for something. He was but obeying the scriptural in- junction, which, according to Tyndale's version, reads: "Axe and it shall be geven you." lN~or do they know that he was following, all unwittingly, to be sure, the example set by the first English printer, Caxton, who, in the preface to his edition of Vergil's Aeneid, used precisely the same expression. If then the old parson blundered, as, according to our mod- ern standard, he did, he at all events blundered in good company. In Chaucer, "the first finder of our faire lan- guage," as his ardent disciple Occleve rapturously, though quaintly, called him, we find the same word. Here we find also forms long since fossilized, though still preserved in the speech of the untutored, such '64 lue0tion0 at as "kiver, driv, holp, wrii, rid, etc. In "Much Ado About Nothing" Dogberry, albeit he dislocates the dictionary in speaking of that villain who, he prophe- sies, would be condemned to everlasting redemption, yet uses grammar which, for his day, was above re-' proach, when he exclaimed: "O that I had been writ down an ass I" So we must acknowledge that no violence was done to the language, however our sense of propriety may be shocked, when a century or so ago a Londoner re- marked to his friend who had come up from his home in the country to see the play of "Orpheus and Eurydice," and who was copiously bespattered with mud, as a result of his ride : "You came up to town, I suppose, to see Orpheus and you rid I see" It would be difficult to find in the literature of that period a more felicitous illustration of a perfectly legitimate play on words which the contemporary pronunciation permitted. Shakespeare, who could not resist the temptation to make a pun whenever opportunity offered, fur- nishes additional evidence of his versatility and in- genuity in his apt recognition of the obsolete pro- nunciation of many words of his time, which he turned to good account. Hence so many of his witti- cisms. In "Henry IV," for instance, Falstall says: "If reasons were a plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion," thus play- ing upon the old pronunciation of raisins with which we are all familiar upon the lips of the unlettered. Thus he plays upon the antiquated pronunciation of as room, when, in "Julius Caesar," Cassius in Dut peec& 71 as oblige, join, poison and the like. In his Epistle to Arbuthnot in which Pope pilloried so many of his contemporary poetasters and there left them to the vulgar gaze of all subsequent ages, among others he damned Addison with faint praise as "Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er obliged." Our join, poison, point, soil, spoil, and so on, would have offended the ear of Dryden and Pope, who in- variably said jine, pison, pint, etc. In this respect the speech of our rustics is the speech which Dryden and Pope spoke, though their faith and morals are probably not those which these authors held. In the words of Pope himself : "Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join The varying sense, the full-resounding line, The long majestic march and energy divine." "Good nature and good sense must ever join ; To err is human ; to forgive, divine." " ? T is not enough, taste, judgment, learning join ; In all you speak, let truth and candor shine." . /' "In grave Quintilian's copious work we find The justest rules and clearest method join'd." It is interesting to observe that we still say choir. These words with the en-diphthong are well-nigh all 72 dilutions at 300tte of Anglo-French origin, except boil, in the sense of tumor, where the Anglo-Saxon byle proves that its development into the now vulgar bile is regular. But in standard English the word has been wrested from its normal course of development, probably through association in the popular mind with the verb boil, or to avoid confusion with bile (secretion of the liver), and its spelling has been changed to boil to satisfy, in Lowell's apt phrase, the logic of the eye. But let it be said parenthetically that logic is among the least potent factors in the develop- ment of a language. In the light of these facts, then, we appreciate more fully the significance of the words of Ellis, in his monumental work on Early English Pronuncia- tion : "For the polite sounds of a past generation are the betes noires of the present. Who at present, with any claim to "eddication" would jine in praising the pints of a picter? But certainly there was a time when education, join, points and picture would have sounded equally strange." In the Yankee dialect, as we learn from Lowell's admirable essay on this theme in the introduction to his Biglow Papers, "the u in the ending ture is al- ways shortened, making ventur, natur, pictur, and so on. This was common also among the educated of the last generation. I am inclined to think it may have been once universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile vencher, nayclier, pick- cher, that have taken its place, sounding like the in- vention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze. 7 ' When Lowell wrote these words, very little atten- in flDur dEngltsft Speed) 73 tion had been given to the study of dialects and their significance as exhibiting fossilized forms of a lan- guage. But since the publication of Ellis's excellent work on the early pronunication of our mother- tongue, a flood of light has been shed upon the tortu- ous path of the history of English sounds. Thus we can be sure that the speech of our illiterates, however vulgar and antiquated it may sound to our twentieth century ears, is, at least in many instances, the polite pronunciation of the seventeenth century. It is the English which the Pilgrim Fathers brought over with them when they landed on the shores of the New World. So much for the dialect of our illiterates, the lingua rustled. Let us now consider the Irish dia- lect which is another fruitful source of vulgarisms with a pedigree. A moment's reflection will suffice to convince the reader that this speech is very closely allied in origin with the English brought to Amer- ica by the early settlers. It is well known that the English language, as spoken by the Irish, has a peculiarity of utterance commonly called "the Irish brogue" and differs ma- terially from standard English. Why this clearly marked and distinctive mode of utterance which dif- ferentiates the English speech on Irish lips from the same language as spoken in England and Amer- ica ? As a matter of fact the English spoken by the educated sons of Erin is the same as that used in England and America. But the language of the Irish in the rural districts of Ireland and of those who have emigrated to America is something quite 74 duesticms at 3J00ue different, and varies considerably in idiom and pro- nunciation from standard English. It is this which is usually termed "the Irish brogue." To get at the origin of this lingo we must go back to the time when Ireland was settled by the English. The tongue originally spoken in Ireland was of course the Old Irish, or Gaelic, and this was very closely related to the Welsh and the speech of the ancient Britons who resisted the Roman invasion under Julius Caesar. This was the tongue of the whole of Britain when our Saxon forefathers first found their way across the Channel from Northern Germany. This therefore was the vernacular of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table mentioned in the Arthurian legends. As far back as the twelfth century, history records that the English began to plant colonies on the Emer- ald Isle and to settle parts of it, such as Forth and Bargay. But these were unimportant from our pres- ent point of view. The English settlements in Ire- land from which the English language spread and diffused itself over the country were those made in Ulster and the north during the reign of James I, in 1611. This English emigration was re-enforced by the invasion of Cromwell, in 1649. So then it was during the seventeenth century that the domain of the Irishman's native tongue was invaded by the English speech. It will be recalled that, inasmuch as Ireland was originally populated by the Celtic race, it follows that the genuine Irishman is really a Celt, not a Saxon, although he now speaks English as his ver- in ffl)iit 4Engli0& peecft 75 nacular. He was therefore of the same race and blood as the ancient Britons whom our Saxon fore- fathers found in possession of the country when they first came to Britain from the Continent. The Brit- ish people represent a fusion of these two races Celtic and Saxon with the Saxon element predomi- nating. According to Matthew Arnold's dictum, it is from the Celtic blood flowing in the veins of the Englishman that he gets his sentiment. In his com- posite being, the modern Englishman combines with his original steady-going Saxon temperament some- thing of the Celt's instinct for sentiment, love of beauty, charm and spirituality, together with some- thing of the Norman's tact for business. According to Matthew Arnold, therefore, there is a comming- ling of these three streams in the English race, the Celtic and the Norman both being merged in the Saxon. As the defect of his qualities the Celt had ineffectualness and self-will, qualities which still mark the Irish genius. The words of that eminent nineteenth century critic are very suggestive as indi- cating the influence of the Celtic spirit upon the Saxon, whether we are prepared to share his opinion or not. "If I were asked," remarks he in his ad- mirable essay On the Study of Celtic Literature, "where English poetry got these three things its turn for style, its turn for melancholy, and its turn for natural magic, for catching and rendering the charm of nature in a wonderfully near and vivid way I should answer, with some doubt, that it got much of its turn for style from a Celtic source; with less doubt, that it got much of its melancholy from 76 Xite0tions at 300ue a Celtic source; with no doubt at all, that from a Celtic source it got nearly all of its magic." But to return to the language of the Irish. When the English settlers emigrated to Ulster, they car- ried with them the English speech of the seventeenth century. A moment's reflection teaches us that this was the pronunciation of the days of Milton and Dryden which was transplanted into Ireland. Now, it must be borne in mind that the English of that century was transferred to a country where the na- tive speech and method of utterance were entirely different from those employed in England. The effect of this was to cause some modification in the transplanted language when the English speech came into actual contact with the native Irish tongue on Irish soil. When English was diffused over Ire- land the native speech of which differed both in its body of sounds and in its distinctive method of enun- ciation from the triumphant language, the natives learned to speak the new tongue with their own char- acteristic mode of utterance. It was but natural therefore that the English speech should undergo a considerable alteration on Irish lips. In similar cir- cumstances the supplanted tongue always produces a greater or less change in its victorious rival, not only in form, but also in construction and idiom. Witness here the triumph of Anglo-Saxon over the Celtic of the native Britons. As an illustration of the change in idiom take this example of "Pidgin-English," spoken in the treaty ports of China. In one of those ports, an enterprising merchant with a keen relish for the English shillings, but with little feeling for in 2Dur OBnglfefi S>peecft 77 the English tongue, is reputed to have put out over his shop door a sign with this legend: "Groceries for sale, retail and whole- tail !" An illustration of the difference in mode of utterance between two tongues is furnished by the German, or even the French, method of pronouncing our English th-sound. What inherent difficulty a native German or Frenchman, in his unstudied utterance, encounters in pronounc- ing such simple words as the, then, kith, etc. ! On the other hand, one whose vernacular is English ex- periences as great embarrassment in pronouncing, without studied effort and practice, the German ch- sound, as in Bach, Ich, etc., or the characteristic French u sound as in fut, eut, pu, etc. When therefore the Irish began to learn English in the seventeenth century, they encountered certain difficulties peculiar to the English speech. The dental combinations in our English tongue appear to have proved a stumbling block to the Irish mode of utterance, and hence such grotesque pronunciations as tthrash for thrash, stthraitch for stretch, 8atthir- day for Saturday and scoundthrel for scoundrel. In his native speech the Celt trilled his r's, and noth- ing was more natural then than that he should do the same thing when he began to speak English. So to the present day the r is emphatically trilled on Irish lips, although it is decidedly un-English to trill it. These few examples will serve to indicate the char- acter of some of the difficulties inherent in the Eng- lish language which the Irishman encountered in his effort to speak it. But there were other difficulties 78 fXuefftfon* at 300iie than those of utterance which had to be overcome in mastering the spoken tongue. Furthermore, the English speech on Irish soil did not develop and nourish as it did in its own habitat in England. On the contrary, it always remained an exotic and it never kept pace in its growth and de- velopment with the language on English soil. If Ireland had been first depopulated and then settled by the British, the variations in speech would have been much less conspicuous, even had they existed at all. But that was not the case. Those conditions came much nearer being fulfilled here in America when the Puritans and Cavaliers came over to the New World, bringing with them practically the same English as that carried into the Emerald Isle. For the first settlements in America by the English colon- ists correspond in point of time to those made in Ulster, that is, the early seventeenth century. But the English language in America was not contam- inated by contact with the Indian language and, with the exception of a few geographical names, our speech shows almost no trace of Indian influence. Consequently the English speech on American soil has had an entirely different development from that which it had on Irish soil, although it is a trans- planted language in both instances. The explanation is found entirely in the difference of environment. However, there are certain fossilized phrases, pro- vincialisms, vulgarisms, or what not, in American English, which betray the affinity of the language of the early settlers of America with that of the early settlers of Ireland. .Witness here the coincidence of in SDut ur (Cngligf) peec& 81 has been altered and modified even in modern times, after it found its way to the New World. The modifications and changes, however, both in idiom and pronunciation, would have taken place, even if the English speech had never been transplanted into foreign territory. Conclusive proof of this is fur- nished by a comparison of present-day British Eng- lish with the English of two centuries ago as spoken in the mother country ; and this, though not explicitly stated, is implied in the discussion of the theme in the foregoing paragraphs. 