Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (47 page)
wrap their tongues around it, and reproduce it changed in tonality, pronunciation, cadence and grammar to suit their native phonetic tendencies and their existing needs of expression and communication. The result has been called “the worst English in the world.” It would certainly seem to have a fair claim to that distinction. To understand it requires a trained ear, and at first blush it is equally unintelligible to white people and colored people alike.
3
Attempts upon the phonology and grammar of Gullah have been made by Smith,
4
Turner,
5
Albert H. Stoddard
6
and Guy B. Johnson,
7
and upon those of Negro American in general by James A. Harrison,
8
C. M. Wise,
9
Lupton A. Wilkinson
10
and Johnson.
11
Smith calls Gullah “a highly simplified form of English, both in phonology, grammar and vocabulary, with elision of difficult sounds, shortening of words, modification of every difficult enunciation, and a minimum of forms for person, number, case and tense.” To which Stoddard adds: “[The Negroes’] ears could not take in nor their tongues encompass very much of our pronunciation. They lopped
letters off words or added them on. They got the general idea of a word and used it in other senses.” In Gullah the conjugations of verbs are disregarded, so that “the simple form
run
does duty for
run, runs, is
or
are running, has
or
have run, ran
, etc., singular and plural of all tenses”;
1
the possessive is indicated by juxtaposition, as in
Billy gun, we hat;
2
adjectives and nouns are turned into verbs,
3
and verbs into nouns; “there is no distinction of pronouns with regard to sex: the feminine form is practically unused,”
4
and the singular of nouns commonly, though not invariably, also does duty as the plural.
5
“Negro English,” says Harrison, “is an ear language altogether.” The result in Gullah is that many terms are changed by misunderstanding,
e.g., curly-flower
for
cauliflower, omelette
for
marmalade, sweet religion
for
sweet alyssum
and
Florida lime
for
chloride of lime
, and many others acquire liaison forms,
e.g., senkah
for
the same like, mona
for
more nor
(
more than
),
truwy
for
throw away
, and
shum
for
see them
. There is a marked economy of effort, so that the last means also
see it, him
or
her
, and
I see, do you see, can you see
and
don’t you see it, him, her
, or
those. Sweet
is a sort of universal adjective, indicating any kind or degree of excellence.
To mash
means not only to crush, but also to beat, to dash, to strike upon, to throw weight upon.
One
and
only
become indistinguishable.
Too
is widened in meaning to include that of
very. To stand
is used for to exist, to be, and to live, and
to use
indicates any sort of indwelling or association. The broad
a
and the flat
a
exchange places, so that
psalm
becomes
psa’m
and
man
becomes
mahn
. The neutral vowel replaces the short
i
in
fish, mill, milk
, etc., and also the medial and final
r
, as in
bark, yard, part
and
zar
. Final
s, sh, ze
and
ns
become
ge
or
nge
, as in
sige
for
size, reinge
for
reins, chainge
for
chains
and
sneege
for
sneeze
. Initial
s
is commonly omitted, as in
kin
for
skin, pot
for
spot
and
tick
for
stick
. There are plenty of signs of African influence.
Ain’t
becomes
yent, eye
becomes
yeye, young
becomes
nyoung, you
becomes
oonah
or
yoonah
,
6
and there are frequent African-like duplications, as in
one-one
, a swamp blackbird.
7
Gunnar Myrdal, in “An American Dilemma,”
1
lists some of the terms prevailing among the urban Negroes of the country,
e.g., Uncle Tom
or
handkerchief-head
, a Negro who defers to and flatters his white overlords, and
to play possum
, to beguile a white into doing what is wanted of him. Many others might be added,
e.g., CPT
(colored people’s time), meaning dilatory;
2
ofay, pink, paleface
or
peckerwood
, a white person;
high yallah
, a light mulatto, and
bronze
and
sepia
, euphemisms for
colored
. The contributions of Negro wits to the vocabulary of jive will be noticed in Chapter XI, Section 2.
3
1
AL4, pp. 90, 354
ff
and 416; Supplement I, pp. 4, 5 and 37. See also British Recognition of American Speech in the Eighteenth Century, by Allen Walker Read,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. VI, Part VI, 1933, pp. 313–34, and Two Early Comments on American Dialects, by Robert J. Menner,
American Speech
, Feb., 1938, pp. 8–12.
