to the next chapter. How much influence they exert, even [Pg147]
indirectly, is shown by the American disdain of the English precision
in the use of the indefinite pronoun. I turn to the /Saturday Evening
Post/, and in two minutes find: "/one/ feels like an atom when /he/
begins to review /his/ own life and deeds."[37] The error is very rare
in English; the Fowlers, seeking examples of it, could get them only
from the writings of a third-rate woman novelist, Scotch to boot. But
it is so common in American that it scarcely attracts notice. Neither
does the appearance of a redundant /s/ in such words as /towards/,
/downwards/, /afterwards/ and /heavenwards/. In England this /s/ is
used relatively seldom, and then it usually marks a distinction in
meaning, as it does on both sides of the ocean between /beside/ and
/besides/. "In modern standard English," says Smith,[38] "though not
in the English of the United States, a distinction which we feel, but
many of us could not define, is made between /forward/ and /forwards/;
/forwards/ being used in definite contrast to any other direction, as
'if you move at all, you can only move /forwards/,' while /forward/ is
used where no such contrast is implied, as in the common phrase 'to
bring a matter forward.'"[39] This specific distinction, despite
Smith, probably retains some force in the United States too, but in
general our usage allows the /s/ in cases where English usage would
certainly be against it. Gould, in the 50's, noted its appearance at
the end of such words as /somewhere/ and /anyway/, and denounced it as
vulgar and illogical. Thornton has traced /anyways/ back to 1842 and
shown that it is an archaism, and to be found in the Book of Common
Prayer (/circa/ 1560); perhaps it has been preserved by analogy with
/sideways/. Henry James, in "The Question of Our Speech," attacked
"such forms of impunity as /somewheres else/ and /nowheres else/, /a
good ways on/ and /a good ways off/" as "vulgarisms with what a great
deal of general credit for what we good-naturedly call 'refinement'
appears so able to coexist."[40] /Towards/ and /afterwards/, though
frowned upon in England, are now quite sound in American. I [Pg148]
find the former in the title of an article in /Dialect Notes/, which
plainly gives it scholastic authority.[41] More (and with no little
humor), I find it in the deed of a fund given to the American Academy
of Arts and Letters to enable the gifted philologs of that sanhedrin
"to consider its duty /towards/ the conservation of the English
language in its beauty and purity."[42] Both /towards/ and
/afterwards/, finally, are included in the /New York Evening Post's/
list of "words no longer disapproved when in their proper places,"
along with /over/ for /more than/, and /during/ for /in the course
of/.
In the last chapter we glanced at several salient differences between
the common coin of English and the common coin of American--that is,
the verbs and adjectives in constant colloquial use--the
rubber-stamps, so to speak, of the two languages. America has two
adverbs that belong to the same category. They are /right/ and /good/.
Neither holds the same place in English. Thornton shows that the use
of /right/, as in /right away/, /right good/ and /right now/, was
already widespread in the United States early in the last century; his
first example is dated 1818. He believes that the locution was
"possibly imported from the southwest of Ireland." Whatever its
origin, it quickly attracted the attention of English visitors.
Dickens noted /right away/ as an almost universal Americanism during
his first American tour, in 1842, and poked fun at it in the second
chapter of "American Notes." /Right/ is used as a synonym for
/directly/, as in /right away/, /right off/, /right now/ and /right on
time/; for /moderately/, as in /right well/, /right smart/, /right
good/ and /right often/, and in place of /precisely/, as in /right
there/. Some time ago, in an article on Americanisms, an English
critic called it "that most distinctively American word," and
concocted the following dialogue to instruct the English in its use:
How do I get to----?
Go /right/ along, and take the first turning (/sic/) on the /right/,
and you are /right/ there.
/Right?/
/Right./
/Right!/[43]
Like W. L. George, this Englishman failed in his attempt to write
correct American despite his fine pedagogical passion. No American
would ever say "take the first turning"; he would say "turn at the
first corner." As for /right away/, R. O. Williams argues that "so far
as analogy can make good English, it is as good as one could
choose."[44] Nevertheless, the Oxford Dictionary admits it only as an
Americanism, and avoids all mention of the other American uses of
/right/ as an adverb. /Good/ is almost as protean. It is not only used
as a general synonym for all adjectives and adverbs connoting
satisfaction, as in /to feel good/, /to be treated good/, /to sleep
good/, but also as a reinforcement to other adjectives and adverbs, as
in "I hit him /good/ and hard" and "I am /good/ and tired." Of late
/some/ has come into wide use as an adjective-adverb of all work,
indicating special excellence or high degree, as in /some girl/, /some
sick/, /going some/, etc. It is still below the salt, but threatens to
reach a more respectable position. One encounters it in the newspapers
constantly and in the /Congressional Record/, and not long ago a
writer in the /Atlantic Monthly/[45] hymned it ecstatically as "/some/
word--a true super-word, in fact" and argued that it could be used "in
a sense for which there is absolutely no synonym in the dictionary."