82 Xue0ttott0 at 300uc BEITICISMS VEESUS AMEEICANISMS. It is a recognized fact that there is a considerable variation in the English language as spoken "by the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race. The English people differ from the American people in the use of our common speech not only in their char- acteristic mode of pronunciation and orthography, but they also differ from us in no less striking a man- ner in the use of certain idioms and household phrases, which constitute the small change of our every-day speech. This difference is the natural out- growth of the separation of the two peoples by the estranging ocean, which is of necessity a great bar- rier to complete intercourse. To be sure, the fact that the English people and the American people have distinct national entities with the resulting dif- ference, during the last hundred years, of national ideals and pursuits, has had the natural and inevita- ble effect of widening the breach between the speech of the two countries. No doubt the present variation will be accentuated more and more as the years go by, and the language of Great Britain and of America, far from becoming absolutely identical in pronun- ciation and idiom with the flight of centuries, will go on developing with an ever-increasing divergence in >ur ns!i0& @peecf) 83 from the common standard. If this be true and certainly the facts as to the present tendency seern to warrant such a conclusion the final result may be the unique linguistic phenomenon of two separate and distinct tongues, if such a thing be not an im- possibility. Before pointing out the variations of our American English from British English, it may be interesting to note the source of our American vernacular, and the contributing causes of the chief variations from the authoritative standard of the mother country. When our Saxon forefathers found their way to the shores of this western continent and here estab- lished their permanent abode, the settlers naturally brought with them the language of their native country. This was, of course, the noble tongue of Shakespeare and Milton. Our British cousins who criticize our English so freely and cast reproach upon it as if it were a mere jargon, a barbarous patois, evi- dently lose sight of the fact that it boasts the same high pedigree as their own much-vaunted Elizabethan speech. When the English language was first trans- planted in American soil, it was identical in orthog- raphy, orthoepy and idiom with the speech of the mother country. But the transplanted tongue, hav- ing a new and different habitat, began at once to adapt itself, however imperceptibly, to its changed environ and new conditions. Nor was the connection with the parent stock a sufficiently close and vital bond of union to prevent the English speech on American lips from undergoing at least some slight 84 Hie0ttott0 at 3s0tte modification in the course of time, as a natural con- sequence of the altered conditions in the new world. It is a well-established linguistic principle that a language inevitably undergoes a slight change, de- termined by the varying conditions, as long as it is spoken. When a tongue ceases to be spoken, then and only then does it cease to change and become a dead language, as, for instance, Latin and Greek. This fact of the gradual change in a living language is demonstrated through the difficulty one experiences in understanding the English of Chaucer, or even of Shakespeare, for the matter of that, although he is not so far removed from the present age. If a living tongue underwent no alteration with the lapse of years, then why should not Anglo-Saxon be as readily intelligible to us as modern English ? Furthermore, a language is affected in its develop- ment by contact with a foreign tongue and by outside influences, such as the climate. The first of these reasons is so apparent to all that it hardly deserves comment. But not so the second. Yet the influence of climate on a living language is very fruitful of change. Ready proof of this is furnished in our own country in the soft, musical utterance of the south in contrast with the rather shrill and forceful habits of enunciation characteristic of the north. In Europe, for example, the vast preponderance of the harsh, guttural character of the German tongue offers a glaring contrast to the smooth, liquid notes of the pure Tuscan speech. This is the reason why Italian appeals so strongly to music lovers and to all who have an ear trained to be especially sensitive to sound. fit 2Ditr (English 8>peec& 85 Now, this difference between German and Italian, as respects the musical character of the two languages, is doubtless to be explained in large measure as the result of climate conditions extending through many long centuries. If by some violent political upheaval the Italians were transported to the extreme northern part of Europe, it is altogether probable that their speech in the course of centuries would lose much of its native vocalic development, much of its melody, and become harsh and strident, somewhat like the Russian language. It follows, therefore, that the English speech on American soil has undergone some slight modification, in consequenec of climatic influ- ence. Perhaps this explains the variation of the American pronunciation of the long o-sound as in "stone" and a bone" from the British norm. But the difference in climate between the two countries is not sufficiently marked to produce any very radical departure. A striking feature of the English speech on Amer- ican lips is the leveling of the long a-sound heard in such words as "past," "fast," "plant," "command," "dance," "path," etc. This could hardly be the re- sult of climatic influence, however, for it does not appear that the climate has had the effect of pro- ducing any modification in the pronunciation of such terms in any part of America. The prevailing pro- nunciation of these terms is the same, at the south and at the north alike. Such a variation must, there- fore, be inherent in the natural growth of the Eng- lish language on American soil. For it must be borne in mind that just as the English speech, as any other 86 Xue0tion0 at living organism, has been growing and developing during the centuries in England, so, likewise, in America it has been growing and developing during the last three centuries, but not necessarily in the same manner. Those employing the language in Great Britain and in the United States are no longer a homogeneous people with the same national ideals and destiny. On the contrary, they are two separate and distinct nations with different forms of govern- ment and with different aims and aspirations. Add to this the fact that the nations have been estranged by political differences which resulted in wars and that they are separated by the physical barrier of a vast ocean. In the face of these obstacles it is not at all surprising that the English speech has not gone on developing pari passu on both sides of the Atlantic. The wonder is that the present variations are not really greater and more striking than they are. Another contributing cause of variation of Ameri- can English from the British norm must not be over- looked, the more especially as it has proved a prolific factor. In our new country some conditions of life arose which were totally unlike those existing in the old country. Such strange conditions called impera- tively for the invention of new names and thus gave rise to the employment of new phrases and new locu- tions. These had to be coined immediately for the emergency. Since the most distinctive traits of the American are initiative and wealth of resource, no time was lost in making such additions to the Eng- lish speech as seemed to supply a felt need, and that, too, without any special reference to British models in 2Dut Cnglfgf) peec6 87 and precedents. Hence a large class of terms distinc- tively American and bearing upon their face the trade-mark "made in America" found their way into the English vocabulary on this side of the Atlantic, much to the disgust of the British precisians and purists, who proceeded forthwith to put these new coinages under the ban and to brand them with the bend sinister of "Americanism." Of this class are many terms indicating mechanical inventions and appliances, such as "elevator" instead of the British "lift," to mention only a single example of a long catalogue of useful things which American genius has given to the world. Here also belong numerous words expressing things associated with modern transportation and rapid transit, such as "street-car," "railroad," etc. Perhaps it may be well just here to call attention to some of the ordinary terms and expressions heard in England which strike an American as being quite odd and peculiar. It is to be presumed that the good Britons will not be offended if we, using the same license as themselves, venture to call such expres- sions "Briticisms." Let it be distinctly understood, however, that this is not intended as an opprobrious epithet, but only to signify a word or an idiom which is peculiar to Great Britain and not familiar in America. Eor surely the English people have the right to employ whatever terms they may choose both in their colloquial and in their written speech. If an American in London wishes to use a lan- guage that is readily understood, when he goes to the ticket-office he must call it the booking office of the 88 fXuestions at railway station. There he must ask the clerk, or rather the "clark," for a first single or a second re- turn, instead of a single fare (first-class) and a round trip (second class). He must then have his luggage labeled, not. his baggage checked, and, hav- ing secured his brasses or labels, not his checks, he sees his box, not his trunk, put in the proper van and then takes his seat in the carriage, not in the car. Before the train starts off, the guards slam the doors of the carriages, turning the handles, and at the con- ductor's whistle the engine-driver starts his loco- motive-engine. The points all being set for a clear track ahead, the train speeds along the metals, pass- ing perhaps a shunting-engine about the station and a train of goods-vans. The variation of British from American usage is not more noteworthy in railway parlance than in other circles. If an American goes shopping in Lon- don, he must call for a packet, not a paper, of pins ; a reel, not a spool, of cotton. If he desires to buy a pair of shoes, he must call for boots, unless he wishes low quarters or Oxford ties; if a pair of overshoes, he must ask for footholds or galoshes; if a soft felt hat, he must ask for a squash hat, or if he prefers a Derby, he must ask for a billy-cock hat or a bowler ; if he wishes a pad of paper, he should request a block of paper. If he goes to a restaurant, he indicates whether he desires his meat underdone, not rare; if he wishes corned beef, he calls for silversides of beef ; if beets, he calls for beetroot ; if chicken, he calls for fowl ; if a cereal of any sort, he calls for corn ; if cold bread, he must order cut bread; and if he desires fn 2Dut Cnglfefc Speecft 89 pudding, pie, jam, preserves or candy, he must order sweets, short for sweetmeats. If -the waiter should fail for any reason to give him a napkin, an Ameri- can should ask for a serviette; and when he has fin- ished his repast, he is handed a bill which he may pay with his cheque, or, if he prefers, with the cash from his purse, not his pocket-book. If in England you find no bowl and pitcher in your room, you are expected, as previously observed,* to call for a jug and basin, since there a pitcher means only a little jug and a bowl is used exclusively for serving food in. On the street, instead of a let- ter box near a lamp post, you see a pillar box near a lamp pillar, and you perhaps meet a person pushing a perambulator, called "pram" for short, instead of a baby-carriage. For dry-goods you go to a mercer's, where you will find white calico sold for muslin. For cloth you go to a draper's, for wooden ware to a turnery, for hardware to an ironmonger's, for milk, butter and eggs to a cow-keeper's or a dairy, and for fish, game and poultry to a fish shop. If you desire any of your purchases sent to your address, you order them sent by express-carrier, carriage paid. If at any time you desire the services of a scrub- woman to clean your apartments, you send for a charwoman. If you wish to have some furniture up- holstered, you request the upholder to undertake the work for you. If you need the services of a doctor, you call in a medical man. You must be careful to address surgeons and dentists by the common demo- *See A Question of Preference in English Spelling. 