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Title: Questions at Issue in Our English Speech

Author: Edwin W. Bowen

Release date: April 29, 2022 [eBook #67953]

Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Broadway Publishing Company, 1909

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUESTIONS AT ISSUE IN OUR ENGLISH SPEECH ***

Questions at Issue in

Our English Speech

Edwin W. Bowen, Ph.D.

Author of

“Makers of American Literature”

Broadway Publishing Company

PUBLISHERS AND BOOKSELLERS

835 Broadway, ⁂ New York

COPYRIGHT, 1909

BY

EDWIN W. BOWEN, Ph.D.

All Rights Reserved

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Practically all the matter in this collection of essays has been printed elsewhere. Four of the articles, “A Question of Preference in English Spelling,” “Authority in English Pronunciation,” “What Is Slang?” and “Briticisms versus Americanisms,” first appeared in the “Popular Science Monthly” and are here reproduced with the kind permission of the editor of that journal. The paper, “Vulgarisms with a Pedigree,” is rewritten from three brief essays on allied themes which were published in the “Atlantic Monthly” and the “North American Review.” The essay on “Our English Spelling of Yesterday—Why Antiquated?” is reprinted from the “Methodist Review.” I wish here to thank the publishers of these periodicals for permission to reprint.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Our English Spelling of Yesterday. Why Antiquated

1

A Question of Preference in English Spelling

25

Authority in English Pronunciation

38

Vulgarisms With a Pedigree

60

Briticisms Versus Americanisms

82

What is Slang?

108

Standard English. How it Arose and How it is Maintained

130

OUR ENGLISH SPELLING OF YESTERDAY—WHY ANTIQUATED?

There is a marked distinction between spoken and written language. In writing a system of conventional symbols is adopted to represent speech. At best such a system is ill-devised and incomplete. In many cases, as in our own tongue, the written language fairly bristles with innumerable inaccuracies and inconsistencies and with flagrant absurdities of orthography. Of course the written language is only an imperfect attempt to represent graphically the spoken speech and is a mere shadow of the real substance, of the living tongue. No system of symbols has been adopted which represent with absolute accuracy and adequacy a spoken language at all periods of its history. It is a matter of extreme doubt whether any living language is now, or ever has been, represented by its alphabet with absolute accuracy and precision. It is quite probable that no living European tongue is today represented by its alphabet with more than approximate accuracy and completeness. As for the dead languages, like the classics, we may be reasonably certain that neither the Greek nor the Latin alphabet correctly and adequately represented those respective languages at all periods of their history. The body of Latin literature now extant is but a desiccated, lifeless mummy of the living, pulsating speech which was heard upon the lips of the ancient Romans. Of that robust and vigorous Latin vernacular, as employed by Cicero and Virgil in all its purity, we have only embalmed specimens, preserved to us in the stirring rhetorical periods of that prince of Roman orators and in the stately rhythmical hexameters of that famous Mantuan bard. Quantum mutatum ab illo—how unlike the spoken language, how unlike the burning eloquence which used to thrill the populace in the ancient Roman Forum! Small wonder we are accustomed now to speak of the tongue of the ancient Roman and of the tongue of the ancient Hellene as a “dead language,” for those noble tongues perished, truly, centuries ago, when they ceased to be spoken by the inhabitants of Rome and Athens respectively.

However, the classics are not the only “dead languages.” There is a sense in which some of the modern languages may be said to be “dead.” Even our own Saxon tongue, which good King Alfred employed in all its pristine purity both in conversation and in the translations which he made for his people, is practically as “dead” as Latin or Greek, inasmuch as it is no longer possible for us to think in terms of the Anglo-Saxon or to speak with the accents and sounds of that rugged, unpolished idiom. Indeed, the speech of Chaucer and even of Shakespeare, no less than that of King Alfred, is to all intents and purposes a “dead” tongue to the English-speaking people of the twentieth century, for we no longer employ the idiom and the sound values then current. We have the language of those times, it is true, preserved in the works of Chaucer and in our rich literary heritage from the Elizabethan age, but the speech of those times—the vernacular spoken by the mellifluous-tongued and myriad-minded Shakespeare, no less than that employed by that “verray perfight gentil knight,” Chaucer—is no longer heard upon the lips of the users of English and may therefore be said to be “dead.” These authors have left us a photograph more or less faithful and true, though not a speaking likeness, of the English language then existent. How our English vernacular has changed ever since the days of the famous virgin queen, not to mention the more radical changes of the far-remote days of the ill-starred Richard II! A spoken language is constantly changing. It grows and develops, or languishes and decays, upon the lips of those who employ it as their mother-tongue, now incorporating into itself new expressions and idioms and now casting off such as are old and worn out. But it is no easy matter to fix its ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic form, or to determine its chameleon color. The spoken language is modified by each speaker who uses it as a medium for the communication of his thoughts and feelings. The words which a man employs to convey his thoughts to his fellow man have not an absolute and unvarying significance. They have only a relative meaning, not a rigid and definite signification, which is essential in the nature of the term, and they express only the ideas which the writer or speaker puts into them. The same word, as is well known, has entirely different meanings in different passages or is employed in different senses by the speaker. Hence a prolific source of ambiguity in language. In the last analysis words are only conventional signs which mean whatever the speaker and hearer agree to make them mean. Striking illustration of this fact is furnished by our current social phrases, as Professor Kittredge points out in his “Words and their Ways in English Speech.”[1] Such conventional phrases as “Not at home,” “Delighted to see you,” “Sorry to have missed you when you called” are familiar everyday expressions which have no essential fixed meaning. To be sure, they mean what their face value imports, but they are generally regarded as merely polite forms—etiquette—nothing more.

Furthermore, the sounds which constitute words have to be learned by the tedious process of imitation, and in this very process the sounds are modified to a greater or less extent. In childhood—in fact, in infancy—we begin the slow and painful process of acquiring a vocabulary to express our ideas and we continue the work till death, ever imitating more or less closely the habits of speech of those about us. Thus language is modified perhaps without conscious effort, upon our part. By careful speakers the purity and the propriety of our speech are safeguarded. On the other hand, our language is corrupted and debased by those of careless and slipshod habits of utterance. In any case, however, whether upon the lips of the cultured and refined or upon the lips of the untutored and ignorant, the language is constantly undergoing modifications for better or for worse. Since it is true that a spoken language is ever changing and never remains fixed, how great and far-reaching must be the modification and change which our own English speech has undergone during the many generations of its history! Because our written language has experienced comparatively little alteration since the invention of printing, it does not follow that the spoken speech has remained constant and unchanged from century to century. Indeed, nothing is farther from the truth. But even our written language has been subjected to some minor alteration and slight modification since the days of Caxton, reputed the first English printer. Spoken English, which is the real, living language, has undergone infinite change during the last five centuries, and has diverged more and more from the idiom of Chaucer and Caxton, so that it is today almost an entirely different tongue. English orthography never has kept pace with the written language. Before the invention of printing our spelling failed to reflect the modifications which took place in the pronunciation of our tongue and the printing press served to establish and stereotype the conventional spelling then in vogue, which the characteristic conservatism of the Anglo-Saxon race has ever since preserved in its crystallized, fossilized form.

The printing press, therefore, is largely responsible for our inconsistent, archaic and unphonetic English orthography. When printing was introduced into England, such bewildering confusion and signal want of uniformity prevailed in writing and speaking the vernacular that expediency and business exigencies alike suggested a modification of our received spelling, and soon an imperative demand for simplicity and uniformity was felt among the printers. In response to this demand, and in order to facilitate the labor of the compositor and reader, a conventional mode of spelling was adopted and put into general use by the printers. Thus English orthography was taken from the direct control of the intellectual class who wrote books, and was turned over to a mechanical class who simply printed books. The intellectual class strove to make the spelling of our tongue conform to the pronunciation. With this object always in view English orthography was permitted a wide variation. A writer, therefore, enjoyed considerable latitude and freedom of choice and was untrammeled by the binding authority of tradition or convention. The mechanical class who undertook to establish our spelling for us at the same time that they printed our manuscripts experienced serious difficulty in their effort to represent an ever-varying orthography. Above all things they aimed to reduce English orthography to some uniform notation, and at length they achieved their purpose. Thus uniformity in our spelling was secured, but at the sacrifice of accuracy and precision; for the conventional orthography adopted by the early printers in England was by no means scientific or accurate even at the time of its adoption, and no attempt was made later to make the received orthography adequately reproduce the pronunciation. Consequently there arose a wide divergence between written and spoken English. Not the least important result is the loss of knowledge we have sustained as to how successive past generations of Englishmen spoke the vernacular. The result, which is obvious to everyone and frequently an embarrassment to some, is the innumerable obstacles which our archaic and inconsistent orthography necessarily places in the way of those of the present generation who have to learn English.

Sometimes, indulging in a little persiflage, we point with pardonable pride to the great achievements of our race and descant upon the marvelous beauty and flexibility of our noble English speech. We glory in the fact that “we speak the tongue that Shakespeare spoke,” although we may not hold the faith and morals which Milton held. We look with leniency upon such an oratorical or poetic utterance as a harmless effusion of patriotic sentiment. Yet how few really are those who today know the tongue that Shakespeare spoke! Because we speak the vernacular we take it for granted, as a matter of course, that we speak the language and employ the idiom of Shakespeare, little reflecting how different our present-day English sounds from Elizabethan English. Very few persons, indeed, have an accurate knowledge of Shakespearean English. Our speech has taken a long step in advance since the halcyon days of Queen Elizabeth, and it is a far cry from the twentieth century to the sixteenth century English. Perhaps it is not wide of the mark to affirm that not one person in a thousand of those using English as their mother tongue could today understand a play of Shakespeare if read with the author’s own accent and pronunciation. Spoken with the original sound values, in accordance with authorized usage at the time of its production, the play of Hamlet would seem to us today a foreign tongue. With the words of Shakespeare’s plays according to our present fashion of pronunciation we are quite familiar, but we know no more how the master dramatist would have uttered them, as Ellis observes in his “Early English Pronunciation,”[2] than we know how to write a play in his idiom. The speech of Shakespeare has long since departed from us; and if acquired today, it must be acquired as a new tongue at the cost of untold study and unstinted toil. It would be necessary to delve into Elizabethan antiquities and consult contemporary authorities on English pronunciation in order to determine the accepted values of English sounds then in use and reproduce the vernacular of that remote age. This would involve a vast deal of patient labor and generous study, and even at this costly price we could only hope to ascertain Shakespeare’s speech with approximate accuracy of detail. So far has our spoken English today left behind the written English of the Elizabethan age.

Were it a physical possibility, it would be equally instructive and interesting to hear our English tongue uttered with the characteristic accents and sounds of each successive period of its history from the age of King Alfred to the Victorian era. What a vast and striking difference there must be registered between the received pronunciations of these several periods, embracing a lapse of time of well-nigh ten centuries! How they gradually shade into each other as the colors of the prism! History records a wide divergence of the speech of King Edward VII from that of King Alfred, and yet both of these are but extremes of the same English language which has enjoyed an unbroken continuity of development through so many centuries. How different our language must have sounded upon the lips of the leading English men of letters from Chaucer, Wickliffe, Langland, and Spenser, on down to Dryden, Milton, Pope, and Addison! When we speak of the English speech of a given period in the past, we naturally think of the pronunciation as being uniform all over England. We assume without sufficient warrant that there was a standard of pronunciation that prevailed throughout England in those remote times, just as there is a recognized standard, with but slight variation, that prevails in England and America at the present day. However, even today there is no absolute standard of pronunciation. An absolute, definite English orthoëpy does not exist in reality; it is only a phantom, a figment of a precisian imagination without a counterpart in nature. We use the phrase for convenience, to be sure, but there never has been any such thing as an absolute standard of pronunciation in English, and is not now. The nearest approach to it is a linguistic ideal to which the users of our English speech aim, with more or less conscious effort, to make their pronunciation conform.

Still, the educated pronunciation of England and America comes much nearer to a common standard today than was ever the case before in the history of the English language. In Elizabethan times the usage of London and the Court did not prevail throughout the various shires of England, where the pronunciation was somewhat provincial. The tendency of English pronunciation in modern times has been toward uniformity. But in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries it is almost a straining of the meaning of words, as Ellis truly remarks, to talk of a general English pronunciation. In those good old days there was no received standard of pronunciation in England, and every man was free to speak English according to his own sense of propriety. Indeed, prior to the age of Chaucer not only was there no standard of pronunciation, but there was no acknowledged standard of literary English. There were various provincial dialects and also a Court dialect, but none of these was of sufficient influence to triumph over the rest and to compel universal imitation and adoption. After the Elizabethan age local usage in the matter of English pronunciation declined steadily, and the standard of the metropolis gradually commended itself, with increasing influence, till it spread more or less completely over the entire country. Consequently at the time of the rise of the pronouncing dictionary, in the eighteenth century, when the great middle class had begun to attain to prominence, provincial pronunciation fell into disrepute, and people everywhere clamored for a guide to Court usage in the matter of English orthoëpy. From that time to the present there has been a close approach to uniformity of utterance in our English speech. But in the very nature of things there cannot, of course, be a standard pronunciation without absolute uniformity of utterance, and it need hardly be remarked that this does not exist. Nevertheless, the influence and dominance of the pronouncing dictionary are clearly in the direction of a standard pronunciation and have made possible the existing approach to that end. It is quite remarkable how potent the influence of the pronouncing dictionary is upon English pronunciation.[3] Despite the fact that such an orthoëpic authority is at best arbitrary, and somewhat artificial, it has enjoyed a kind of undisputed supremacy since the days of Dr. Johnson, the literary autocrat of the eighteenth century; and its tyranny seems not yet ended. For the English-speaking world still defers to the authority of the pronouncing dictionary and to that extent is under its thrall and has not the courage to challenge it and to assert its own independence in matters of orthoëpy.

Prior to the eighteenth century the pronouncing dictionary was unknown. It therefore cannot boast the authority of a long antiquity. There were, however, certain guides to correct orthoëpy even in those early times, at least in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There are preserved to us certain records of contemporary orthoëpists which throw light upon English pronunciation in those remote times. We are not therefore left to conjecture simply in this matter. These authorities, to be sure, leave much to be desired in any disputed question of our early pronunciation. Their descriptions of the accepted orthoëpy of their respective centuries as well as their graphic representations of the English sounds are far from lucid, and they sometimes make confusion worse confounded. Some of the orthoëpists were content to refer to Latin, Greek, or Hebrew sounds as a standard of comparison for English pronunciation, sublimely unconscious of the fact that the older pronunciation of these languages is not yet established to the satisfaction of all scholars and that the modern pronunciation varies with different countries. Others of them used key words the value of which it is extremely difficult to determine definitely. Others again refer to such unstable standards of comparison as contemporary French and Italian. Yet, amid the endless confusion and apparent conflict of these incomplete records, that eminent authority on our English speech succeeded, by dint of his laborious erudition and untiring patience, in solving the numberless difficulties with which the question of our early pronunciation was beset. By this achievement Mr. Ellis placed the world of scholars under lasting obligation by determining for us, with approximate accuracy, the successive values of our early English sounds down to the age of the pronouncing dictionary. Let Mr. Ellis give us in his own words a summary of his arduous investigation. “The pronunciation of English during the sixteenth century,” says he, “was thus rendered tolerably clear, and the mode in which it broke into that of the seventeenth century became traceable. But the seventeenth century was, like the fifteenth, one of civil war, that is of extraordinary commingling of the population, and consequently one of marked linguistic change. Between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries our language was almost born anew. In the seventeenth century the idiomatic changes are by no means so evident, but the pronunciation altered distinctly in some remarkable points. These facts, and the breaking up of the seventeenth into the eighteenth century pronunciation, which when established scarcely differed from the present, are well brought to light by Wallis, Wilkins, Owen, Price, Cooper, Miege, and Jones, followed by Buchanan, Franklin, and Sheridan. It became, therefore, possible to assign with considerable accuracy the pronunciation of Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, or rather of their contemporaries.”[4]

In the English language there is manifest a tendency for the pronunciation to conform to the orthography. Our pronunciation seems to be more a matter of the eye than of the ear. By this is meant that the spelling of an English word exerts an appreciable influence upon its pronunciation. We feel, somehow, instinctively that the spelling ought to be an index, perhaps a reasonably trustworthy guide to the pronunciation of a word. It seems not in keeping with the eternal fitness of things, certainly contrary to our linguistic instinct and opposed to the genius of our English speech, for pronunciation to be entirely dissociated from orthography. We feel that the sound should be forever and inseparably wedded to the writing, and our linguistic sense is more or less shocked when the two are divorced. Especially is this sentiment prevalent in America. What else could have prompted the slight modification in the writing of such words as favor, honor, neighbor,[5] etc., where American usage has seen fit to make a departure from the time-honored British usage in discarding the silent letter? Of course, as far as orthography is concerned, there is very little difference between American and British usage. In America we aim to pronounce more nearly as we spell. Yet even in American English the pronunciation is occasionally divorced from the spelling, particularly in proper names, but in British English this feature is still more noticeable, and, no doubt, American usage in this particular is simply to be regarded as a concession to British authority and custom.[6] For there appears to be no general principle governing the pronunciation of proper names, the same name being sometimes differently pronounced in different localities. Besides, many of our proper names are direct importations from the mother country and therefore have naturally retained their imported pronunciations. In British usage the pronunciation and spelling are not infrequently at glaring variance, as in Pall Mall and Cholmondeley, which may serve as a type of this class of proper names. We might offer Taliaferro as an American Roland for the British Oliver. But where should we find a parallel in American English to the characteristic British clerk and military, to cite only two examples of a class of words of which the distinctive usage of the United States and Great Britain is at variance?

Perhaps the true explanation of this variation between British and American usage is found in the fact that America is a new country, and hence tradition here does not carry such binding authority as in the Old World. There the pronunciation has been handed down by word of mouth, from generation to generation, among a people “to the manner born.” Here conditions are much altered. America has a large foreign-born element, and consequently many of the people cannot claim English as their native tongue and are compelled to learn it as a foreign language. Hence they rely, in a measure, upon the spelling to indicate the pronunciation of English, making it a study for the eye quite as much as for the ear. If in democratic America the habits of speech were as thoroughly established as they are in aristocratic England then we should speak the English language without any reference to its orthography. But political conditions have modified our American English somewhat, causing it to vary slightly from British usage. A rise in social rank, which is quite common in the New World though rare in the Old, is frequently marked by a revision of one’s former mode of utterance, especially if your self-made man happens to have come of an obscure and unlettered family.

Assuredly English orthography is no criterion of received pronunciation, either in America or in England. It requires only a moment’s reflection to be convinced how misleading and deceptive is our orthography as a guide to orthoëpy. Foreigners who undertake to learn our tongue are naturally more forcibly impressed with the utter untrustworthiness of this guide. The status of our orthography has been correctly described by a prominent historian of our noble speech. He says, “English is now the most barbarously spelled of any cultivated tongue in Christendom. We are weltering in an orthographic chaos in which a multitude of signs are represented by the same sound and a multitude of sounds by the same sign.”[7] There is no doubt that our spelling is exceedingly unphonetic and unscientific. In our alphabet are only twenty-six characters to represent the multiplicity of sounds which exist in the English language. The utter inadequacy of our imperfect alphabet makes its strongest appeal—albeit mute—in its vowel notation. Here the many distinct vocalic sounds with their gradations in which English abounds must all be represented by five symbols. Add to this that we employ the same orthographic device to indicate quantity. The one vowel symbol a, for example, is written to indicate the various divergent sounds heard in the words father, fate, fat, fall, ask, and fare. Likewise the single letter o is employed to represent the diverse gradations of that sound which we utter in the words floor, room, frog, off, note, and not. Again we use diagraphs, such as ea, ee, oa, ei, ie, etc., to represent a single vowel sound and diphthongs as well. As has been pointed out by Professor Lounsbury, one and the same sound is now represented by e in let, by ea in head, by ei in heifer, by eo in leopard, by ay in says, by ai in said, and by a in many.

Furthermore, as a result of the change in the values of English vowel sounds, our vowel notation is no longer accurate. We use the character a to indicate to the eye the vowel quality in mate, sate, rate, date, etc., where the sound value, far from being of an a quality, is really a long phonetic e. The truth is, all the English vowels have undergone a radical alteration from their primitive values which they had in the early history of our speech, having passed through different stages in the successive periods. It is an interesting chapter in English phonology to trace the tortuous course of a given sound, say a, through its various mutations from the Anglo-Saxon period down to the present time. Our vowels, especially, have changed and interchanged to an extent which is simply astonishing. The average scholar who has not made a special study of our English language has absolutely no conception of the radical nature and vast extent of the change and development of English sounds. Take as an illustration our vowel e. The early English phonetic e passed through several stages of development and about the seventeenth century came to have the value of a genuine long i, as in ear, hear, year, etc. Later, in the nineteenth century, this same sound developed into a diphthong which is its present phonetic value. Of course we speak now of the sound of this vowel, not of the symbol which we employ to represent it to the eye in writing. That is another story, and it illustrates the bungling work of our early English printers. In early times there were several characters in use to represent the vowel, e, to wit, e, ee, eo, ea, and ae. After the printing press was set up in England, for convenience and simplicity, eo and ae were not much employed. But e, ee, and ea came into general favor, and were established by custom to indicate the vowel e to the eye. However, these symbols were not consistently used in the beginning by the printers, and hence the present confusion in writing. Our consonantal notation shows evidence of as flagrant abuse of symbols and of glaring inaccuracy. Numerous examples might be cited to prove that errors on the part of our early scribes and printers have been stereotyped in our orthography and perpetuated to the present day.