Basically, it appears to be an adjective, but in many of its common
situations the grammarians would probably call it an adverb. It gives
no little support to the growing tendency, already noticed, to break
down the barrier between the two parts of speech.
§ 4
/Foreign Influences Today/--No other great nation of today supports so
large a foreign population as the United States, [Pg150] either
relatively or absolutely; none other contains so many foreigners
forced to an effort, often ignorant and ineffective, to master the
national language. Since 1820 nearly 35,000,000 immigrants have come
into the country, and of them probably not 10,000,000 brought any
preliminary acquaintance with English with them. The census of 1910
showed that nearly 1,500,000 persons then living permanently on
American soil could not speak it at all; that more than 13,000,000 had
been born in other countries, chiefly of different language; and that
nearly 20,000,000 were the children of such immigrants, and hence
under the influence of their speech habits. Altogether, there were
probably at least 25,000,000 whose house language was not the vulgate,
and who thus spoke it in competition with some other language. No
other country houses so many aliens. In Great Britain the alien
population, for a century past, has never been more than 2 per cent of
the total population, and since the passage of the Alien Act of 1905
it has tended to decline steadily. In Germany, in 1910, there were but
1,259,873 aliens in a population of more than 60,000,000, and of these
nearly a half were German-speaking Austrians and Swiss. In France, in
1906, there were 1,000,000 foreigners in a population of 39,000,000
and a third of them were French-speaking Belgians, Luxembourgeois and
Swiss. In Italy, in 1911, there were but 350,000 in a population of
35,000,000.
This large and constantly reinforced admixture of foreigners has
naturally exerted a constant pressure upon the national language, for
the majority of them, at least in the first generation, have found it
quite impossible to acquire it in any purity, and even their children
have grown up with speech habits differing radically from those of
correct English. The effects of this pressure are obviously two-fold;
on the one hand the foreigner, struggling with a strange and difficult
tongue, makes efforts to simplify it as much as possible, and so
strengthens the native tendency to disregard all niceties and
complexities, and on the other hand he corrupts it with words and
locutions from the language he has brought with him, and sometimes
with whole idioms and grammatical forms. We have seen, in earlier
chapters, how the [Pg151] Dutch and French of colonial days enriched
the vocabulary of the colonists, how the German immigrants of the
first half of the nineteenth century enriched it still further, and
how the Irish of the same period influenced its everyday usages. The
same process is still going on. The Italians, the Slavs, and, above
all, the Russian Jews, make steady contributions to the American
vocabulary and idiom, and though these contributions are often
concealed by quick and complete naturalization their foreignness to
English remains none the less obvious. /I should worry/,[46] in its
way, is correct English, but in essence it is as completely Yiddish as
/kosher/, /ganof/, /schadchen/, /oi-yoi/, /matzoh/ or /mazuma/.[47]
/Black-hand/, too, is English in form, but it is nevertheless as
plainly an Italian loan-word as /spaghetti/, /mafia/ or /padrone/.
The extent of such influences upon American, and particularly upon
spoken American, remains to be studied; in the whole literature I can
find but one formal article upon the subject. That article[48] deals
specifically with the suffix /-fest/, which came into American from
the German and was probably suggested by familiarity with
/sängerfest/. There is no mention of it in any of the dictionaries of
Americanisms, and yet, in such forms as /talk-fest/ and /gabfest/ it
is met with almost daily. So with /-heimer/, /-inski/ and /-bund/.
Several years ago /-heimer/ had a great vogue in slang, and was
rapidly done to death. But /wiseheimer/ remains [Pg152] in colloquial
use as a facetious synonym for /smart-aleck/, and after awhile it may
gradually acquire dignity. Far lowlier words, in fact, have worked
their way in. /Buttinski/, perhaps, is going the same route. As for
the words in /-bund/, many of them are already almost accepted.