90 Xue0ttcm0 at cratic title "mister," since the English custom does not warrant you to address them as "doctor." If you are well, to your inquiring friends you are re- ported "fit," if unwell, "seedy," if sick, invariably "ill." To an American ear British orthoepy offers quite as noteworthy surprises as the idiomatic diction does. Of course it is to be presumed that theie should be more or less marked variations in the matter of habitual utterance of certain sounds, especially the long o- and the long a-vowel, as in "fast," "dance," "sha'n't," etc., which are at striking variance with American usage. Indeed, these sounds are so char- acteristic that, like the English custom of ending almost every sentence with a question, when clearly natural and not an affectation, they serve as a shib- boleth of British nativity. But notable eccentricities are to be observed in the English mode of pronunc- ing many proper names such as Derby, pronounced "darby" ; Berkeley, pronounced "barclay" ; Mag- dalen, pronounced "maudlin"; Cadogan, pronounced "kerduggan"; Maryleboiie, pronounced "merry- bone"; Cholmondeley, pronounced "chumly"; Marl- borough, pronounced "mobrer"; Albany, pronounced so that the first syllable rhymes with Al- in Alfred, etc. It is unnecessary to multiply examples. Suffice it to say that there is a large class of these words the spelling and pronunciation of which seem to an American rather curiously divorced. Certainly American usage offers no parallel where there is so complete a divorce of orthoepy from orthographv. American usage makes for phonetic spelling and in 2Dur 4Engli0l) Speecft 91 tends to make the conventional pronunciation and spelling conform somewhat, at least. Having drawn attention to a few Briticisms, we are now prepared to discuss some of our American- isms which seem to excite in the pure minds of the English precisians alternate feelings of disgust and indignation. Let it be premised, however, that it is not proposed to include ordinary slang in the pres- ent discussion. It must be admitted that too much slang is employed even in polite circles, not to men- tion the speech of those who make no pretense to re- finement and culture. But one should not confuse vulgarisms with so-called Americanisms, just as one should not confuse vulgarisms with legitimate slang. The discriminating student distinguishes between ordinary slang and legitimate slang. The vulgar slang of the street is, of course, to be universally con- demned and tabooed. Legitimate slang, on the con- trary, performs an important function in the develop- ment of a living language. It is not to be inconsid- erately ostracized, therefore, and put under the ban as the chief source of corruption of our vernacular, as certain of our purists, in their zeal without knowl- edge, tell us and attempt to maintain. It is idle for them in their self-appointed role of guardian of the pristine purity of the English tongue to endeavor to defend so unsound and so indefensible a thesis. For legitimate slang, far from being an unmitigated evil and a constant menace to the purity and propriety of our noble tongue, is standard English in the making, is idiom in the nascent state before it has attained to the dignity of correctness of usage. To change the at figure, legitimate slang is the recruiting ground whence come the new and untried words which are to take the place in the vernacular, of the archaic and obsolete words, dropping out of the ranks. But it is aside from the main purpose of this chapter to discuss the relation of slang to standard usage (cf. "What is slang?") and hence this only in passing. By an Americanism, as here used, is meant a word, phrase, or idiom of the English tongue, in good standing, which has originated in America or is in use only on this side of the Atlantic. It will be seen, therefore, that all mere slang expressions, even though they be of American origin, are barred from the present consideration. In his dictionary of "Americanisms," Bartlett gives a large collection, many of which the above limitation, of course, ex- cludes. Of reputed Americanisms, as one might surmise, there are several classes to be distinguished, without any very clearly defined line of demarcation separat- ing them. One class includes a large number of phrases which had their origin in England and were transported thence to our shores by the first settlers who came from the mother country and established themselves in Virginia and Massachusetts. In the last analysis these locutions appear to be transplanted British provincialisms, not a few of which came over in the Mayflower. Some of our British critics who are not as familiar with the history of the English language as they might be do not hesitate to deliver an offhand opinion, pronouncing an apparent neolo- gism an Americanism, when as a matter of fact the in Dur 4Bnglt0i) ^pecci) 93 expression shows a good English pedigree extending back many generations. A more intimate acquain- tance with the history of our common speech would save them the embarrassment from such a glaring blunder. But it is so easy to fall into the careless habit of branding as an Americanism an unfamiliar idiom or a phrase that is rarely heard in England. This convenient term has thus become in England a reproach, inasmuch as a certain stigma, somehow, attaches to it in the British mind. But for all that, like charity, it covers a multitude of sins, sins of keen prejudice, no less than of crass ignorance. Many of the so-called Americanisms are really survivals of Elizabethan English and boast a Shake- spearean pedigree, although they are no longer heard in the country of that consummate master of our speech.* Somehow, they seem to have drifted out of the main current of British English. Perhaps they have been caught up by an eddy and carried into one of the provinces where they are still preserved, as they are in America, fresh and vigorous. A mo- ment's reflection will show that we Americans come rightly by our Elizabethan English. For surely New England, Maryland and Virginia were settled by those who spoke the tongue of Shakespeare, even though they did not all hold the faith and morals of Milton. Many of these settlers both Puritan and Cavalier were college-bred men, graduates of Ox- ford and Cambridge. Therefore they inherited the best traditions of the English speech and transmitted *See Vulgarisms With A Pedigree. 94 Xue0tion$ at 300ite it uncorrupted to their children. Nor were their chil- dren wilful traducers and corruptors of the King's English, but contrariwise they conserved it and safe- guarded its purity quite as sedulously as the in- habitants of the mother country. Thus the English speech was handed down, undefiled, from one genera- tion to another, in America. Hence some words and phrases of good Elizabethan usage have been pre- served in America, which long ago became obsolete and dropped out of the living speech in England, where the growth of the language was, of course, not arrested by the rude shock incident to its being trans- planted in a foreign country. Let us now point out a few examples of reputed Americanisms, social pariahs which have lost caste and no longer move in polite circles in England. An interesting example is found in the word "fall" used in the sense of autumn. Both these terms are in favor in America, although the pedants, following the lead of British critics, proscribe the use of "fall." We are told it is not employed in standard English, and hence must be censured as provincial. Yet "fall," which enjoys a certain poetic association with the fall of the leaf, can offer in its support the high authority of Dryden, who employed it in his translation of Juvenal's satires: What crowds of patients the town doctor kills, Or how last fall he raised the weekly bills. In his "Northern Farmer," Tennyson used the offending word, but of course under the cloak of a in 2Dur <2ngH0f) peecf) 95 provincialism. Still Freeman did not deign to em- ploy it. Commenting on it, he remarks : "If fall as a season of the year has gone out of use in Britain, it has gone out very lately. At least I remember per- fectly well the phrase of 'spring and falP in my childhood." Another good illustration of a word still surviving in American usage, but long ago discarded in Eng- land, is "sick" in the sense of ill. British usage restricts the meaning to nausea, employing ill to de- scribe a man suffering with a disease of whatever sort. Yet "sick" is supported by the very best liter- ary authority. The term occurs again and again in Elizabethan literature. Reference to Bartlett's con- cordance will convince even the most skeptical that the word abounds in Shakespeare, and that, too, in passages where the correct interpretation leaves no doubt that "ill" is meant. Suffice it to cite only an example or two: In "Midsummer Night's Dream" (act 1, scene 1), Shakespeare makes Helena say, "Sickness is catching" ; again in "Cymbeline" (act 5, scene 4), we read, "Yet am I better than one that's sick of the gout"; and in "Romeo and Juliet" (act 5, scene 2), we read, "Here in this city visiting the sick." Not only so. "Sick," in the American ac- ceptation, has an unbroken line of the best literary authority from Chaucer, "that well of English unde- filed," down to Doctor Johnson, whose dictionary de- fines the word in reference to a person afflicted with disease. American usage, furthermore, is supported by the King James version, in which "ill" is nowhere found, and also by the Anglican Church ritual. It is 96 iue0tion0 at needless to multiply citations. If Americans sin in the improper use of "sick," it may be urged in ex- tenuation that they can at least plead a long array of illustrious and unimpeachable authority and are in good company. The use of "well" as an interjection is mentioned by Bartlett in his dictionary as one of "the most marked peculiarities of American speech." More- over, he adds, "Englishmen have told me that they could always detect an American by the use of this word." If this is an infallible hall-mark of Amer- ican speech, then American English is nearer the tongue of Shakespeare than British English of the present day. For the word "well" in the sense of an interjection occurs again and again in Shake- speare. In "Hamlet" (act 1, scene 1), Bernardo asks, "Have you had a quiet guard ?" Francisco re- plies, "Not a mouse stirring." Whereupon Ber- nardo adds, "Well, good-night." Again in "Mid- summer Night's Dream" (act 3, scene 1) : Bottom. And then indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner. Quince. Well, it shall be so. In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Captain" (act 3, scene 3), we find an excellent example in the line, "Well, I shall live to see your husbands beat you." "No one, of course, would think of charging Tenny- son with using unidiomatic English. Yet, in "Locks- ley Hall," you read: "Well >t is well that I should bluster." in 2Dut Cttglfeft peecfi 97 Surely it is superfluous to cite further examples from English authors showing that American usage in the case of "well" as an interjection is perfectly good English, even if the locution is censured by British pedantry and never heard on British lips. The trite and hard-worked "guess," as characteris- tic of American speech as the much-abused "fancy" is of British speech, furnishes another conspicuous example of a reputable word in Elizabethan English which has become obsolete in England, but is still preserved on this side of the Atlantic. There is no doubt that our constant employment of this good old Saxon word to do service on every occasion and to express every shade of thought from mild conjecture to positive assertion is somewhat inelegant; and this circumstance has perhaps contributed to bring the overtaxed phrase into disrepute with our kin across the sea. Yet there is abundant warrant in Eliza- bethan usage for the familiar notation we give "guess" in our every-day speech, although it is gen- erally confined to its strict meaning of conjecture in that period of the language. We find it used in the familiar sense of "think" in several passages in Shakespeare, notably in "I. Henry VI." (act 2, scene 1) : Not altogether ; better far, I guess, That we do make our entrance several ways. Likewise, in "Measure for Measure" (act 4, scene 4): OP THE [\ UNIVERSITY OF ^1. 