But not all the inconsistencies in our spelling have sprung from the careless work of the early printers. Some are the result of our etymological spelling. For instance, the sound of s in sure we represent by the symbol ti in motion, by sci in conscience, by ci in suspicion, by xi in anxious, by ce in ocean, and by sh in shepherd. It is obviously not fair to charge such an inconsistency as this to the sins of our erring early printers. Still, the early English printers have enough to answer for in corrupting the orthography of our language. They were grossly careless and indifferent, and showed but slight regard for the propriety of English orthography. We are not at all surprised to learn, in view of the gross errors they committed, that they were, for the most part, foreigners—Germans and Dutchmen—who did not use English as their vernacular and who did not, for that reason, know the language thoroughly. “As foreigners,” comments Professor Lounsbury, “they had little or no knowledge of the proper spelling of our tongue”; and he adds that “in the general license that then prevailed they could venture to disregard where they did not care to understand.” The result was the printing press brought chaos into English orthography in the multitude of books which it sent broadcast over the land. Some of the errors, it is true, were corrected subsequently, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when an effort was made to reform English orthography and adjust it anew to the pronunciation. But many of the incorrect spellings which had meanwhile crept in through the introduction of printing were too thoroughly established by usage to be eradicated. They continue still in English orthography as a lasting monument alike to the crass ignorance and negligence of our early printers and to the arrant pedantry of our early proof readers. Thus our English orthography now in its crystallized state preserves those glaring defects as the amber the insects which, entangled in the liquid, are encased for ever.

It must not be inferred, however, that as soon as Caxton set up his press, English spelling was immediately stereotyped and fixed for all time. It required fully two, if not three, centuries, according to Ellis, for the picturesque diversity and latitude permitted the early scribes to be reduced to the dull, rigid uniformity now established by convention. Experiment after experiment was made by the typographers whose constant and ultimate aim was simplicity. The last radical change was effected by the seventeenth century when the spellings ee, oo, and oa were adopted by the printers. Even then a fierce struggle in orthography was waged, as, for example, that between sope and soap, until the conventional spelling at last triumphed. In the seventeenth century the writing ie for long e as in brief, believe, friend, chief, and the like, was finally established after a long and doubtful contest. In early times the spelling vacillated between frend and freend, chef, cheef, and chefe; and a scribe could take his choice. But of course the printing press sounded the knell of this orthographic liberty of the individual, and one must spell now according to convention. And if one does not know what this is, he must consult the dictionary.

The seventeenth century witnessed many important, yea, revolutionary, changes in our speech as a result of the social upheaval incident to the civil war. But there was very slight recognition of these in the contemporary orthography. The printers refused to alter the conventional orthography to suit the modifications in the spoken speech, and they threw the weight of all their mighty influence in favor of the traditional spelling and against any sweeping reform. They prevailed; and from that time down to the present they have resolutely discouraged any attempt at extensive revision of our traditional orthography. Hence our historic orthography with its teeming inconsistencies and absurdities has now come to be regarded with a feeling of reverence; and we naturally recoil from any far-reaching reform of it as we would from laying violent hands upon an heirloom which has passed down to us through many generations. We have become accustomed to associate a certain spelling with a certain word, and we do not desire to have this association broken up. We therefore feel like registering a strong and vigorous protest against any proposed reform of a sweeping nature which would disturb our present English orthography, however illogical, archaic, and arbitrary.

To be sure, some of our lexicographers have ventured to introduce a revised spelling here and there. Dr. Johnson essayed this in his epoch-making dictionary, published about the middle of the eighteenth century. Indeed, he foisted not a few absurd and arbitrary orthographies into our language, which have contributed to bring our spelling into disrepute with those who clamor for “fonetic reform.” Let us note some of these. Johnson threw the weight of his authority in favor of comptroller against the older controller, although he gave both a place in his dictionary. He likewise harbored foreign and sovereign in his dictionary, leaving the older forrain and sovran to shift for themselves. He adopted debt and doubt with the epenthetic b, to the exclusion of the older and correct dett and dout. He lent the weight of his influence to establish a misleading and useless s in island, which used to be written iland. But perhaps he felt that the word was too closely associated in the popular mind with isle for iland to prevail. On the other hand, he retained the old spelling ile, which we have discarded for the etymological aisle, adding that isle was in his judgment a corrupt writing for aile, then also current. His uncertainty as to the etymology of the early English agast led him to write it also aghast, which has since triumphed over its quondam rival. He gives the precedence to delight, to the utter defeat of delite, its erstwhile competitor for popular favor. He rejected the simpler spelling ake for the less familiar ache, out of deference to its Greek origin, yet he endeavored to preserve a useless k in almanack and musick and similar words. He made a distinction without a difference in his spelling of the final syllables of such words as accede, exceed, precede, and proceed. But it is idle at this distant day to arraign Dr. Johnson on the score of his spelling. Let us therefore dismiss the indictment against his arbitrary orthography. Some of our present authorities on English spelling are not entirely free from reproach in this particular. The truth is, even yet our English dictionaries are not a unit as to approved spelling. We have not yet attained to absolute uniformity in the matter of our orthography. For, according to Ellis, there are still well-nigh twenty-five hundred words in the English language the spelling of which is unsettled and indeterminate. But we experience no serious inconvenience as a result, even if we have no preference as to what dictionary we should follow as a guide. In fact, any dictionary gives us a choice between worshipped and worshiped, traveller and traveler, center and centre, and similar words, in the case of which usage still wavers and is divided almost equally. Some excellent authorities still cling to the etymological spelling of words of classic origin, such as hæmorrhage, diarrhœa, æsthetics, œconomics, and æstivate, to mention only a few of a large class the spelling of which vacillates. Others, again, sanction this spelling, but throw the weight of their influence on the side of the simpler form. This simply proves that there is some degree of variation even in our accepted orthography. After all there is no fixed standard of English orthography, just as there is no absolute standard of English pronunciation. And yet there is a narrower margin of variation in our accepted orthography than there is in our received pronunciation.

The movement for the reform of English spelling is beginning to engage the attention of the public. The Simplified Spelling Board has already entered upon a campaign which holds out some hope of success. It remains to be seen what practical results will be accomplished. Scholars of acknowledged eminence are lending the influence of their authority to the movement. But there is a mighty wall of bigoted conservatism, to be battered down before a movement so sweeping in its aim and scope as “spelling reform” can make much headway. The history of all similar attempts in the past is not such as to hold out great promise to the present reformers or inspire them with unbounded confidence. Still, intelligent, well-directed and untiring effort ought certainly to be rewarded with a reasonable degree of success, and surely there can be no question that there is room for improvement in our English spelling. If we had such an institution as the French Academy, no doubt the problem would be simplified. The outcome of the present campaign for the revision of our English spelling will be awaited with no little interest.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See p. 219.

[2] Vol. I, p. 22.

[3] See Authority in English Pronunciation.

[4] Early English Pronunciation, I, p. 26.

[5] See A Question of Preference in English Spelling.

[6] See Briticisms vs. Americanisms.

[7] Professor T. R. Lounsbury, History of the English Language. p. 267.

A QUESTION OF PREFERENCE IN ENGLISH SPELLING.

We little think when we read or write that the words we employ are not precisely the same as those which have been in use in our mother-tongue from time immemorial. We are born into the language, so to say, and the words of our vocabulary we regard as part and parcel of our rich heritage of American liberty. Yet even the words of our English speech, like many of the institutions and customs of our Anglo-Saxon civilization, have a long history back of them, showing traces here and there of the various stages of development they have passed through. The words we use to-day are not identical in form or meaning with those employed by our forebears of the generation of Chaucer or even of the generation of Shakespeare. The forms of our English words have undergone considerable change since that remote period in the development of our mother-tongue. English spelling is far different from what it was in Alfred’s, or Chaucer’s time.

Before the invention of printing, those who spoke and wrote the English language seem to have been at liberty to spell as they chose. Their mental composure was not disturbed by the annoying suspicion that their spelling was not according to the norm prescribed by the dictionary. In those good old days there was no acknowledged criterion such as the “Century,” or “Webster,” or “Worcester”; and writers had no final appeal in the matter of orthography as present-day writers have. Since there was no standard authority on orthography to which all polite society had to conform, the authors of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were untrammeled by tradition and were free to spell as they pleased. Every writer was a law unto himself and followed the dictates of his own orthographical conscience, with no dictionary to molest or make him afraid. We find an allusion to this delightful sense of freedom in the comment which a well-known American humorist made upon Chaucer, that well of English undefiled from which so many modern writers have drunk copious draughts of inspiration. “Chaucer,” said he quaintly, “may have been a fine poet, but he was a —— poor speller.”

The diffusion of the art of printing and the consequent necessity for a uniform orthography gradually curtailed this liberty, and then the day of the dictionary dawned. The dictionary is a democratic invention called into being by the rise of the great middle class of society, which desired to become familiar with the practises of polite circles. Lexicographers came forward to supply the desired information. Authors not “to the mannor born,” and therefore unacquainted with courtly usage, when moved to write, felt that they must conform to the standards set up by the lexicographers, who claimed to give the received usage, the jus et norma scribendi. Before the epoch of dictionaries it appears not to have made the slightest difference whether a writer spelled the word recede, for example, according to the present accepted orthography, or whether he spelled it receed, receede, recede or recead, all of which forms are found in manuscripts of a few centuries ago. Some of these orthographic variations lingered into the eighteenth century, though English spelling had probably become stereotyped at least a century before this date. Yet the establishment of the spelling was naturally a gradual process, and some words vacillated a long time and never really became fixed. Of this more anon. Proper names showed considerable latitude of spelling. Men of the eminence of Spenser, rare Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, for example, are said to have had no fixed practise of spelling their names, but wrote them in a variety of ways.

The lack of a standard authority of orthography necessarily gave rise to much confusion and disorder in English spelling. This confusion is reflected even yet in the present chaotic and unphonetic spelling of our language. Few tongues are more unphonetic than the English. This fact is recognized and efforts have been made to bring our spelling into closer conformity with our pronunciation. Philological societies on both sides of the Atlantic have been trying for the last quarter of a century, at least, to reform English spelling; but only meager success has been achieved thus far.

The proposed reforms have been of two kinds, and they have varying aims. One recommended by the extreme phonetists, is a reform which contemplates a revision and enlargement of our alphabet. This would result in a radical transformation of our written speech, and chiefly for this reason it has found few ardent advocates. It may be briefly described as a reform of the language. The other reform is less revolutionary and contemplates mainly a simplification of our present spelling, such as the omission of silent letters, the substitution of “f” for “ph” as in phonetics (fonetics) and of “t” for final “d” as in equipped (equipt) and similar emendations. Of the two kinds of reform the latter has, manifestly, more to commend it to popular favor. This kind of reform may be termed a reform in the language.

The public concedes the unphonetic character of English orthography, but the conservatism of the Anglo-Saxon race is so binding that the people are slow to adopt even the slightest recommendations of the philological societies. A few American journals have had the courage to adopt certain emended spellings, such as thru (through), tho (though), catalog (catalogue) and the like, but the majority of our periodicals show by their practise very meager approval of spelling-reform. No publisher, so far as known to the writer, has ventured as yet to use the emended spelling in a book issued by his firm. Yet all admit the need of spelling-reform and believe that, if adopted, it would save the coming generation a vast deal of humdrum work in acquiring an accurate knowledge of English orthography.

We Americans, however, with our characteristic spirit of independence have made bold to break away from British tradition and custom in the writing of certain English words and have introduced a few minor reforms in our spelling. But the English people have not followed our lead in this matter, being content to allow our adopted American spelling, together with our distinctive pronunciation, serve as an earmark to distinguish American from British English. It is the practise of some reputable British journals to disparage our spelling, wherever it makes a departure from English traditions, and to refer to it by way of reproach as “American spelling.” Some few years ago the St. James Gazette, intending to express its disapproval of our spelling, deprecatingly remarked that “already newspapers in London are habitually using the ugliest forms of American spelling and those silly eccentricities do not make the slightest difference in their circulation.” Viewed in the light of subsequent events, perhaps this ought to be considered as the forerunner of “the American invasion.”

As every one knows who has visited the mother country, there is a perceptible difference not only in the spelling, but also in the pronunciation, between American English and British English. Of course the language is the same in America as in England; and yet there are some appreciable minor points of difference. For example, the Englishman gives the broad sound to the vowel a as in father, when it is followed by such a combination of consonants as in the words ask, fast, dance, can’t, answer, after and the like. In America, on the other hand, while this pronunciation is heard in some circles, it is clearly not the ordinary pronunciation and is not general, as in England. There is also a noticeable difference in the pronunciation of long o, the Englishman giving the vowel a distinctive utterance quite unlike that ordinarily heard in America. The pronunciation of the word been is a shibboleth by which a man of British nationality may be almost unfailingly distinguished. The native Englishman pronounces the word so as to rhyme with seen, never bin. In addition to these points of pronunciation there are certain locutions which never fail to betray an Englishman. The English call an elevator a lift, overshoes galoshes, napkins serviettes, candy sweets. In England a baby-carriage is called a perambulator, which is generally abridged “pram” merely; a lamp-post is known as lamp-pillar and a letter-box as a pillar-box. There no one would ask at a store for a wash-bowl and pitcher, however much he might need these useful household articles, but he would call at the shop for a jug and basin. An American in London must not say street car, but tram or road car; not engine (which is pronounced injin), but locomotive-engine; not engineer, but engine-driver. In England many ordinary household articles are known by names as different from those in our country as if the language there were altogether a foreign tongue. Small wonder, then, that a keen-witted American maid remarked, à propos of the difference between British English and American English, that London was a delightful place if you only knew the language.

Nowhere is the difference between American English and British English more marked and interesting than in the varying practise of spelling on both sides of the Atlantic. Let us note some of the chief points of variation.

Our British cousins assume an exasperating air of superiority when they mention the matter of our spelling and, as self-appointed conservators of the language, point out what they are pleased to style the offensive eccentricities of American spelling. The British journals ever and anon draw attention to our manner of writing such words as favor, honor, center, program, almanac, tire, curb, check and criticize and the like, which they spell favour, honour, centre, programme, almanack, tyre, kerb, cheque and criticise. Now, in the case of most of these words, we submit that the American spelling is nearer the historical spelling, simpler and more logical than the British method. As for the words typified by honor, our method is simpler and nearer to the ultimate etymology. These words, it hardly need be observed, are borrowed from the Latin through the French. The British maintain that for this reason the spelling ought to conform to the French fashion. But they overlook the fact that these words have not always been written in English according to the French manner of writing. Dr. Johnson, the eminent lexicographer of the eighteenth century, wrote honor beside honour, neighbor beside neighbour, harbor beside harbour and the like. Indeed, the great Cham allowed himself considerable latitude in the matter of English orthography. Moreover, the Norman-French forms of these words were written in a variety of ways, as our, eur, ur, and also or. Even on the historical ground, therefore, there is not lacking some authority for the American spelling. If the English were consistent, they would be forced by the logic of their argument to write uniformly governour, errour, emperour, oratour, horrour and dolour as well as honour and favour. But practise shows their glaring lack of consistency, since they do not spell these words ordinarily with u. It ought not to be regarded as a reproach upon American spelling, because in our desire for simplicity and uniformity we have rejected the u in this entire class of words like honor, thus making the spelling more in keeping with the Latin derivation. We can at least lay claim to simplicity and consistency. If we are provincial, we can not be charged with arbitrariness in our spelling.

As for the writing of center, meter, meager and words of this kind, the American method has as much history and logic in its favor as the British spelling has. Analogy, too, if that may be cited as an argument, supports our spelling, for we all write perimeter, diameter, never otherwise, whether we be American or English. The word center, according to Lowell, who was no mean authority on matters pertaining to our speech, “is no Americanism; it entered the language in that shape and kept it at least as late as Defoe.” “In the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century,” declares Professor Lounsbury, in reference to the spelling of center and similar words, “while both ways of writing these words existed side by side, the termination er is far more common than re. The first complete edition of Shakespeare’s plays was published in 1624. In that work sepulcher occurs thirteen times; it is spelled eleven times with er. Scepter occurs thirty-seven times; it is not once spelled with re, but always with er. Center occurs twelve times, and in nine instances out of the twelve it ends in er.” John Bellows, in the preface to his excellent French-English and English-French pocket dictionary, states that “the Act of Parliament legalizing the use of the metric system in this country [England] gives the words meter, liter, gram, etc., spelt on the American plan.” It is evident, then, that our way of writing these words is quite as logical and as much warranted by the history of our tongue as the British spelling.

The American orthography is clearly in advance of the British in the word almanac. This word is not rightly entitled to the final k, as the English spell it. This superfluous letter is a mere survival from a former way of writing, no longer in vogue. It has been rejected in music, public, optic and similar words which are written alike on both sides of the Atlantic. In Johnson’s dictionary and also in our King James’s version of the Scriptures the old spelling generally occurs. Indeed, Johnson appended the excrescent k to well-nigh all words of this class. Strange to say, there is one word of this class which preserves the k even in American English, and that is hammock. This is but an exception which goes to prove that even American English with its revised orthography is still far from being phonetic.

In regard to words ending in ize, usage in Great Britain has established the writing ise, as in civilise. However, new formations even there are usually made to terminate in ize, which is generally adopted in America. Yet American spelling sometimes exhibits ise, after the English fashion. The British writing is derived from the French, whereas the American harks back to the original Greek suffix. The British spelling of tyre, kerb, programme and cheque perhaps has as much to commend it as the American tire, curb, program and check. Usage in America varies in the case of program, the more conservative still clinging to programme. Tyre and kerb are but little employed here. These words are merely variant forms which British usage has adopted. The spelling cheque, in general use in Great Britain for our bank check, has resulted through the influence of the word exchequer with which it is connected.

The usual American spelling of wagon is held up to public obloquy by British journalists, who regard waggon as the orthodox orthography. Skeat, who gives both forms in his etymological dictionary, asserts that the doubling of the g is simply a device to show that the preceding vowel is short. In the early history of the language when the etymological spelling was in vogue, pedants had recourse to this method of changing the form of a word to make it phonetic, as they claimed. In point of fact, by their practise they made the language far less phonetic. Spenser and other early English authors write the word after the American fashion. Horace Greeley once made a departure from our American usage and wrote waggon, saying by way of apology, when his attention was called to it, that “they used to build wagons heavier in the good old times when he learned to spell.”

It is not to be supposed for a moment, however, that our utilitarian disregard of tradition is so strong as to have eliminated all useless letters in our American spelling. There is many a word in which an epenthetic letter is still retained merely because the traditional spelling shows it. Sovereign, comptroller, island and rhyme may be cited as examples in point. Perhaps it ought to be added that the emended spelling rime for rhyme appears to be meeting with favor in certain philological circles.

There is one class of words which does not exhibit a uniform method of writing, either in Great Britain or in America. This class is typified by the words traveler, counselor, worshiper and the like. It will be readily seen that these words are all derivatives, formed from the primary by the addition of a suffix; and the writing vacillates between a single and a double consonant preceding the suffix. According to the well-known principle of English orthography, these words are not entitled to a double consonant, and therefore should never be written traveller, counsellor and worshipper. The rule is, if the final syllable of a word ending in a single consonant and preceded by a short vowel is accented, the final consonant, on the addition of a suffix beginning with a vowel, is doubled; but never otherwise. Thus we write offered, deviled and the like, but referred, transferred and jammed. Hence the orthodox spelling should be traveler, counselor, worshiper, unrivaled and the like. But practise shows that either spelling is regarded as correct on both sides of the Atlantic. These words are survivals from a former period in the history of the language when more latitude was allowed in English orthography and there was no hard and fast line drawn, no fixed standard. The proper historical spelling, it is interesting to note, is with one consonant, as in counselor derived ultimately from the Latin consilarius. While either spelling is considered correct, British usage favors the double consonant (counsellor) and American the single (counselor). Here again as elsewhere American spelling inclines to simplification and would make these words conform to the general rule of English orthography as laid down above. Strange to say, British usage shows one exception in the word paralleled, which it has adopted (and not parallelled). Here we find another instance of the striking inconsistency of British orthography. It may be a shocking thing to say, but investigation will prove it true, that if those British critics who censure our spelling so severely, as offending their esthetic sense, were more familiar with the history of the language, they would, without doubt, have far less comment to make upon the so-called eccentricities of American spelling.

It remains to notice some apparent exceptions to the rule of English orthography stated above. Noteworthy among these are the words handicapped and kidnapped, which are written alike in British and American English. But they can be explained and are only apparent exceptions. A moment’s reflection is sufficient to convince one that handicap and kidnap are not simple words, but in reality compounds in which the last element has not completely lost its identity in combination. Because of the consciousness of the independent words cap and nap in these compounds, they conform to the rule as a matter of fact and therefore double the final consonant, on the addition of a suffix beginning with a vowel. Hence, if they are exceptions, they must be considered exceptions which prove the rule.

The few points we have drawn attention to in this imperfect little sketch are enough to show how unphonetic and illogical is our English spelling. Many of the eccentricities of our orthography, according to Skeat, have resulted from the futile attempts of pedants in the sixteenth century to make English spelling etymological and to make it conform to the classics, from which a vast multitude of words had been introduced into our speech. These conscious attempts at etymological spelling gave rise to endless confusion and disorder. But other causes, such as analogy and mere caprice, also contributed to this end. Thus we are to explain the writing of the word female, for example. This word, coming from the Latin femella through the French femelle into English, was originally written femelle and would probably have retained this form to the present time. But because of a fancied connection with the word male, the spelling was changed to female. In a similar manner is to be explained the spelling of numerous other words in our language which seem perfectly natural and logical on first blush.

AUTHORITY IN ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION.

For wellnigh two centuries a popular belief has prevailed throughout the English-speaking world that there should be a standard of pronunciation, which should be followed in all those countries where English is the native tongue. Many people, holding this view, assume that some such norm is unconsciously observed by men of education and culture, who, because of their influence and rank, are generally conceded the right to establish the customs of speech. It is but natural, therefore, that men with greater or less claim to culture and education should take it upon themselves from time to time to determine the supposed standard of pronunciation. Thus as far back as the beginning of the eighteenth century we find that the orthoepists of that period undertook to ascertain and record the pronunciation of English as practised in polite society.

Now, the early orthoepists discovered, apparently to their astonishment, that English pronunciation, even in the most cultured circles, far from being fixed by ironclad rules, was quite an elastic thing, allowing considerable latitude. Indeed, two centuries ago pronunciation in English, as reflected by the best usage, was no more uniform than it is to-day. Then as now, men recognized no fixed and absolute standard of English pronunciation. They followed their own tastes and individual preferences, despite the orthoepical suggestions and recommendations of their contemporaries. Prejudice and caprice, too, in those days, as in the present time, were factors to be reckoned with, so that the path of the would-be authority on pronunciation was beset with no slight difficulty.