/Plunder-bund/ is now at least as good as /pork-barrel/ and
/slush-fund/, and /money-bund/ is frequently heard in Congress.[49]
Such locutions creep in stealthily, and are secure before they are
suspected. Current slang, out of which the more decorous language
dredges a large part of its raw materials, is full of them. /Nix/ and
/nixy/, for /no/, are debased forms of the German /nichts/; /aber
nit/, once as popular as /camouflage/, is obviously /aber nicht/. And
a steady flow of nouns, all needed to designate objects introduced by
immigrants, enriches the vocabulary. The Hungarians not only brought
their national condiment with them; they also brought its name,
/paprika/, and that name is now thoroughly American.[50] In the same
way the Italians brought in /camorra/, /padrone/, /spaghetti/ and a
score of other substantives, and the Jews made contributions from
Yiddish and Hebrew and greatly reinforced certain old borrowings from
German. Once such a loan-word gets in it takes firm root. During the
first year of American participation in the World War an effort was
made, on patriotic grounds, to substitute /liberty-cabbage/ for
/sour-kraut/, but it quickly failed, for the name had become as
completely Americanized as the thing itself, and so /liberty-cabbage/
seemed affected and absurd. In the same way a great many other German
words survived the passions of the time. Nor could all the influence
of the professional patriots obliterate that German influence which
has fastened upon the American /yes/ something of the quality of /ja/.
Constant familiarity with such contributions from foreign languages
and with the general speech habits of foreign peoples has made
American a good deal more hospitable to loan-words than English, even
in the absence of special pressure. Let the same [Pg153] word knock
at the gates of the two languages, and American will admit it more
readily, and give it at once a wider and more intimate currency.
Examples are afforded by /café/, /vaudeville/, /employé/, /boulevard/,
/cabaret/, /toilette/, /exposé/, /kindergarten/, /dépôt/, /fête/ and
/menu/. /Café/, in American, is a word of much larger and more varied
meaning than in English and is used much more frequently, and by many
more persons. So is /employé/, in the naturalized form of /employee/.
So is /toilet/: we have even seen it as a euphemism for native terms
that otherwise would be in daily use. So is /kindergarten/: I read
lately of a /kindergarten/ for the elementary instruction of
conscripts. Such words are not unknown to the Englishman, but when he
uses them it is with a plain sense of their foreignness. In American
they are completely naturalized, as is shown by the spelling and
pronunciation of most of them. An American would no more think of
attempting the French pronunciation of /depot/ or of putting the
French accents upon it than he would think of spelling /toilet/ with
the final /te/ or of essaying to pronounce /Anheuser/ in the German
manner. Often curious battles go on between such loan-words and their
English equivalents, and with varying fortunes. In 1895 Weber and
Fields tried to establish /music-hall/ in New York, but it quickly
succumbed to /vaudeville-theatre/, as /variety/ had succumbed to
/vaudeville/ before it. In the same way /lawn-fete/ (without the
circumflex accent, and commonly pronounced /feet/) has elbowed out the
English /garden-party/. But now and then, when the competing loan-word
happens to violate American speech habits, a native term ousts it. The
French /crèche/ offers an example; it has been entirely displaced by
/day-nursery/.
The English, in this matter, display their greater conservatism very
plainly. Even when a loan-word enters both English and American
simultaneously a sense of foreignness lingers about it on the other
side of the Atlantic much longer than on this side, and it is used
with far more self-consciousness. The word /matinée/ offers a
convenient example. To this day the English commonly print it in
italics, give it its French accent, and pronounce it with some attempt
at the French manner. But in America it is entirely naturalized, and
the most ignorant man [Pg154] uses it without any feeling that it is
strange. The same lack of any sense of linguistic integrity is to be
noticed in many other directions--for example, in the freedom with
which the Latin /per/ is used with native nouns. One constantly sees
/per day/, /per dozen/, /per hundred/, /per mile/, etc., in American
newspapers, even the most careful, but in England the more seemly /a/
is almost always used, or the noun itself is made Latin, as in /per
diem/. /Per/, in fact, is fast becoming an everyday American word.