1 FOR! 98 Hie0tion0 at Itestie Angela. And why meet him at the gates and re- deliver our authorities there ? Escalus. I guess not. So, again, in the "Winter's Tale" (act 4, scene 3) : Camilla. Which, I do guess, you do not purpose to him. But this meaning of "guess" is common through- out the entire history of English literature, for the word has always borne the sense of think, cheek by jowl with its specific meaning of conjecture. It is so employed by Chaucer and Gower in early times and in the last century by Sheridan and Wordsworth, certainly good literary authority enough. How- ever, this meaning of the term appears to have died out in the present-day British speech, and the word is there employed strictly in the sense of conjecture, its lost sense being supplied by "fancy." Now, as between the Briton's "fancy" and the American's "guess," there may not be much choice. But cer- tainly the employment of "guess" which our British cousins claim to be a shibboleth of American na- tionality does not indicate any misuse of our mother tongue, as they contend. Only one more case shall be adduced in illustra- tion, to wit, our word "baggage," which the other half of the Anglo-Saxon race has discarded for "lug- gage." Here again, as elsewhere in the exercise of our prerogative, we have demonstrated our inde- pendence of the mother country in the matter of our speech and have chosen one term while the English people have adopted another, to designate the same thing. Both words have a good literary pedigree ex- in Diit (English @peecf) 99 tending several centuries back. Shakespearean usage seems about equally divided, perhaps, with the odds in favor of "baggage." The Shakespearean coinage "bag and baggage and scrip and scrippage," which falls from the lips of Touchstone in "As You Like It," and which enjoys the familiarity of a household word, ought to have given "baggage" a wider currency, especially in the author's own coun- try. But language, like the heathen Chinee, has ways that are dark, if not tricks that are vain, and does not develop according to logic or our a priori conceptions. Between the Briticism "luggage" and the Americanism "baggage" it appears, therefore, to be a drawn battle. So the British have nothing to reproach us with on this score, since convention has adopted "baggage" on one side of the Atlantic and "luggage" on the other. So much for this interesting class of Americanisms which repose on standard Elizabethan usage, but are social outcasts in the land of their birth. There is another class of Americanisms which are not bol- stered up by a long literary pedigree, inasmuch as they originated on American soil and were not im- ported from the Old World. As compared with the class just considered, these latter are mere parvenus, without any illustrious ancestral history to commend them. This class of Americanisms is composed of phrases which have found their way into our speech from various foreign sources. They have been intro- duced into our tongue from our contact with diverse peoples from remote parts of the globe. They consti- tute a small residuum of terms and phrases, the pres- ioo ilutons at ence of which in our vocabulary attests the fact of our relations with different nations of the earth. For instance, in the early history of our country, we had to do with the Indians, and so borrowed from them certain terms especially pertaining to natural ob- jects. We also had relations with the French, and consequently borrowed from them sundry phrases employed in official parlance, such as "bureau of in- formation," for which British usage prefers "office" ; "exposition" for the British "exhibition," and the like. Let these few examples represent the class. It is apparent here that we have made a slight departure from British usage. But it does not follow that our speech, for this reason, is less pure or less idiomatic. Both American usage and British usage show that the respective nations have decided to employ Ko- mance importations in official language, but they have adopted different terms for the same object. This proves, in the first place, the independence of the two great English-speaking nations even in the matter of language, and, in the second place, the wide-reaching influence of French as the recognized official and diplomatic language during the eigh- teenth and early nineteenth centuries. In addition to these two distinct classes of Amer- icanisms there is a third class composed of phrases and expressions which have not yet attained to the dignity of universal currency throughout the entire country. These are rather provincialisms which are peculiar to certain localities. This class, therefore, does not command the importance which the first two classes already considered do. In a heterogeneous fit Pur OEnglte!) >peecj) 101 population like ours, made up of people from every nationality under heaven, it is quite natural that in certain localities there should exist some eccentrici- ties of speech, some departures from the received standard in a word, some provincialisms. It need hardly be recalled that parts of our vast country were settled by other nations than the English, as, for in- stance, New York by the Dutch and Louisiana by the French, to mention two specific cases bearing on the point in question. The people of these respective states, when they were incorporated into the union, of course, did not immediately forsake their native modes of speech and inherited vocabulary for pure, unadulterated Saxon. When the vast southwest ter- ritory was made a part of the United States, the peo- ple in that quarter of the land spoke a lingo which had a decided foreign complexion. What more nat- ural, then, than that in the speech of that portion of our land there should exist traces of this old foreign element? Assuredly it would have been the height of artificiality and an unprecedented proceeding for the French element of New Orleans, when they be- came citizens of the United States, to have renounced their native French names for such natural objects as "bayou," "levee" and the like, in order to adopt pure Saxon terms. Likewise, it was not to be expected that the Spanish settlers in the western section of our country, specifically California, should abandon such native terms as "canon" and "ranch" and so on, for the corresponding names of genuine English origin. Thus it happens that there is a pronounced foreign flavor, or at least a slight tang, in. the eccen- Xue0tiotts at tricities of speech heard in certain localities of the United States. But these are mere provincialisms and do not impair the quailty of our standard speech, which is English to the very core. However, it was inevitable that the English lan- guage in America should have received an influx of foreign words on American soil. But our speech possesses a marvelous capacity for assimilating non- Saxon elements from whatever source. Hence the various foreign elements, such as Indian, Dutch, French and Spanish, to mention only the chief im- portations, have all been absorbed without any appre- ciable alteration in the constitution of our English speech, and only traces here and there are seen of non-Saxon elements surviving in a word or an idiom as an enduring monument to the influence of other tongues upon our own on American soil. Some of these foreign loans, it is true, are confined to certain localities, and consequently are to be viewed in the light of solecisms, or at best provincialisms. They circulate freely in a limited area, but are not recog- nized as legal tender throughout the length and breadth of the country. Such expressions are con- fined chiefly to the western portion of the United States and very rarely find their way east. It is questionable whether they are entitled to be termed Americanisms except in the most liberal interpreta- tion of that phase, because they are not everywhere current and are not readily intelligible, not "under- etanded of the people." It seems appropriate at this juncture to say a word concerning dialects in America. The assertion is in fl>ur (Ettglfef) ^peecf) 103 sometimes made that there are no dialects in Amer- ica, that the railroad and printing press, the two potent and indispensable agencies in our modern civ- ilization, have leveled out all eccentricities and pe- culiarities of speech and reduced our language to a uniform standard throughout our entire country. This statement is, in the main, true. Yet it requires only a little reflection to see that the assertion is not absolutely accurate and in accord with the facts. Certainly a brief residence in the several principal sections of the United States would bring convincing refutation. There is the western dialect, as implied in the comments in the preceding paragraph. There is also the Yankee dialect of New England, the salient features of which Lowell described very fully in his famous "Biglow Papers." There is no less truly the southern dialect with its definite peculiari- ties of idiom and utterance. These dialects are quite sharply defined by their respective characteristics of colloquial speech. Each dialect has its own phrases and locutions familiar enough within its own geo- graphical divisions, but not readily understood, per- haps unknown, elsewhere. For instance, the native southerner "reckons" and "don't guess," whereas the Yankee a to the manner born" does not "reckon," but "guesses" a tort et a {ravers. As for the western dialect, it is said that three elements enter into its constitution, viz., the mining, the gambling and the cowboy element, a rich vein of billingsgate running through each. An effort has been made by our writ- ers of fiction to register and record the salient feat- ures of these respective dialects incidentally in their 104 Xue0tiott$ at stories, but the shades and gradations of speech are not easy to reflect and preserve on the printed page with the corresponding local color. Hence the work has been but partially done, and nowhere with com- plete success. We Americans are far less trammeled by dialectal inconveniences and perplexities, however, than are the English people. For in Great Britain there is much less uniformity of speech than with us, and the difference between the language of a Scotchman and that of a Devonshire man is almost infinitely greater than the difference between any two American dia- lects. But the dissimilarity of the British dialects is historic and dates back from time immemorial. The story of Caxton, the first English printer, is well known, how the good merchant from a southern shire, when he inquired for eggs of a good wife in a northern shire, could not make himself understood, his southern dialect being mistaken for French. To be sure, the dialectal differences are not so great to-day as they were in those remote times, largely as the result of the printing-press Caxton set up in West- minster. But even yet the differences between the dialects of the extreme parts of the British Isles is so pronounced as to be a barrier to complete interchange of thought. It appears from the foregoing that the indictment of corrupting the English language which certain British critics have brought in against the American people is not a true bill, since no count has been es- tablished. Our British critics seem loath to ac- knowledge any American rights in our common Ian- in flDut OEttglisf) ^peecft 105 guage. Americans have as much right to enrich the English vocabulary with useful words as the English people themselves. We also have as just a claim as they to revive and preserve an obsolescent phrase or idiom. Because a given English word is no longer in use and esteem in England, but is recognized as standard usage in the United States, it does not fol- low that it is not good English. The number of those using the English language in America far exceeds the population of England, and the English speech is just as vigorous and virile in America as it is in the parent country. Indeed, it has given indubitable proof of its vitality and vigor on American lips by adapting itself to the infinite variety of new condi- tions in this new country and by the added flexibility, strength and richness as exhibited in its augmented vocabulary. English now is the language of the American people as well as of the English people. It is, therefore, no longer proper or scientific to speak of the queen's or of the king's English. Such a phrase is really an anachronism in the twentieth century, when the English-speaking subjects of King Edward are numerically inferior to those not owning alle- giance to Britain's sovereign, who speak the same tongue. Moreover, it is manifestly not in keeping with the eternal fitness of things, as well as unscien- tific, for our British kith and kin to stigmatize an idiom or a phrase in good American usage as a pro- vincialism simply because it is not current in Great Britain. The Britons have no more right to attempt to prescribe and limit the growth of the English tongue than we have. Nor do they enjoy an ex- 106 tiie0tion0 at elusive prerogative of determining whether a given expression, be it a new coinage or a survival from a former period, shall live and flourish or decline and perish in the English tongue. ~No sovereign, no na- tion can determine this, either by decree or by stat- ute. The most that the British can say in deroga- tion of an alleged Americanism is that it is current only in America and is not authorized by British usage. But this does not make it un-English, if it bears the American sign manual. It is perfectly absurd for the British critics to condemn Americanisms offhand and to attempt to read them out of the language, simply because they are not in accord with British usage. In so doing they give proof of their insularity and fail to exhibit a spirit of liberality and sweet reasonableness. In- deed, they