To the English traveller in America the language which he hears spoken
about him is at once a puzzle and a surprise. It is his own, yet not his
own. It seems to him a caricature of English, a phantom speech, ghostly
but familiar, such as he might hear in a land of dreams. He recognises
its broad lineaments; its lesser details evade, or confuse, him. He
acknowledges that the two tongues have a common basis. Their grammatical
framework is identical. The small change of language--the adverbs and
prepositions,--though sometimes strangely used in America, are not
strange to an English ear. And there the precise resemblance ends.
Accent, idiom, vocabulary give a new turn to the ancient speech. The
traveller feels as though he were confronted with an old friend, tricked
out in an odd suit of clothes, and master of a new pose and unaccustomed
gesture.
The Americans are commonly reputed to speak through their nose. A more
intimate acquaintance with their manner belies this reputation. It is
rather a drawl that afflicts the ear than a nasal twang. You notice in
every sentence a curious shifting of emphasis. America, with the true
instinct of democracy, is determined to give all parts of speech an
equal chance. The modest pronoun is not to be outdone by the blustering
substantive or the self-asserting verb. And so it is that the native
American hangs upon the little words: he does not clip and slur "the
smaller parts of speech," and what his tongue loses in colour it gains
in distinctness.
If the American continent had been colonised by Englishmen before the
invention of printing, we might have watched the growth of another
Anglo-Saxon tongue, separate and characteristic. American might have
wandered as far from English as French or Spanish has wandered from
Latin. It might have invented fresh inflections, and shaped its own
syntax. But the black art of Gutenberg had hindered the free development
of speech before John Smith set foot in Virginia, and the easy
interchange of books, newspapers, and other merchandise ensured a
certain uniformity. And so it was that the Americans, having accepted a
ready-made system of grammar, were forced to express their fancy in
an energetic and a multi-coloured vocabulary. Nor do they attempt
to belittle their debt, Rather they claim in English an exclusive
privilege. Those whose pleasure it is to call America "God's own
country" tell us with a bluff heartiness that they are the sole
inheritors of the speech which Chaucer and Shakespeare adorned. It is
their favourite boast that they have preserved the old language from
extinction. They expend a vast deal of ingenuity in the fruitless
attempt to prove that even their dialect has its roots deep down in the
soil of classical English. And when their proofs are demanded they
are indeed a sorry few. A vast edifice of mistaken pride has been
established upon the insecure basis of three words--fall, gotten, and
bully. These once were familiar English, and they are English no more.
The word "fall," "the fall of the leaf," which so beautifully echoes
the thought of spring, survives only in our provinces. It makes but
a furtive and infrequent appearance in our literature. Chaucer and
Shakespeare know it not. It is found in "The Nymph's Reply to the
Shepherd":
"A honey tongue, a heart of gall
Is fancy's Spring, but Sorrow's Fall."
Johnson cites but one illustration of its use--from Dryden:
"What crowds of patients the town-doctor kills, Or how last fall he
raised the weekly hills."
On the other side of the Atlantic it is universally heard and written.
There the word "autumn" is almost unknown; and though there is a dignity
in the Latin word ennobled by our orators and poets, there is no one
with a sense of style who will not applaud the choice of America.
But if she may take a lawful pride in "fall," America need not boast the
use of "gotten." The termination, which suggests either wilful archaism
or useless slang, adds nothing of sense or sound to the word. It is like
a piece of dead wood in a tree, and is better lopped off. Nor does the
use of "bully" prove a wholesome respect for the past. It is true that
our Elizabethans used this adjective in the sense of great or noble.
"Come," writes Ben Jonson in "The Poetaster," "I love bully Horace."
{*} But in England the word was never of universal application, and was
sternly reserved for poets, kings, and heroes. In modern America there
is nothing that may not be "bully" if it meet with approval. "A bully
place," "a bully boat," "a bully blaze,"--these show how far the word
has departed from its origin. Nor, indeed, does it come down from
English in an unbroken line. Overlooked for centuries, it was revived
(or invented) in America some fifty years ago, and it is not to Dekker
and Ben Jonson that we must look for palliation of its misuse.