It must not be inferred, however, that the orthoepists themselves were a unit and in perfect harmony as to current usage. On the contrary, they were frequently far apart in recording the pronunciation sanctioned by the best society and differed quite as much as their worthy successors of the present day. They sometimes indulged in vituperation and severe censure at each others’ expense and made no attempt to conceal their disapproval of a rival’s authority, which they expressed in plain, vigorous Anglo-Saxon. Some of their sarcastic remarks furnish spicy and entertaining reading to the student who is willing to plod his way through the dreary waste of those forgotten dust-covered tomes.

The most conspicuous among the eighteenth century orthoepists were Baily, Johnson, Buchanan, Sheridan and Walker. Some of these were Scotch, and some Irish, and some, of course, English. Quite naturally it struck the fancy of an Englishman as somewhat humorous, not to say absurd, for an Irishman or a Scotchman to pose as an authority on English pronunciation. So the damaging taunt of foreign nationality and consequent lack of acquaintance with English usage was flaunted in the face of Buchanan and Sheridan, natives of Scotland and Ireland, respectively.

When Doctor Johnson was informed of Sheridan’s plan of producing an English dictionary that was designed to indicate the pronunciation of each word, he ridiculed the idea of an Irishman’s presuming to teach Englishmen how to speak their native language as utterly absurd. “Why, Sir,” growled the autocrat of eighteenth century literature, “my dictionary shows you the accent of words, if you can but remember them.” Then on being reminded that his dictionary does not give the pronunciation of the vowels, “Why, Sir,” continued he, in his characteristic surly manner, “consider how much easier it is to learn a language by the ear than by any marks. Sheridan’s dictionary may do very well; but you can not always carry it about with you; and when you want the word, you have not the dictionary. It is like the man who has a sword that will not draw. It is an admirable sword, to be sure; but while your enemy is cutting your throat, you are unable to use it. Besides, Sir, what entitles Sheridan to fix the pronunciation of English? He has, in the first place, the disadvantage of being an Irishman; and if he says he will fix it after the example of the best company, why they differ among themselves. I remember an instance: when I published the plan of my dictionary, Lord Chesterfield told me that the word great should be pronounced to rhyme to state; and Sir William Yonge sent me word that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to seat, and that none but Irishmen would pronounce it grait. Now, here were two men of the highest rank, the one the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely.”

As this quotation shows clearly and forcibly, even the usage of the very best speakers in England in the eighteenth century was far from uniform and harmonious, as has been intimated in the opening paragraph. Moreover, it is evident from the striking illustration Johnson uses that English pronunciation must have varied much more two centuries ago than it does to-day; for no two speakers of national reputation, such as the leaders of the two chambers of Parliament presumably must have been, would differ so radically at the present time in their pronunciation. The truth is, in those good old days men paid but little attention either to pronunciation or to spelling. It is a fact not so widely known as it deserves to be, that English orthography two centuries ago was just emerging from a state of confusion and chaos; and law and order were then for the first time beginning to appear. The result is the conventional spelling which only since the eighteenth century has been stereotyped in the form now so familiar to all educated people. And not even yet, as we know, has English orthography had its perfect work. As late as Doctor Johnson’s time, the spelling of many English words had not yet been crystallized, and not a few words could be spelled in two distinct ways, either of which was recognized as correct. For instance, the spelling of soap, cloak, choke and fuel, to select only a few examples, as recorded in his dictionary, vacillated between “sope,” “cloke,” “choak,” “fewel” and the present accepted spelling of these words. These variant spellings, long since rejected, now seem to us either attempts at phonetic spelling or quaint and curious imitations of Chaucerian orthography. Having discussed elsewhere[8] the subject of English spelling, I dismiss the matter here with this passing reference.

The crystallized form of English spelling which has been brought about mainly through the influence of the printing-press in the last few centuries we accept as a matter of course, little thinking of the difficulties innumerable which the printer and the “gentle” reader encountered three centuries ago. But the very existence of a standard orthography, as a moment’s reflection will show, has necessitated as its indispensable adjunct the pronouncing dictionary.

The pronouncing dictionary, therefore, is a modern production; it was hardly known before the first quarter of the eighteenth century. It is held by some scholars, notably Professor Lounsbury in his “Standard of Pronunciation in English,” that the pronouncing dictionary was called into existence by the desire on the part of the imperfectly educated middle class to know what to say and how to say it. This desire became stronger and stronger as the members of that growing class of England’s population rose by degrees into social prominence. Possessing little culture and few social advantages, and lacking confidence in their meager training, such people were not willing to exercise the right of private judgment, and consequently they sought out an authority and guide. They were eager to learn the modes of speech which obtained in the most highly cultured circles, the jus et norma loquendi of the nobility. It was natural therefore, since the occasion appeared to demand it, that self-appointed guides should come forward and offer to conduct the multitudes of social pariahs through the wilderness of orthoepical embarrassment into the Canaan of polite usage. Such was probably the origin of the pronouncing dictionary.

It will prove interesting to consider some of the pronunciations authorized by the early orthoepists as reflecting contemporary usage. How unlike current usage many of those early pronunciations are, the reader will see for himself. But first a word as to the orthoepists themselves.

The earliest of the eighteenth century orthoepists is Baily. His dictionary enjoyed the enviable distinction of being the first authority on English pronunciation during the first half of the eighteenth century. But Baily’s supremacy was eclipsed by Johnson, whose epoch-marking dictionary appeared in 1755. Johnson claimed to record the most approved method of English orthoepy, and his prestige as a man of letters contributed speedily to establish his dictionary as the ultimate authority on English pronunciation. It is to be observed, however, that Johnson only indicated the syllable on which the accent falls. This left much to be desired as a pronouncing dictionary. So, in 1766, Buchanan, a Scotchman, gave to the world his dictionary which challenged Johnson’s pre-eminence. A few years later, in 1780, to be accurate, Sheridan published his dictionary. Sheridan was an Irishman by birth, as has been said, the son of the famous British orator and dramatist, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whose plays are so favorably known to us through Mr. Jefferson’s interpretation. Sheridan’s nationality was used by his competitors to prejudice the public against his dictionary and to discount it as an authority on English pronunciation. Still Sheridan enjoyed a considerable vogue.

In 1791 Walker published his dictionary. The reputation of this work, in a revised form, extended far into the last century, so we are informed by the late Mr. Ellis in his authoritative work on English pronunciation. Walker, like Sheridan, was an actor, but unlike his rival he was an Englishman by birth. He did not fail to draw attention to the advantage this circumstance would naturally give him in the popular estimation, in advertising the merits of his book. In his treatment of the principles of pronunciation, however, Walker shows a feeble grasp of his subject, and the most serious criticism upon his book is that he was unduly influenced by the spelling in ascertaining the pronunciation of a word. “In almost every part of his principles,” says Mr. Ellis, speaking of Walker’s work, “and in his remarks upon particular words throughout his dictionary, one will see the most evident marks of insufficient knowledge and of that kind of pedantic self-sufficiency which is the true growth of half-enlightened ignorance.” Such drastic criticism upon the author of a dictionary which was esteemed the highest authority on English pronunciation during the first half of the last century does not invite confidence in the results of our early orthoepists. Rather it makes us feel that none of them is perhaps entitled to credit. Probably Doctor Johnson shared this feeling when he exclaimed in the preface to his dictionary, Quis autem custodiet ipsos custodes?

So much for the lexicographers of the eighteenth century. Let us now consider some of the pronunciations authorized by them, which have long since been discarded. These will serve as illustrations to bring home to the mind of the reader the truth that our speech is slowly but surely and constantly changing, and that English pronunciation, unlike English spelling, has never been stereotyped in a fast, unvarying form. They will also show how indispensable an auxiliary to our crystallized, conventional spelling has the pronouncing dictionary become.

An interesting illustration is furnished by the word asparagus. The popular pronunciation of this word in the eighteenth century was sparrow-grass. This was felt by the orthoepists, however, to be a vulgar corruption of the word, and they therefore strove with concerted effort to stem the popular tide and to make the pronunciation conform to abstract propriety as indicated by the spelling. Walker, in commenting upon the pronunciation of the word, remarks, as if apologizing for the theoretically correct form which he recommends, that “the corruption of the word into sparrow-grass is so general that asparagus has an air of stiffness and pedantry.” Another word with a no less interesting history is cucumber. This word used to be generally pronounced cowcumber. The popular pronunciation of this word as well as of asparagus, once so universal, has survived even up to the present in the lingo of the illiterate whites of New England and in the Negro dialect. This vulgar pronunciation which was a thorn in the flesh to the eighteenth century lexicographers, it is instructive to note in passing, was not the result of mere caprice, but was warranted by an old variant spelling of the word. This historic spelling, long since discarded altogether by the users of English, was formerly very prevalent and in good literary usage. Hence little wonder that the vulgar pronunciation for a long time contested the supremacy with the mode of utterance now universally accepted. Even so high an authority as Mr. Pepys refers in his “Diary” to a certain man as “dead of eating cowcumbers.” It was not till wellnigh the middle of the last century that the orthoepists Knowles and Smart ventured to denounce cowcumber along with sparrow-grass as vulgar and therefore tabooed in polite circles.

It is a well-established fact in the history of English pronunciation that in the seventeenth century and far into the following century such words as spoil, toil, boil, and so on, were pronounced, even in best usage, precisely as they are uttered to-day in the Negro dialect and by the illiterate whites among us, that is, just as if they were written “spile,” “tile” and “bile.” This is conclusively proved by the rhymes of Dryden and Pope.[9] It is further evident from the rhymes of the poets of the latter half of the eighteenth century that this archaic pronunciation persisted almost down to the beginning of the last century. This pronunciation was regarded by the orthoepists as antiquated and vulgar, and they did not fail to denounce it in strong terms, warning against its use. In 1773 Kenrick records with mingled regret and disgust that it would appear affected to pronounce such words as boil, join and many others otherwise than as “bile” and “jine.” But toward the close of the eighteenth century the present pronunciation began to prevail and “the banished diphthong,” as Nares records with triumphant delight, “seemed at length to be upon its return.” This same orthoepist informs us, and we may well believe him, that it was the authority of the poets, who had pilloried the offensive pronunciation in their verse, that retarded the progress of the received sound of the diphthong which finally triumphed.

The early lexicographers were divided on the pronunciation of vase. Indeed, two centuries have not sufficed to unite their successors in perfect harmony on this question. The word to-day vacillates between four received pronunciations. The great unwashed pronounce vase to rhyme with base and case. Some pronounce the word as if written “vaz” with “the broad a.” Others, associating it with its French equivalent, pronounce the word “vauze.” Others still pronounce it so as to rhyme with amaze and gaze. Of these four pronunciations the first is the most prevalent to-day, as it also was two centuries ago. According to the Century Dictionary, the word was introduced into English during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and after the analogy of words of its class, it would naturally be pronounced so as to rhyme with case and base. But the recency of the word and its familiar association with art have given rise to the attempt to make it conform to the analogy of the French pronunciation and sound it as if written “vauze.” The early occasional spelling of the word as vause doubtless contributed somewhat to the extension of this latter pronunciation. This French pronunciation, says the Century, is now affected by many. It is worth while to remark, however, that while the Century recognizes the French pronunciation, it still gives the preference to the old historic pronunciation, viz., that rhyming with case and base.

Now, in the eighteenth century some of the orthoepists favored one pronunciation and some another. Sheridan, Scott, Kenrick, Perry and Buchanan declared for the pronunciation rhyming with case and base. On the other hand, Smith, Johnston and Walker expressed themselves in favor of “vaze.” Walker says that he has uniformly heard it so pronounced, but adds the significant remark that the word is pronounced according to the French fashion “sometimes by people of refinement; but this, being too refined for the general ear, is now but seldom heard,” This French pronunciation, however strange the comment may appear to us in view of his wide acquaintance with English usage, the late Mr. A. J. Ellis averred was the most familiar to him. So the struggle between the several pronunciations of vase continues still, and no one can say which will ultimately prevail.

Another interesting illustration of vacillation of usage two centuries ago is furnished in the pronunciation of either and neither. Like the word vase, these words show incidentally how long a time two pronunciations of the same word may linger in good usage before either supplants the other. There is to-day probably as much variation in the pronunciation of either and neither as there was a century and a half ago. Early in the eighteenth century the i sound was conceded by some of the orthoepists as permissible in these words. Two authorities, Buchanan and Johnston, declared for the new pronunciation, that is, “ither” and “nither.” But since they were both Scotchmen, their authority was discounted. On the other hand, Sheridan and Walker recommended the e sound and used their influence to bespeak for it general endorsement. They recognized the i sound, to be sure, but only on sufferance. From that day to the present the battle has waged more or less fiercely between the advocates of these respective pronunciations of either and neither. Which will ultimately prevail, it is impossible to determine. It may be said, however, that analogy and history are on the side of the e sound. Yet the i sound appears to be encroaching at present on the former pronunciation. There is still another pronunciation of these words which we now rarely hear. I refer to the old dialectical pronunciation as “ather” and “nather.” This pronunciation was current in Doctor Johnson’s time, though it probably did not enjoy the sanction of good usage. On being asked one day whether he regarded “ither,” or “ether” as the proper pronunciation of either, the old Doctor is said to have blurted out in his characteristic crabbed manner, “Nather, Sir!” This pronunciation survives now only as an Irishism.

Another class of former pronunciations surviving now as an Irishism, or at best as a provincialism merely, is exemplified by such words as nature, creature and picture. In Dryden’s and Pope’s time these words were pronounced “nater,” “crater” and “picter.”[10] These pronunciations are preserved still in the Yankee dialect, as shown in Lowell’s inimitable Biglow Papers, and of course they are frequently heard on Irish lips. But they long ago dropped out of the speech of polite society. There is one notable exception found in the word figure. The variant pronunciation of this word as “figer” survives in standard English as a heritage from the seventeenth century.

Quite as instructive an illustration of survivals in pronunciation, is furnished by the British pronunciation of clerk and Derby. The English, as is well known, pronounce these words as if written “clark” and “Darby.” They used to pronounce clergy with the same vowel sound, and many other words besides. But it is a significant sign of the approaching change in British usage in respect to these words that a recent British dictionary, the New Historical, in commenting on clerk admits that the American pronunciation of this word has become somewhat frequent of late in London and its neighborhood. (Are we to look upon this as a result of the much-discussed American invasion?) But our British cousins are still wedded to their Derby (Darby) and show no sign of abandoning either the old pronunciation or the custom. Even we Americans cling tenaciously to serjeant and show but little inclination to make that conform speedily to the analogy of other words of its class and to pronounce it in accordance with the spelling. But, no doubt, this word, also, in the course of time, will yield to the pressure of analogy, and our time-honored serjeant, with the flight of years, is destined to be classed among those pronunciations that have lost caste. The early orthoepists uniformly pronounced this entire class of words as our British cousins pronounce them at the present time, that is, as if they were written “clark,” “sarjeant” and so on. Indeed, it is the spelling that has been the main factor in effecting the change in the pronunciation of these words. There is a strong tendency in English to pronounce a word as it is written, and this tendency has been asserting itself with ever increasing force since English spelling has been crystallized and thereby rendered less subject to preference or caprice.

A constantly recurring question, which never ceased to vex the spirit of the early orthoepists, was, where to place the accent in the case of contemplate, demonstrate, illustrate and similar words of classical origin. The question at issue here is whether the stress shall fall upon the antepenultimate or the penultimate. Even with all the accumulated knowledge of the centuries we are no nearer a solution of this perplexing question than were the Elizabethans. Shakespeare could say indifferently cónfiscate or confíscate, démonstrate or demónstrate. Here the battle has been waged between the scholars, on the one hand, who insist upon strict propriety, and the uninitiated, on the other, who follow the line of least resistance and by intuition place the accent upon the initial syllable. As is evident at a glance, these words come to us from the classics. The scholars therefore, somewhat pedantically, insist upon retaining the stress on the syllable which bore it in the original Latin or Greek. Per contra, the common people, who know “little Latin and less Greek” and care not a fig for the original accent, instinctively throw the stress upon the first syllable, in keeping with their feeling for their mother tongue. This feeling for the language, which the Germans call “Sprachgefühl,” is, after all, a safer guide than the rules laid down by the pedants. Candor compels us to admit that the popular tendency is more in harmony with the genius of our vernacular. But the scholars have made a brave fight for what we may demoniate abstract propriety, and the result, thus far, is a drawn battle. Each side has scored some points, and each side has had to make some concessions. Thus balcony, academy, decorous and metamorphosis, to cite a few concrete examples, have finally triumphed over the earlier pedantic pronunciations, which required the accent on the penult of these words. Horizon, on the other hand, stands as a monument of a concession to the learned, since this word in Elizabethan times had the stress on the initial syllable, as had also the name of the month July. Popular usage in favor of the received pronunciation of auditor, senator, victory, orator and many similar words has achieved a decided triumph over the early orthoepists, who, it was very obvious, were fighting a losing battle in their efforts to retain the classical accent.

It follows that pronunciation is the resultant product of several forces which are silently but constantly acting upon the living language. There are, to be sure, various methods of pronunciation, but the standard is that sanctioned by the most cultivated circles of society. Now, it is the function of the pronouncing dictionary, and its sole reason for existence, to determine and record the usage of the most cultured classes. But here is where the rub comes. This is the stumbling-block in the way of the lexicographers. It may seem, upon first blush, that the task of the orthoepist is easy enough. But not so in actual practice. Countless and insuperable difficulties soon begin to loom up a little ahead in the path of the intending orthoepist, and he finds, to his regret and his occasional disgust, that the way he has marked out for himself is not strewn with roses. It is an arduous undertaking which holds out but meager hope of successful accomplishment, to make an accurate record of the pronunciation received in any large class of society. The labor and trouble are multiplied many times when an attempt is made to determine the best orthoepical usage in a democracy. There is really no absolute standard of pronunciation in English and there can not be, from the very nature of the case, as Professor Lounsbury has clearly demonstrated in his recent luminous book on this subject.

Yet it is unquestionably true that the pronouncing dictionary is constantly making for uniformity of pronunciation. There is far less difference in English orthoepy at the beginning of the twentieth century, even despite the present diversity of good usage, than there was at the beginning of the eighteenth century. A glance at the history of the usage, if we may trust Professor Lounsbury, an eminent authority on English pronunciation, will readily convince the reader of this fact. This result is the direct outgrowth of the increased facilities for intercourse between communities, and of the gradual diffusion of education which the last two centuries have witnessed. With the spread of education there go along those habits of speech which are generally recognized to be in accord with best usage and which therefore have most to commend them to popular favor. But till men cease to exercise the right of choice in the mode of utterance, till men prefer, for the sake of uniformity, to say exclusively “hóstǐle” and not “hostĩle,” “sérvǐle” and not “servle,” “rise” and not “rice,” to mention an example of variant usage, so long will there probably be a diversity of pronunciation and the consequent need for the pronouncing dictionary. This consummation so devoutly to be wished we may expect at the Greek Kalends. We may rest assured, therefore, that the pronouncing dictionary is here to stay.

Every man has his preference as to his pronouncing dictionary, which he regards with more or less confidence and, may be, reverence, as his final authority. To this he resorts in all orthoepical questions, for final solution. This, of course, is a legitimate function of the pronouncing dictionary. The fact is, the vocabulary of the average educated man is so extremely limited and the vocabulary of the language so extremely copious that there are thousands of words of a technical character which even the most accomplished scholars have never once heard uttered. The average educated man who knows that English spelling is a very untrustworthy guide to pronunciation is perforce driven to consult his Webster, or his Worcester, or his Standard, or mayhap his Century. Only then can he pronounce an unfamiliar English word with any assurance of propriety.

Notwithstanding the fact that every educated man has his favorite dictionary, it is probably true that no man’s pronunciation is in entire accord with the dictionary he habitually follows. The late Mr. Ellis gave a suggestive test which I believe has never been successfully challenged. “I do not remember,” said he, “ever meeting with a person of general education, or even literary habits, who could read off, without hesitation, the whole of such a list of words as: bourgeois, demy, actinism, velleity, batman, beaufin, brevier, rowlock, fusil, flugleman, vase, tassel, buoy, oboe, archimandrite, etc., and give them in each case the same pronunciation as is assigned in any given pronouncing dictionary now in use.” Let the reader try these test words and see whether he pronounces this short list according to any received authority in use at the present day.

It may not prove an altogether unprofitable inquiry how our pronouncing dictionaries are made. Such an inquiry, if pursued, may teach us somewhat of the methods of the orthoepists to ascertain good usage. The method formerly adopted was very much after this fashion: The lexicographer studies in his own library the pronouncing dictionary of everybody who has taken the pains to compile one, whether he be an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotchman, or an American. He compares these several dictionaries and records their variations. From these he selects those pronunciations which, for any special reason, commend themselves to his individual taste or judgment. These are usually such pronunciations as he is accustomed to hear or himself to use. These are published with the stamp of the lexicographer’s authority and approval, and the dictionary is sent out into the world as so-and-so’s record of the most approved usage.

This was doubtless the way pronouncing dictionaries used to be compiled. But we may believe that this method is not the course ordinarily followed by the authors of our best modern dictionaries. If our best standard dictionaries to-day were made in this fashion, their authority would richly deserve to be heavily discounted for such carelessness of method. But greater efforts are made by the most recent orthoepists, we may believe, to determine the accepted usage in polite society. Yet, after all, the personal equation enters as an important factor into the compilation of every pronouncing dictionary. The author or authors who compile the dictionary naturally follow their own preferences and prejudices in the matter of pronunciation; and their results, even at best, repose on very restricted and imperfect observation. An orthoepist ought not to be cocksure and dogmatic. Indeed, the proper attitude of the author of a dictionary is that of the late Mr. Ellis. It was quite natural that a man of his superior scholarship and rare orthoepical attainments should have been frequently asked as to the proper pronunciation of a particular word.

“It has not unfrequently happened,” observes Mr. Ellis in his monumental work on “Early English Pronunciation,” in reference to his practice, when appealed to as an authority, “It has not unfrequently happened that the present writer has been appealed to respecting the pronunciation of a word. He generally replies that he is accustomed to pronounce it in such or such a way, and has often to add that he has heard others pronounce it differently, but that he has no means of deciding which pronunciation ought to be adopted, or even of saying which is the more customary.”