seem disposed, at all events, to take them- selves too seriously as guardians of the English lan- guage. It is well enough for a critic to throw his influence on the side of the preservation of the purity and propriety of speech. But it is sheer folly to allow one's pedantry to go to such a length as Mal- herbe, that "tyrant of words and syllables," who on his death-bed angrily rebuked his nurse for the solecisms of her language, exclaiming in extenuation of his act, "Sir, I will defend to my very last gasp the purity of the French language." It is related of him that he was so fatal a precisian in the choice of words that he spent three years in composing an ode on the death of a friend's wife, ind when at last the ode was completed, his friend had married again, and the purist had only his labor for his pains, in 2Dut 8 iue0tion0 at issue WHAT IS SLANG? To the purist slang is an unmitigated evil which makes for the gradual corruption and decadence of our vernacular. The pedant who is a martinet re- gards all slang with absolute contempt and abhors its use, because he believes slang spells deterioration for our noble tongue. Such an one takes his self- appointed guardianship of the language very seri- iously and deems it his bounden duty as a curator of our English speech, not only himself to spurn the use of slang, but also to inveigh against all those who employ it habitually or occasionally. The baneful influence of slang, he tells us, is sweeping like a mighty tidal wave over the English language, debas- ing it and corrupting its very sources. Nor is the precisionist alone in entertaining this alarming view. For many others who are not stick- lers for strict propriety and correctness of speech share, to some extent, the same opinion, although they feel no special concern as to the final outcome. How- ever, it is reassuring to reflect that the best-informed among us and those whose thorough knowledge en- titles them to speak with authority do not take so gloomy and pessimistic a view of the future of the English language. They inform us that the fears of in flDut OBngIf06 Speech 109 the pedants and pedagogues the half-educated are never destined to be realized. "Strictly speaking/ 7 says Professor Lounsbury, than whom there is no higher authority in America on the history of English, "there is no such thing as a language becoming corrupt. It is an instrument which will be just what those who use it choose to make it. The words that constitute it have no real significance of their own. It is the meaning men put into them that gives them all the efficacy they pos- sess. Language does nothing more than reflect the character and the characteristics of those who speak it. It mirrors their thoughts and feelings, their pas- sions and prejudices, their hopes and aspirations, their aims, whether high or low. In the mouth of the bombastic it will be inflated ; in the mouth of the illiterate it will be full of vulgarisms ; in the mouth of the precise it will be formal and pedantic. The history of language is the history of corruptions using that term in the sense in which it is constantly employed by those who are stigmatizing by it the new words and phrases and constructions to which they take exception. Every one of us is to-day employing expressions which either outrage the rules of strict grammar, or disregard the principles of analogy, or belong by their origin to what we now deem the worst sort of vulgarisms. These so-called corruptions are found everywhere in the vocabulary, and in nearly all the parts of speech." Yet the feeling of the pedants and purists reflects the traditional attitude of professional men of let- ters in respect to the so-called corruptions that have no Xue0ttott0 at 300ue been creeping into English during the last few cen- turies. It may be worth while to give some of the utterances of our representative English authors on this subject, showing how great solicitude they felt for the purity of our language in consequence of the increasing slang introduced into English. But before doing this, let us make a brief digression, in order to discuss what is meant by slang, which appears to be the source of the alleged corruptions of our speech. In the first place one must differentiate slang from cant. It is evident, on a careful analysis, that much of the reputed slang now current is really cant, not slang, in the proper sense of the term. Both cant and slang are closely allied and have a kindred ori- gin. This is the reason for the confusion of the two in the popular mind. Cant is the language of a certain class or sect of people. It is the phraseology, the dialect, so to say, of a certain craft or profession and is not readily understood save by the members of the craft con- cerned. It may be perfectly correct according to the rules of grammar, but it is not perfectly intelligible and is not understood by the people. It is an esoteric language which only the initiated fully comprehend and are familiar with. Eor example, the jargon of thieves is called cant, as is also the jargon of pro- fessional gamblers. Slang, on the other hand, be- longs to no particular class. It is a collection of words and phrases, borrowed from whatever source, which everybody is acquainted with and readily un- derstands. It is not uncouth gibberish intelligible in Dut ng!i0f) peedj m only to a few. It is composed of colloquialisms everywhere current, but homely and not refined enough to be admitted into polite speech. Such ex- pressions may be allowed a place in certain depart- ments of literature, as familiar and humorous writ- ing, but they are objectionable in grave and serious composition and speech. Now, slang is reputed to have had its origin in cant, specifically "thieves' Latin," as the cant of this vagabond class is called. Indeed, this appears to have been the only meaning of slang till probably the second quarter of the last century. In "Red Gaunt- let," published in 1824, Scott refers to certain cant words and "thieves 7 Latin called slang"; and the great romancer seems to have been fully aware that he was using a rather unknown term which required a gloss. Sometime during the middle of the last cen- tury, so Professor Brander Matthews informs us, slang lost this narrow limitation and came to signify a word or phrase used with a meaning not recog- nized in polite letters, either because it had just been, invented or because it had passed out of memory. If it is true that slang had its beginning in the argot of thieves, it soon lost all association with its vulgar source, and polite slang to-day bears hardly a remote suggestion of the lingo of this disreputable class. In so short a period but little more than a half cen- tury has the word, as well as the thing it signifies, separated itself from its unsavory early association and worked its way up into good spciety. Of slang, however, there are several kinds. There is a slang attached to certain different professions at and classes of society, such as college slang, political slang and racing slang. But it must be borne in mind that this differentiation has reference to the origin of the slang in the cant of these respective professions. It is of the nature of slang to circulate more or less freely among all classes of society. Yet there are several kinds of slang corresponding to the several classes of society, such as vulgar and polite, to mention only two general classes. Now, it is true of all slang, as a rule, that it is the result of an effort to express an idea in a more vigorous, piquant and terse manner than standard usage ordinarily admits. In proof of this it will suffice to cite awfully for very, employed by every school-girl as "awfully cute" ; peach or daisy for something or some one es- pecially attractive or admirable, as "she's a peach"; a walk-over for any easy victory, a dead cinch for a surety, and the like. But it is not necessary to mul- tiply examples of a mode of expression which is per- fectly familiar to all. Every man's vocabulary con- tains slang terms and phrases, some more than oth- ers. Often the slang consists of words in good social standing which are arbitrarily misapplied. For al- though much current slang is of vulgar origin and bears upon its face the bend sinister of its vulgarity, still some of it is of good birth and is held in repute by writers and speakers even who are punctilious as to their English. Some slang expressions are of the nature of metaphors, and are highly figurative. Such are to kick the bucket, to pass in your checks, to hold up, to pull the wool over your eyes, to talk through your hat, to fire out, to go lack on f to make in 2Dut OBnglis]) %peec|) 113 yourself solid with, to have a jag on, to be loaded, to freeze on to, to freeze out, to bark up the wrong tree, don't monkey with the buzz-saw, and in the soup. But of the different kinds of slang and of its vivid and picturesque character more anon. Let us now, after this digression as to what consti- tutes slang, return to the former question of the his- torical aspect of slang, which was engaging our con- sideration. Though the name is modern, slang itself is, in reality, of venerable age, and was recognized in the plebeian speech of Petronius, the Beau Brum- mel of Nero's time, whose "Trimalchio's Dinner" is replete with the choicest slang of the Eoman "smart set." The humorous pages of Francois Rabelais, also, have a copious sprinkling of slang expressions and invite comparison with the productions of some of our own American humorists, who depend not a little upon the vigorous western slang to enhance the effectiveness of their humor. But it is more to the point to cite historical instances among our English authors, especially those who set themselves the bur- densome, yet thankless, task of striving to preserve the primitive purity of our speech. The greatest representative of this number in Eng- lish lierature, excepting Addison, is Swift, the famous dean of St. Patrick's. He was impelled by a desire amounting almost to a passion, it is said, to hand down the English language to his successors with its vaunted purity and beauty absolutely unim- paired. In an essay in The Tattler of September 28, IT 10, he gives vehement utterance to his feelings on the shocking carelessness and woeful lack of taste H4 4Ctue$tfottg at in the use of the vernacular exhibited by his con- temporaries. He affirms that the conscienceless, un- refined writers of his day were utterly indifferent as to the effect of their deplorable practice upon the future of the English tongue and brought forward, in proof of his contention, numerous examples of solecisms which he alleged were constantly employed, to the corruption and deterioration of the language. Swift made a threefold division of the barbarous neologisms which were introduced in his day. It is interesting to observe his several classes of these locu- tions that were contrary to all rules of propriety. The first class was made up of abbreviations in which only the first syllable or part of the word had to do duty for the entire word, as phiz for physiognomy, hyp for hypochondria, mob for mobile vulgus, poz for positive, rep for reputation, incog for incognito and plenipo for plenipotentiary. The second class included polysyllables, such as speculations, bat- talions, ambassadors, palisadoes, operations, com- munications, preliminaries, circumvallations and other ungraceful, mouth-filling words, which Swift alleged were introduced into the language as a re- sult of the war of the Spanish succession then in progress. His third class embraced those terms which were, to quote his own words, "invented by certain pretty fellows, such as banter, bamboozle, country put and kidney/' "I have done my utmost/' he pa- thetically remarks, "for some years past to stop the progress of mob and banter, but have been plainly borne down by numbers and betrayed by those who promised to assist me," in fl)ur Cnglisi) @peec& 115 Two years later Swift addressed a public letter to the Earl of Oxford, the Lord High Treasurer, depre- cating the approaching decadence of the English tongue and earnestly urging some sort of concerted action for correcting and improving the vernacular. The language, the letter recited, was very imperfect and daily deteriorating. The period of its greatest purity, Swift went on to say, was that from the be- ginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign to the breaking out of the evil war of 1642. His perturbed mind was filled with mingled feelings of grief and indigna- tion as he pointed out in this letter the growing cor- ruptions then so apparent even in the writings of the best authors, and more especially as he was com- pelled to admit that not only the fanatics of the com- monwealth, but also the court itself, had contributed to bring about the sad condition of the language. It is not worth while to speak in detail of Swift's fanciful and quixotic scheme for purging the lan- guage and keeping it pure. But it is interesting to ob- serve, in passing, that his urgent appeal to the prime minister to become the guardian and curator of the English tongue was utterly fruitless and, what is more, that his direful predictions as to the speedy decay of English have never been verified. Further- more, some of those very neologisms which Swift criticized so unrelentingly are now recognized in po- lite speech and bear the stamp of approval as the jus et norma loquendi. Of his second class of bar- barisms well-nigh all are to-day accepted as standard English and are without a trace of