* Innumerable examples might be culled from the literature
of the seventeenth century. One other will suffice here,
taken from Dekker's "Shoemaker's Holiday ": "Yet I'll
shave it off," says the shoemaker, of his beard, "and stuff
a tennis-ball with it, to please my bully king."
Words have their fates. By a caprice of fortune one is taken, another
is left. This is restricted to a narrow use; that wanders free over
the plain of meaning. And thus we may explain many of the variations
of English and of American speech. A simple word crosses the ocean and
takes new tasks upon itself. The word "parlour," for instance, is dying
in our midst, while "parlor" gains a fresh vigour from an increasing
and illegitimate employment. Originally a room in a religious house, a
parlour (or parloir) became a place of reception or entertainment. Two
centuries ago an air of elegance hung about it. It suggested spinnets
and powdered wigs. And then, as fashion turned to commonness, the
parlour grew stuffy with disuse, until it is to-day the room reserved
for a vain display, consecrated to wax-flowers and framed photographs,
hermetically sealed save when the voice of gentility bids its furtive
door be opened. The American "parlor" resembles the "parlour" of the
eighteenth century as little as the "parlour" of the Victorian age. It
is busy, public, and multifarious. It means so many things that at last
it carries no other meaning than that of a false elegance. It is in a
dentist's parlor that the American's teeth are gilded; he is shaved in
a tonsorial parlor; he travels in a parlor-car; and Miss Maudie's parlor
proves how far an ancient and respected word may wander from its origin.
One example, of many, will illustrate the accidents which beset the life
of words. No examples will prove the plain absurdity which has flattered
the vanity of some American critics that their language has faithfully
adhered to the tradition of English speech.
The vocabulary of America, like the country itself, is a strange medley.
Some words it has assimilated into itself; others it holds, as it were,
by a temporary loan. And in its choice, or invention, it follows two
divergent, even opposite, paths. On the one hand, it pursues and gathers
to itself barbarous Latinisms; on the other, it is eager in its quest
after a coarse and living slang.
That a country which makes a constant boast of its practical
intelligence should delight in long, flat, cumbrous collections of
syllables, such as "locate," "operate," "antagonize," "transportation,"
"commutation," and "proposition," is an irony of civilisation. These
words, if words they may be called, are hideous to the eye, offensive
to the ear, and inexpressive to the mind. They are the base coins of
language. They bear upon their face no decent superscription. They are
put upon the street, fresh from some smasher's den, and not even the
newspapers, contemptuous as they are of style, have reason to be proud
of them! Nor is there any clear link between them and the meaning thrust
upon them. Why should the poor holder of a season-ticket have the grim
word "commutation" hung round his neck? Why should the simple business
of going from one place to another be labelled "transportation"?
And these words are apt and lucid compared with "proposition." Now
"proposition" is America's maid-of-all-work. It means everything or
nothing. It may be masculine, feminine, neuter--he, she, it. It is tough
or firm, cold or warm, according to circumstances. But it has no more
sense than an expletive, and its popularity is a clear proof of an idle
imagination.
And while the American language is collecting those dried and shrivelled
specimens of verbiage, it does not disdain the many-coloured flowers of
lively speech. In other words, it gives as ready a welcome to the last
experiment in Slang as to its false and pompous Latinisms. Nor is the
welcome given in vain. Never before in the world's history has Slang
flourished as it has flourished in America. And its triumph is not
surprising. It is more than any artifice of speech the mark of a various
and changing people. America has a natural love of metaphor and imagery;
its pride delights in the mysteries of a technical vocabulary; it is
happiest when it can fence itself about by the privilege of an exclusive
and obscure tongue. And what is Slang but metaphor? There is no class,
no cult, no trade, no sport which will not provide some strange words or
images to the general stock of language, and America's variety has been
a quick encouragement to the growth of Slang. She levies contributions
upon every batch of immigrants. The old world has thus come to the aid
of the new. Spanish, Chinese, German, and Yiddish have all paid their
toll. The aboriginal speech of the Indians, and its debased lingo,
Chinook, have given freely of their wealth. And not only many tongues
but many employments have enhanced the picturesqueness of American
Slang. America has not lost touch with her beginnings. The spirit of
adventure is still strong within her. There is no country within
whose borders so many lives are led. The pioneer still jostles the
millionaire. The backwoods are not far distant from Wall Street.