This attitude will, no doubt, commend itself to the favor of the reflecting and judicious man much more forcibly than that spirit of assumed infallibility which is a sure sign, in an orthoepist, of insufficient knowledge and lack of preparation for his work. The business of a lexicographer is to record what good usage authorizes, not to tell us what we shall not use. The orthoepist who goes farther, and dogmatically asserts that a given pronunciation is correct and another incorrect, transcends the legitimate bounds of his province. Moreover, he arouses suspicion in the minds of the thoughtful as to his trustworthiness as a guide in matters of pronunciation. For no orthoepist records all the pronunciations sanctioned by good usage, and no one therefore can affirm positively that a given pronunciation of a word may not be warranted by reputable usage in some quarter. Even so high an authority and careful an observer as Ellis lapsed into error in his comment upon the pronunciation of trait, claiming that the silent final t was an unfailing shibboleth of British practice. As a matter of fact, the pronunciation of the final letter of trait, as Professor Lounsbury has clearly shown,[11] had been recognized by English orthoepists as allowable for more than a century. It is manifest that one can not afford to be very positive in English orthoepy: if he is, he will be compelled either to retract or to qualify some of his sweeping statements.

The pronouncing dictionary is, as a general rule, a good guide to standard usage, though it can not be relied upon implicitly. When the orthoepists are all agreed upon a particular pronunciation, one ought to be very chary of using one’s customary or pet pronunciation that differs. The chances are that it is not in good repute. But when, on the contrary, the orthoepists themselves differ, one may reasonably infer that no statement of any one of them about the proper pronunciation of a word, however positive it may be, ought to be recognized as a binding authority. For no pronouncing dictionary is an absolutely final authority. Nor can it ever justly claim to be, since the pronouncing dictionary purports to record only such pronunciations as are sanctioned by good usage, and good usage ever varies with the living speech, which, like all living things, is always slowly changing from century to century. The change is sometimes so gradual that hardly the lapse of a century will reveal it. Again, for one reason or another, it is so rapid in development that even a generation suffices to record it.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] See A Question of Preference in Spelling.

[9] See Vulgarisms With A Pedigree.

[10] See Vulgarisms With A Pedigree.

[11] The Standard of Pronunciation in English, p. 230.

VULGARISMS WITH A PEDIGREE.

Never before was there so much enthusiasm manifested in linguistic studies as during the last quarter of a century, and even yet there is no indication of a waning interest. Not only have languages been studied in their relation to one another, but dialects also have come in for their share of attention in the pursuit of these studies. Nor has our own country been backward in contributing, through its dialectal and various philological associations, its quota to the science of philology. Authors in different parts of the country have written long and (it must be confessed, sometimes) tedious stories in the individual dialects of their respective localities. There are books in the dialect of the negro, as, for example, Thomas Nelson Page’s, to mention only one writer of a large class, those in the dialect of the Tennessee mountains, as, for example, Miss Murfee’s books, those in the dialect of the “Georgia cracker,” as the stories of Joel Chandler Harris, and a host of others in various parts of the country. These books are almost like the sands of the seashore for number.

So numerous and varied are the local dialects in this country that a contributor to the North American Review, some few years ago, ventured the thesis that from the very nature of the diverse and varied character of our local dialects, there can not be any such thing as a great national novel in the United States. While this, it must be admitted, is a somewhat extreme view, to which many do not feel prepared to subscribe, the fact yet remains that there are marked dialectal peculiarities in the spoken language of certain localities. These dialectal peculiarities, however, are fast disappearing before the onward march of the unifying influence of education, the printing press, and the railroad. When the leavening power of education has permeated the entire population of the country, there will result uniformity of speech, and dialectal variations from the common norm will linger but as a tradition.

The dialect authors, in the meantime, are doing the reading public a service in furnishing it with entertaining stories of an elevating character. Moreover, some of them at least, as for example, Page, Harris and others, are rendering literature and science an ulterior service, consciously or unconsciously, in preserving in their books types of a people and their speech which a wave of oblivion is rapidly sweeping away.

If one will examine the speech of the negro and the native-born illiterate white, it matters not whether the latter be from New England, or from the South, one will find that, excepting certain provincialisms peculiar to their respective homes, their language has much in common, and to the student of historic English, it exhibits indisputable evidence of its affinity with the English of the seventeenth century. This is obvious from such words as hand-kercher, ar (air), pint (point), pison (poison), gwine (going), arrant (errand), cratur (creature), arth (earth), all of which are common alike to the “Yankee dialect” and to the negro dialect. The student who is familiar with the development of the English tongue will at once recognize these as standard, according to the received pronunciation of the seventeenth century. But in the development of the language, these pronunciations subsequently fell into disuse and were discarded by standard English. They still survived, however, in the lower stratum of society among the poor and illiterate who, denied the privileges and advantages of an education and therefore ignorant of the most elementary principles of grammar, inherited this speech from their ancestors and handed it down, with but little change, from generation to generation to their children.

The language of the seventeenth century was brought to America by the early settlers and was taught the slaves, and the tongue which the illiterate negroes then learned to speak they have preserved, without any material change, down to the present generation. Since this is the case, we can not then be surprised to find upon examination that many of their dialectal pronunciations and locutions are to be traced back to classic authors of an earlier period, yea, to Shakespeare himself. In this sense it is doubtless true that many of the fossilized pronunciations of our illiterates are much nearer the language of, and would therefore be more intelligible to, Shakespeare and Milton than present standard English.

Every one who has ever heard the old negro preacher giving an “exhortation” at the close of his fervid “sarmon” knows very well that, though the old man’s heart was perhaps right and himself on the way to the kingdom, his conscience never for a moment troubled him about his loose grammar. Notwithstanding his sanctification and his ecstatic anticipation of the joys of the kingdom for which he was bound, he had no conscientious scruples about “axin’” his “ole marster” if the latter was at all tardy in offering him the desired help. Perhaps many of those who were so familiar with the lingo of the old preacher never reflected that his language, like his heart, was, after all, not very far wrong and entirely without precedent when he “axed” for something. He was but obeying the scriptural injunction, which, according to Tyndale’s version, reads: “Axe and it shall be geven you.” Nor do they know that he was following, all unwittingly, to be sure, the example set by the first English printer, Caxton, who, in the preface to his edition of Vergil’s Aeneid, used precisely the same expression. If then the old parson blundered, as, according to our modern standard, he did, he at all events blundered in good company.

In Chaucer, “the first finder of our faire language,” as his ardent disciple Occleve rapturously, though quaintly, called him, we find the same word. Here we find also forms long since fossilized, though still preserved in the speech of the untutored, such as kiver, driv, holp, writ, rid, etc. In “Much Ado About Nothing” Dogberry, albeit he dislocates the dictionary in speaking of that villain who, he prophesies, would be condemned to everlasting redemption, yet uses grammar which, for his day, was above reproach, when he exclaimed: “O that I had been writ down an ass!”

So we must acknowledge that no violence was done to the language, however our sense of propriety may be shocked, when a century or so ago a Londoner remarked to his friend who had come up from his home in the country to see the play of “Orpheus and Eurydice,” and who was copiously bespattered with mud, as a result of his ride: “You came up to town, I suppose, to see Orpheus and you rid I see.” It would be difficult to find in the literature of that period a more felicitous illustration of a perfectly legitimate play on words which the contemporary pronunciation permitted.

Shakespeare, who could not resist the temptation to make a pun whenever opportunity offered, furnishes additional evidence of his versatility and ingenuity in his apt recognition of the obsolete pronunciation of many words of his time, which he turned to good account. Hence so many of his witticisms. In “Henry IV,” for instance, Falstall says: “If reasons were a plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion,” thus playing upon the old pronunciation of raisins with which we are all familiar upon the lips of the unlettered. Thus he plays upon the antiquated pronunciation of Rome as room, when, in “Julius Caesar,” Cassius says of Caesar’s vaulting ambition which o’erleaped itself:

“Now is it Rome indeed and Roome enough,

When there is in it but one only man.”

One of the conundrums of that period, which, by the way, could only have belonged to that period, illustrates the antiquated pronunciation of chair as cheer, still current among the illiterate. “Why is a stout man always happy?” The answer was, “Because he is cheerful (chair full).”

It is needless to multiply random illustrations. We owe a lasting debt of gratitude to the philologists who have labored in this field and illuminated this subject which before was enveloped with almost Cimmerian darkness. These amenities of philology which have been mentioned above are but an incident of the arduous and laborious pursuits of those philologists. Let us consider for a while some of the results of their research which prove how the English language has changed.

Every student who has given any attention to the historical development of our speech knows that it has changed from age to age no less in form than in pronunciation. Indeed, it could not be a living tongue if it did not constantly change. The oldest form of the language which we call Anglo-Saxon gradually changed in form and sound till Middle English times, and then it continued to change even more rapidly till modern times. It has undergone no small change even since the days of Elizabeth, when our great dramatists spoke and wrote it. So great are these changes through which our vernacular has passed that a modern could not converse with one of his Saxon forebears of the time of the good and great King Alfred except through an interpreter of his own mother-tongue. If any man is skeptical on this point, let him test himself by trying to modernize offhand a passage from one of Alfred’s own works. Indeed, it is not necessary to go so far back. For Shakespeare, not to mention Chaucer, may prove a rock of offence and would no doubt appear to most of us to speak in an unknown tongue, could we hear him speak. Surely the commentators find no end of difficulties in interpreting his writings which have been preserved to us. Even were we to approach Shakespeare from the vantage ground of the famous Tieck and Schlegel translation which some patriotic German scholars with more zeal than knowledge assert is better than the original, no doubt, we should still encounter many hard sayings in the master dramatist’s language. Much less therefore should we be able to understand his spoken tongue, since spoken speech, in the very nature of things, changes far more than written language.

However, it is not our purpose here to use Shakespeare as a concrete illustration to show how our speech has changed even in the last few centuries. We have chosen two other authors who flourished long after the voice of the “sweet swan of Avon” had ceased to sing and his bones had moulded back to dust in the quaint parish church of Stratford. These writers are the distinguished satirists, the vigorous Dryden and the didactic Pope. Their rhymes are a fairly accurate index to the standard contemporary pronunciation.

Dryden has often been taxed with a certain laxity in his rhymes, and to one not recognizing the difference between the pronunciation current in England in the seventeenth century and that accepted at the beginning of the twentieth century, the criticism would appear to be well founded. But it must be borne in mind that the sounds of the English vowels, especially, have undergone a considerable change since Dryden’s day. We should not be surprised then if, when we apply the present standard of English pronunciation to his rhymes, they seem somewhat imperfect. However, this is not intended to extenuate Dryden’s false rhymes, of which there are confessedly some; for he had neither a sensitive ear nor a tender conscience in his work for the stage. His motto expressed in his own words was,

“He who lives to please, must please to live.”

Yet Dryden was, after all, no greater sinner in this respect than others of his day, or even of the present day, whose verses furnish such monstrosities as has rhyming with was, love consorting with move,—rhymes which “keep the word of promise to the eye and break it to the ear.” Let us now cite a few of the received pronunciations of the seventeenth century as indicated in the rhymes of that day. It will be observed that where these are still lingering in our speech to-day, they are regarded simply as vulgarisms.

Such words as please, these, seize, severe, sea, speak, complete, and the like were pronounced, in the seventeenth century and in the first half of the eighteenth, in a way which, to the modern ear, is decidedly suggestive of the Irish “brogue.” For both Dryden and Pope pronounced these words plase, thase, saze, savare, say, spake, complate: and this was the received pronunciation during that period. Pope, therefore, whose delicate ear was easily fascinated by the vigor and musical cadence of his master Dryden preserves but the aroma of the old tea, in that heroic couplet upon a mock heroic subject:

“Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.”

Likewise, again he says:

“Soft yielding minds to water glide away,

And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea.”

Dryden pertinently asks, in his Absalom and Achitophel:

“But when should people strive their bonds to break,

If not when kings are negligent or weak?”

So Pope likewise pronounced weak rhyming it with take. Both he and Dryden offer numerous examples of speak rhyming with wake, sphere with bear, hear with care, retreat and complete with great, and treat with the French tête, as in Pope’s imitation of Horace:

“The guests withdrawn had left the treat,

And down the mice sate, tête-à-tête.”

In the Hind and the Panther Dryden uses the now vulgar pronunciation of clear thus:

“The sense is intricate, ’tis only clear

What vowels and consonants are there.”

But this was a perfectly faultless rhyme then and was sanctioned by the best usage. So the vulgar pronunciation of key is the only open sesame to this perfect rhyme in Dryden’s time:

“’Twere pity treason at his door to lay,

Who makes heaven’s gate a lock to its own key.”

Here also occurs the obsolete pronunciation of says rhyming with days, and said is wedded to maid and even have consorts with slave and wave, all of which pronunciations have long ago been repudiated by standard English and survive now only in the speech of the rustics and upon Irish lips.

The story is told of an old Scotchman who, like some others not of Scotch descent, occasionally draw their inspiration from an illicit source that during a spell of serious illness he was visited by the good minister who pointed out to him his weakness and endeavored to persuade him to leave off his bibulous habit. When the minister told the erring Scotchman that in heaven whither he was going there would be no wine, he impulsively exclaimed: “I dinna ken, but I think it would be but dacent (decent) to have it on the table.” This is precisely the way Dryden and Pope pronounced the word decent, and the pronunciation still lingers as a provincialism.

Pope rhymes nature with satire and makes Craggs exclaim in a dialogue:

“Alas, if I am such a creature

To grow the worse for growing greater.”

This rhyme at that time was perfect to the ear, though false to the eye. Again, Pope wishes—

“That all mankind might that just mean observe,

In which none e’er could surfeit, none could starve.”

As for the atmosphere, Pope called it aar, making the word rhyme with star, and are and were he pronounced occasionally air and ware. These pronunciations, it is interesting to note, are still heard now and then from the lips of educated men, either as an affected archaism or more probably from sheer force of a habit of utterance acquired in youth.

There is another vulgarism with a pedigree which is especially to be noted because it is never heard now except from the unlettered. Yet in the seventeenth century this was the standard pronunciation. We refer to the obsolete pronunciation of such words as oblige, join, poison and the like. In his Epistle to Arbuthnot in which Pope pilloried so many of his contemporary poetasters and there left them to the vulgar gaze of all subsequent ages, among others he damned Addison with faint praise as—

“Dreading e’en fools, by flatterers besieged,

And so obliging that he ne’er obliged.”

Our join, poison, point, soil, spoil, and so on, would have offended the ear of Dryden and Pope, who invariably said jine, pison, pint, etc. In this respect the speech of our rustics is the speech which Dryden and Pope spoke, though their faith and morals are probably not those which these authors held.

In the words of Pope himself:—

“Waller was smooth, but Dryden taught to join

The varying sense, the full-resounding line,

The long majestic march and energy divine.”

“Good nature and good sense must ever join;

To err is human; to forgive, divine.”

“’Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning join;

In all you speak, let truth and candor shine.”

“In grave Quintilian’s copious work we find

The justest rules and clearest method join’d.”

It is interesting to observe that we still say choir. These words with the oi-diphthong are well-nigh all of Anglo-French origin, except boil, in the sense of tumor, where the Anglo-Saxon byle proves that its development into the now vulgar bile is regular. But in standard English the word has been wrested from its normal course of development, probably through association in the popular mind with the verb boil, or to avoid confusion with bile (secretion of the liver), and its spelling has been changed to boil to satisfy, in Lowell’s apt phrase, the logic of the eye. But let it be said parenthetically that logic is among the least potent factors in the development of a language.

In the light of these facts, then, we appreciate more fully the significance of the words of Ellis, in his monumental work on Early English Pronunciation: “For the polite sounds of a past generation are the bêtes noires of the present. Who at present, with any claim to “eddication” would jine in praising the pints of a picter? But certainly there was a time when education, join, points and picture would have sounded equally strange.”

In the Yankee dialect, as we learn from Lowell’s admirable essay on this theme in the introduction to his Biglow Papers, “the u in the ending ture is always shortened, making ventur, natur, pictur, and so on. This was common also among the educated of the last generation. I am inclined to think it may have been once universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile vencher, naycher, pickcher, that have taken its place, sounding like the invention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze.” When Lowell wrote these words, very little attention had been given to the study of dialects and their significance as exhibiting fossilized forms of a language. But since the publication of Ellis’s excellent work on the early pronunciation of our mother-tongue, a flood of light has been shed upon the tortuous path of the history of English sounds. Thus we can be sure that the speech of our illiterates, however vulgar and antiquated it may sound to our twentieth century ears, is, at least in many instances, the polite pronunciation of the seventeenth century. It is the English which the Pilgrim Fathers brought over with them when they landed on the shores of the New World.

So much for the dialect of our illiterates, the lingua rustica. Let us now consider the Irish dialect which is another fruitful source of vulgarisms with a pedigree. A moment’s reflection will suffice to convince the reader that this speech is very closely allied in origin with the English brought to America by the early settlers.

It is well known that the English language, as spoken by the Irish, has a peculiarity of utterance commonly called “the Irish brogue” and differs materially from standard English. Why this clearly marked and distinctive mode of utterance which differentiates the English speech on Irish lips from the same language as spoken in England and America? As a matter of fact the English spoken by the educated sons of Erin is the same as that used in England and America. But the language of the Irish in the rural districts of Ireland and of those who have emigrated to America is something quite different, and varies considerably in idiom and pronunciation from standard English. It is this which is usually termed “the Irish brogue.”

To get at the origin of this lingo we must go back to the time when Ireland was settled by the English. The tongue originally spoken in Ireland was of course the Old Irish, or Gaelic, and this was very closely related to the Welsh and the speech of the ancient Britons who resisted the Roman invasion under Julius Caesar. This was the tongue of the whole of Britain when our Saxon forefathers first found their way across the Channel from Northern Germany. This therefore was the vernacular of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table mentioned in the Arthurian legends.

As far back as the twelfth century, history records that the English began to plant colonies on the Emerald Isle and to settle parts of it, such as Forth and Bargay. But these were unimportant from our present point of view. The English settlements in Ireland from which the English language spread and diffused itself over the country were those made in Ulster and the north during the reign of James I, in 1611. This English emigration was re-enforced by the invasion of Cromwell, in 1649. So then it was during the seventeenth century that the domain of the Irishman’s native tongue was invaded by the English speech.

It will be recalled that, inasmuch as Ireland was originally populated by the Celtic race, it follows that the genuine Irishman is really a Celt, not a Saxon, although he now speaks English as his venacular. He was therefore of the same race and blood as the ancient Britons whom our Saxon forefathers found in possession of the country when they first came to Britain from the Continent. The British people represent a fusion of these two races—Celtic and Saxon—with the Saxon element predominating. According to Matthew Arnold’s dictum, it is from the Celtic blood flowing in the veins of the Englishman that he gets his sentiment. In his composite being, the modern Englishman combines with his original steady-going Saxon temperament something of the Celt’s instinct for sentiment, love of beauty, charm and spirituality, together with something of the Norman’s tact for business. According to Matthew Arnold, therefore, there is a commingling of these three streams in the English race, the Celtic and the Norman both being merged in the Saxon. As the defect of his qualities the Celt had ineffectualness and self-will,—qualities which still mark the Irish genius. The words of that eminent nineteenth century critic are very suggestive as indicating the influence of the Celtic spirit upon the Saxon, whether we are prepared to share his opinion or not. “If I were asked,” remarks he in his admirable essay On the Study of Celtic Literature, “where English poetry got these three things—its turn for style, its turn for melancholy, and its turn for natural magic, for catching and rendering the charm of nature in a wonderfully near and vivid way—I should answer, with some doubt, that it got much of its turn for style from a Celtic source; with less doubt, that it got much of its melancholy from a Celtic source; with no doubt at all, that from a Celtic source it got nearly all of its magic.”

But to return to the language of the Irish. When the English settlers emigrated to Ulster, they carried with them the English speech of the seventeenth century. A moment’s reflection teaches us that this was the pronunciation of the days of Milton and Dryden which was transplanted into Ireland. Now, it must be borne in mind that the English of that century was transferred to a country where the native speech and method of utterance were entirely different from those employed in England. The effect of this was to cause some modification in the transplanted language when the English speech came into actual contact with the native Irish tongue on Irish soil. When English was diffused over Ireland the native speech of which differed both in its body of sounds and in its distinctive method of enunciation from the triumphant language, the natives learned to speak the new tongue with their own characteristic mode of utterance. It was but natural therefore that the English speech should undergo a considerable alteration on Irish lips. In similar circumstances the supplanted tongue always produces a greater or less change in its victorious rival, not only in form, but also in construction and idiom. Witness here the triumph of Anglo-Saxon over the Celtic of the native Britons. As an illustration of the change in idiom take this example of “Pidgin-English,” spoken in the treaty ports of China. In one of those ports, an enterprising merchant with a keen relish for the English shillings, but with little feeling for the English tongue, is reputed to have put out over his shop door a sign with this legend: “Groceries for sale, retail and whole-tail!” An illustration of the difference in mode of utterance between two tongues is furnished by the German, or even the French, method of pronouncing our English th-sound. What inherent difficulty a native German or Frenchman, in his unstudied utterance, encounters in pronouncing such simple words as the, then, kith, etc.! On the other hand, one whose vernacular is English experiences as great embarrassment in pronouncing, without studied effort and practice, the German ch-sound, as in Bach, Ich, etc., or the characteristic French u sound as in fût, eut, pu, etc.

When therefore the Irish began to learn English in the seventeenth century, they encountered certain difficulties peculiar to the English speech. The dental combinations in our English tongue appear to have proved a stumbling block to the Irish mode of utterance, and hence such grotesque pronunciations as tthrash for thrash, stthraitch for stretch, Satthirday for Saturday and scoundthrel for scoundrel. In his native speech the Celt trilled his r’s, and nothing was more natural then than that he should do the same thing when he began to speak English. So to the present day the r is emphatically trilled on Irish lips, although it is decidedly un-English to trill it. These few examples will serve to indicate the character of some of the difficulties inherent in the English language which the Irishman encountered in his effort to speak it. But there were other difficulties than those of utterance which had to be overcome in mastering the spoken tongue.

