The American Language
professorship of the /landsmaal/ was established in the University of
Christiania. The school boards in the case of primary schools, and the
pupils in the case of middle and high schools are now permitted to
choose between the two languages, and the /landsmaal/ has been given
official status by the State Church. The chief impediment to its wider
acceptance lies in the fact that it is not, as it stands, a natural
language, but an artificial amalgamation of peasant dialects. It was
devised in 1848-50 by Ivar Aasen. /Vide/ The Language Question, /London
Times/ Norwegian Supplement, May 18, 1914.
[6] A few such works are listed in the bibliography. More of them are
mentioned in Americanismos, by Miguel de Toro y Gisbert; Paris, n. d.
[7] Maximilian Schele de Vere: Americanisms: The English of the New
World; New York, 1872.
[8] Richard H. Thornton: An American Glossary ..., 2 vols.; Phila. and
London, 1912.
[9] Organized Feb. 19, 1889, with Dr. J. J. Child, of Harvard, as its
first president.
[10] Author of Travels in North America; London, 1829.
[11] A Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases which Have Been
Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America; Boston, 1816.
[12] A Letter to the Hon. John Pickering on the Subject of His
Vocabulary; Boston, 1817.
[13] 4th ed., New York, 1870, p. 669.
[14] /Op. cit./ p. 676.
[15] The English Language; New York 1850; rev. ed., 1855. This was the
first American text-book of English for use in colleges. Before its
publication, according to Fowler himself (rev. ed., p. xi), the
language was studied only "superficially" and "in the primary
schools." He goes on: "Afterward, when older, in the academy, during
their preparation for college, our pupils perhaps despised it, in
comparison with the Latin and the Greek; and in the college they do
not systematically study the language after they come to maturity."
[16] In Recent Exemplifications of False Philology; London, 1872.
[17] Americanisms, parts I-VIII, April, May, July, Sept., Nov., 1878;
Jan., March, May, 1879.
[18] A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to
the United States, 4th ed.; Boston, 1877.
[19] Feb., March, June, July, Sept.
[20] Vol. xiv, pp. 484-5; Cambridge, 1917.
[21] Vol. xxv, p. 209.
[22] July 18, 1913.
[23] Of the words cited as still unfamiliar in England, Thornton has
traced /hobo/ to 1891, /hold-up/ and /bunco/ to 1887, /dive/ to 1882,
/dead-beat/ to 1877, /hoodlum/ to 1872, /road-agent/ to 1866, /stag/
to 1856, /drummer/ to 1836 and /flume/ to 1792. All of them are
probably older than these references indicate.
[24] Summarized in /Literary Digest/, June 19, 1915.
[25] America Today, /Scribner's/, Feb. 1899, p. 218.
[26] /London Court Journal/, Aug. 28, 1892.
[27] In Pastures New; New York, 1906, p. 6.
[28] Concerning the American Language, in The Stolen White Elephant;
Boston, 1882. A footnote says that the essay is "part of a chapter
crowded out of A Tramp Abroad." (Hartford, 1880.)
[29] Hartford, 1872, p. 45.
[30] The Editor's Study, /Harper's Magazine/, Jan. 1886.
[31] Die englische Sprache in Nordamerika, band iv, heft i;
Braunschweig, 1848.
[32] Étude sur l'Anglais Parlé aux Etats Unis (la Langue Américaine),
/Actes de la Société Philologique de Paris/, March, 1874.
[33] Metoula-Sprachführer.... Englisch von Karl Blattner; Ausgabe für
Amerika; Berlin-Schöneberg, 1912.
[34] Polyglott Kuntze; Schnellste Erlernung jeder Sprache ohne Lehrer;
Amerikanisch; Bonn a. Rh., n. d.
[35] Like the English expositors of American slang, this German falls
into several errors. For example, he gives /cock/ for /rooster/,
/boots/ for /shoes/, /braces/ for /suspenders/ and /postman/ for
/letter-carrier/, and lists /iron-monger/, /joiner/ and /linen-draper/
as American terms. He also spells /wagon/ in the English manner, with
two /g/'s, and translates /Schweinefüsse/ as /pork-feet/. But he
spells such words as /color/ in the American manner and gives the
pronunciation of /clerk/ as the American /klörk/, not as the English
/klark/.
[36] Molee's notions are set forth in Plea for an American Language
...; Chicago, 1888; and Tutonish; Chicago, 1902. He announced the
preparation of A Dictionary of the American Language in 1888, but so
far as I know it has not been published. He was born in Wisconsin, of
Norwegian parents, in 1845, and pursued linguistic studies at the
University of Wisconsin, where he seems to have taken a Ph. B.
[37] American English, /North American Review/, Jan. 1883.
[38] Oct. 1, 1909.
[39] J. F. Healy, general manager of the Davis Colliery Co. at Elkins,
W. Va., in a speech before the West Virginia Coal Mining Institute, at
Wheeling, Dec. 1910; reprinted as The American Language; Pittsburgh,
1911.
[40] /Westminster Review/, July, 1888, p. 35.
[41] W. W. Skeat distinguishes no less than 9 dialects in Scotland, 3
in Ireland and 30 in England and Wales. /Vide/ English Dialects From
the Eighth Century to the Present Day; Cambridge, 1911, p. 107 /et
seq./
[42] /Art./ Americanisms, 2nd ed.
[43] F. L. Pattee: A History of American Literature Since 1870; New
York, 1916.
[44] A. H. Sayce: Introduction to the Science of Language, 2 vols.;
London, 1900. See especially vol. ii, ch. vi.
[45] /Cf./ the chapter, Interlude: On Jargon, in Quiller-Couch's On
the Art of Writing; New York, 1916. Curiously enough, large parts of
the learned critic's book are written in the very Jargon he attacks.