slang. With his first and third classes, however, fate has not dealt so at kindly, for these words are still under condemnation, save mob, which has forced its way to recognition in good usage as a necessary term. Toward the end of the eighteenth century ap- peared another champion of the preservation of the purity and propriety of the English speech. This was James Beattie, a learned Scotchman. For some reason or other, the Scotch seemed extremely solici- tous about the English language during the eigh- teenth century a solicitude that was not appreciated by the British lexicographers and least of all by Dr. Johnson. In a letter written in 1790, Beattie took occasion to speak of the "new-fangled phrases and barbarous idioms that are now so much affected by those who form their style from political pamphlets and those pretended speeches in Parliament that ap- pear in the newspapers." "Should this jargon con- tinue to gain ground among us," he assures his cor- respondent, in a doleful mood, "English literature will go to ruin. During the last twenty years, espe- cially since the breaking out of the American war, it has made alarming progress. ... If I live to execute what I purpose on the writings and genius of Addison, I shall at least enter my protest against the practise ; and by exhibiting a copious specimen of the new phraseology, endeavor to make my reader set his heart against it." In order to emphasize the damage resulting to the language from the neologisms which were creep- ing in, Beattie conceived the clever plan of privately printing a series of "Dialogues of the Dead," which purported to be the production of his son deceased in >itr Cnglfeft peetft 117 a few years before. The most interesting of these "Dialogues" is the report of an imaginary conversa- tion between Dean Swift, a bookseller and Mercury, in which the worthy dean expresses himself as greatly shocked and disgusted at the outlandish English used by the bookseller; and he calls on Mercury to trans- late the patois into good English. In response to Swift's earnest request, Mercury says among other things : "Instead of life, new, wish for, take, plunge, etc., you must say existence, novel, desiderate, cap- ture, ingurgitate, etc., as a fever put an end to his existence. . . . Instead of a new fashion, you will do well to say a novel fashion. . . . You must on no account speak of taking the enemy's ships, towns, guns or baggage: it must be capturing." Other words which were censured as improper by this phan- tom critic were unfriendly and hostile for which inimical was recommended; sort and kind, in place of each of which description was to be used. Some of the locutions then in vogue which especially of- fended good taste, according to Beattie, were to make up ones mind-, to scout the idea, to go to prove, line of conduct, in contemplation, and for the future. Furthermore, the frequent use of feel, which threat- ened to supplant the verb to ~be in such an idiom as "I am sick" and drive it from its rightful domain, aroused the learned Scotch purist's apprehension as to the final outcome, as did also the growing tendency to employ truism for truth, committal for commit- ment, pugilist for boxer, approval for approbation and agriculturist for husbandman. No doubt Beattie believed with Swift that the in- us Hue0tion0 at flux of such pedantic Latinisms as desiderate and ingurgitate and the like would result in impairing the purity of our speech and perhaps hasten its de- clension. ISTor did he look with favor on the growing fashion to use monosyllables, though of pure Saxon origin, so much affected by some writers during that period. Both of these tendencies were of temporary vogue ; yet they served to arouse the fears of the ultra- conservatives as to the fate of the English language. One might suppose that, dreading the then threaten- ing invasion of Latin terms as they clearly did, they would have hailed with delight the revival of Saxon monosyllables as a favorable offset. But even this did not allay their fears and was rather interpreted as a harmful symptom. Time, however, has demon- strated fully that the fears of those purists were un- warranted and that their dire predictions as to the future of English were founded on a very imperfect knowledge of linguistic development. A cursory ex- amination of Beattie's lists reveals the fact that of the verbal innovations and offending phrases which he put under the ban, the genius of the language has adopted not a few, and that, too, without impairing in the least the purity of the English tongue or its capacity for expressing the finest shades of thought. So far from losing, the language has gained in its capacity for expressing nice distinctions of thought and feeling, as a result of its marvelous absorptive power. It has thus been shown that in the eighteenth cen- tury there were not wanting those purists or what not who entertained and expressed no little concern in ffl)ut CnglteJ) @>peecft 119 as to the ultimate effect upon our speech of the multi- tude of neologisms and asserted improprieties that were introduced. Did space permit, utterances of a similar character by nineteenth-century writers, from Walter Savage Landon down to critics of far less renown, might be brought forward as evidence to show that the watch-dogs of our speech were as nu- merous and as alert as ever. E"or is their tribe yet extinct. Ever and anon, even in the last few years, some prophet of evil is heard to raise his voice in vig- orous protest against the increasing use of slang as foreboding the decadence of our vernacular. But the warning is not heeded; and the English language, like the real living thing that it is, goes on develop- ing according to the subtle principles of speech devel- opment. The laws governing speech development are very imperfectly known. Consequently none can foretell how a given tongue may develop. The language ap- pears to be independent of one's individual habit of speech ; yet it is the sum total of the individual habits of speech that constitutes the language. No man makes a language; no man can make it. "Not even the greatest monarch on earth can, by decree or fiat, predetermine the course of development of the lan- guage of his subjects. Language is an involuntary product and does not result from any determined con- cert of action. Yet it is modified and changed by various influences. As long as it is alive and spoken, it is constantly changing and will not remain "fixed 7 ' according to the whimsical desire of the purist. When it ceases to be used upon the lips of the people as a 120 IXuestions at medium of communication of their thoughts and feel- ings, then it will cease to change and grow and will become "fixed." But when a language is no longer spoken, it is characterized as dead. It is in this sense that we call Latin and Greek dead languages, al- though they survive in modern Italian and modern Greek, respectively. It follows, therefore, that it is the height of folly for any one, no matter how highly esteemed as an author, to attempt the role of reformer of the speech. Such an one is destined to have only his labor for his pains. He can not directly purge the language of its neologisms and improprieties of usage. These violations of standard usage which offend good taste, strange as it may seem, furnish indubitable evidence of the vitality of the speech; for from these contra- band expressions come the new terms and idioms which are to take the place of the obsolete words which drop out of the vocabulary. Viewed in this light, slang assumes a different as- pect, and it becomes evident that it performs a cer- tain necessary function in the development of lan- guage. It is no longer proper, therefore, to refer to slang with supreme contempt and to condemn it off- hand as an unmitigated evil which ought to be forth- with extirpated from the language. For, as an emi- nent authority has observed, slang is the recruiting ground of language and is, in reality, idiom in the making. It has been pointed out how some of the slang expressions of the eighteenth century which fell under the censure of Swift and Beattie are now found upon the pages of our best authors and are in flDttr dEnglfefe %>peecfc 121 heard upon the lips of our most polished and elegant speakers. Since this is true, no verbal critic can at the present time affirm of a polite slang expression now in vogue that it is destined never to work its way up into good usage, or of a foreign locution that it will never be domiciled in our speech. NOT can he determine, in the case of a new coinage which is a candidate for adoption into the literary language, just when it is taken over from that doubtful border- land between slang and standard usage. Seeing, then, that slang really has a function to perform in the growth of speech and, therefore, that it is worthy of serious consideration, let us examine some of our modern English slang and study for a short while its origin and history. Professor Brander Matthews, in an admirable pa- per on the subject, divides slang into four classes, and we can hardly do better than to follow his gen- eral classification. The first class embraces those vulgar cant expressions which are the survivals of thieves' Latin or St. Giles' Greek, and those uncouth, inelegant terms which constitute the vernacular of the lower orders of society. This is the kind of slang heard in the police courts, the kind the newspaper reporter too frequently resorts to, in order to give spice to his account. It has been introduced into lit- erature by some of our recent novelists, notably Dick- ens. The second class of slang is not quite so coarse, and includes those ephemeral phrases and catchwords which have a fleeting popularity and which, because they meet no real need, are soon forgotten utterly. They live but a day and pass away, leaving behind 122 tue0tiong at no trace of their existence. Of this class are cam- paign slogans and such inane expressions as where did you get that hat? cliestnut, rot, I should smile and many others equally stupid. It is these two classes of slang that have brought the term into dis- repute and merited contempt. For this sort of slang is very offensive to delicate ears and justly deserves the speedy oblivion which overtakes it. The other two classes of slang, on the contrary, are of a finer type and have a reason for their being, something to commend them to popular favor. It may well be that from this type new idioms and phrases are recruited into our literary language. However, a certain stigma attaches to this better va- riety of slang, also, in the judgment of many, simply because it is slang. Yet it is heard on the lips of educated and cultured speakers, much to the disgust of those who are fastidious as to the propriety of usage. When it is employed in the written speech, the more careful writers brand it with inverted com- mas, the barbarian earmarks which attest its social inferiority. Occasionally a bold writer like Mr. Howells breaks down these barriers which convention has set up and gives a polite slang expression the stamp of his approval and authority. In this way these social outcasts, the pariahs of our literary speech, are now and then elevated to the dignity and rank of good society, and finally establish themselves in standard English. Of these two classes of slang serving some useful end as feeders to the vocabulary and idiom of our language by which its wasting energy is to be re- in Ditt 4Englt0f) >peecft 123 paired, the first embraces those archaic phrases and terms which are revived after long disuse and again brought into service. Restored after several genera- tions of neglect, they now appear to be entirely new coinages and are only received as other probationers. The second class is composed of absolutely new words and expressions, frequently the product of a happy invention and, generally, racy and forceful. As in- stances of the first class may be mentioned to fire, in the sense to expel forcibly or dismiss, bloody in the senes of very, deck in the sense pack of cards and similar historic Elizabethan revivals. Such locu- tions have a good literary pedigree, now and then boasting the authority of Shakespearean usage. But this is not always apparent and such long-obsolete phrases are, therefore, accounted mere parvenus. For example, in King Henry VI. we read: Whiles he thought to steal the single ten, The king was slily fingered from the deck. 3 Pr. ; v.l. and again in Shakespeare's 144th sonnet: Till my good angel fire my bad one out. The vulgar bloody, more common in England than in America, is an inheritance from the classic age of Dryden, who even uses the coarse phrase "bloody drunk" in his Prologue to "Southerners Disappoint- ment." Swift furnishes a slight variation from this in "bloody sick," occurring in his "Poisoning of Curll." The more fruitful province of polite slang tue0tion0 at issue is the second class, which is made up of the clever productions of the present age. It is from the best of these coinages, above all, that the worn-out ener- gies of our vocabulary and idiom are repaired. These raw recruits of slang are severely disciplined and tested by hard preliminary service. If in this test an individual slang expression proves useful and is seen to fill an actual need, it is admitted eventually into the fellowship of standard English. But if, on the other hand, its utility is not established, it is rele- gated to the limbo of useless inventions where oblivion soon engulfs it. Let us now review a few specimens of the best type of our