Furthermore, the English speech on Irish soil did not develop and flourish as it did in its own habitat in England. On the contrary, it always remained an exotic and it never kept pace in its growth and development with the language on English soil. If Ireland had been first depopulated and then settled by the British, the variations in speech would have been much less conspicuous, even had they existed at all. But that was not the case. Those conditions came much nearer being fulfilled here in America when the Puritans and Cavaliers came over to the New World, bringing with them practically the same English as that carried into the Emerald Isle. For the first settlements in America by the English colonists correspond in point of time to those made in Ulster,—that is, the early seventeenth century. But the English language in America was not contaminated by contact with the Indian language and, with the exception of a few geographical names, our speech shows almost no trace of Indian influence. Consequently the English speech on American soil has had an entirely different development from that which it had on Irish soil, although it is a transplanted language in both instances. The explanation is found entirely in the difference of environment. However, there are certain fossilized phrases, provincialisms, vulgarisms, or what not, in American English, which betray the affinity of the language of the early settlers of America with that of the early settlers of Ireland. Witness here the coincidence of our vulgar chist (chest), ingine (engine), quair (queer), hade (head), afeard (afraid), weepin (weapon), kag (keg), rassel (wrestle), arrant (errand), deef (deaf), baste (beast), sarmin (sermon), etc., with the Irish pronunciation of these words.

There is one marked Hibernicism which has now passed far beyond the Irish dialect. Probably many of those from whose delicate mouths we hear it so frequently are not aware of its Irish origin. Let it be said by way of parenthesis that the writer does not intend this remark as an impeachment of that charming pronunciation which boasts the sanction of those arriving at their conclusions by instinct rather than reason; nor is the remark made in a spirit of stoical indifference to refined and delicate feelings like that of Balthazar, the infatuated chemist in Balzac’s Search for the Absolute. When the beautiful eyes of his devoted wife filled with tears as she pleaded with him not to sacrifice all his fortune and even herself in his search for diamonds, he ruthlessly exclaimed: “Tears! I have decomposed them; they contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium, mucin and water.” The Hibernicism in question is the pronunciation of “gyirl,” so wide-spread and carefully cultivated by delicate mouths in Virginia as to be regarded a shibboleth of those “to the manner born.” (It is of course the prerogative of woman to change her mind,—and her name, too, if she so elects.) Other examples of this Hibernicism are cyart, cyarve, scyar, gyarden, gyarlic, gyuide, cyow and nyow, which last approximates a feline note if uttered in a falsetto. The Irish pronunciation of sure extends far beyond that jargon now. Perhaps the reader has heard the story of the good bishop’s wife who twitted her husband about saying shore for sure, and who, when reminded that she pronounced the word the same way, indignantly replied, “Why, to be shore, I do not!”

It must not be inferred from what has been said that the English spoken in all parts of Ireland is uniform. On the contrary, it differs vastly and varies with the locality. In some parts, indeed, English is not spoken at all. But where it is spoken, it bears a striking resemblance, as has been pointed out, to the English of the times of Dryden and Pope, which was fossilized by emigration. The “brogue” itself is due to the characteristic Celtic habit of utterance, and consists mostly in the intonation, “which appears,” according to Murray, “full of violent ups and downs, or rather precipices and chasms of force and pitch, almost disguising the sound to English ears.”

Thus it is evident that not a few of the expressions which now survive only as provincialisms, or vulgarisms, in the speech of the illiterate were once in entire accord with polite usage. Many of the locutions heard now in the negro dialect can boast really an aristocratic pedigree and, several generations ago, enjoyed the sanction of the highest orthoepical authority. But these pronunciations, somehow, drifted out of the main current of standard speech and at present appear only as jetsam and flotsam in the back-water of our English tongue. Yet they serve to indicate how extensively our language has been altered and modified even in modern times, after it found its way to the New World. The modifications and changes, however, both in idiom and pronunciation, would have taken place, even if the English speech had never been transplanted into foreign territory. Conclusive proof of this is furnished by a comparison of present-day British English with the English of two centuries ago as spoken in the mother country; and this, though not explicitly stated, is implied in the discussion of the theme in the foregoing paragraphs.

BRITICISMS VERSUS AMERICANISMS.

It is a recognized fact that there is a considerable variation in the English language as spoken by the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race. The English people differ from the American people in the use of our common speech not only in their characteristic mode of pronunciation and orthography, but they also differ from us in no less striking a manner in the use of certain idioms and household phrases, which constitute the small change of our every-day speech. This difference is the natural outgrowth of the separation of the two peoples by the estranging ocean, which is of necessity a great barrier to complete intercourse. To be sure, the fact that the English people and the American people have distinct national entities with the resulting difference, during the last hundred years, of national ideals and pursuits, has had the natural and inevitable effect of widening the breach between the speech of the two countries. No doubt the present variation will be accentuated more and more as the years go by, and the language of Great Britain and of America, far from becoming absolutely identical in pronunciation and idiom with the flight of centuries, will go on developing with an ever-increasing divergence from the common standard. If this be true—and certainly the facts as to the present tendency seem to warrant such a conclusion—the final result may be the unique linguistic phenomenon of two separate and distinct tongues, if such a thing be not an impossibility.

Before pointing out the variations of our American English from British English, it may be interesting to note the source of our American vernacular, and the contributing causes of the chief variations from the authoritative standard of the mother country.

When our Saxon forefathers found their way to the shores of this western continent and here established their permanent abode, the settlers naturally brought with them the language of their native country. This was, of course, the noble tongue of Shakespeare and Milton. Our British cousins who criticize our English so freely and cast reproach upon it as if it were a mere jargon, a barbarous patois, evidently lose sight of the fact that it boasts the same high pedigree as their own much-vaunted Elizabethan speech. When the English language was first transplanted in American soil, it was identical in orthography, orthoepy and idiom with the speech of the mother country. But the transplanted tongue, having a new and different habitat, began at once to adapt itself, however imperceptibly, to its changed environ and new conditions. Nor was the connection with the parent stock a sufficiently close and vital bond of union to prevent the English speech on American lips from undergoing at least some slight modification in the course of time, as a natural consequence of the altered conditions in the new world.

It is a well-established linguistic principle that a language inevitably undergoes a slight change, determined by the varying conditions, as long as it is spoken. When a tongue ceases to be spoken, then and only then does it cease to change and become a dead language, as, for instance, Latin and Greek. This fact of the gradual change in a living language is demonstrated through the difficulty one experiences in understanding the English of Chaucer, or even of Shakespeare, for the matter of that, although he is not so far removed from the present age. If a living tongue underwent no alteration with the lapse of years, then why should not Anglo-Saxon be as readily intelligible to us as modern English?

Furthermore, a language is affected in its development by contact with a foreign tongue and by outside influences, such as the climate. The first of these reasons is so apparent to all that it hardly deserves comment. But not so the second. Yet the influence of climate on a living language is very fruitful of change. Ready proof of this is furnished in our own country in the soft, musical utterance of the south in contrast with the rather shrill and forceful habits of enunciation characteristic of the north. In Europe, for example, the vast preponderance of the harsh, guttural character of the German tongue offers a glaring contrast to the smooth, liquid notes of the pure Tuscan speech. This is the reason why Italian appeals so strongly to music lovers and to all who have an ear trained to be especially sensitive to sound. Now, this difference between German and Italian, as respects the musical character of the two languages, is doubtless to be explained in large measure as the result of climate conditions extending through many long centuries. If by some violent political upheaval the Italians were transported to the extreme northern part of Europe, it is altogether probable that their speech in the course of centuries would lose much of its native vocalic development, much of its melody, and become harsh and strident, somewhat like the Russian language. It follows, therefore, that the English speech on American soil has undergone some slight modification, in consequence of climatic influence. Perhaps this explains the variation of the American pronunciation of the long o-sound as in “stone” and “bone” from the British norm. But the difference in climate between the two countries is not sufficiently marked to produce any very radical departure.

A striking feature of the English speech on American lips is the leveling of the long a-sound heard in such words as “past,” “fast,” “plant,” “command,” “dance,” “path,” etc. This could hardly be the result of climatic influence, however, for it does not appear that the climate has had the effect of producing any modification in the pronunciation of such terms in any part of America. The prevailing pronunciation of these terms is the same, at the south and at the north alike. Such a variation must, therefore, be inherent in the natural growth of the English language on American soil. For it must be borne in mind that just as the English speech, as any other living organism, has been growing and developing during the centuries in England, so, likewise, in America it has been growing and developing during the last three centuries, but not necessarily in the same manner. Those employing the language in Great Britain and in the United States are no longer a homogeneous people with the same national ideals and destiny. On the contrary, they are two separate and distinct nations with different forms of government and with different aims and aspirations. Add to this the fact that the nations have been estranged by political differences which resulted in wars and that they are separated by the physical barrier of a vast ocean. In the face of these obstacles it is not at all surprising that the English speech has not gone on developing pari passu on both sides of the Atlantic. The wonder is that the present variations are not really greater and more striking than they are.

Another contributing cause of variation of American English from the British norm must not be overlooked, the more especially as it has proved a prolific factor. In our new country some conditions of life arose which were totally unlike those existing in the old country. Such strange conditions called imperatively for the invention of new names and thus gave rise to the employment of new phrases and new locutions. These had to be coined immediately for the emergency. Since the most distinctive traits of the American are initiative and wealth of resource, no time was lost in making such additions to the English speech as seemed to supply a felt need, and that, too, without any special reference to British models and precedents. Hence a large class of terms distinctively American and bearing upon their face the trade-mark “made in America” found their way into the English vocabulary on this side of the Atlantic, much to the disgust of the British precisians and purists, who proceeded forthwith to put these new coinages under the ban and to brand them with the bend sinister of “Americanism.” Of this class are many terms indicating mechanical inventions and appliances, such as “elevator” instead of the British “lift,” to mention only a single example of a long catalogue of useful things which American genius has given to the world. Here also belong numerous words expressing things associated with modern transportation and rapid transit, such as “street-car,” “railroad,” etc.

Perhaps it may be well just here to call attention to some of the ordinary terms and expressions heard in England which strike an American as being quite odd and peculiar. It is to be presumed that the good Britons will not be offended if we, using the same license as themselves, venture to call such expressions “Briticisms.” Let it be distinctly understood, however, that this is not intended as an opprobrious epithet, but only to signify a word or an idiom which is peculiar to Great Britain and not familiar in America. For surely the English people have the right to employ whatever terms they may choose both in their colloquial and in their written speech.

If an American in London wishes to use a language that is readily understood, when he goes to the ticket-office he must call it the booking office of the railway station. There he must ask the clerk, or rather the “clark,” for a first single or a second return, instead of a single fare (first-class) and a round trip (second class). He must then have his luggage labeled, not his baggage checked, and, having secured his brasses or labels, not his checks, he sees his box, not his trunk, put in the proper van and then takes his seat in the carriage, not in the car. Before the train starts off, the guards slam the doors of the carriages, turning the handles, and at the conductor’s whistle the engine-driver starts his locomotive-engine. The points all being set for a clear track ahead, the train speeds along the metals, passing perhaps a shunting-engine about the station and a train of goods-vans.

The variation of British from American usage is not more noteworthy in railway parlance than in other circles. If an American goes shopping in London, he must call for a packet, not a paper, of pins; a reel, not a spool, of cotton. If he desires to buy a pair of shoes, he must call for boots, unless he wishes low quarters or Oxford ties; if a pair of overshoes, he must ask for footholds or galoshes; if a soft felt hat, he must ask for a squash hat, or if he prefers a Derby, he must ask for a billy-cock hat or a bowler; if he wishes a pad of paper, he should request a block of paper. If he goes to a restaurant, he indicates whether he desires his meat underdone, not rare; if he wishes corned beef, he calls for silversides of beef; if beets, he calls for beetroot; if chicken, he calls for fowl; if a cereal of any sort, he calls for corn; if cold bread, he must order cut bread; and if he desires pudding, pie, jam, preserves or candy, he must order sweets, short for sweetmeats. If the waiter should fail for any reason to give him a napkin, an American should ask for a serviette; and when he has finished his repast, he is handed a bill which he may pay with his cheque, or, if he prefers, with the cash from his purse, not his pocket-book.

If in England you find no bowl and pitcher in your room, you are expected, as previously observed,[12] to call for a jug and basin, since there a pitcher means only a little jug and a bowl is used exclusively for serving food in. On the street, instead of a letter box near a lamp post, you see a pillar box near a lamp pillar, and you perhaps meet a person pushing a perambulator, called “pram” for short, instead of a baby-carriage. For dry-goods you go to a mercer’s, where you will find white calico sold for muslin. For cloth you go to a draper’s, for wooden ware to a turnery, for hardware to an ironmonger’s, for milk, butter and eggs to a cow-keeper’s or a dairy, and for fish, game and poultry to a fish shop. If you desire any of your purchases sent to your address, you order them sent by express-carrier, carriage paid.

If at any time you desire the services of a scrub-woman to clean your apartments, you send for a charwoman. If you wish to have some furniture upholstered, you request the upholder to undertake the work for you. If you need the services of a doctor, you call in a medical man. You must be careful to address surgeons and dentists by the common democratic title “mister,” since the English custom does not warrant you to address them as “doctor.” If you are well, to your inquiring friends you are reported “fit,” if unwell, “seedy,” if sick, invariably “ill.”

To an American ear British orthoepy offers quite as noteworthy surprises as the idiomatic diction does. Of course it is to be presumed that there should be more or less marked variations in the matter of habitual utterance of certain sounds, especially the long o- and the long a-vowel, as in “fast,” “dance,” “sha’n’t,” etc., which are at striking variance with American usage. Indeed, these sounds are so characteristic that, like the English custom of ending almost every sentence with a question, when clearly natural and not an affectation, they serve as a shibboleth of British nativity. But notable eccentricities are to be observed in the English mode of pronouncing many proper names such as Derby, pronounced “darby”; Berkeley, pronounced “barclay”; Magdalen, pronounced “maudlin”; Cadogan, pronounced “kerduggan”; Marylebone, pronounced “merrybone”; Cholmondeley, pronounced “chumly”; Marlborough, pronounced “mobrer”; Albany, pronounced so that the first syllable rhymes with Al- in Alfred, etc. It is unnecessary to multiply examples. Suffice it to say that there is a large class of these words the spelling and pronunciation of which seem to an American rather curiously divorced. Certainly American usage offers no parallel where there is so complete a divorce of orthoepy from orthography. American usage makes for phonetic spelling and tends to make the conventional pronunciation and spelling conform somewhat, at least.

Having drawn attention to a few Briticisms, we are now prepared to discuss some of our Americanisms which seem to excite in the pure minds of the English precisians alternate feelings of disgust and indignation. Let it be premised, however, that it is not proposed to include ordinary slang in the present discussion. It must be admitted that too much slang is employed even in polite circles, not to mention the speech of those who make no pretense to refinement and culture. But one should not confuse vulgarisms with so-called Americanisms, just as one should not confuse vulgarisms with legitimate slang. The discriminating student distinguishes between ordinary slang and legitimate slang. The vulgar slang of the street is, of course, to be universally condemned and tabooed. Legitimate slang, on the contrary, performs an important function in the development of a living language. It is not to be inconsiderately ostracized, therefore, and put under the ban as the chief source of corruption of our vernacular, as certain of our purists, in their zeal without knowledge, tell us and attempt to maintain. It is idle for them in their self-appointed rôle of guardian of the pristine purity of the English tongue to endeavor to defend so unsound and so indefensible a thesis. For legitimate slang, far from being an unmitigated evil and a constant menace to the purity and propriety of our noble tongue, is standard English in the making, is idiom in the nascent state before it has attained to the dignity of correctness of usage. To change the figure, legitimate slang is the recruiting ground whence come the new and untried words which are to take the place in the vernacular, of the archaic and obsolete words, dropping out of the ranks. But it is aside from the main purpose of this chapter to discuss the relation of slang to standard usage (cf. “What is slang?”) and hence this only in passing.

By an Americanism, as here used, is meant a word, phrase, or idiom of the English tongue, in good standing, which has originated in America or is in use only on this side of the Atlantic. It will be seen, therefore, that all mere slang expressions, even though they be of American origin, are barred from the present consideration. In his dictionary of “Americanisms,” Bartlett gives a large collection, many of which the above limitation, of course, excludes.

Of reputed Americanisms, as one might surmise, there are several classes to be distinguished, without any very clearly defined line of demarcation separating them. One class includes a large number of phrases which had their origin in England and were transported thence to our shores by the first settlers who came from the mother country and established themselves in Virginia and Massachusetts. In the last analysis these locutions appear to be transplanted British provincialisms, not a few of which came over in the Mayflower. Some of our British critics who are not as familiar with the history of the English language as they might be do not hesitate to deliver an offhand opinion, pronouncing an apparent neologism an Americanism, when as a matter of fact the expression shows a good English pedigree extending back many generations. A more intimate acquaintance with the history of our common speech would save them the embarrassment from such a glaring blunder. But it is so easy to fall into the careless habit of branding as an Americanism an unfamiliar idiom or a phrase that is rarely heard in England. This convenient term has thus become in England a reproach, inasmuch as a certain stigma, somehow, attaches to it in the British mind. But for all that, like charity, it covers a multitude of sins, sins of keen prejudice, no less than of crass ignorance.

Many of the so-called Americanisms are really survivals of Elizabethan English and boast a Shakespearean pedigree, although they are no longer heard in the country of that consummate master of our speech.[13] Somehow, they seem to have drifted out of the main current of British English. Perhaps they have been caught up by an eddy and carried into one of the provinces where they are still preserved, as they are in America, fresh and vigorous. A moment’s reflection will show that we Americans come rightly by our Elizabethan English. For surely New England, Maryland and Virginia were settled by those who spoke the tongue of Shakespeare, even though they did not all hold the faith and morals of Milton. Many of these settlers—both Puritan and Cavalier—were college-bred men, graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. Therefore they inherited the best traditions of the English speech and transmitted it uncorrupted to their children. Nor were their children wilful traducers and corruptors of the King’s English, but contrariwise they conserved it and safeguarded its purity quite as sedulously as the inhabitants of the mother country. Thus the English speech was handed down, undefiled, from one generation to another, in America. Hence some words and phrases of good Elizabethan usage have been preserved in America, which long ago became obsolete and dropped out of the living speech in England, where the growth of the language was, of course, not arrested by the rude shock incident to its being transplanted in a foreign country.

Let us now point out a few examples of reputed Americanisms, social pariahs which have lost caste and no longer move in polite circles in England. An interesting example is found in the word “fall” used in the sense of autumn. Both these terms are in favor in America, although the pedants, following the lead of British critics, proscribe the use of “fall.” We are told it is not employed in standard English, and hence must be censured as provincial. Yet “fall,” which enjoys a certain poetic association with the fall of the leaf, can offer in its support the high authority of Dryden, who employed it in his translation of Juvenal’s satires:

What crowds of patients the town doctor kills,

Or how last fall he raised the weekly bills.

In his “Northern Farmer,” Tennyson used the offending word, but of course under the cloak of a provincialism. Still Freeman did not deign to employ it. Commenting on it, he remarks: “If fall as a season of the year has gone out of use in Britain, it has gone out very lately. At least I remember perfectly well the phrase of ‘spring and fall’ in my childhood.”

Another good illustration of a word still surviving in American usage, but long ago discarded in England, is “sick” in the sense of ill. British usage restricts the meaning to nausea, employing ill to describe a man suffering with a disease of whatever sort. Yet “sick” is supported by the very best literary authority. The term occurs again and again in Elizabethan literature. Reference to Bartlett’s concordance will convince even the most skeptical that the word abounds in Shakespeare, and that, too, in passages where the correct interpretation leaves no doubt that “ill” is meant. Suffice it to cite only an example or two: In “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (act 1, scene 1), Shakespeare makes Helena say, “Sickness is catching”; again in “Cymbeline” (act 5, scene 4), we read, “Yet am I better than one that’s sick of the gout”; and in “Romeo and Juliet” (act 5, scene 2), we read, “Here in this city visiting the sick.” Not only so. “Sick,” in the American acceptation, has an unbroken line of the best literary authority from Chaucer, “that well of English undefiled,” down to Doctor Johnson, whose dictionary defines the word in reference to a person afflicted with disease. American usage, furthermore, is supported by the King James version, in which “ill” is nowhere found, and also by the Anglican Church ritual. It is needless to multiply citations. If Americans sin in the improper use of “sick,” it may be urged in extenuation that they can at least plead a long array of illustrious and unimpeachable authority and are in good company.

The use of “well” as an interjection is mentioned by Bartlett in his dictionary as one of “the most marked peculiarities of American speech.” Moreover, he adds, “Englishmen have told me that they could always detect an American by the use of this word.” If this is an infallible hall-mark of American speech, then American English is nearer the tongue of Shakespeare than British English of the present day. For the word “well” in the sense of an interjection occurs again and again in Shakespeare. In “Hamlet” (act 1, scene 1), Bernardo asks, “Have you had a quiet guard?” Francisco replies, “Not a mouse stirring.” Whereupon Bernardo adds, “Well, good-night.” Again in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (act 3, scene 1):

Bottom. And then indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.

Quince. Well, it shall be so.

In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Captain” (act 3, scene 3), we find an excellent example in the line, “Well, I shall live to see your husbands beat you.” No one, of course, would think of charging Tennyson with using unidiomatic English. Yet, in “Locksley Hall,” you read:

“Well—’tis well that I should bluster.”

Surely it is superfluous to cite further examples from English authors showing that American usage in the case of “well” as an interjection is perfectly good English, even if the locution is censured by British pedantry and never heard on British lips.