1
“The difference in speech between Boston and San Francisco,” says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, fourteenth edition; London, 1929, Vol. XIII, p. 698, col. 2, “is less than what may be observed between two villages in Great Britain that are only a few miles apart.” In other countries the same divergences are to be found, for nowhere else is there so much interstate migration as in the United States. The situation in Italy is thus set forth by Mr. Hugh Morrison (private communication, Feb. 8, 1946):
“Few Americans realize how fortunate they are in living in a country in which the differences in speech from place to place are slight. The following is a sentence,
‘Inside there were written three words,’ in the dialects of ten different places in Italy:
“Tuscany (standard Italian): Dentro c’erano scritte tre parole.
“Piedmont: Drenta a i era scrit tre parole.
“Lombardy: Denter gh’era scritt tre paroll.
“Venice: Drento ghe era scrite tre parole.
“Emilia: Deintr a i era scrett trai paroll.
“Rome: Drento c’erano scritte tre parole.
“Sicily: Dintra c’eranu scritti tri paroli.
“Sardinia: Intro ci vini inscrittas tres paraulas.
“Milan: Denter gh’erò scritti trè parol.
“Naples: Entro c’erano scritto tre paruolo.
” The study of the Tuscan dialect is required in all the schools in Italy, but it is a mistake to think that everyone learns it. When I was studying Italian in New York there were two young men fresh from Italy trying to learn their own language. They were not from backwoods communities but from cities – Milan and Bari. They had had the elementary schooling required of everybody, and all their textbooks were in standard Italian. They could read Italian all right, but in every other respect they were the poorest students in the class. They often resorted to English in talking to each other.”
2
For example, in The Origin of the Dialectal Differences in Spoken American English, by Hans Kurath,
Modern Philology
, May, 1928, pp. 385–95. Excellent expositions of the nature of the process whereby dialects rise and fall are in What is a Dialect?, by E. S. Sheldon,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Part VI, 1893, pp. 286–97; Linguistic Change, by E. H. Sturtevant; Chicago, 1917, pp. 146–58; and English Words and Their Backgrounds, by George H. McKnight; New York, 1923, pp. 12–22.
1
Dissertations, p. 19.
2
See Noah Webster, Schoolmaster to America, by Harry R. Warfel; New York, 1936, p. 3. Writing in Notions of the Americans; London, 1828, Vol. II, p. 165, J. Fenimore Cooper reported that the dialectal peculiarities of New England, New York and Pennsylvania “were far greater twenty years ago than they are now.”
3
A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States, second edition; Boston, 1859, p. xviii.
4
“Standardization of education and the migratory habits of the population,” said the London
Morning Post
, Aug. 26, 1936, “have brought American citizens much nearer a common American than we are near a common English.”
5
A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English; Springfield (Mass.), 1944, p. xxxii.
6
American Pronunciation,
S.P.E. Tract No. XXX;
Oxford, 1928, p. 268.
1
Language
, July-Sept., 1944, p. 151.
2
See also A Standard American Language, by W. Cabell Greet,
New Republic
, May 25, 1938, pp. 68–70.
3
“Local variants,” says A. Lloyd James in Broadcast English No. I; London, 1935, p. 10, “become increasingly unlike one another as we descend the social scale.”
4
S.P.E. Tract No. XXX
, before cited, p. 292.
5
Southern Speech, in Culture in the South, edited by W. T. Couch; Chapel Hill (N.C.), 1934, p. 602. Greet returned to the subject in The South Today: The Direction of Southern Speech, an article released by the Southern Newspaper Syndicate, June 21, 1936.
1
Language
, July-Sept., 1944, p. 151.
2
A full bibliography down to 1874 is in A Bibliographical List of the Works That Have Been Published or are Known to Exist in Manuscript, Illustrative of the Various Dialects of English, edited by Skeat and published by the Society in 1875. An extension to the end of 1922 is in Kennedy, pp. 380–404. Of the latter valuable work Kemp Malone said in
Modern Language Notes
, Dec., 1928, p. 500: “It is a model, and an ornament to American scholarship. It belongs to that limited number of books which, immediately upon their publication, become indispensable.”
3
He counted 30 of them in England and Wales, 7 in Scotland and 3 in Ireland.
4
Six volumes; London, 1898–1905. It was reprinted in 1923. An English Dialect Grammar is in Vol. VI.
1
The story of its organization is told in The First Year of the American Dialect Society,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Part I, 1890, pp. 1–12.
2
p. 104.
3
Then of West Virginia University; later of Temple University. Wentworth was born at Cortland, N. Y., in 1904, and is a Ph.D. of Cornell. He was assistant editor of Webster 1934, and has been a frequent contributor to
American Speech
and other philological journals. See Supplement I, pp. 326n, 359, 367, 368, 369n, 372, 381 and 683n.
4
A list of his principal sources is in his dictionary; New York, 1944, pp. 737–47.
1
A History of Modern Colloquial English; London, 1920, pp. 15 and 16.
