The American Language
least two of the recommended spellings, /program/ and /catalog/, were
in general use. Then, in 1906, came the organization of the Simplified
Spelling Board, with an endowment of $15,000 a year from Andrew
Carnegie, and a formidable membership of pundits. The board at once
issued a list of 300 revised spellings, new and old, and in August,
1906, President Roosevelt ordered their adoption by the Government
Printing Office. But this unwise effort to hasten matters, combined
with the buffoonery characteristically thrown about the matter by
Roosevelt, served only to raise up enemies, and since then, though it
has prudently gone back to more discreet endeavors and now lays main
stress upon the original 12 words of the National Education
Association, the Board has not made a great deal of progress.[27] From
time to time it issues impressive lists of newspapers and periodicals
that are using some, at least, of its revised spellings and of
colleges that have made them optional, but an inspection of these
lists shows that very few [Pg263] publications of any importance have
been converted[28] and that most of the great universities still
hesitate. It has, however, greatly reinforced the authority behind
many of Webster's spellings, and it has done much to reform scientific
orthography. Such forms as /gram/, /cocain/, /chlorid/, /anemia/ and
/anilin/ are the products of its influence.
Despite the large admixture of failure in this success there is good
reason to believe that at least two of the spellings on the National
Education Association list, /tho/ and /thru/, are making not a little
quiet progress. I read a great many manuscripts by American authors,
and find in them an increasing use of both forms, with the occasional
addition of /altho/, /thoro/ and /thoroly/. The spirit of American
spelling is on their side. They promise to come in as /honor/, /bark/,
/check/, /wagon/ and /story/ came in many years ago, as /tire/,[29]
/esophagus/ and /theater/ came in later on, as /program/, /catalog/
and /cyclopedia/ came in only yesterday, and as /airplane/ (for
/aëroplane/)[30] is coming in today. A constant tendency toward logic
and simplicity is visible; if the spelling of English and American
does not grow farther and farther apart it is only because American
drags English along. There is incessant experimentalization. New forms
appear, are tested, and then either gain general acceptance or
disappear. One such, now struggling for recognition, is /alright/, a
compound of /all/ and /right/, made by analogy with /already/ and
/almost/. I find it in American manuscripts every day, and it not
infrequently gets into print.[31] So far no dictionary supports it,
but [Pg264] it has already migrated to England.[32] Meanwhile, one
often encounters, in American advertising matter, such experimental
forms as /burlesk/, /foto/, /fonograph/, /kandy/, /kar/, /holsum/,
/kumfort/ and /Q-room/, not to mention /sulfur/. /Segar/ has been more
or less in use for half a century, and at one time it threatened to
displace /cigar/. At least one American professor of English predicts
that such forms will eventually prevail. Even /fosfate/ and
/fotograph/, he says, "are bound to be the spellings of the
future."[33]
§ 6
/Minor Differences/--Various minor differences remain to be noticed.
One is a divergence in orthography due to differences in
pronunciation. /Specialty/, /aluminum/ and /alarm/ offer examples. In
English they are /speciality/, /aluminium/ and /alarum/, though
/alarm/ is also an alternative form. /Specialty/, in America, is
always accented on the first syllable; /speciality/, in England, on
the third. The result is two distinct words, though their meaning is
identical. How /aluminium/, in America, lost its fourth syllable I
have been unable to determine, but all American authorities now make
it /aluminum/ and all English authorities stick to /aluminium/.
Another difference in usage is revealed in the spelling and
pluralization of foreign words. Such words, when they appear in an
English publication, even a newspaper, almost invariably bear the
correct accents, but in the United States it is almost as invariably
the rule to omit these accents, save in publications of considerable
pretensions. This is notably the case with /café/, /crêpe/, /début/,
/débutante/, /portière/, /levée/, /éclat/, /fête/, /régime/, /rôle/,
/soirée/, /protégé/, /élite/, /mêlée/, /tête-à-tête/ and /répertoire/.
It is rare to encounter any of them with its proper accents in an
American newspaper; it is rare to encounter them unaccented in an
English [Pg265] newspaper. This slaughter of the accents, it must be
obvious, greatly aids the rapid naturalization of a newcomer. It loses
much of its foreignness at once, and is thus easier to absorb. /Dépôt/
would have been a long time working its way into American had it
remained /dépôt/, but immediately it became plain /depot/ it got in.