The farmers of Ohio, the cowboys of Texas, the miners of Nevada, owe
allegiance to the same Government, and shape the same speech to their
own purpose. Every State is a separate country, and cultivates a
separate dialect. Then come baseball, poker, and the racecourse, each
with its own metaphors to swell the hoard. And the result is a language
of the street and camp, brilliant in colour, multiform in character,
which has not a rival in the history of speech.
There remains the Cant of the grafters and guns, the coves that work
upon the cross in the great cities. In England, as in France, this
strange gibberish is the oldest and richest form of Slang. Whence
it came is still a puzzle of the philologists. Harrison, in his
'Description of England' (1577), with a dogmatism which is not
justified, sets a precise date upon its invention.
In counterfeiting the Egyptian rogues [says he of the vagabonds who then
infested England], they have devised a language among themselves which
they name Canting, but others Pedlars' French, a speech compact thirty
years since of English, and a great number of odd words of their own
devising, without all order or reason: and yet such is it that none but
themselves are able to understand. The first deviser thereof was hanged
by the neck,--a just reward, no doubt, for his deserts, and a common end
to all of that profession.
The lingo, called indifferently Thieves' Latin or St Giles's Greek, was
assuredly not the invention of one brain. The work of many, it supplied
an imperious need. It was at once an expression of pride and a shield of
defence. Those who understood it proved by its use that they belonged
to a class apart; and, being unintelligible to the respectable majority,
they could communicate with one another--secretly, as they hoped, and
without fear of detection. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries the flash tongue grew and was changed; it crossed the Atlantic
with the early settlers, and it has left its marks upon the dialect of
the American underworld. But its influence upon the common Slang has
been light in America, as in England. It is as severely technical as the
language of science, and is familiar chiefly to policemen, tramps, and
informers. As Slang leaves the tavern and the street-corner, to invade
the theatre, the office, and even the drawing-room, those who aim at a
variety of speech need owe no debt to the Cant of the vagabonds, and
it is not surprising that to-day the vulgar tongue, in America as in
England, borrows more from "soldiers on the long march, seamen at the
capstan, and ladies disposing of fish," than from the common cursetors
and cony-catchers who once dominated it.
The use of Slang proves at once the wealth and poverty of a language. It
proves its wealth when it reflects a living, moving image. It proves
its poverty when it is nothing more than the vain echo of a familiar
catchword.
At its best it is an ornament of speech; at its worst it is a
labour-saving device. And it is for this reason that the vulgar American
delights in the baser kind of Slang: it seems to ensure him an easy
effect He must be picturesque at all costs. Sometimes he reaches the
goal of his ambition by a purposed extravagance. What can be more
foolish than the description which follows of a man equal to the most
difficult occasion: "He can light his cigar, when the battle is on, with
the friction of a passing cannon-ball." In yet worse taste is another
piece of fustian, invented by the same author: "When a 'twister' off
the hills gets ready to do business in a 20-knot sou'wester it sends no
messenger boys ahead to distribute its itinerary handbills." There is no
fault of style which these few lines do not display. They combine, with
a singular success, commonness and pomp. The epic poets of old were wont
to illustrate the life of man by the phenomena of nature. The vulgar
American reverses the process--he illustrates nature from the pavement.