Such phrases as "as /per/ your letter (or order) of the 15th inst."
are incessantly met with in business correspondence. The same greater
hospitality is shown by the readiness with which various un-English
prefixes and affixes come into fashion, for example, /super-/ and
/-itis/. The English accept them gingerly; the Americans take them in
with enthusiasm, and naturalize them instanter.[51]
The same deficiency in reserve is to be noted in nearly all other
colonialized dialects. The Latin-American variants of Spanish, for
example, have adopted a great many words which appear in true Castilian
only as occasional guests. Thus in Argentina /matinée/, /menu/,
/début/, /toilette/ and /femme de chambre/ are perfectly good
Argentine, and in Mexico /sandwich/ and /club/ have been thoroughly
naturalized. The same thing is to be noted in the French of Haiti, in
the Portuguese of Brazil, and even in the Danish of Norway. Once a
language spreads beyond the country of its origin and begins to be used
by people born, in the German phrase, to a different /Sprachgefühl/,
the sense of loyalty to its vocabulary is lost, along with the
instinctive feeling for its idiomatic habits. How far this destruction
of its forms may go in the absence of strong contrary influences is
exhibited by the rise of the Romance languages from the vulgar Latin of
the Roman provinces, and, here at home, by the decay of foreign
languages in competition with English. The Yiddish that the Jews from
Russia bring in is German debased with Russian, Polish and [Pg155]
Hebrew; in America, it quickly absorbs hundreds of words and idioms
from the speech of the streets. Various conflicting German dialects,
among the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch and in the German areas of the
Northwest, combine in a patois that, in its end forms, shows almost as
much English as German. Classical examples of it are "es giebt gar kein
/use/," "Ich kann es nicht /ständen/" and "mein /stallion/ hat über die
/fenz gescheumpt/ und dem nachbar sein /whiet/ abscheulich
/gedämätscht/."[52] The use of /gleiche/ for /to like/, by false
analogy from /gleich/ (=/like/, /similar/) is characteristic. In the
same way the Scandinavians in the Northwest corrupt their native
Swedish and Dano-Norwegian. Thus, American-Norwegian is heavy with such
forms as /strit-kar/, /reit-evé/, /nekk-töi/ and /staits-pruessen/, for
/street-car/, /right away/, /necktie/ and /states-prison/, and admits
such phrases as "det /meka/ ingen /difrens/."[53]
The changes that Yiddish has undergone in America, though rather
foreign to the present inquiry, are interesting enough to be noticed.
First of all, it has admitted into its vocabulary a large number of
everyday substantives, among them /boy/, /chair/, /window/, /carpet/,
/floor/, /dress/, /hat/, /watch/, /ceiling/, /consumption/,
/property/, /trouble/, /bother/, /match/, /change/, /party/,
/birthday/, /picture/, /paper/ (only in the sense of /newspaper/),
/gambler/, /show/, /hall/, /kitchen/, /store/, /bedroom/, /key/,
/mantelpiece/, /closet/, /lounge/, /broom/, /tablecloth/, /paint/,
/landlord/, /fellow/, /tenant/, /shop/, /wages/, /foreman/, /sleeve/,
/collar/, /cuff/, /button/, /cotton/, /thimble/, /needle/, /pocket/,
/bargain/, /sale/, /remnant/, /sample/, /haircut/, /razor/, /waist/,
/basket/, /school/, /scholar/, /teacher/, /baby/, /mustache/,
/butcher/, /grocery/, /dinner/, /street/ and /walk/. And with them
many characteristic Americanisms, [Pg156] for example, /bluffer/,
/faker/, /boodler/, /grafter/, /gangster/, /crook/, /guy/, /kike/,
/piker/, /squealer/, /bum/, /cadet/, /boom/, /bunch/, /pants/, /vest/,
/loafer/, /jumper/, /stoop/, /saleslady/, /ice-box/ and /raise/, with
their attendant verbs and adjectives. These words are used constantly;
many of them have quite crowded out the corresponding Yiddish words.
For example, /ingel/, meaning /boy/ (it is a Slavic loan-word in
Yiddish), has been obliterated by the English word. A Jewish immigrant
almost invariably refers to his son as his /boy/, though strangely
enough he calls his daughter his /meidel/. "Die /boys/ mit die
/meidlach/ haben a good time" is excellent American Yiddish. In the
same way /fenster/ has been completely displaced by /window/, though
/tür/ (=/door/) has been left intact. /Tisch/ (=/table/) also remains,
but /chair/ is always used, probably because few of the Jews had
chairs in the old country. There the /beinkel/, a bench without a
back, was in use; chairs were only for the well-to-do. /Floor/ has
apparently prevailed because no invariable corresponding word was
employed at home: in various parts of Russia and Poland a floor is a
/dill/, a /podlogé/, or a /bricke/. So with /ceiling/. There were six
different words for it.