The trite and hard-worked “guess,” as characteristic of American speech as the much-abused “fancy” is of British speech, furnishes another conspicuous example of a reputable word in Elizabethan English which has become obsolete in England, but is still preserved on this side of the Atlantic. There is no doubt that our constant employment of this good old Saxon word to do service on every occasion and to express every shade of thought from mild conjecture to positive assertion is somewhat inelegant; and this circumstance has perhaps contributed to bring the overtaxed phrase into disrepute with our kin across the sea. Yet there is abundant warrant in Elizabethan usage for the familiar notation we give “guess” in our every-day speech, although it is generally confined to its strict meaning of conjecture in that period of the language. We find it used in the familiar sense of “think” in several passages in Shakespeare, notably in “I. Henry VI.” (act 2, scene 1):

Not altogether; better far, I guess,

That we do make our entrance several ways.

Likewise, in “Measure for Measure” (act 4, scene 4):

Angelo. And why meet him at the gates and redeliver our authorities there?

Escalus. I guess not.

So, again, in the “Winter’s Tale” (act 4, scene 3):

Camillo. Which, I do guess, you do not purpose to him.

But this meaning of “guess” is common throughout the entire history of English literature, for the word has always borne the sense of think, cheek by jowl with its specific meaning of conjecture. It is so employed by Chaucer and Gower in early times and in the last century by Sheridan and Wordsworth, certainly good literary authority enough. However, this meaning of the term appears to have died out in the present-day British speech, and the word is there employed strictly in the sense of conjecture, its lost sense being supplied by “fancy.” Now, as between the Briton’s “fancy” and the American’s “guess,” there may not be much choice. But certainly the employment of “guess” which our British cousins claim to be a shibboleth of American nationality does not indicate any misuse of our mother tongue, as they contend.

Only one more case shall be adduced in illustration, to wit, our word “baggage,” which the other half of the Anglo-Saxon race has discarded for “luggage.” Here again, as elsewhere in the exercise of our prerogative, we have demonstrated our independence of the mother country in the matter of our speech and have chosen one term while the English people have adopted another, to designate the same thing. Both words have a good literary pedigree extending several centuries back. Shakespearean usage seems about equally divided, perhaps, with the odds in favor of “baggage.” The Shakespearean coinage “bag and baggage and scrip and scrippage,” which falls from the lips of Touchstone in “As You Like It,” and which enjoys the familiarity of a household word, ought to have given “baggage” a wider currency, especially in the author’s own country. But language, like the heathen Chinee, has ways that are dark, if not tricks that are vain, and does not develop according to logic or our a priori conceptions. Between the Briticism “luggage” and the Americanism “baggage” it appears, therefore, to be a drawn battle. So the British have nothing to reproach us with on this score, since convention has adopted “baggage” on one side of the Atlantic and “luggage” on the other.

So much for this interesting class of Americanisms which repose on standard Elizabethan usage, but are social outcasts in the land of their birth. There is another class of Americanisms which are not bolstered up by a long literary pedigree, inasmuch as they originated on American soil and were not imported from the Old World. As compared with the class just considered, these latter are mere parvenus, without any illustrious ancestral history to commend them. This class of Americanisms is composed of phrases which have found their way into our speech from various foreign sources. They have been introduced into our tongue from our contact with diverse peoples from remote parts of the globe. They constitute a small residuum of terms and phrases, the presence of which in our vocabulary attests the fact of our relations with different nations of the earth. For instance, in the early history of our country, we had to do with the Indians, and so borrowed from them certain terms especially pertaining to natural objects. We also had relations with the French, and consequently borrowed from them sundry phrases employed in official parlance, such as “bureau of information,” for which British usage prefers “office”; “exposition” for the British “exhibition,” and the like. Let these few examples represent the class. It is apparent here that we have made a slight departure from British usage. But it does not follow that our speech, for this reason, is less pure or less idiomatic. Both American usage and British usage show that the respective nations have decided to employ Romance importations in official language, but they have adopted different terms for the same object. This proves, in the first place, the independence of the two great English-speaking nations even in the matter of language, and, in the second place, the wide-reaching influence of French as the recognized official and diplomatic language during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

In addition to these two distinct classes of Americanisms there is a third class composed of phrases and expressions which have not yet attained to the dignity of universal currency throughout the entire country. These are rather provincialisms which are peculiar to certain localities. This class, therefore, does not command the importance which the first two classes already considered do. In a heterogeneous population like ours, made up of people from every nationality under heaven, it is quite natural that in certain localities there should exist some eccentricities of speech, some departures from the received standard—in a word, some provincialisms. It need hardly be recalled that parts of our vast country were settled by other nations than the English, as, for instance, New York by the Dutch and Louisiana by the French, to mention two specific cases bearing on the point in question. The people of these respective states, when they were incorporated into the union, of course, did not immediately forsake their native modes of speech and inherited vocabulary for pure, unadulterated Saxon. When the vast southwest territory was made a part of the United States, the people in that quarter of the land spoke a lingo which had a decided foreign complexion. What more natural, then, than that in the speech of that portion of our land there should exist traces of this old foreign element? Assuredly it would have been the height of artificiality and an unprecedented proceeding for the French element of New Orleans, when they became citizens of the United States, to have renounced their native French names for such natural objects as “bayou,” “levee” and the like, in order to adopt pure Saxon terms. Likewise, it was not to be expected that the Spanish settlers in the western section of our country, specifically California, should abandon such native terms as “cañon” and “ranch” and so on, for the corresponding names of genuine English origin. Thus it happens that there is a pronounced foreign flavor, or at least a slight tang, in the eccentricities of speech heard in certain localities of the United States. But these are mere provincialisms and do not impair the quality of our standard speech, which is English to the very core.

However, it was inevitable that the English language in America should have received an influx of foreign words on American soil. But our speech possesses a marvelous capacity for assimilating non-Saxon elements from whatever source. Hence the various foreign elements, such as Indian, Dutch, French and Spanish, to mention only the chief importations, have all been absorbed without any appreciable alteration in the constitution of our English speech, and only traces here and there are seen of non-Saxon elements surviving in a word or an idiom as an enduring monument to the influence of other tongues upon our own on American soil. Some of these foreign loans, it is true, are confined to certain localities, and consequently are to be viewed in the light of solecisms, or at best provincialisms. They circulate freely in a limited area, but are not recognized as legal tender throughout the length and breadth of the country. Such expressions are confined chiefly to the western portion of the United States and very rarely find their way east. It is questionable whether they are entitled to be termed Americanisms except in the most liberal interpretation of that phase, because they are not everywhere current and are not readily intelligible, not “understanded of the people.”

It seems appropriate at this juncture to say a word concerning dialects in America. The assertion is sometimes made that there are no dialects in America, that the railroad and printing press, the two potent and indispensable agencies in our modern civilization, have leveled out all eccentricities and peculiarities of speech and reduced our language to a uniform standard throughout our entire country. This statement is, in the main, true. Yet it requires only a little reflection to see that the assertion is not absolutely accurate and in accord with the facts. Certainly a brief residence in the several principal sections of the United States would bring convincing refutation. There is the western dialect, as implied in the comments in the preceding paragraph. There is also the Yankee dialect of New England, the salient features of which Lowell described very fully in his famous “Biglow Papers.” There is no less truly the southern dialect with its definite peculiarities of idiom and utterance. These dialects are quite sharply defined by their respective characteristics of colloquial speech. Each dialect has its own phrases and locutions familiar enough within its own geographical divisions, but not readily understood, perhaps unknown, elsewhere. For instance, the native southerner “reckons” and “don’t guess,” whereas the Yankee “to the manner born” does not “reckon,” but “guesses” à tort et à travers. As for the western dialect, it is said that three elements enter into its constitution, viz., the mining, the gambling and the cowboy element, a rich vein of billingsgate running through each. An effort has been made by our writers of fiction to register and record the salient features of these respective dialects incidentally in their stories, but the shades and gradations of speech are not easy to reflect and preserve on the printed page with the corresponding local color. Hence the work has been but partially done, and nowhere with complete success.

We Americans are far less trammeled by dialectal inconveniences and perplexities, however, than are the English people. For in Great Britain there is much less uniformity of speech than with us, and the difference between the language of a Scotchman and that of a Devonshire man is almost infinitely greater than the difference between any two American dialects. But the dissimilarity of the British dialects is historic and dates back from time immemorial. The story of Caxton, the first English printer, is well known, how the good merchant from a southern shire, when he inquired for eggs of a good wife in a northern shire, could not make himself understood, his southern dialect being mistaken for French. To be sure, the dialectal differences are not so great to-day as they were in those remote times, largely as the result of the printing-press Caxton set up in Westminster. But even yet the differences between the dialects of the extreme parts of the British Isles is so pronounced as to be a barrier to complete interchange of thought.

It appears from the foregoing that the indictment of corrupting the English language which certain British critics have brought in against the American people is not a true bill, since no count has been established. Our British critics seem loath to acknowledge any American rights in our common language. Americans have as much right to enrich the English vocabulary with useful words as the English people themselves. We also have as just a claim as they to revive and preserve an obsolescent phrase or idiom. Because a given English word is no longer in use and esteem in England, but is recognized as standard usage in the United States, it does not follow that it is not good English. The number of those using the English language in America far exceeds the population of England, and the English speech is just as vigorous and virile in America as it is in the parent country. Indeed, it has given indubitable proof of its vitality and vigor on American lips by adapting itself to the infinite variety of new conditions in this new country and by the added flexibility, strength and richness as exhibited in its augmented vocabulary. English now is the language of the American people as well as of the English people. It is, therefore, no longer proper or scientific to speak of the queen’s or of the king’s English. Such a phrase is really an anachronism in the twentieth century, when the English-speaking subjects of King Edward are numerically inferior to those not owing allegiance to Britain’s sovereign, who speak the same tongue. Moreover, it is manifestly not in keeping with the eternal fitness of things, as well as unscientific, for our British kith and kin to stigmatize an idiom or a phrase in good American usage as a provincialism simply because it is not current in Great Britain. The Britons have no more right to attempt to prescribe and limit the growth of the English tongue than we have. Nor do they enjoy an exclusive prerogative of determining whether a given expression, be it a new coinage or a survival from a former period, shall live and flourish or decline and perish in the English tongue. No sovereign, no nation can determine this, either by decree or by statute. The most that the British can say in derogation of an alleged Americanism is that it is current only in America and is not authorized by British usage. But this does not make it un-English, if it bears the American sign manual.

It is perfectly absurd for the British critics to condemn Americanisms offhand and to attempt to read them out of the language, simply because they are not in accord with British usage. In so doing they give proof of their insularity and fail to exhibit a spirit of liberality and sweet reasonableness. Indeed, they seem disposed, at all events, to take themselves too seriously as guardians of the English language. It is well enough for a critic to throw his influence on the side of the preservation of the purity and propriety of speech. But it is sheer folly to allow one’s pedantry to go to such a length as Malherbe, that “tyrant of words and syllables,” who on his death-bed angrily rebuked his nurse for the solecisms of her language, exclaiming in extenuation of his act, “Sir, I will defend to my very last gasp the purity of the French language.” It is related of him that he was so fatal a precisian in the choice of words that he spent three years in composing an ode on the death of a friend’s wife, and when at last the ode was completed, his friend had married again, and the purist had only his labor for his pains. Now your true British pedant seems to think it his bounden duty to reject summarily every word or expression which does not bear the pure English hall-mark, and that as for Americanisms they are an abomination which must inevitably work the speedy corruption and ultimate decadence of the noble English tongue. Such an one, whether from his precisianism or his prejudice, fails utterly to recognize in Americanisms conclusive evidence of the inherent potency, vigor and vitality of the English language on American lips.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] See A Question of Preference in English Spelling.

[13] See Vulgarisms With A Pedigree.

WHAT IS SLANG?

To the purist slang is an unmitigated evil which makes for the gradual corruption and decadence of our vernacular. The pedant who is a martinet regards all slang with absolute contempt and abhors its use, because he believes slang spells deterioration for our noble tongue. Such an one takes his self-appointed guardianship of the language very seriously and deems it his bounden duty as a curator of our English speech, not only himself to spurn the use of slang, but also to inveigh against all those who employ it habitually or occasionally. The baneful influence of slang, he tells us, is sweeping like a mighty tidal wave over the English language, debasing it and corrupting its very sources.

Nor is the precisionist alone in entertaining this alarming view. For many others who are not sticklers for strict propriety and correctness of speech share, to some extent, the same opinion, although they feel no special concern as to the final outcome. However, it is reassuring to reflect that the best-informed among us and those whose thorough knowledge entitles them to speak with authority do not take so gloomy and pessimistic a view of the future of the English language. They inform us that the fears of the pedants and pedagogues—the half-educated—are never destined to be realized.

“Strictly speaking,” says Professor Lounsbury, than whom there is no higher authority in America on the history of English, “there is no such thing as a language becoming corrupt. It is an instrument which will be just what those who use it choose to make it. The words that constitute it have no real significance of their own. It is the meaning men put into them that gives them all the efficacy they possess. Language does nothing more than reflect the character and the characteristics of those who speak it. It mirrors their thoughts and feelings, their passions and prejudices, their hopes and aspirations, their aims, whether high or low. In the mouth of the bombastic it will be inflated; in the mouth of the illiterate it will be full of vulgarisms; in the mouth of the precise it will be formal and pedantic. The history of language is the history of corruptions—using that term in the sense in which it is constantly employed by those who are stigmatizing by it the new words and phrases and constructions to which they take exception. Every one of us is to-day employing expressions which either outrage the rules of strict grammar, or disregard the principles of analogy, or belong by their origin to what we now deem the worst sort of vulgarisms. These so-called corruptions are found everywhere in the vocabulary, and in nearly all the parts of speech.”

Yet the feeling of the pedants and purists reflects the traditional attitude of professional men of letters in respect to the so-called corruptions that have been creeping into English during the last few centuries. It may be worth while to give some of the utterances of our representative English authors on this subject, showing how great solicitude they felt for the purity of our language in consequence of the increasing slang introduced into English. But before doing this, let us make a brief digression, in order to discuss what is meant by slang, which appears to be the source of the alleged corruptions of our speech.

In the first place one must differentiate slang from cant. It is evident, on a careful analysis, that much of the reputed slang now current is really cant, not slang, in the proper sense of the term. Both cant and slang are closely allied and have a kindred origin. This is the reason for the confusion of the two in the popular mind.

Cant is the language of a certain class or sect of people. It is the phraseology, the dialect, so to say, of a certain craft or profession and is not readily understood save by the members of the craft concerned. It may be perfectly correct according to the rules of grammar, but it is not perfectly intelligible and is not understood by the people. It is an esoteric language which only the initiated fully comprehend and are familiar with. For example, the jargon of thieves is called cant, as is also the jargon of professional gamblers. Slang, on the other hand, belongs to no particular class. It is a collection of words and phrases, borrowed from whatever source, which everybody is acquainted with and readily understands. It is not uncouth gibberish intelligible only to a few. It is composed of colloquialisms everywhere current, but homely and not refined enough to be admitted into polite speech. Such expressions may be allowed a place in certain departments of literature, as familiar and humorous writing, but they are objectionable in grave and serious composition and speech.

Now, slang is reputed to have had its origin in cant, specifically “thieves’ Latin,” as the cant of this vagabond class is called. Indeed, this appears to have been the only meaning of slang till probably the second quarter of the last century. In “Red Gauntlet,” published in 1824, Scott refers to certain cant words and “thieves’ Latin called slang”; and the great romancer seems to have been fully aware that he was using a rather unknown term which required a gloss. Sometime during the middle of the last century, so Professor Brander Matthews informs us, slang lost this narrow limitation and came to signify a word or phrase used with a meaning not recognized in polite letters, either because it had just been invented or because it had passed out of memory. If it is true that slang had its beginning in the argot of thieves, it soon lost all association with its vulgar source, and polite slang to-day bears hardly a remote suggestion of the lingo of this disreputable class. In so short a period—but little more than a half century—has the word, as well as the thing it signifies, separated itself from its unsavory early association and worked its way up into good society.

Of slang, however, there are several kinds. There is a slang attached to certain different professions and classes of society, such as college slang, political slang and racing slang. But it must be borne in mind that this differentiation has reference to the origin of the slang in the cant of these respective professions. It is of the nature of slang to circulate more or less freely among all classes of society. Yet there are several kinds of slang corresponding to the several classes of society, such as vulgar and polite, to mention only two general classes. Now, it is true of all slang, as a rule, that it is the result of an effort to express an idea in a more vigorous, piquant and terse manner than standard usage ordinarily admits. In proof of this it will suffice to cite awfully for very, employed by every school-girl as “awfully cute”; peach or daisy for something or some one especially attractive or admirable, as “she’s a peach”; a walk-over for any easy victory, a dead cinch for a surety, and the like. But it is not necessary to multiply examples of a mode of expression which is perfectly familiar to all. Every man’s vocabulary contains slang terms and phrases, some more than others. Often the slang consists of words in good social standing which are arbitrarily misapplied. For although much current slang is of vulgar origin and bears upon its face the bend sinister of its vulgarity, still some of it is of good birth and is held in repute by writers and speakers even who are punctilious as to their English. Some slang expressions are of the nature of metaphors, and are highly figurative. Such are to kick the bucket, to pass in your checks, to hold up, to pull the wool over your eyes, to talk through your hat, to fire out, to go back on, to make yourself solid with, to have a jag on, to be loaded, to freeze on to, to freeze out, to bark up the wrong tree, don’t monkey with the buzz-saw, and in the soup. But of the different kinds of slang and of its vivid and picturesque character more anon.

Let us now, after this digression as to what constitutes slang, return to the former question of the historical aspect of slang, which was engaging our consideration. Though the name is modern, slang itself is, in reality, of venerable age, and was recognized in the plebeian speech of Petronius, the Beau Brummel of Nero’s time, whose “Trimalchio’s Dinner” is replete with the choicest slang of the Roman “smart set.” The humorous pages of François Rabelais, also, have a copious sprinkling of slang expressions and invite comparison with the productions of some of our own American humorists, who depend not a little upon the vigorous western slang to enhance the effectiveness of their humor. But it is more to the point to cite historical instances among our English authors, especially those who set themselves the burdensome, yet thankless, task of striving to preserve the primitive purity of our speech.

The greatest representative of this number in English literature, excepting Addison, is Swift, the famous dean of St. Patrick’s. He was impelled by a desire amounting almost to a passion, it is said, to hand down the English language to his successors with its vaunted purity and beauty absolutely unimpaired. In an essay in The Tattler of September 28, 1710, he gives vehement utterance to his feelings on the shocking carelessness and woeful lack of taste in the use of the vernacular exhibited by his contemporaries. He affirms that the conscienceless, unrefined writers of his day were utterly indifferent as to the effect of their deplorable practice upon the future of the English tongue and brought forward, in proof of his contention, numerous examples of solecisms which he alleged were constantly employed, to the corruption and deterioration of the language.

Swift made a threefold division of the barbarous neologisms which were introduced in his day. It is interesting to observe his several classes of these locutions that were contrary to all rules of propriety. The first class was made up of abbreviations in which only the first syllable or part of the word had to do duty for the entire word, as phiz for physiognomy, hyp for hypochondria, mob for mobile vulgus, poz for positive, rep for reputation, incog for incognito and plenipo for plenipotentiary. The second class included polysyllables, such as speculations, battalions, ambassadors, palisadoes, operations, communications, preliminaries, circumvallations and other ungraceful, mouth-filling words, which Swift alleged were introduced into the language as a result of the war of the Spanish succession then in progress. His third class embraced those terms which were, to quote his own words, “invented by certain pretty fellows, such as banter, bamboozle, country put and kidney.” “I have done my utmost,” he pathetically remarks, “for some years past to stop the progress of mob and banter, but have been plainly borne down by numbers and betrayed by those who promised to assist me.”

Two years later Swift addressed a public letter to the Earl of Oxford, the Lord High Treasurer, deprecating the approaching decadence of the English tongue and earnestly urging some sort of concerted action for correcting and improving the vernacular. The language, the letter recited, was very imperfect and daily deteriorating. The period of its greatest purity, Swift went on to say, was that from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign to the breaking out of the civil war of 1642. His perturbed mind was filled with mingled feelings of grief and indignation as he pointed out in this letter the growing corruptions then so apparent even in the writings of the best authors, and more especially as he was compelled to admit that not only the fanatics of the commonwealth, but also the court itself, had contributed to bring about the sad condition of the language.

It is not worth while to speak in detail of Swift’s fanciful and quixotic scheme for purging the language and keeping it pure. But it is interesting to observe, in passing, that his urgent appeal to the prime minister to become the guardian and curator of the English tongue was utterly fruitless and, what is more, that his direful predictions as to the speedy decay of English have never been verified. Furthermore, some of those very neologisms which Swift criticized so unrelentingly are now recognized in polite speech and bear the stamp of approval as the jus et norma loquendi. Of his second class of barbarisms well-nigh all are to-day accepted as standard English and are without a trace of slang. With his first and third classes, however, fate has not dealt so kindly, for these words are still under condemnation, save mob, which has forced its way to recognition in good usage as a necessary term.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century appeared another champion of the preservation of the purity and propriety of the English speech. This was James Beattie, a learned Scotchman. For some reason or other, the Scotch seemed extremely solicitous about the English language during the eighteenth century—a solicitude that was not appreciated by the British lexicographers and least of all by Dr. Johnson. In a letter written in 1790, Beattie took occasion to speak of the “new-fangled phrases and barbarous idioms that are now so much affected by those who form their style from political pamphlets and those pretended speeches in Parliament that appear in the newspapers.” “Should this jargon continue to gain ground among us,” he assures his correspondent, in a doleful mood, “English literature will go to ruin. During the last twenty years, especially since the breaking out of the American war, it has made alarming progress.... If I live to execute what I purpose on the writings and genius of Addison, I shall at least enter my protest against the practise; and by exhibiting a copious specimen of the new phraseology, endeavor to make my reader set his heart against it.”