modern slang. But perhaps it is safer simply to mention the alleged slang and not undertake to decide which of these expressions are slang and which standard English. For it is no easy matter to trace the line of cleavage between the legitimate technical- ity of a given craft or profession and polite slang. For instance, are corner, bull, bear and slump, so familiar in financial parlance, mere technical phrase- ology or slang ? How is one to classify such political terms as mugwump, buncombe, gerrymander, scala- wag, henchman, log-rolling, pulling the wires, ma- chine, slate and to take the stump ? If these are mere technical terms, surely boycott, cab, humbug, boom and blizzard have passed beyond the narrow bounds of technicality and are verging on that dubious bor- derland between slang and standard English. Fur- thermore, are swell, fad, crank, spook and stogy to be considered slang or good English ? Each of these terms is supported by the authority of some of our in ur OBnglfci) %ptttb 125 best writers. Swell, to cite only one example, is bolstered up by the authority of Thackeray, who in his "Adventures of Philip" writes: "They narrate to him the advent and departure of the lady in the swell carriage, the mother of the young swell with the flower in his buttonhole." Again, how is one to regard fake, splurge, sand, swagger, blooming (idiot), to go it blind, to catch on, and that vast host of similar racy and vivid phrases which, if slang, still do duty for classic English in common parlance ? A glance at some of our slang idioms shows that they are borrowed from the cant of various crafts and callings. Some are borrowed from the technical vocabulary of the stage, some are taken over from the phraseology of sporting life, while some bear the stamp of various other vocations. Take as an illus- tration fake, or, better still, greenhorn, which has forced its way to recognition in standard English. At first greenhorn was applied figuratively to a cow or deer or other horned animal when its horns are immature. In the "Towneley Mysteries" it is ap- plied to an ox, for example. Later it was extended to signify an inexperienced person, or one who, from lack of acquaintance with the ways of the world, is easily imposed upon. The former application where the term was used in allusion to an immature horned animal is a legitimate metaphor. The latter use when applied to an inexperienced person was doubt- less recognized as an extension of the metaphor and as slang. But the word filled a need in the vocabu- lary and was at length admitted into the guild of good usage. Another illustration is furnished by at mascot, a recent importation from the French. This word originated in gambler's cant and signified a talisman, a fetish, something designed to bestow good luck upon its possessor. The term, despite its unsavory association, somehow has commended itself to popular favor and now seems not to offend the most refined taste. Slump, though not so hackneyed, may serve as an example in point also. As a provincial- ism this word denotes soft swampy ground, or melt- ing snow and slush. Later by transferred meaning it came to characterize in the financial world the melt- ing away of prices, as a slump in the market a vivid picture which is more interesting as a linguistic phe- nomenon than as an actual fact. The history of slang teaches that words, like peo- ple, may be divided into two general classes, high and low, or refined and uncouth. "In language as in life," as Professor Dowden puts it, "there is, so to speak, an aristocracy and a commonalty, words with a heritage of dignity, words which have been ennobled, and a rabble of words which are excluded from positions of honor and trust." Now, some writers select only the choice and noble words to convey their ideas, leaving the coarse and vulgar words, terms without a pedigree, as it were, in the bottom of the inkhorn, for those who desire them. Other writers again have less cultured tastes and do not scruple to employ now and then plebeian words, to set forth their thoughts and feelings. One might suppose on first blush that the diction- ary ought to be a safe guide in the choice of words. A moment's reflection, however, is sufficient to con- in fl)iit (English Speed) 127 vince one that the dictionary can not be relied upon always for this desired knowledge. It is the lexicog- rapher's office to make a complete register of the vo- cabulary of the language; and so, to make his work exhaustive, he frequently records many slang words in his dictionary. Yet the practise of our diction- ary-makers, it must be admitted, varies widely in this respect, some being far more exclusive than oth- ers. Our former lexicographers, as for instance Doc- tor Johnson, exercised a stricter censorship than is the custom at present. But it is not correct always to infer, in the case of an unrecorded word of ques- tionable usage, that the author excluded it of set pur- pose. It may possibly be omitted from oversight. It seems to be the custom of our lexicographers now to make as complete a record as possible of all polite slang, but to brand it "slang." This plan is, of course, altogether distasteful to the pedants and pedagogues who make a fruitless effort to curb and check the vocabulary of a language by rejecting all words of questionable usage. Whatever is not in harmony with established usage, whatever is not au- thorized by standard speech, the pedants and half- educated utterly reject. Now, heretofore our dic- tionary-makers have not been entirely above and be- yond this narrow and circumscribed view. It was this fact that prompted Lowell, in the preface to his famous "Biglow Papers/' to express himself in these vigorous words: "There is death in the dictionary; and where language is too strictly limited by con- vention, the ground for expression to grow in is lim- Hte0tiott0 at 300 tie ited also, and we get a potted literature Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees." The truth is, it does not fall legitimately within the province of the lexicographer to settle the ques- tion whether a polite slang term of recognized fitness and utility should be deemed good English or not/ ISTo man, however competent a scholar he may be, has the right to determine the growth and develop- ment of our language. Yet such a practise means this in the last analysis. There are not a few words and idioms in English that have neither logic nor reason to commend them, but are the product of analogy, as it, its and you, instead of the strictly cor- rect hit, his and ye, to use a familiar example; and yet these analogical formations, which at first were mere slang, long ago drove our proper pronouns from the field. This change took place in the last two or three centuries, and that, too, in the very face of the vaunted authority of Shakespeare and the King James Version. No doubt the pedants and purists opposed this change as utterly illogical and contrary to the natural order of development and growth of our English speech; but they were gradually borne down. It is the vast body of those who use the lan- guage, the people, not the lexicographers and schol- ars solely or chiefly, who are the final arbiters in a matter of this kind. It is the law of speech as regis- tered in the usage of those who employ the language that decides ultimately whether a given phrase shall survive or perish; and this is done so unconsciously withal that the people are not aware that they are sealing the destiny of some particular vocable, This In 2>ut ur (English peecf) 139 from various parts of the world, and himself set them a worthy example of industry and scholarship by translating into the vernacular Pope Gregory's a Pastoral Care/' Boethius's "Consolations of Philo- sophy" and Orosius's "Chronicle." After the death of King Alfred there was a sad decline in literature. But the prowess and overlord- ship of Wessex had made the West-Saxon dialect the standard literary language of England; and it continued so till the Norman Conquest destroyed the political prestige of that kingdom and consequently deprived that dialect of its evident advantage as the official language. While the West-Saxon dialect was recognized, it is true, as the literary language, still it did not entirely supplant the Anglian and the Mer- cian, both of which continued to be spoken and, to some extent, also written. But it is a significant fact that the earlier Northumbrian poetry was translated into this southern speech and is preserved to us only in the West-Saxon version. West-Saxon lost its supremacy as the standard language when, as a result of the Conquest, Norman French was adopted by the ruling class as the culti- vated speech of the realm. Still, "the native tongue," to quote Professor Lounsbury (History of the Eng- lish Language), "continued to be spoken by the great majority of the population, but it went out of use as the language of high culture. The educated classes, whether lay or ecclesiastical, preferred to write either in Latin or French the latter steadily tending to become more and more the language of literature as well as of polite society." The result 140 Xue0tion0 at 3fe0ue was that West- Saxon, being supplanted as the liter- 'ary language by Norman French, lost prestige and was reduced ultimately to the level of its sister dia- lects, Anglian and Mercian. After the loss of West- Saxon ascendency no one dialect was again pre-emi- nent in England till the fourteenth century. For two centuries prior to that date the several provin- cial dialects were employed in their respective terri- tories; and each had an equal chance of becoming standard English. An author, therefore, was free to use his own local speech. To be sure, French was the accepted language at court and in high society; but this foreign tongue at no time enjoyed such a commanding position as to threaten the extinction of the native dialects. Indeed, the relation of the Norman French to the English dialects has given rise to so much popular misconception and error that it seems worth while, at this juncture, to indicate the true relation explicitly. When the Normans conquered England, as the phil- ologists tell us, they did not seek to impose their language upon the English people. Such a policy would have been very unwise for obvious reasons, and would have produced untold trouble and conflict between the two races. The Normans did not de- spise the English tongue. They were content to let the natives speak their several English dialects just as before the Conquest. Of course, the Normans retained their own French patois and had no expec- tation of abandoning it in favor of English, as they had once before given up their Scandinavian ver- nacular for French. Yet in consequence of the over- in 2Dut Cnglfef) Speecft 141 whelming preponderance of the English natives over their Norman invaders it was inevitable, in the event of a struggle for supremacy between the two tongues, that the French should be forced to the wall. For- tunately, no such conflict was designed by either race, and it is quite reasonable to suppose that neither peo- ple ever seriously contemplated such a possibility. It is evident, then, that the Norman Conquest did not tend to destroy the English tongue in Britain, as it was once the fashion to teach. The Norman Con- quest did, however, interrupt the normal literary tra- dition of the English speech. For at the time of the Battle of Hastings, as has been intimated, the West- Saxon dialect was easily the foremost of the English provincial dialects and seemed destined to estab- lish its claim as being the national speech. But the Conquest interrupted this natural process and drove West-Saxon from its coign of vantage, re- ducing it to the level of the rival provincial dialects. French being, of course, the language of the court and the official tongue generally, the West-Saxon dia- lect no longer offered any special inducement to in- tending authors to employ it, as had been the case ever since the days of King Alfred. Hence writers simply used their respective local dialects, there be- ing no recognized standard speech. Norman French and the several English dialects were now spoken side by side, and continued so for quite a long while. What more natural, therefore, than that each tongue should exercise some influence upon the other, however slight ? It is usually stated that French influence hastened the decay of English 142 iue0tton0 at 300110 inflections. But the English had begun to lose its inflections even before the coming of the Normans and to rely more largely upon position and preposi- tions to indicate case relations. No doubt, French influence accelerated this tendency. French influ- ence was also a factor in modifying the idiom and vocabulary of the English tongue. But each lan- guage, as Anglo-Norman students assure us, reacted upon the other mutually; and the speech of the in- vaders was influenced by the English of the natives just as much as English was influenced by French. The truth is, the influence of Norrnan French upon English was not so important in itself, as far as any immediate effect was concerned ; but it paved the way for the subsequent influence of Parisian French which swept like a mighty tidal wave over England, leaving a considerable residuum and de- posit in our speech alike in. idiom and in vocabulary. Norman influence upon our tongue was, therefore, chiefly indirect, not direct. When Anjou was sub- dued by Philip Augustus of France in 1204, Nor- mandy was forfeited by the English crown and from that day Norman