2
The NED traces it to 1513 in Scotch use, and shows that it was used by Pepys, Samuel Johnson and Benjamin Franklin.
1
Local Names of Migratory Game Birds, by W. L. McAtee (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Circular No. 13); Washington, 1937, p. 45. McAtee has published a bibliography of American bird nomenclature in Some Local Names of Birds,
Wilson Bulletin
, June, 1917, pp. 85–89. He is also the author of a series of valuable papers, Some Local Names of Plants, in
Torreya
, 1913–42.
2
Review of Wentworth in the Providence
Journal
, Aug. 6, 1944.
3
Southern Speech, by W. Cabell Greet, in Culture in the South, edited by W. T. Couch, Chapel Hill (N.C.), 1934, p. 595.
4
The pioneer in this investigation seems to have been Albert Matthews (1860–1946). He was powererfully reinforced in 1925 by George Philip Krapp (1872–1934) in The English Language in America, Vol. II. Since then a large collection of materials has been made by Miles L. Hanley. These written records, of course, leave much to be desired, for even the most ignorant scribe, when he seized pen in hand, became self-conscious and literary. Said Erick Berry (Mrs. Herbert Best) in Collaborating on a Best-Seller,
Author & Journalist
, Dec., 1945, p. 8: “The recreation of a past mode of speech is particularly difficult, since in his diaries and letters the early American was much influenced by his reading of the Bible and the classics; he wrote with one eye on the elegancies of the language and never, oh never, indulged in local slang or swear words.” But this is a difficulty that afflicts all compilers of dictionaries “on historical principles.”
1
Wilson published Instructions to Collectors of Dialect as
Publication of the American Dialect Society No. I
in April, 1944. This was preceded by Some Principles for American Dialect Study, by Raven I. McDavid, Jr.,
Studies in Linguistics
, Dec., 1942. See also Organization of Source Material for the Study of American English and American Dialects, by Nathan van Patten,
American Speech
, Aug., 1939, pp. 425–29, and Regional Speech and Localisms, by Wilson, in Needed Research in American English, published by the American Dialect Society, May, 1943, pp. 2–4.
2
Its defects are set forth in a sympathetic review by Wilson,
American Speech
, Dec., 1944, pp. 284–89. The publisher, the Thomas Y. Crowell Company of New York, bore the whole cost and risk of publication. Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary, according to its title page, was printed at his own expense, though he got some financial help from W. W. Skeat and others when he was gathering his materials. He had the assistance of hundreds of volunteer local informants and readers, but Wentworth was aided by an even smaller group than the one which cooperated in the DAE. See AL4, p. 106.
1
The opposing views are well stated in the program of the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society at Washington, Dec. 28, 1946, prepared by George P. Wilson, and in a review of Phyllis J. Nixon’s Glossary of Virginia Words, by Raven I. McDavid, Jr.,
Studies in Linguistics
, March, 1947, pp. 21–24.
2
Supplement I, p. 519.
1
This lack, of course, is inevitable. Says Joseph Wright in the preface to Vol. I of his English Dictionary, p. v: “It is not always easy to decide what is dialect and what is literary English; there is no sharp line of demarcation; the one overlaps the other.”
2
Sturtevant, a former president of the Linguistic Society of America, was born at Jacksonville, Ill., in 1875 and got his doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1901. He has specialized in late years in Hittite and is the author of standard works upon it. He has also written two excellent books for the general reader – Linguistic Change; Chicago, 1917, and An Introduction to Linguistic Science; New Haven, 1947. The early history of the Atlas is told in The Dialect Society and the Dialect Atlas,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. VI, Part II, 1931, pp. 65–78. See also AL4, pp. 58–59; Supplement I, pp. 111–13, and How We Got Our Dialects, by Falk Johnson,
American Mercury
, Jan., 1947, pp. 68–70.
3
Kurath was born in Vienna in 1891, but was brought to the United States as a boy and got his education in this country. He took his doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1920. He is also editor of the Middle English Dictionary.
4
Hanley is an Ohioan, educated at Harvard. He was secretary-treasurer of the American Dialect Society, 1928–1940, and has done a great deal of valuable work in the field of American English. See Supplement I, pp. 105 and 109.
5
Born in New York in 1907, Bloch took his Ph.D. at Brown in 1935, and has since been a member of the faculty there.
1
Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz, edited by Karl Jaberg and Jakob Jud; 16 volumes; Zofingen (Switzerland), 1928–40.
2
Bulletin of the Linguistic Society
, 1946, p. 15.
3
Supplement to Language
, Oct.-Dec., 1946, p. 15;
Indiana University Bulletin
, Aug., 1946, p. 2.