In order to emphasize the damage resulting to the language from the neologisms which were creeping in, Beattie conceived the clever plan of privately printing a series of “Dialogues of the Dead,” which purported to be the production of his son deceased a few years before. The most interesting of these “Dialogues” is the report of an imaginary conversation between Dean Swift, a bookseller and Mercury, in which the worthy dean expresses himself as greatly shocked and disgusted at the outlandish English used by the bookseller; and he calls on Mercury to translate the patois into good English. In response to Swift’s earnest request, Mercury says among other things: “Instead of life, new, wish for, take, plunge, etc., you must say existence, novel, desiderate, capture, ingurgitate, etc., as—a fever put an end to his existence.... Instead of a new fashion, you will do well to say a novel fashion.... You must on no account speak of taking the enemy’s ships, towns, guns or baggage: it must be capturing.” Other words which were censured as improper by this phantom critic were unfriendly and hostile for which inimical was recommended; sort and kind, in place of each of which description was to be used. Some of the locutions then in vogue which especially offended good taste, according to Beattie, were to make up one’s mind, to scout the idea, to go to prove, line of conduct, in contemplation, and for the future. Furthermore, the frequent use of feel, which threatened to supplant the verb to be in such an idiom as “I am sick” and drive it from its rightful domain, aroused the learned Scotch purist’s apprehension as to the final outcome, as did also the growing tendency to employ truism for truth, committal for commitment, pugilist for boxer, approval for approbation and agriculturist for husbandman.

No doubt Beattie believed with Swift that the influx of such pedantic Latinisms as desiderate and ingurgitate and the like would result in impairing the purity of our speech and perhaps hasten its declension. Nor did he look with favor on the growing fashion to use monosyllables, though of pure Saxon origin, so much affected by some writers during that period. Both of these tendencies were of temporary vogue; yet they served to arouse the fears of the ultra-conservatives as to the fate of the English language. One might suppose that, dreading the then threatening invasion of Latin terms as they clearly did, they would have hailed with delight the revival of Saxon monosyllables as a favorable offset. But even this did not allay their fears and was rather interpreted as a harmful symptom. Time, however, has demonstrated fully that the fears of those purists were unwarranted and that their dire predictions as to the future of English were founded on a very imperfect knowledge of linguistic development. A cursory examination of Beattie’s lists reveals the fact that of the verbal innovations and offending phrases which he put under the ban, the genius of the language has adopted not a few, and that, too, without impairing in the least the purity of the English tongue or its capacity for expressing the finest shades of thought. So far from losing, the language has gained in its capacity for expressing nice distinctions of thought and feeling, as a result of its marvelous absorptive power.

It has thus been shown that in the eighteenth century there were not wanting those—purists or what not—who entertained and expressed no little concern as to the ultimate effect upon our speech of the multitude of neologisms and asserted improprieties that were introduced. Did space permit, utterances of a similar character by nineteenth-century writers, from Walter Savage Landon down to critics of far less renown, might be brought forward as evidence to show that the watch-dogs of our speech were as numerous and as alert as ever. Nor is their tribe yet extinct. Ever and anon, even in the last few years, some prophet of evil is heard to raise his voice in vigorous protest against the increasing use of slang as foreboding the decadence of our vernacular. But the warning is not heeded; and the English language, like the real living thing that it is, goes on developing according to the subtle principles of speech development.

The laws governing speech development are very imperfectly known. Consequently none can foretell how a given tongue may develop. The language appears to be independent of one’s individual habit of speech; yet it is the sum total of the individual habits of speech that constitutes the language. No man makes a language; no man can make it. Not even the greatest monarch on earth can, by decree or fiat, predetermine the course of development of the language of his subjects. Language is an involuntary product and does not result from any determined concert of action. Yet it is modified and changed by various influences. As long as it is alive and spoken, it is constantly changing and will not remain “fixed” according to the whimsical desire of the purist. When it ceases to be used upon the lips of the people as a medium of communication of their thoughts and feelings, then it will cease to change and grow and will become “fixed.” But when a language is no longer spoken, it is characterized as dead. It is in this sense that we call Latin and Greek dead languages, although they survive in modern Italian and modern Greek, respectively.

It follows, therefore, that it is the height of folly for any one, no matter how highly esteemed as an author, to attempt the rôle of reformer of the speech. Such an one is destined to have only his labor for his pains. He can not directly purge the language of its neologisms and improprieties of usage. These violations of standard usage which offend good taste, strange as it may seem, furnish indubitable evidence of the vitality of the speech; for from these contraband expressions come the new terms and idioms which are to take the place of the obsolete words which drop out of the vocabulary.

Viewed in this light, slang assumes a different aspect, and it becomes evident that it performs a certain necessary function in the development of language. It is no longer proper, therefore, to refer to slang with supreme contempt and to condemn it offhand as an unmitigated evil which ought to be forthwith extirpated from the language. For, as an eminent authority has observed, slang is the recruiting ground of language and is, in reality, idiom in the making. It has been pointed out how some of the slang expressions of the eighteenth century which fell under the censure of Swift and Beattie are now found upon the pages of our best authors and are heard upon the lips of our most polished and elegant speakers. Since this is true, no verbal critic can at the present time affirm of a polite slang expression now in vogue that it is destined never to work its way up into good usage, or of a foreign locution that it will never be domiciled in our speech. Nor can he determine, in the case of a new coinage which is a candidate for adoption into the literary language, just when it is taken over from that doubtful borderland between slang and standard usage.

Seeing, then, that slang really has a function to perform in the growth of speech and, therefore, that it is worthy of serious consideration, let us examine some of our modern English slang and study for a short while its origin and history.

Professor Brander Matthews, in an admirable paper on the subject, divides slang into four classes, and we can hardly do better than to follow his general classification. The first class embraces those vulgar cant expressions which are the survivals of thieves’ Latin or St. Giles’ Greek, and those uncouth, inelegant terms which constitute the vernacular of the lower orders of society. This is the kind of slang heard in the police courts, the kind the newspaper reporter too frequently resorts to, in order to give spice to his account. It has been introduced into literature by some of our recent novelists, notably Dickens. The second class of slang is not quite so coarse, and includes those ephemeral phrases and catchwords which have a fleeting popularity and which, because they meet no real need, are soon forgotten utterly. They live but a day and pass away, leaving behind no trace of their existence. Of this class are campaign slogans and such inane expressions as where did you get that hat? chestnut, rot, I should smile and many others equally stupid. It is these two classes of slang that have brought the term into disrepute and merited contempt. For this sort of slang is very offensive to delicate ears and justly deserves the speedy oblivion which overtakes it.

The other two classes of slang, on the contrary, are of a finer type and have a reason for their being, something to commend them to popular favor. It may well be that from this type new idioms and phrases are recruited into our literary language. However, a certain stigma attaches to this better variety of slang, also, in the judgment of many, simply because it is slang. Yet it is heard on the lips of educated and cultured speakers, much to the disgust of those who are fastidious as to the propriety of usage. When it is employed in the written speech, the more careful writers brand it with inverted commas, the barbarian earmarks which attest its social inferiority. Occasionally a bold writer like Mr. Howells breaks down these barriers which convention has set up and gives a polite slang expression the stamp of his approval and authority. In this way these social outcasts, the pariahs of our literary speech, are now and then elevated to the dignity and rank of good society, and finally establish themselves in standard English.

Of these two classes of slang serving some useful end as feeders to the vocabulary and idiom of our language by which its wasting energy is to be repaired, the first embraces those archaic phrases and terms which are revived after long disuse and again brought into service. Restored after several generations of neglect, they now appear to be entirely new coinages and are only received as other probationers. The second class is composed of absolutely new words and expressions, frequently the product of a happy invention and, generally, racy and forceful. As instances of the first class may be mentioned to fire, in the sense to expel forcibly or dismiss, bloody in the sense of very, deck in the sense pack of cards and similar historic Elizabethan revivals. Such locutions have a good literary pedigree, now and then boasting the authority of Shakespearean usage. But this is not always apparent and such long-obsolete phrases are, therefore, accounted mere parvenus. For example, in King Henry VI. we read:

Whiles he thought to steal the single ten,

The king was slily fingered from the deck.—3 Pr.,v.1.

and again in Shakespeare’s 144th sonnet:

Till my good angel fire my bad one out.

The vulgar bloody, more common in England than in America, is an inheritance from the classic age of Dryden, who even uses the coarse phrase “bloody drunk” in his Prologue to “Southerne’s Disappointment.” Swift furnishes a slight variation from this in “bloody sick,” occurring in his “Poisoning of Curll.” The more fruitful province of polite slang is the second class, which is made up of the clever productions of the present age. It is from the best of these coinages, above all, that the worn-out energies of our vocabulary and idiom are repaired. These raw recruits of slang are severely disciplined and tested by hard preliminary service. If in this test an individual slang expression proves useful and is seen to fill an actual need, it is admitted eventually into the fellowship of standard English. But if, on the other hand, its utility is not established, it is relegated to the limbo of useless inventions where oblivion soon engulfs it.

Let us now review a few specimens of the best type of our modern slang. But perhaps it is safer simply to mention the alleged slang and not undertake to decide which of these expressions are slang and which standard English. For it is no easy matter to trace the line of cleavage between the legitimate technicality of a given craft or profession and polite slang. For instance, are corner, bull, bear and slump, so familiar in financial parlance, mere technical phraseology or slang? How is one to classify such political terms as mugwump, buncombe, gerrymander, scalawag, henchman, log-rolling, pulling the wires, machine, slate and to take the stump? If these are mere technical terms, surely boycott, cab, humbug, boom and blizzard have passed beyond the narrow bounds of technicality and are verging on that dubious borderland between slang and standard English. Furthermore, are swell, fad, crank, spook and stogy to be considered slang or good English? Each of these terms is supported by the authority of some of our best writers. Swell, to cite only one example, is bolstered up by the authority of Thackeray, who in his “Adventures of Philip” writes: “They narrate to him the advent and departure of the lady in the swell carriage, the mother of the young swell with the flower in his buttonhole.” Again, how is one to regard fake, splurge, sand, swagger, blooming (idiot), to go it blind, to catch on, and that vast host of similar racy and vivid phrases which, if slang, still do duty for classic English in common parlance?

A glance at some of our slang idioms shows that they are borrowed from the cant of various crafts and callings. Some are borrowed from the technical vocabulary of the stage, some are taken over from the phraseology of sporting life, while some bear the stamp of various other vocations. Take as an illustration fake, or, better still, greenhorn, which has forced its way to recognition in standard English. At first greenhorn was applied figuratively to a cow or deer or other horned animal when its horns are immature. In the “Towneley Mysteries” it is applied to an ox, for example. Later it was extended to signify an inexperienced person, or one who, from lack of acquaintance with the ways of the world, is easily imposed upon. The former application where the term was used in allusion to an immature horned animal is a legitimate metaphor. The latter use when applied to an inexperienced person was doubtless recognized as an extension of the metaphor and as slang. But the word filled a need in the vocabulary and was at length admitted into the guild of good usage. Another illustration is furnished by mascot, a recent importation from the French. This word originated in gambler’s cant and signified a talisman, a fetish, something designed to bestow good luck upon its possessor. The term, despite its unsavory association, somehow has commended itself to popular favor and now seems not to offend the most refined taste. Slump, though not so hackneyed, may serve as an example in point also. As a provincialism this word denotes soft swampy ground, or melting snow and slush. Later by transferred meaning it came to characterize in the financial world the melting away of prices, as a slump in the market—a vivid picture which is more interesting as a linguistic phenomenon than as an actual fact.

The history of slang teaches that words, like people, may be divided into two general classes, high and low, or refined and uncouth. “In language as in life,” as Professor Dowden puts it, “there is, so to speak, an aristocracy and a commonalty, words with a heritage of dignity, words which have been ennobled, and a rabble of words which are excluded from positions of honor and trust.” Now, some writers select only the choice and noble words to convey their ideas, leaving the coarse and vulgar words, terms without a pedigree, as it were, in the bottom of the inkhorn, for those who desire them. Other writers again have less cultured tastes and do not scruple to employ now and then plebeian words, to set forth their thoughts and feelings.

One might suppose on first blush that the dictionary ought to be a safe guide in the choice of words. A moment’s reflection, however, is sufficient to convince one that the dictionary can not be relied upon always for this desired knowledge. It is the lexicographer’s office to make a complete register of the vocabulary of the language; and so, to make his work exhaustive, he frequently records many slang words in his dictionary. Yet the practise of our dictionary-makers, it must be admitted, varies widely in this respect, some being far more exclusive than others. Our former lexicographers, as for instance Doctor Johnson, exercised a stricter censorship than is the custom at present. But it is not correct always to infer, in the case of an unrecorded word of questionable usage, that the author excluded it of set purpose. It may possibly be omitted from oversight. It seems to be the custom of our lexicographers now to make as complete a record as possible of all polite slang, but to brand it “slang.” This plan is, of course, altogether distasteful to the pedants and pedagogues who make a fruitless effort to curb and check the vocabulary of a language by rejecting all words of questionable usage. Whatever is not in harmony with established usage, whatever is not authorized by standard speech, the pedants and half-educated utterly reject. Now, heretofore our dictionary-makers have not been entirely above and beyond this narrow and circumscribed view. It was this fact that prompted Lowell, in the preface to his famous “Biglow Papers,” to express himself in these vigorous words: “There is death in the dictionary; and where language is too strictly limited by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is limited also, and we get a potted literature—Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees.”

The truth is, it does not fall legitimately within the province of the lexicographer to settle the question whether a polite slang term of recognized fitness and utility should be deemed good English or not. No man, however competent a scholar he may be, has the right to determine the growth and development of our language. Yet such a practise means this in the last analysis. There are not a few words and idioms in English that have neither logic nor reason to commend them, but are the product of analogy, as it, its and you, instead of the strictly correct hit, his and ye, to use a familiar example; and yet these analogical formations, which at first were mere slang, long ago drove our proper pronouns from the field. This change took place in the last two or three centuries, and that, too, in the very face of the vaunted authority of Shakespeare and the King James Version. No doubt the pedants and purists opposed this change as utterly illogical and contrary to the natural order of development and growth of our English speech; but they were gradually borne down. It is the vast body of those who use the language, the people, not the lexicographers and scholars solely or chiefly, who are the final arbiters in a matter of this kind. It is the law of speech as registered in the usage of those who employ the language that decides ultimately whether a given phrase shall survive or perish; and this is done so unconsciously withal that the people are not aware that they are sealing the destiny of some particular vocable. This silent, indefinable, resistless force we call the genius of the language.

It is hoped that the spirit of this paper will not be misunderstood. The article, let it be distinctly and emphatically stated, is not intended as a brief for slang—far from it. It is written simply to call attention anew to the fact that slang is not to be absolutely condemned as the main source of corruption of our speech, as some assert, but that, contrariwise, it is an important factor in the growth of our vernacular and serves—at least, the best of it—a useful purpose in repairing the resulting waste which necessarily occurs in English as in every spoken language.

STANDARD ENGLISH—HOW IT AROSE AND HOW IT IS MAINTAINED.

Much is said and written nowadays as to the prevalence of slang and bad English. It is a matter of common regret both in academic circles and elsewhere that our English tongue is not now spoken and written with its traditional purity and propriety. As to the truth of this complaint there is probably some ground for doubt, but it is not proposed here to discuss this question. The mere fact of the existence of slang and bad English implies that there is a norm, a standard of propriety of English speech, to which polite usage ever aims to conform. It is this standard that ratifies a given idiom or locution and stamps it with the hall-mark of propriety, thus establishing its usage as approved. Any signal departure from this standard is at once branded a solecism and consequently recognized as a provincialism, or slang. It is here proposed to inquire what constitutes standard English, how it arose, how it is maintained.

The science of language comes to our aid in this inquiry and teaches us how a language grows and develops. Before the dawn of this new science it was supposed that the standard speech was determined by court usage as reflected in the language of the ruling class and the courtiers. This select body of people was believed to set the fashion in speech, as in other things, and the educated and cultured of the country were thought to follow their lead as a matter of course. The common people, according to this theory, accepted as final the standard set by the nobility, and all divergences therefrom were held to be the result of ignorance. Not only was the court dialect regarded as indicating absolute propriety of usage, but it was supposed to be the original form of the vernacular speech, which the masses were expected to imitate as perfectly as they could, in their habits of speaking and writing. The court itself, likewise holding this view, did not hesitate to condemn and stigmatize every departure in speech from the received dialect as a glaring solecism which made for the corruption and ultimate disintegration of the language.

This is now an exploded theory. Modern philology has demonstrated beyond a doubt that such an assumption is utterly false and untrue to nature. For philology teaches us clearly that the urban dialect, far from being the original tongue of which the rural dialects are mere corruptions, was itself once only a provincial, barbarous form of speech,—a lingo just as primitive and just as uncultivated as any of its fellows,—and that its supremacy is the result, not of any intrinsic superiority over its rivals, but of the political predominance of those who employed it as their vernacular. Those who used the urban dialect, by dint of their own intelligence and skill, surpassed their rivals in the race for the primacy and were the first, therefore, to establish the ascendency of their community. Their supremacy once established, the inhabitants of the more highly organized community proceeded at once to impose their rule upon their weaker neighbors. The latter, being unable to resist the more powerful and resourceful community, soon forfeited their independence and lost their identity and were gradually absorbed. It is thus that political pre-eminence of a primitive community over its rivals paves the way for the growth and development of its speech, which is gradually extended over the conquered until it finally supplants its fellows and itself becomes supreme as the accepted language of the victorious and the vanquished alike.

The philologists explain the several stages of the development of a language, distinctly marking off each, from the crude local patois to the highly developed and polished speech of a cultured nation. The primitive tongue of a local tribe is termed a patois, a rudimentary speech ill adapted to the communication of the simplest ideas. If a patois grows and develops so as to become available in vocabulary and syntax for the expression of thought, it is called a dialect. When a local patois advances to the dialect stage, there is a marked tendency, on the part of those employing it, to crush out its rivals by conquest and assimilation. Consequently the triumphant dialect then becomes the only speech of a linguistic province, and is itself perhaps somewhat modified by the conflict from which it has emerged victorious.

Now, there may be several independent linguistic provinces. If so, a hard struggle for supremacy follows. Eventually some one of the provinces succeeds in establishing its political mastery over the others, and then begins the process of linguistic expansion and assimilation. Thus the dialect of the most powerful province or district is at length made the speech of the entire people. In this manner not only all the local patois, but all the competing dialects also, are either absorbed, or are crushed out by the dialect of the dominant political community.

A striking illustration of this process is furnished in the history of the development of the Latin tongue. This dominant language which still survives, more or less disguised, in the speech of a large part of Europe, as well as in the speech of Latin America, and which has so generously enriched our own English tongue, as Whitney tells us in his “Language and the Study of Language,” was the vernacular less than twenty-five centuries ago, of an insignificant district in central Italy, the inhabitants of which at that remote day were but little above savages. History is silent as to when and how this tribe found their way into that region of the Italian peninsula. Their speech was only one of a group of related dialects, “descendants and joint representatives of an older tongue, spoken by the first immigrants, which had grown apart by the effect of the usual dissimilating processes.” There still survive remains of at least two of the rival dialects, Oscan and Umbrian, which throw a flood of light on the prehistoric period of Italian speech. The Latin dialect was threatened on the north by the Etruscan, the vernacular of a civilized people dwelling beyond the Tiber; and it was likewise menaced on the south by the Greek language, spoken by the Hellenic colonies, long before settled in southern Italy and Sicily. Both of these tongues are assumed to have been superior in intrinsic character to the crude, primitive dialect of the early Romans. But the rudimentary Latin speech spread pari passu with the extension of the Roman dominion. As the Roman arms brought one Italian district after another under Roman sway, the tongue of that mighty people grew apace and diffused itself throughout the whole of Italy, gradually absorbing all the rival dialects. Finally all the dialects of Italy were forced to acknowledge the predominance of the speech of the conquering city on the Tiber,—from the uncultivated Gaulish of the north to the facile and polished Greek of the south. Thus all Italy came at last to have one uniform language, to wit, Latin.

Yet there did not result, after all, absolute uniformity of speech throughout the whole of Italy. For though the rival dialects had one by one given place to the triumphant advance of the all-absorbing Latin, still in the remote rural districts relics of the native local dialects tenaciously maintained their foothold in the popular speech; and like paganism before the advance of Christianity, the local dialects were loth to relinquish their strongholds in the inaccessible country districts. Traces of the vanquished tongues were still to be discerned in the varying local dialects throughout the remote parts of the Italian peninsula. Nor was the common speech of Italy everywhere current the pure classic Latin of Cicero and Vergil. On the contrary, the vernacular of the ancient Romans, by and large, was a far less polished and graceful idiom, “containing already the germs of many of the changes exhibited by the modern Italian and the other Romanic tongues.”

A second shining example is found in the history of the rise of the French language. This marvelously lucid tongue had its origin in a little island in the Seine, at present the heart of the great city of Paris. The language of the inhabitants of that tiny isle, to be sure, was at first a rude lingo no whit superior to the various patois of Romanized Gaul. But the inhabitants of that vigorous district soon gained the political ascendency over their neighbors and gradually extended their speech throughout the whole of Ile-de-France. The upshot was that the numerous local patois speedily lost caste, sinking to a lower and lower level, till they all finally disappeared, and the dialect of Paris came to be recognized as the official language of the entire central part of France. But there were also other provinces of France besides that of Ile-de-France. Normandy, Provence and Burgundy had meantime risen to marked political distinction, and the speech of each of these provinces in due course attained to the dignity of a dialect with a considerable body of literature. But no one dialect was supreme. However, in the process of time the people of central France established their pre-eminence, extending their dominion over the entire country. Thus the sister provinces were, in turn, brought under the sway of the predominant Ile-de-France which imposed its dialect upon its subdued rivals. In this manner the Parisian dialect spread over the whole of France and was destined speedily to become the accepted speech of the country. Naturally enough, as the Parisian dialect gained the ascendency, the Provençal, the Norman and the Burgundian dialect each fell into decay and finally ceased to exist as a spoken dialect, being preserved only in certain literary monuments.

Now, the Parisian dialect did not attain to the honor of the standard language of France without a long and hard struggle. During this struggle the language was in process of development and underwent some changes by attrition and contact with its strenuous rivals. In the conflict the Parisian dialect sloughed off some of its unessentials, its eccentricities of speech in the form of inflexions and syntax and came forth somewhat simplified in its grammar. At the same time it borrowed not a few idioms and phrases from its defeated rivals, thus enriching its vocabulary and simplifying its syntax by contact with the decadent dialects.