Exaggeration, then, is one easy artifice of effect. Another is the
constant repetition of certain words and phrases which have lost their
meaning by detrition and are known to all. Not to be disappointed is
sometimes as pleasant as to be surprised. A catchword passed from one to
another is often a signal of sympathy, and many a man has been taken for
a wit merely because his tinkling brain has given back the echo which
was expected. In stereotyped phrases, in ready-made sentences, in the
small change of meaningless words, the American language is peculiarly
rich. "To cut ice," "to get next to," "straight goods," {*}--these and
similar expressions, of no obvious merit in themselves, long ago lost
their freshness, and are not likely to assume a dignity with age. But
they save trouble, they establish an understanding between him who
speaks and him who hears; and when they are thrown into a discourse they
serve the purpose of gestures, To exclaim "I should smile" or "I should
cough" is not of much help in an argument, but such interjections
as these imply an appreciation not merely of slang but of your
interlocutor.
* To the Englishman who knows them not, the following
quotations will explain their significance:--
"Tain't what ye ain't or what ye don't do that cuts ice with
me."
"Well, invested capital has got to protect itself when the
law won't do it. Ain't them straight goods?"
"Boston don't want Bishop Potter to come up here an' tell
her 't she ain't next to the latest curves in goodness.
Hully gee, no!"
Slang is better heard than read. The child of the street or the
hedgerow, it assumes in print a grave air which does not belong to it,
or, worse still, it is charged with the vice or the vagabondage which
it suggests. And so it is that Slang words have a life as closely packed
with adventure as is the life of those who use them with the quickest
understanding. To ask what becomes of last year's Slang is as rash as to
speculate on the fate of last year's literature. Many specimens die in
the gutter, where they were born, after living a precarious life in the
mouths of men. Others are gathered into dictionaries, and survive to
become the sport of philologists. For the worst of their kind special
lexicons are designed, which, like prisons and workhouses, admit only
the disreputable, as though Victor Hugo's definition--"L'argot, c'est
le verbe devenu forçat"--were amply justified. The journals, too, which
take their material where they find it, give to many specimens a life as
long as their own. It is scarcely possible, for instance, to pick up an
American newspaper that does not turn the word _cinch_ to some strange
purpose. The form and origin of the word are worthy a better fate. It
passed from Spain into the Western States, and was the name given
to saddle-girths of leather or woven horse-hair. It suggests Mexican
horsemanship and the open prairie. The explanation given in the Century
Dictionary will make clear its meaning to the untravelled: "The two
ends of the tough cordage, which constitute the cinch, terminate in long
narrow strips of leather called _latigos_, which connect the cinches
with the saddle, and are run through an iron ring, called the _larigo_
ring, and then tied by a series of complicated turns and knots, known
only to the craft." In the West the word is still used in its natural
and dignified sense. For example: "At Giles's ranch, on the divide, the
party halted to cinch up." And then in the East it has become the victim
of extravagant metaphor. As a verb, it means to hold firm, to put a
screw on; as a noun, it means a grip or screw, an advantage fair or
unfair. In the hand of the sporting reporter it can achieve wonders.
"The bettor of whom the pool-room bookmaker stands in dread"--this
flower of speech is culled from the 'New York World'--"is the race-horse
owner, who has a cinch bottled up for a particular race, and drops into
the room an hour or two before the race begins." The idea of bottling a
cinch is enough to make a Californian shudder, and this confused image
helps to explain the difference between East and West.
Thus words wander farther and farther from their origin; and when at
last their meanings are wholly forgotten or obscured, they become part
of the common speech. One kind of Slang may succeed to another, but
cinch is secure for ever of a place in the newspaper, and in the spoken
language, of America. Caboodle, also, is firmly established. The long
series of words, such as Cachunk or Kerblunk, which suggest the impact
of falling bodies with the earth, will live as expletives with Say,
Sure, and many other, interjections which fill up the pauses of thought
and speech. There are two other specimens of Slang beloved by the
journals, for which it would be rash to prophesy a long life. To call
a man or a thing or an act "the limit," is for the moment the highest
step, save one, in praise or blame. When the limit is not eloquent
enough to describe the hero who has climbed the topmost rung of glory,
the language gasps into simplicity, and declares that he is It. "I
didn't do a thing," says an eminent writer, "but push my face in there
about eight o'clock last night, and I was It from the start." Though
the pronoun is expressive enough, it does not carry with it the signs of
immortality, and the next change of fashion may sweep it away into the
limbo of forgotten words.