French influence on English was practically at an end. But the Parisian dialect soon extended its sphere into Britain and began to exert a decided influence upon the English speech. In the fourteenth century English scholars industriously turned their attention to French literature, either adapting or closely translating many specimens. Norman French now gave place to the Parisian dia- lect which had established itself as the standard speech for all the provinces of France. English in SDut OBngH0& peec& 143 scholars who crossed the Channel, as many now did, learned the French of Paris; and when they re- turned to their native shores of Albion, they brought with them the best French of Paris. Having lost caste, the Norman dialect was no longer esteemed fashionable in polite society and consequently it fell to the lot of Parisian French to honor the heavy drafts which the English tongue made during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries upon the French language, for the enrichment and augmentation of its vocabulary. Nor, indeed, did the French impor- tations into our speech cease even then. They con- tinued, only with slightly diminished activity, dur- ing the Elizabethan and succeeding ages, down to the present time. However, during the last few cen- turies our vernacular has not borrowed so copiously from that source, although we still draw heavily on French in our art parlance. Yet despite the French invasion, English held its own as the vernacular of the people, yielding but very little ground, except in its vocabulary, to the foreign tongue. So far from retreating before the vigorous onslaught of French influence, our sturdy English speech actually advanced its position and succeeded in driving French from its former strong- hold of the court and high society. For the de- scendants of the Normans who were overwhelmingly in the minority, seeing that they were compelled by sheer force of circumstances to speak English also, gradually abandoned French as their mother-tongue and were finally content to use the language which was understood by everybody in the kingdom. Thus 144 Xue0tiott at 3J0gue the English vernacular at last triumphed over French as the language even of the governing class in England; and French fell into disuse and sur- vived as a spoken tongue only in polite society and among scholars, as an accomplishment. So much for the true relation of French to Eng- lish in the history of our speech. But to return to the question of the rise of the standard literary lan- guage in England. As has been pointed out, from 1066 to 1300 there was no recognized standard of English speech. In the existing confusion of pro- vincial dialects there was felt an urgent need for a uniform speech throughout the entire country. The perplexity resulting from the babel of unfamiliar English dialects in use at the time of the introduc- tion of printing was keenly felt by the people them- selves, but by none more than by Caxton, who set up the first printing press in England. ]STow, Caxton himself used London English, as a rule. But he ex- perienced no little embarrassment when he began to print books, because he was uncertain as to which dialect he should employ. In the prologue to his version of Vergil's Aeneid he freely confesses his inability to determine which of the varying dialects he should adopt. Commenting on the dialectal dif- ferences he complainingly remarks: "And that com- mon English that is spoken in one shire varyeth from another. Insomuch that in my days happened that certain merchants were in a ship in Thames, for to have sailed over the sea into Zeeland, and for lack of wind they tarried at the foreland and went to land for to refresh them. And one of them named Shef- fn flDtir (Englfel) >peedb 145 field, a mercer, came into an house and axed for meat and specially lie axed after eggs; and the good wife answered that she could speak no French. And the merchant was angry, for he could speak no French, but would have had eggs and she understood him not. And then at last another said that he would have eiren; then the good wife said that she understood him well. Lo, what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eiren? Certainly it is hard to please every man because of diversity and change of language." This incident related by Caxton serves to illus- trate how almost unintelligible the southern dialect had become to the inhabitants of the northern part of England in the early fifteenth century. The sev- eral dialects spoken in England had diverged so much as to result in a serious handicap on trade and a practical embargo on letters. The Northern, the Southern and the Mercian (the last now split into two minor dialects distinguished as east and west) had each risen to the dignity of a literary language. But no one of them was recognized as the triumph- ant dialect, destined to vanquish all its rivals and to establish its sway over the entire country. At this juncture circumstances, somehow, conspired to raise the East Midland dialect to the primacy, enabling it to extend itself over the whole country as the re- ceived language, the national speech. This dialect had much to commend it to favor. To begin with, this dialect occupied a somewhat central position geo- graphically and so offered a compromise to the in- habitants of the extreme northern and southern por- 146 CtumiottS at tions of England, whose dialects were so far apart. In the second place, East Midland was the dialect of London, the great commercial center the em- porium of Great Britain. It was also the dialect of the famous university towns where the flower of the English nobility was trained. Furthermore, it was the dialect of the Court and Parliament when- ever they spoke English. Finally, it was the dialect of Wycklif s version of the Bible and of Chaucer, "that well of English undefiled" whose refreshing stream of song carried joy and gladness to every part of the island. It is sometimes said that Chaucers' poetic genius moulded the literary language of England. This is a pleasant illusion, but not quite in accord with the facts. Chaucer, in conformity to the custom of the times, simply wrote in his native dialect. That dia- lect, it is true, happened to be the dialect of the chief city of the realm and of the most powerful elements in the state, the ruling class. It was a mere accident that Chaucer spoke and wrote this same dialect as his vernacular. In no sense did Chaucer create the London dialect. K"or did he make it the received literary language, the standard speech of the English people. This dictum was once accepted, but needless to add it is now discredited by schol- ars. Yet Chaucer's influence as the foremost Eng- lish author of his age was assuredly not without weight in establishing the dialect of London as the standard literary language of the kingdom. It is a significant fact that this dialect (which was the dia- lect of the Court) had attained the distinction of in fl)ur peec& 149 a rough distinction, are employed to signify objects of domestic association, homespun ideas and thoughts, while the words of Romance origin are reserved to express objects that are associated with luxury and delicate culture and to convey subtle shades of thought. When two or more words are used to sig- nify very much the same thing, the genius of the English speech tends to differentiate and to restrict the words to separate and special senses. This, of course, makes the language more flexible and more facile as a medium of expression. Just as English was enriched by contact with Erench, so it has been improved, though to a less ex- tent, by attrition and contact with its sister dialects. By elbowing its way to the front through the various dialects which jostled it, the dialect which developed into standard English naturally lost by attrition most of the grammatical peculiarities that hampered it. It was, of course, a decided advantage to the London dia- lect, in its struggle for the distinction of the standard speech, to throw off such inflections as proved a hin- drance to its complete development. Most philolo- gists used to regard the loss of superfluous inflections a symptom of decadence in a language. Now, how- ever, such a process is regarded a sign of virility and progress. "The fewer and shorter the forms, the better," affirms the eminent Danish philologist Jes- peren. "The analytical structure of modern European languages is so far from being a drawback to them that it gives them an unimpeachable superiority over the earlier stages of the same language." This high authority even goes so far as to declare that "the so- ttie0ticmg at called full and rich forms of the ancient languages are not a beauty, but a deformity.' 7 Thus in the process of its development standard English was gradually freed of many of its pristine grammatical encumbrances, to take its place in the front rank of living tongues as the best equipped for a universal language. And the end is not yet. For the work of simplifying is still in progress. The his- tory of our speech from the fifteenth century down to the present day proves nothing more conclusively than that English tends ever to become more and more simple in inflection and syntax. Witness the dwindling use of the subjunctive mood, which has been almost driven from the field of modern English syntax by the constantly encoraching indicative. An- other example in point is the transfer of the function of the absolute case from the dative, an oblique case, to the nominative. This shifting has been accom- plished since the time of Milton, who represents the transitional period. It is evident then that the ten- dency of standard English is in the direction of sim- plicity, and its future growth will, no doubt, be along the line of least resistance. Certainly its vis inertiae seems destined, unless acted upon by some violent ex- ternal force, to move in that direction. It need hardly be added that standard English, like every spoken language, has undergone change, from age to age. Some words become obsolete and drop out of the vocabulary. New words are coined to take their places, and if, after a period of probation, they prove acceptable, they are received into good usage and are recognized as standard. In this manner the in SDur (ZBnglte!) %peecft waste that necessarily occurs in living English, as in every living language, is repaired. Thus the English speech grows, adapting itself to the many and varied conditions which are exacted of it as the medium for the communication of thought for the millions of people in every quarter of the globe who use it. Here and there slight variations from the normal, slight departures from the standard, are made. But unless the locutions which constitute these departures possess extraordinary vitality and force, unless they persist with dogged tenacity and supply a real need in the language, they are doomed to perish without leaving any appreciable effect upon the standard speech. What, then, determines standard English? The reply, in a nutshell, is the usage of the best writers and speakers. Standard English is determined by the habitual manner the learned and cultured employ to express their thoughts and feelings in words. The customary mode of expression now in vogue among the most careful users of English has been inherited from the generations of writers and speakers who have employed our speech in the centuries past as their vernacular. The leading English authors from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Swift, Johnson and a host of others, down to the liv- ing writers, have each in his way contributed to make our standard literary language. Each of these, it is true, has influenced standard English in some degree. !N"o one can fail to see the impress which such an ec- centric writer as Doctor Johnson, the literary dictator of the eighteenth century, stamped upon the standard 152 Xue0tion0 at English of his age. Our speech shows no less dis- tainctly marked traces of the influence of Addison. For Addison's admirable style, with its characteristic grace, crispness and lightness of touch, even John- son himself warmly commended, although the great Cham's innate tendency to the stilted, the turgid and the ponderous prevented him from approximating in his practice what in his preaching he so ardently held up for the imitation and emulation of others. To men- tion another concrete example, in more recent times standard English has been swayed somewhat by Ma- caulay's passionate love of antithesis and of the peri- odic structure of the sentence. Attention might be called, likewise, to the influence of Gibbon's chaste and classic style (albeit a trifle heavy and wearisome at times) upon our standard literary language, or to the influence of another prominent author whose style is still more unique and distinctive Thomas Carlyle. Away back in the early history of English one may observe in the style of the West-Saxon trans- lator of Bede's "Ecclesiastical History" a trick of repetition which has made a lasting impression on our standard speech ; and it still survives in such familiar tautological phrases as a really and truly," "bright and shining," "pure and simple," "without let or hindrance," "toil and delve," "confirm and strengthen," and "lord and master." All of these locutions, as Professor Kittredge informs us, in his suggestive book, "Words and Their Ways in English Speech," are in high favor, and are recognized as standard English. Euphuism is a movement that swept over Elizabethan English in the wake of the fn ffi)ur