Thus arose modern French—a language beautifully transparent and precise and almost as untrammeled by inflections as English is and as admirably adapted for the conveyance of nice distinctions and fine shades of thought. It appears, then, that modern French is developed from one of the pristine provincial dialects which probably enjoyed no superior advantage over its sister dialects, but which owes its success as a literary medium to the happy circumstance that it was the vernacular of the most important political province. Furthermore, it is manifest that the Provençal, Norman and Burgundian dialects are in no sense a corrupt form of the standard speech. They are rather kindred dialects which by sheer force of political conditions were outstripped in the race for the distinction of being chosen as the national language.

Let us now consider the history of the English language. The development of the English tongue is quite similar, if not, indeed, parallel, to the story of Latin and French. It is in order to give here a brief survey of the origin and development of the English speech.

In the earliest period of our language it is assumed that there were numerous patois spoken by the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons who had settled in Britain as rovers and adventurers. True, we have no record preserved of these several patois; but philology warrants the inference that they existed. In the earliest stage of the Anglo-Saxon speech of which history furnishes a record, these various patois had already given rise to some three or four distinct dialects commonly designated, according to their respective geographical positions, Kentish, Southern, Midland, and Northern. There are documents extant of each of these early English dialects which constitute our Anglo-Saxon literature. Now, each of these dialects (if Kentish is included in the Southern dialect) marks a separate period in the political history of Teutonic England. In the northern part of England, then known as Northumbria, where the Angles settled after migrating from the Continent, the Anglian dialect was first pre-eminent as the literary language. This was during the eighth century when the leading writers in that dialect were Caedmon and the Venerable Bede. In those early times the Angles appear to have extended their control over Mercia, too, even down to the northern banks of the Thames. However, this district later had a local dialect of its own, apart from the Northumbrian, and its chief literary monuments are a translation of the Psalter and a version of Matthew’s Gospel designated the “Rushworth.” The part of Britain south of the Thames and lying toward the west was settled by the Saxons. Their dialect which scholars call the West-Saxon was quite unlike the Anglian dialect; and it is distinguished above its fellows as the dialect in which the bulk of our earliest literature is written. The West-Saxon, therefore, from the grammatical point of view is by far the most important of our early English dialects, and is recognized by scholars as the standard for inflection and idiom. But the pre-eminence of West-Saxon was of later date than that of the Northumbrian dialect. From the death of Bede in 734 to the accession of King Alfred in 871, it is interesting to note that no one of the English dialects seems to have been supreme. However, from the accession of Ecgberht in 802 the West-Saxon had been gradually gaining its ascendency which was of course completed in the days of King Alfred. This good king signalized his reign by a great revival of learning, in which he himself was the leading figure. He summoned to his court an earnest and enthusiastic body of scholars from various parts of the world, and himself set them a worthy example of industry and scholarship by translating into the vernacular Pope Gregory’s “Pastoral Care,” Boethius’s “Consolations of Philosophy” and Orosius’s “Chronicle.”

After the death of King Alfred there was a sad decline in literature. But the prowess and overlordship of Wessex had made the West-Saxon dialect the standard literary language of England; and it continued so till the Norman Conquest destroyed the political prestige of that kingdom and consequently deprived that dialect of its evident advantage as the official language. While the West-Saxon dialect was recognized, it is true, as the literary language, still it did not entirely supplant the Anglian and the Mercian, both of which continued to be spoken and, to some extent, also written. But it is a significant fact that the earlier Northumbrian poetry was translated into this southern speech and is preserved to us only in the West-Saxon version.

West-Saxon lost its supremacy as the standard language when, as a result of the Conquest, Norman French was adopted by the ruling class as the cultivated speech of the realm. Still, “the native tongue,” to quote Professor Lounsbury (History of the English Language), “continued to be spoken by the great majority of the population, but it went out of use as the language of high culture. The educated classes, whether lay or ecclesiastical, preferred to write either in Latin or French—the latter steadily tending to become more and more the language of literature as well as of polite society.” The result was that West-Saxon, being supplanted as the literary language by Norman French, lost prestige and was reduced ultimately to the level of its sister dialects, Anglian and Mercian. After the loss of West-Saxon ascendency no one dialect was again pre-eminent in England till the fourteenth century. For two centuries prior to that date the several provincial dialects were employed in their respective territories; and each had an equal chance of becoming standard English. An author, therefore, was free to use his own local speech. To be sure, French was the accepted language at court and in high society; but this foreign tongue at no time enjoyed such a commanding position as to threaten the extinction of the native dialects.

Indeed, the relation of the Norman French to the English dialects has given rise to so much popular misconception and error that it seems worth while, at this juncture, to indicate the true relation explicitly. When the Normans conquered England, as the philologists tell us, they did not seek to impose their language upon the English people. Such a policy would have been very unwise for obvious reasons, and would have produced untold trouble and conflict between the two races. The Normans did not despise the English tongue. They were content to let the natives speak their several English dialects just as before the Conquest. Of course, the Normans retained their own French patois and had no expectation of abandoning it in favor of English, as they had once before given up their Scandinavian vernacular for French. Yet in consequence of the overwhelming preponderance of the English natives over their Norman invaders it was inevitable, in the event of a struggle for supremacy between the two tongues, that the French should be forced to the wall. Fortunately, no such conflict was designed by either race, and it is quite reasonable to suppose that neither people ever seriously contemplated such a possibility.

It is evident, then, that the Norman Conquest did not tend to destroy the English tongue in Britain, as it was once the fashion to teach. The Norman Conquest did, however, interrupt the normal literary tradition of the English speech. For at the time of the Battle of Hastings, as has been intimated, the West-Saxon dialect was easily the foremost of the English provincial dialects and seemed destined to establish its claim as being the national speech. But the Conquest interrupted this natural process and drove West-Saxon from its coign of vantage, reducing it to the level of the rival provincial dialects. French being, of course, the language of the court and the official tongue generally, the West-Saxon dialect no longer offered any special inducement to intending authors to employ it, as had been the case ever since the days of King Alfred. Hence writers simply used their respective local dialects, there being no recognized standard speech.

Norman French and the several English dialects were now spoken side by side, and continued so for quite a long while. What more natural, therefore, than that each tongue should exercise some influence upon the other, however slight? It is usually stated that French influence hastened the decay of English inflections. But the English had begun to lose its inflections even before the coming of the Normans and to rely more largely upon position and prepositions to indicate case relations. No doubt, French influence accelerated this tendency. French influence was also a factor in modifying the idiom and vocabulary of the English tongue. But each language, as Anglo-Norman students assure us, reacted upon the other mutually; and the speech of the invaders was influenced by the English of the natives just as much as English was influenced by French.

The truth is, the influence of Norman French upon English was not so important in itself, as far as any immediate effect was concerned; but it paved the way for the subsequent influence of Parisian French which swept like a mighty tidal wave over England, leaving a considerable residuum and deposit in our speech alike in idiom and in vocabulary. Norman influence upon our tongue was, therefore, chiefly indirect, not direct. When Anjou was subdued by Philip Augustus of France in 1204, Normandy was forfeited by the English crown and from that day Norman French influence on English was practically at an end. But the Parisian dialect soon extended its sphere into Britain and began to exert a decided influence upon the English speech. In the fourteenth century English scholars industriously turned their attention to French literature, either adapting or closely translating many specimens. Norman French now gave place to the Parisian dialect which had established itself as the standard speech for all the provinces of France. English scholars who crossed the Channel, as many now did, learned the French of Paris; and when they returned to their native shores of Albion, they brought with them the best French of Paris. Having lost caste, the Norman dialect was no longer esteemed fashionable in polite society and consequently it fell to the lot of Parisian French to honor the heavy drafts which the English tongue made during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries upon the French language, for the enrichment and augmentation of its vocabulary. Nor, indeed, did the French importations into our speech cease even then. They continued, only with slightly diminished activity, during the Elizabethan and succeeding ages, down to the present time. However, during the last few centuries our vernacular has not borrowed so copiously from that source, although we still draw heavily on French in our art parlance.

Yet despite the French invasion, English held its own as the vernacular of the people, yielding but very little ground, except in its vocabulary, to the foreign tongue. So far from retreating before the vigorous onslaught of French influence, our sturdy English speech actually advanced its position and succeeded in driving French from its former stronghold of the court and high society. For the descendants of the Normans who were overwhelmingly in the minority, seeing that they were compelled by sheer force of circumstances to speak English also, gradually abandoned French as their mother-tongue and were finally content to use the language which was understood by everybody in the kingdom. Thus the English vernacular at last triumphed over French as the language even of the governing class in England; and French fell into disuse and survived as a spoken tongue only in polite society and among scholars, as an accomplishment.

So much for the true relation of French to English in the history of our speech. But to return to the question of the rise of the standard literary language in England. As has been pointed out, from 1066 to 1300 there was no recognized standard of English speech. In the existing confusion of provincial dialects there was felt an urgent need for a uniform speech throughout the entire country. The perplexity resulting from the babel of unfamiliar English dialects in use at the time of the introduction of printing was keenly felt by the people themselves, but by none more than by Caxton, who set up the first printing press in England. Now, Caxton himself used London English, as a rule. But he experienced no little embarrassment when he began to print books, because he was uncertain as to which dialect he should employ. In the prologue to his version of Vergil’s Aeneid he freely confesses his inability to determine which of the varying dialects he should adopt. Commenting on the dialectal differences he complainingly remarks: “And that common English that is spoken in one shire varyeth from another. Insomuch that in my days happened that certain merchants were in a ship in Thames, for to have sailed over the sea into Zeeland, and for lack of wind they tarried at the foreland and went to land for to refresh them. And one of them named Sheffield, a mercer, came into an house and axed for meat and specially he axed after eggs; and the good wife answered that she could speak no French. And the merchant was angry, for he could speak no French, but would have had eggs and she understood him not. And then at last another said that he would have eiren; then the good wife said that she understood him well. Lo, what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eiren? Certainly it is hard to please every man because of diversity and change of language.”

This incident related by Caxton serves to illustrate how almost unintelligible the southern dialect had become to the inhabitants of the northern part of England in the early fifteenth century. The several dialects spoken in England had diverged so much as to result in a serious handicap on trade and a practical embargo on letters. The Northern, the Southern and the Mercian (the last now split into two minor dialects distinguished as east and west) had each risen to the dignity of a literary language. But no one of them was recognized as the triumphant dialect, destined to vanquish all its rivals and to establish its sway over the entire country. At this juncture circumstances, somehow, conspired to raise the East Midland dialect to the primacy, enabling it to extend itself over the whole country as the received language, the national speech. This dialect had much to commend it to favor. To begin with, this dialect occupied a somewhat central position geographically and so offered a compromise to the inhabitants of the extreme northern and southern portions of England, whose dialects were so far apart. In the second place, East Midland was the dialect of London, the great commercial center—the emporium—of Great Britain. It was also the dialect of the famous university towns where the flower of the English nobility was trained. Furthermore, it was the dialect of the Court and Parliament whenever they spoke English. Finally, it was the dialect of Wycklif’s version of the Bible and of Chaucer, “that well of English undefiled” whose refreshing stream of song carried joy and gladness to every part of the island.

It is sometimes said that Chaucer’s poetic genius moulded the literary language of England. This is a pleasant illusion, but not quite in accord with the facts. Chaucer, in conformity to the custom of the times, simply wrote in his native dialect. That dialect, it is true, happened to be the dialect of the chief city of the realm and of the most powerful elements in the state, the ruling class. It was a mere accident that Chaucer spoke and wrote this same dialect as his vernacular. In no sense did Chaucer create the London dialect. Nor did he make it the received literary language, the standard speech of the English people. This dictum was once accepted, but needless to add it is now discredited by scholars. Yet Chaucer’s influence as the foremost English author of his age was assuredly not without weight in establishing the dialect of London as the standard literary language of the kingdom. It is a significant fact that this dialect (which was the dialect of the Court) had attained the distinction of being the literary language of England, by the first half of the fifteenth century, though perhaps it was a mere coincidence that this was only a short time after Chaucer’s death. It is quite possible, yea probable, that the East Midland dialect would have established its supremacy as the standard language of England even if Chaucer had written his works in French, or Latin, or Scotch. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that an author of such rare and commanding genius as Chaucer contributed not a little to hasten the process of the spread of his native dialect and its acceptance as the standard language of the realm. The acknowledged excellence of his poetic works tended, no doubt, to stamp the dialect in which they were written as literary English and furnished a sufficient guaranty, in after years, that his language was classic English.

The effect of the establishment of the East Midland dialect as the standard language of England was soon observed in the rapid declension and ultimate disuse of all the rival dialects. For as soon as the dialect of London was recognized as supreme, no author could be expected to court oblivion by employing any of the decadent provincial dialects as his medium of expression. Hence all the provincial dialects hitherto employed now either fell into disuse, or survived only as a mere local patois without any literary pretensions—a rustic lingo heard only on the lips of the illiterate and uncultured. Such was the fate of the various Middle English dialects, Scotch only excepted. The Northern dialect, or Scottish, seems to have maintained itself for quite a considerable time. Indeed, Scottish was recognized as the standard language of Scotland as long as that northern kingdom preserved its independence. Down to the time of James the First, therefore, there was a dual standard in the language of Great Britain, the English of London which was the vernacular of England and the Scottish of Edinburgh, which was the vernacular of Scotland. In 1603, upon the accession of James the First, the Scottish as a literary tongue was abandoned in favor of standard English, as a result of the political organic union of Scotland with England. From that time to the present there has been only one standard English language for Great Britain. Yet the language spoken in Scotland preserves not a few traces of the old Scotch dialect mingled with standard English, which imparts to it its Scotch characteristics. This is more particularly noticeable in the speech of the common people and occasionally in the works of a popular poet like Burns, although his language contains very few strictly Scotch words.

It has been shown how standard English was enriched in vocabulary and idiom by contact with the French language. It is to the Norman Conquest that our speech is largely indebted for its double vocabulary which gives English a unique place among modern languages. The skeleton of our English tongue has always remained Teutonic, despite the unusually large number of words it has assimilated from French and other foreign sources. In our vocabulary, which has been so vastly swollen by our French borrowings, the native English words, if one may venture to make a rough distinction, are employed to signify objects of domestic association, homespun ideas and thoughts, while the words of Romance origin are reserved to express objects that are associated with luxury and delicate culture and to convey subtle shades of thought. When two or more words are used to signify very much the same thing, the genius of the English speech tends to differentiate and to restrict the words to separate and special senses. This, of course, makes the language more flexible and more facile as a medium of expression.

Just as English was enriched by contact with French, so it has been improved, though to a less extent, by attrition and contact with its sister dialects. By elbowing its way to the front through the various dialects which jostled it, the dialect which developed into standard English naturally lost by attrition most of the grammatical peculiarities that hampered it. It was, of course, a decided advantage to the London dialect, in its struggle for the distinction of the standard speech, to throw off such inflections as proved a hindrance to its complete development. Most philologists used to regard the loss of superfluous inflections a symptom of decadence in a language. Now, however, such a process is regarded a sign of virility and progress. “The fewer and shorter the forms, the better,” affirms the eminent Danish philologist Jespersen. “The analytical structure of modern European languages is so far from being a drawback to them that it gives them an unimpeachable superiority over the earlier stages of the same language.” This high authority even goes so far as to declare that “the so-called full and rich forms of the ancient languages are not a beauty, but a deformity.”

Thus in the process of its development standard English was gradually freed of many of its pristine grammatical encumbrances, to take its place in the front rank of living tongues as the best equipped for a universal language. And the end is not yet. For the work of simplifying is still in progress. The history of our speech from the fifteenth century down to the present day proves nothing more conclusively than that English tends ever to become more and more simple in inflection and syntax. Witness the dwindling use of the subjunctive mood, which has been almost driven from the field of modern English syntax by the constantly encroaching indicative. Another example in point is the transfer of the function of the absolute case from the dative, an oblique case, to the nominative. This shifting has been accomplished since the time of Milton, who represents the transitional period. It is evident then that the tendency of standard English is in the direction of simplicity, and its future growth will, no doubt, be along the line of least resistance. Certainly its vis inertiae seems destined, unless acted upon by some violent external force, to move in that direction.

It need hardly be added that standard English, like every spoken language, has undergone change, from age to age. Some words become obsolete and drop out of the vocabulary. New words are coined to take their places, and if, after a period of probation, they prove acceptable, they are received into good usage and are recognized as standard. In this manner the waste that necessarily occurs in living English, as in every living language, is repaired. Thus the English speech grows, adapting itself to the many and varied conditions which are exacted of it as the medium for the communication of thought for the millions of people in every quarter of the globe who use it. Here and there slight variations from the normal, slight departures from the standard, are made. But unless the locutions which constitute these departures possess extraordinary vitality and force, unless they persist with dogged tenacity and supply a real need in the language, they are doomed to perish without leaving any appreciable effect upon the standard speech.

What, then, determines standard English? The reply, in a nutshell, is the usage of the best writers and speakers. Standard English is determined by the habitual manner the learned and cultured employ to express their thoughts and feelings in words. The customary mode of expression now in vogue among the most careful users of English has been inherited from the generations of writers and speakers who have employed our speech in the centuries past as their vernacular. The leading English authors from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Swift, Johnson and a host of others, down to the living writers, have each in his way contributed to make our standard literary language. Each of these, it is true, has influenced standard English in some degree. No one can fail to see the impress which such an eccentric writer as Doctor Johnson, the literary dictator of the eighteenth century, stamped upon the standard English of his age. Our speech shows no less distinctly marked traces of the influence of Addison. For Addison’s admirable style, with its characteristic grace, crispness and lightness of touch, even Johnson himself warmly commended, although the great Cham’s innate tendency to the stilted, the turgid and the ponderous prevented him from approximating in his practice what in his preaching he so ardently held up for the imitation and emulation of others. To mention another concrete example, in more recent times standard English has been swayed somewhat by Macaulay’s passionate love of antithesis and of the periodic structure of the sentence. Attention might be called, likewise, to the influence of Gibbon’s chaste and classic style (albeit a trifle heavy and wearisome at times) upon our standard literary language, or to the influence of another prominent author whose style is still more unique and distinctive—Thomas Carlyle. Away back in the early history of English one may observe in the style of the West-Saxon translator of Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History” a trick of repetition which has made a lasting impression on our standard speech; and it still survives in such familiar tautological phrases as “really and truly,” “bright and shining,” “pure and simple,” “without let or hindrance,” “toil and delve,” “confirm and strengthen,” and “lord and master.” All of these locutions, as Professor Kittredge informs us, in his suggestive book, “Words and Their Ways in English Speech,” are in high favor, and are recognized as standard English. Euphuism is a movement that swept over Elizabethan English in the wake of the tidal wave of ink-horn terms, materially affecting the standard speech. Even Shakespeare could not quite resist the fashion of Euphuism, and his English is indeed slightly colored thereby. Another trick of style which has cropped out here and there, from the days of Spenser down to the present age, is that of employing archaic terms with the intent to revive them. On the score of this affectation the most flagrant sinner among modern authors is William Morris, whose writings furnish a veritable treasure-trove of curious and amusing archaisms. But it is not worth while to multiply examples. Let those already given suffice to illustrate how standard English has been swayed, from time to time, even by the devices and attractions of dame fashion.

It is to be noted, in conclusion, that standard English is no longer confined to the usage of any given locality, as was the case in the early history of the language. The English language spoken in London does not now enjoy the distinction of determining the standard universally accepted. A special mode of utterance or a special idiom is not now regarded proper simply and solely because it is sanctioned by London usage. Indeed, that British metropolis appears rather to have broken with its enviable past and worthy traditions in the matter of its English, for London is now recognized as the home of the “cockney” dialect. Nowhere more than on the lips of the native Londoner is the purity of our noble tongue in jeopardy. Strange to say, the English vernacular of the native Londoner has, of late years, fallen into disrepute by reason of its abounding improprieties, its teeming provincialisms and its solecisms. No educated man who professes English as his mother-tongue would, to-day, think of making his speech conform to the usage of London as reflected in the local dialect. It used to be the custom to take London English as a model; but not so now, since the local speech has become so corrupt as to prove a constant menace to the purity of the living tongue. Perhaps it should be added, in order to forestall adverse criticism, that standard English is, of course, heard in London, as elsewhere, upon the lips of the educated and cultured. But it is worth while to emphasize this fact, even at the risk of repetition, that standard English is no longer confined to any given locality or to any one country, for the matter of that, but is written and spoken in America, in far-off India, and in other remote parts of the world as well as in the British Isles. For wherever the English language is employed, whether written or spoken, in accordance with the best traditions of that rich, flexible and copious tongue, there standard English is found, in whatever quarter of the globe it may be.

Transcriber’s Notes

Page 10: “linguistc ideal” changed to “linguistic ideal”

Page 14: A missing footnote anchor was added.

Page 29: “St. James Gazettte” changed to “St. James Gazette”

Page 73: “early pronunication” changed to “early pronunciation”

Page 85: “in consequenec” changed to “in consequence”

Page 90: “mode of pronuncing” changed to “mode of pronouncing”

Page 102: “the quailty” changed to “the quality”

Page 105: “not owning allegiance” changed to “not owing allegiance”

Page 108: “very seriiously” changed to “very seriously”

Page 113: “English lierature” changed to “English literature”

Page 115: “cvil war” changed to “civil war”

Page 123: “the senes of very” changed to “the sense of very”

Page 129: “let is be distinctly” changed to “let it be distinctly”

Page 130: “what constiutes” changed to “what constitutes”

Page 149: “Danish philologist Jesperen” changed to “Danish philologist Jespersen”

Page 150: “constantly encoraching” changed to “constantly encroaching”

Page 152: “no less distainctly” changed to “no less distinctly”

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Table of Contents

Questions at Issue in Our English Speech

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

CONTENTS.

OUR ENGLISH SPELLING OF YESTERDAY—WHY ANTIQUATED?

FOOTNOTES:

A QUESTION OF PREFERENCE IN ENGLISH SPELLING.

AUTHORITY IN ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION.

FOOTNOTES:

VULGARISMS WITH A PEDIGREE.

BRITICISMS VERSUS AMERICANISMS.

FOOTNOTES:

WHAT IS SLANG?

STANDARD ENGLISH—HOW IT AROSE AND HOW IT IS MAINTAINED.

Transcriber’s Notes

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