The journals do their best to keep alive the language of the people. The
novelists do far more, since their works outlive by months or years the
exaggeration of the press. And the novelists, though in narrative they
preserve a scrupulous respect for the literary language, take what
licence the dialect and character of their personages permit them. It
is from novels, indeed, that future generations will best be able to
construct the speech of to-day. With the greatest skill the writers of
romance mimic the style and accent of their contemporaries. They
put into the mouths of those who, in life, knew no other lingo, the
highly-flavoured Slang of the street or the market. Here, for instance,
is the talk of a saloon-keeper, taken from W. Payne's story, 'The Money
Captain,' which echoes, as nearly as printed words can echo, the voice
of the boodler:
"Stop it?" says the saloon-keeper of a journalist's attack. "What I got
to stop it with? What's the matter with you fellows anyhow? You come
chasin' yourselves down here, scared out of your wits because a dinky
little one cent newspaper's makin' faces at you. A man 'd think you was
a young lady's Bible-class and 'd seen a mouse.... Now, that's right,"
he exclaims, as another assailant appears; "make it unanimous. Let all
hands come and rig the ship on old Simp. Tell him your troubles and ask
him to help you out. He ain't got nothing better to do. Pitch into him;
give him hell; he likes it. Come one, come all--all you moth-eaten,
lousy stiffs from Stiffville. Come, tell Simp there's a reporter
rubberin' around and you're scared to death. He'll sympathise with
you--you sweet-scented skates."
It is not an elegant method of speech, but such as it is, it bears as
close a resemblance to the dialect of Chicago as can be transferred from
the ear to the eye.
If we compare the present with the past, we cannot but acknowledge that
American Slang has grown marvellously in colour and variety. The jargon
of Artemus Ward and Josh Billings possessed as little fire as character.
These two humourists obtained their effect by the simple method, lately
advocated by Messrs Roosevelt and Carnegie, of spelling as they pleased.
The modern professors of Slang have invented a new style. Their pages
sparkle with wit and allusion. They interpret their shrewd sense
in words and phrases which have never before enjoyed the freedom of
printer's ink. George Ade, the best of them all, has shown us how the
wise ones of Chicago think and speak. His 'Fables in Slang' is a little
masterpiece of humour in substance and wit in expression. To quote from
it would be to destroy its effect. But it will discover the processes of
Slang, as it is understood in the West, more clearly than any argument,
and having amused the present generation, it will remain an historical
document of enduring value.
Slang is the only language known to many thousands of citizens. The
newly arrived immigrant delights to prove his familiarity with the land
of his adoption by accepting its idioms and by speaking the American,
not of books but of the market-place. And yet this same Slang,
universally heard and understood, knocks in vain for admission into
American literature. It expatiates in journals, in novels of dialect,
and in works, like George Ade's, which are designed for its exposition.
But it has no part in the fabric of the gravely written language. Men
of letters have disdained its use with a scrupulousness worthy our own
eighteenth century. The best of them have written an English as pure as
a devout respect for tradition can make it. Though they have travelled
far in space and thought, they have anchored their craft securely in the
past. No writer that has handled prose or verse with a high seriousness
has offended against the practice of the masters--save only Walt
Whitman. The written word and the spoken word differ even more widely
in America than elsewhere. The spoken word threw off the trammels of an
uneasy restraint at the very outset. The written word still obeys the
law of gradual development, which has always controlled it. If you
contrast the English literature of to-day with the American, you will
find differences of accent and expression so slight that you may neglect
them. You will find resemblances which prove that it is not in vain that
our literatures have a common origin and have followed a common road.
The arts, in truth, are more willingly obedient than life or politics to
the established order; and America, free and democratic though she be,
loyally acknowledges the sovereignty of humane letters. American is
heard at the street corner. It is still English that is written in the
study.