4
An Introduction to Linguistic Science, before mentioned, p. 37.
5
p. 107. He believed that it was produced by the natural diffidence of a people unaccustomed to commanding slaves and servants and “not possessing that pride and consciousness of superiority which attend birth and fortune.” This caused them “to give their opinions in an indecisive tone” and to drag out their words.
6
Ann Arbor (Mich.), 1927.
7
The first of them was apparently Seba Smith, whose Letters of Jack Downing was published in 1830, but the most successful was Thomas C. Haliburton, whose Sam Slick sketches began to appear in 1835- See Supplement I, pp. 128–30.
1
It is actually traced by the DAE to
c
. 1175.
2
The English Language in America; New York, 1925, Vol. I, pp. 232–33.
3
p. 235.
4
A Comparison of the Dialect of The Biglow Papers With the Dialect of Four Yankee Plays,
American Speech
, Feb., 1928, pp. 222–236.
5
They were Tyler, whose The Contrast was first played in 1787; Joseph S. Jones, whose The People’s Lawyer, or Solon Shingle appeared in 1839, and Denman Thompson, whose The Old Homestead was first presented in 1886 and continued to be the starring vehicle of the author until his death in 1911.
1
AL4, pp. 69–71.
2
Haliburton was a Nova Scotian, and it was the fashion at the time to denounce him for libelling the Yankee. But
Harper’s Magazine
said of him in April, 1852, p. 705, col. 2: “It is a little singular, but it is true, that scarcely any native writer has succeeded better in giving what is termed the true Yankee dialect than a foreigner, an Englishman, Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia.” This was six years after The Biglow Papers began to appear.
3
pp. 66 and 67.
4
It would be more natural today to say
backward
here, and to use
forward
where Bristed later uses
backward
.
5
All the more important discussions of New England speech down to 1922 are listed in Kennedy, pp. 413–16. Among those of interest that have appeared since are New England Dialect, by Windsor P. Daggett,
Billboard
, March 3, 1923; Yankee Twang – New England Dialect, by Gertrude McQuesten,
Emerson Quarterly
, March, 1925; The Real Dialect of Northern New England, by George A. England,
Writer’s Monthly
, March, 1926; New England Provincialisms, 1818, by P. G. Perrin,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. X, Part IX, 1926, pp. 383–84; Die Volkssprache im Nordosten der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, by Johann Alfred Heil,
Giessner Beiträge zur Erforschung der Sprache und Kultur Englands und Nordamerikas
, Vol. III, 1927, pp. 205–311 (based on Lowell and other writers); The Language of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, by Henry Alexander,
American Speech
, June, 1928, pp. 390–400; Some New England Neologisms, by Julia W. Wolfe,
American Speech
, Dec., 1929, pp. 134–36; New England Words for the Seesaw, by Hans Kurath,
American Speech
, April, 1933, pp. 14–18; New England Words for Earthworm, by Rachel S. Harris,
American Speech
, Dec., 1933, pp. 12–17; New England Terms for Poached Eggs, by Herbert Penzl,
American Speech
, April, 1934, pp. 90–95 (the last three are based on the Linguistic Atlas of New England); Two New England Lists of 1848, by Allen Walker Read,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. VI, Part X, July, 1935, pp. 452–54; Dialect Mongers in New England, by Clarence M. Webster,
Yankee
, Sept., 1936, pp. 7–10; That Famous Harvard English is O.K., by Sebastian Smith, Boston
Post
, Dec. 27, 1936; Postvocalic
r
in New England Speech, by Bernard Bloch,
Acts of the Fourth International Congress of Linguists
, Copenhagen, 1936, pp. 195–99; Relics With Broad
a
in New England Speech, by Herbert Penzl,
American Speech
, Feb., 1938, pp. 45–49; The Yankee on the Stage, by R. M. Dorson,
New England Quarterly
, Sept., 1940, pp. 467–93; Early New England Words, by William Matthews,
American Speech
, Oct., 1940, pp. 225–31; The Stage Yankee, by Louis M. Eich,
Quarterly Journal of Speech
, Feb., 1941, pp. 16–25; New Englandisms of the Twenties, by George R. Potter,
American Notes & Queries
, April, 1943, p. 7; A New England Dialogue by B. J. Whiting,
American Speech
, Oct., 1944, pp. 227–28. Mr. Thomas S. Shaw, of Washington, calls my attention to a brief but interesting paper that Kennedy overlooked, to wit, Collection of Vulgarisms, or Yankeeisms,
American Magazine
, Sept., 1834, p. 416. Articles on the regional speech of the various New England States will be listed when we come to those States.