[46] Alexander Francis: Americans: an Impression; New York, 1900.
[47] G. Lowes Dickinson, in the /English Review/, quoted by /Current
Literature/, April, 1910.
[48] Speech before the Chamber of Commerce Convention, Washington,
Feb. 19, 1916.
[49] Speech at workingman's dinner, New York, Sept. 4, 1912.
[50] wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson, comp. by Richard Linthicum; New
York, 1916, p. 54.
[51] Speech at Ridgewood, N. J., April 22, 1910.
[52] Wit and Wisdom ..., p. 56.
[53] Henry Sweet: A New English Grammar, Logical and Historical, 2
parts; Oxford, 1900-03, part i, p. 224.
[54] Despite this fact an academic and ineffective opposition to it
still goes on. On the Style Sheet of the /Century Magazine/ it is
listed among the "words and phrases to be avoided." It was prohibited
by the famous /Index Expurgatorius/ prepared by William Cullen Bryant
for the /New York Evening Post/, and his prohibition is still
theoretically in force, but the word is now actually permitted by the
/Post/. The /Chicago Daily News/ Style Book, dated July 1, 1908, also
bans it.
[55] /Scientist/ is now in the Oxford Dictionary. So are /reliable/,
/standpoint/ and /gubernatorial/. But the /Century Magazine/ still
bans /standpoint/ and the /Evening Post/ (at least in theory) bans
both /standpoint/ and /reliable/. The /Chicago Daily News/ accepts
/standpoint/, but bans /reliable/ and /gubernatorial/. All of these
words, of course, are now quite as good as /ox/ or /and/.
[56] /Art./ Changes in the Language Since Shakespeare's Time,
Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. xiv. p. 491.
[57] Introduction to the Science of Language, vol. ii, pp. 333-4.
[58] /Op. cit./, pp. 119-28.
[59] Alfred L. Elwyn, M. D.: Glossary of Supposed Americanisms ...;
Phila., 1859.
[60] John S. Farmer: Americanisms Old and New ...; London, 1889.
[61] Sylva Clapin: A New Dictionary of Americanisms, Being a Glossary
of Words Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States and the Dominion
of Canada; New York, 1902.
[Pg036]
II
The Beginnings of American
§ 1
/In Colonial Days/--William Gifford, the first editor of the
/Quarterly Review/, is authority for the tale that some of the Puritan
clergy of New England, during the Revolution, proposed that English be
formally abandoned as the national language of America, and Hebrew
adopted in its place. An American chronicler, Charles Astor Bristed,
makes the proposed tongue Greek, and reports that the change was
rejected on the ground that "it would be more convenient for us to
keep the language as it is, and make the English speak Greek."[1] The
story, though it has the support of the editors of the Cambridge
History of American Literature,[2] has an apocryphal smack; one
suspects that the savagely anti-American Gifford invented it. But,
true or false, it well indicates the temper of those times. The
passion for complete political independence of England bred a general
hostility to all English authority, whatever its character, and that
hostility, in the direction of present concern to us, culminated in
the revolutionary attitude of Noah Webster's "Dissertations on the
English Language," printed in 1789. Webster harbored no fantastic
notion of abandoning English altogether, but he was eager to set up
American as a distinct and independent dialect. "Let us," he said,
"seize the present moment, and establish a national language as well
as a national government.... As an independent nation our honor
requires [Pg037] us to have a system of our own, in language as well
as government."
Long before this the challenge had been flung. Scarcely two years
after the Declaration of Independence Franklin was instructed by
Congress, on his appointment as minister to France, to employ "the
language of the United States," not simply English, in all his
"replies or answers" to the communications of the ministry of Louis
XVI. And eight years before the Declaration Franklin himself had drawn
up a characteristically American scheme of spelling reform, and had
offered plenty of proof in it, perhaps unconsciously, that the
standards of spelling and pronunciation in the New World had already
diverged noticeably from those accepted on the other side of the
ocean.[3] In acknowledging the dedication of Webster's "Dissertations"
Franklin endorsed both his revolt against English domination and his
forecast of widening differences in future, though protesting at the
same time against certain Americanisms that have since come into good
usage, and even migrated to England.[4]
This protest was marked by Franklin's habitual mildness, but in other
quarters dissent was voiced with far less urbanity. The growing
independence of the colonial dialect, not only in its spoken form, but
also in its most dignified written form, had begun, indeed, to attract
the attention of purists in both England and America, and they sought
to dispose of it in its infancy by /force majeure/. One of the first
and most vigorous of the attacks upon it was delivered by John
Witherspoon, a Scotch clergyman who came out in 1769 to be president
of Princeton /in partibus infidelium/. This Witherspoon brought a
Scotch hatred of the English with him, and at once became a leader of
the party of independence; he signed the Declaration to the tune of
much rhetoric, and was the only clergyman to sit in the Continental
Congress. But in matters of learning he was orthodox to the point of
hunkerousness, and the strange locutions that [Pg038] he encountered
on all sides aroused his pedagogic ire. "I have heard in this
country," he wrote in 1781, "in the senate, at the bar, and from the
pulpit, and see daily in dissertations from the press, errors in
grammar, improprieties and vulgarisms which hardly any person of the
same class in point of rank and literature would have fallen into in
Great Britain."[5] It was Witherspoon who coined the word
/Americanism/--and at once the English guardians of the sacred vessels
began employing it as a general synonym for vulgarism and barbarism.
Another learned immigrant, the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, soon joined him.
This Boucher was a friend of Washington, but was driven back to
England by his Loyalist sentiments. He took revenge by printing