Yiddish inflections have been fastened upon most of these loan-words.
Thus, "er hat ihm /abgefaked/" is "he cheated him," /zubumt/ is the
American /gone to the bad/, /fix'n/ is to /fix/, /usen/ is /to use/,
and so on. The feminine and diminutive suffix /-ké/ is often added to
nouns. Thus /bluffer/ gives rise to /blufferké/ (=/hypocrite/), and
one also notes /dresské/, /hatké/, /watchké/ and /bummerké/. "Oi! is
sie a /blufferké/!" is good American Yiddish for "isn't she a
hypocrite!" The suffix /-nick/, signifying agency, is also freely
applied. /Allrightnick/ means an upstart, an offensive boaster, one of
whom his fellows would say "He is all right" with a sneer. Similarly,
/consumptionick/ means a victim of tuberculosis. Other suffixes are
/-chick/ and /-ige/, the first exemplified in /boychick/, a diminutive
of /boy/, and the second in /next-doorige/, meaning the woman
next-door, an important person in ghetto social life. Some of the
loan-words, of course, undergo changes on Yiddish-speaking lips. Thus,
/landlord/ becomes /lendler/, /lounge/ becomes /lunch/, /tenant/
becomes /tenner/, and /whiskers/ loses its final /s/. "Wie gefällt dir
sein /whisker/?" (=how do you like his beard?) [Pg157] is good
Yiddish, ironically intended. /Fellow/, of course, changes to the
American /feller/, as in "Rosie hat schon a /feller/" (=Rosie has got
a /feller/, /i. e./, a sweetheart). /Show/, in the sense of /chance/,
is used constantly, as in "git ihm a /show/" (=give him a chance).
/Bad boy/ is adopted bodily, as in "er is a /bad boy/." To /shut up/
is inflected as one word, as in "er hat nit gewolt /shutup'n/" (=he
wouldn't shut up). /To catch/ is used in the sense of to obtain, as in
"/catch'n/ a gmilath chesed" (=to raise a loan). Here, by the way,
/gmilath chesed/ is excellent Biblical Hebrew. /To bluff/, unchanged
in form, takes on the new meaning of to lie: a /bluffer/ is a liar.
Scores of American phrases are in constant use, among them, /all
right/, /never mind/, /I bet you/, /no sir/ and /I'll fix you/. It is
curious to note that /sure Mike/, borrowed by the American vulgate
from Irish English, has gone over into American Yiddish. Finally, to
make an end, here are two complete and characteristic American Yiddish
sentences: "Sie wet /clean'n/ die /rooms/, /scrub'n/ dem /floor/,
/wash'n/ die /windows/, /dress'n/ dem /boy/ und gehn in
/butcher-store/ und in /grocery/. Dernoch vet sie machen /dinner/ und
gehn in /street/ für a /walk/."[54]
American itself, in the Philippines, and to a lesser extent in Porto
Rico and on the Isthmus, has undergone similar changes under the
influence of Spanish and the native dialects. Maurice P. Dunlap[55]
offers the following specimen of a conversation between two Americans
long resident in Manila:
Hola, amigo.
Komusta kayo.
Porque were you hablaing with ese señorita?
She wanted a job as lavandera.
Cuanto?
Ten cents, conant, a piece, so I told her no kerry.
Have you had chow? Well, spera till I sign this chit and I'll take a
paseo with you.
[Pg158]
Here we have an example of Philippine American that shows all the
tendencies of American Yiddish. It retains the general forms of
American, but in the short conversation, embracing but 41 different
words, there are eight loan-words from the Spanish (/hola/, /amigo/,
/porque/, /ese/, /señorita/, /lavandera/, /cuanto/ and /paseo/), two
Spanish locutions in a debased form (/spera/ for /espera/ and /no
kerry/ for /no quiro/), two loan-words from the Taglog (/komusta/ and
/kayo/), two from Pigeon English (/chow/ and /chit/), one
Philippine-American localism (/conant/), and a Spanish verb with an
English inflection (/hablaing/).