There is no point on which usage is more uncertain and fluctuating than in
regard to the words which we are always borrowing from foreign languages.
Expression generally lags behind thought, and we are now more than ever
handicapped by the lack of convenient terms to describe the new
discoveries, and new ways of thinking and feeling by which our lives are
enriched and made interesting. It has been our national custom in the past
to eke out our native resources by borrowing from other languages,
especially from French, any words which we found ready to our needs; and
until recent times, these words were soon made current and convenient by
being assimilated and given English shapes and sounds. We still borrow as
freely as ever; but half the benefit of this borrowing is lost to us,
owing to our modern and pedantic attempts to preserve the foreign sounds
and shapes of imported words, which make their current use unnecessarily
difficult. Owing to our false taste in this matter many words which have
been long naturalized in the language are being now put back into their
foreign forms, and our speech is being thus gradually impoverished. This
process of de-assimilation generally begins with the restoration of
foreign accents to such words as have them in French; thus 'role' is now
written 'rôle'*[A]; 'debris', 'débris'; 'detour', 'détour'; 'depot',
'dépôt'; and the old words long established in our language, 'levee',
'naivety', now appear as 'levée', and 'naïveté'. The next step is to
italicize these words, thus treating them as complete aliens, and thus we
often see _rôle_, _dépôt_, &c. The very old English word 'rendezvous' is
now printed _rendezvous_, and 'dilettante' and 'vogue' sometimes are
printed in italics. Among other words which have been borrowed at various
times and more or less naturalized, but which are now being driven out of
the language, are the following: confrere, congee, cortege, dishabille,
distrait, ensemble, fête, flair, mellay (now _mêlée_), nonchalance,
provenance, renconter, &c. On the other hand, it is satisfactory to note
that 'employee' appears to be taking the place of 'employé'.
[Footnote A: For the words marked with an asterisk see notes on page 10.]
The printing in italics and the restoration of foreign accents is
accompanied by awkward attempts to revert to the foreign pronunciation of
these words, which of course much lessens their usefulness in
conversation. Sometimes this, as in _nuance_, or _timbre_* practically
deprives us of a word which most of us are unable to pronounce correctly;
sometimes it is merely absurd, as in 'envelope', where most people try to
give a foreign sound to a word which no one regards as an alien, and which
has been anglicized in spelling for nearly two hundred years.
Members of our Society will, we hope, do what is in their power to stop
this process of impoverishment, by writing and pronouncing as English such
words as have already been naturalized, and when a new borrowing appears
in two forms they will give their preference to the one which is most
English. There are some who may even help to enrich the language by a
bolder conquest of useful terms, and although they may suffer ridicule,
they will suffer it in a good cause, and will only be sharing the
short-lived denunciation which former innovators incurred when they
borrowed so many concise and useful terms from France and Italy to enlarge
and adorn our English speech. If we are to use foreign words (and, if we
have no equivalents, we must use them) it is certainly much better that
they should be incorporated in our language, and made available for common
use. Words like 'garage' and 'nuance' and 'naivety' had much better be
pronounced and written as English words, and there are others, like
'bouleverse' and 'bouleversement', whose partial borrowing might well be
made complete; and a useful word like _malaise_ could with advantage
reassume the old form 'malease' which it once possessed.