The American Language
/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/).
The immigrant in the midst of a large native population, of course,
exerts no such pressure upon the national language as that exerted
upon an immigrant language by the native, but nevertheless his
linguistic habits and limitations have to be reckoned with in dealing
with him, and the concessions thus made necessary have a very
ponderable influence upon the general speech. In the usual sense, as
we have seen, there are no dialects in American; two natives, however
widely their birthplaces may be separated, never have any practical
difficulty understanding each other. But there are at least
quasi-dialects among the immigrants--the Irish, the German, the
Scandinavian, the Italian, the Jewish, and so on--and these
quasi-dialects undoubtedly leave occasional marks, not only upon the
national vocabulary, but also upon the general speech habits of the
country, as in the case, for example, of the pronunciation of /yes/,
already mentioned, and in that of the substitution of the diphthong
/oi/ for the /ur-/sound in such words as /world/, /journal/ and
/burn/--a Yiddishism now almost universal among the lower classes of
New York, and threatening to spread.[56] More important, however, is
the support given to a native tendency by the foreigner's incapacity
for employing (or even comprehending) syntax of any complexity, or
words not of the simplest. This is the tendency toward succinctness
[Pg159] and clarity, at whatever sacrifice of grace. One English
observer, Sidney Low, puts the chief blame for the general
explosiveness of American upon the immigrant, who must be communicated
with in the plainest words available, and is not socially worthy of
the suavity of circumlocution anyhow.[57] In his turn the immigrant
seizes upon these plainest words as upon a sort of convenient Lingua
Franca--his quick adoption of /damn/ as a universal adjective is
traditional--and throws his influence upon the side of the underlying
speech habit when he gets on in the vulgate. Many characteristic
Americanisms of the sort to stagger lexicographers--for example,
/near-silk/--have come from the Jews, whose progress in business is a
good deal faster than their progress in English. Others, as we have
seen, have come from the German immigrants of half a century ago, from
the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch (who are notoriously ignorant and
uncouth), and from the Irish, who brought with them a form of English
already very corrupt. The same and similar elements greatly reinforce
the congenital tendencies of the dialect--toward the facile
manufacture of compounds, toward a disregard of the distinctions
between parts of speech, and, above all, toward the throwing off of
all etymological restraints.
§ 5
/Processes of Word Formation/--Some of these tendencies, it has been
pointed out, go back to the period of the first growth of American,
and were inherited from the English of the time. They are the products
of a movement which, reaching its height in the English of Elizabeth,
was dammed up at home, so to speak, by the rise of linguistic