The process is constantly going on. I often encounter /naïveté/
without its accents, and even /déshabille/, /hofbräu/, /señor/ and
/résumé/. /Cañon/ was changed to /canyon/ years ago, and the cases of
/exposé/, /divorcée/, /schmierkäse/, /employé/ and /matinée/ are
familiar. At least one American dignitary of learning, Brander
Matthews, has openly defended and even advocated this clipping of
accents. In speaking of /naïf/ and /naïveté/, which he welcomes
because "we have no exact equivalent for either word," he says: "But
they will need to shed their accents and to adapt themselves somehow
to the traditions of our orthography."[34] He goes on: "After we have
decided that the foreign word we find knocking at the doors of English
[he really means American, as the context shows] is likely to be
useful, we must fit it for naturalization by insisting that it shall
shed its accents, if it has any; that it shall change its spelling, if
this is necessary; that it shall modify its pronunciation, if this is
not easy for us to compass; and that it shall conform to all our
speech-habits, especially in the formation of the plural."[35]
In this formation of the plural, as elsewhere, English regards the
precedents and American makes new ones. All the English authorities
that I have had access to advocate retaining the foreign plurals of
most of the foreign words in daily use, /e. g./, /sanatoria/,
/appendices/, /virtuosi/, /formulae/ and /libretti/. But American
usage favors plurals of native cut, and the /Journal/ of the American
Medical Association goes so far as to approve /curriculums/ and
/septums/. /Banditti/, in place of /bandits/, would seem an
affectation in America, and so would /soprani/ for /sopranos/ [Pg266]
and /soli/ for /solos/.[36] The last two are common in England. Both
English and American labor under the lack of native plurals for the
two everyday titles, /Mister/ and /Missus/. In the written speech, and
in the more exact forms of the spoken speech, the French plurals,
/Messieurs/ and /Mesdames/, are used, but in the ordinary spoken
speech, at least in America, they are avoided by circumlocution. When
/Messieurs/ has to be spoken it is almost invariably pronounced
/messers/, and in the same way /Mesdames/ becomes /mez-dames/, with
the first syllable rhyming with /sez/ and the second, which bears the
accent, with /games/. In place of /Mesdames/ a more natural form,
/Madames/, seems to be gaining ground in America. Thus, I lately found
/Dames du Sacré Coeur/ translated as /Madames of the Sacred Heart/ in
a Catholic paper of wide circulation,[37] and the form is apparently
used by American members of the community.
In capitalization the English are a good deal more conservative than
we are. They invariably capitalize such terms as /Government/, /Prime
Minister/ and /Society/, when used as proper nouns; they capitalize
/Press/, /Pulpit/, /Bar/, etc., almost as often. In America a movement
against this use of capitals appeared during the latter part of the
eighteenth century. In Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of
Independence /nature/ and /creator/, and even /god/ are in lower
case.[38] During the 20's and 30's of the succeeding century, probably
as a result of French influence, the disdain of capitals went so far
that the days of the week were often spelled with small initial
letters, and even /Mr./ became /mr/. Curiously enough, the most
striking exhibition of this tendency of late years is offered by an
English work of the highest scholarship, the Cambridge History of
English Literature. It uses the lower case for all titles, even
/baron/ and /colonel/ before proper names, and also avoids capitals in
such [Pg267] words as /presbyterian/, /catholic/ and /christian/, and
in the second parts of such terms as Westminster /abbey/ and Atlantic
/ocean/.
Finally, there are certain differences in punctuation. The English, as
everyone knows, put a comma after the street number of a house, making
it, for example, /34, St. James street/. They usually insert a comma
instead of a period after the hour when giving the time in figures,
/e. g./, /9,27/, and omit the /0/ when indicating less than 10
minutes, /e. g./, /8,7/ instead of /8.07/. They do not use the period
as the mark of the decimal, but employ a dot at the level of the upper
dot of a colon, as in /3·1416/. They cling to the hyphen in such words
as /to-day/ and /to-night/; it begins to disappear in America. They
use /an/ before /hotel/ and /historical/; Kipling has even used it
before /hydraulic/;[39] American usage prefers /a/. But these small
differences need not be pursued further.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Fowler & Fowler, in The King's English, p. 23, say that "when it
was proposed to borrow from France what we [/i. e./, the English] now
know as the /closure/, it seemed certain for some time that with the
thing we should borrow the name, /clôture/; a press campaign resulted
in /closure/." But in the /Congressional Record/ it is still
/cloture/, though with the loss of the circumflex accent, and this
form is generally retained by American newspapers.
[2] Richard P. Read: The American Language, /New York Sun/, March 7,
1918.
[3] /To shew/ has completely disappeared from American, but it still
survives in English usage. /Cf./ The /Shewing/-Up of Blanco Posnet, by
George Bernard Shaw. The word, of course, is pronounced /show/, not
/shoe/. /Shrew/, a cognate word, still retains the early pronunciation
of /shrow/ in English, but is now phonetic in American.
[4] /Cf./ Lounsbury; English Spelling and Spelling Reform; p. 209 /et
seq./ Johnson even advocated /translatour/, /emperour/, /oratour/ and
/horrour/. But, like most other lexicographers, he was often
inconsistent, and the conflict between /interiour/ and /exterior/, and
/anteriour/ and /posterior/, in his dictionary, laid him open to much
mocking criticism.
[5] In a letter to Miss Stephenson, Sept. 20, 1768, he exhibited the
use of his new alphabet. The letter is to be found in most editions of
his writings.
[6] R. C. Williams: Our Dictionaries; New York, 1890, p. 30.
[7] Nomenclature of Diseases and Condition, prepared by direction of
the Surgeon General; Washington, 1916.
[8] American Medical Association Style Book; Chicago, 1915.
[9] /Democratic Review/, March, 1856.
[10] /Vide/ English Spelling and Spelling Reform, p. 229.
[11] A Critical Review of the Orthography of Dr. Webster's Series of
Books ...; New York, 1831.
[12] Good English; p. 137 /et seq./
[13] Studies in English; pp. 64-5.
[14] Americanisms and Briticisms; New York, 1892, p. 37.
[15] Authors' & Printers' Dictionary ... an attempt to codify the best
typographical practices of the present day, by F. Howard Collins; 4th
ed., revised by Horace Hart; London, 1912.
[16] Horace Hart: Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University