Duality of Voice

by Emil Sutro

THE AMERICAN NATION

It will require but a single example, familiar to all, to still more forcibly show that it is language through whose agency national traits of character and physical development are produced. How do you suppose that the wonder has been wrought, and is still daily being worked, of the great mass of humanity reaching these shores from foreign lands being merged into one homogeneous nation? The remark is often made that "it is the climate." If it were the climate, or other conditions specifically belonging to this country, how is it that foreigners coming here at maturity always remain foreigners, while their offspring born and bred here become Americans? Even children born elsewhere, but coming here at an early age, soon become "Americanized," while their parents remain foreigners always. These children must have taken a potent draught, not partaken of by their parents, to not only change their mode of vocal but also of physical expression; nay, the vital expression of their entire being. That draught is the English language. Most foreigners respectively married to an American wife or husband, and rearing a family of American children, remain foreigners to the end of their lives.

It often happens that parents of foreign birth cannot comprehend the character and actions of their own children, who are so different, being superficial and frivolous, where they are deep and sound; cool and calculating where they are fire and flame. Yet these children possess sterling qualities of another kind which their parents do not possess.

I call to mind two brothers, sons of German parents, born in this country. With the eldest-born the German influence was potent. He was made to speak German at home and at school, and is to-day, though married to an American, more German in his manner and appearance than American, while his mode of speaking the English language also has something "German" in it. His brother, on the other hand, more particularly reared under native influences, is a thorough American. There was nothing in this case but the influence of language which could have caused this difference. Similar examples might be cited endlessly.

If language is capable of exercising so powerful an influence it must be more than a superficial acquirement. It must be woven into and interwoven with our innermost nature. What is there in the English language to make a German's broad and massive forehead, high cheek-bones, full lips, short chin, and round face, in his offspring sink into narrow forms and long, oval lines? What makes the lower jaw, which in him was short and round, in these children sink down and extend outward, while the upper jaw recedes back? What is it that makes the jovial and happy expression of the German in his children change into features of an impassive nature, from which they are only roused when in action?—features of which it has been said that it is sometimes difficult to know whether they, sphinx-like, cover a happy or unhappy disposition; a disposition sometimes so self-possessed and reserved that its owner might almost reply as Alva did, when asked why he never smiled: "I would not so demean myself before myself as to smile." Yet when such a face (especially when it is a girl's) does smile, its passive features are lighted up in a manner so enchanting that its beauty amply compensates for its previous apathy.

I do not wish to say, however, that Anglo-Saxons do not feel either joy or sorrow as keenly as Germans do (though I have my doubts even on this score); but they do not carry their feelings with them on the surface. They sink them into that reserve, at once proud and self-possessed, which does not wish others to take cognizance of their private affairs. The nature of the Anglo-Saxon is one of reserve, that of the German one of abandon and laisser-aller. This is not due to heredity in the first instance, but to the influence of language, by which character and habits are formed.

Dr. Holmes relates that, after a protracted search for his son, who had been wounded in the battle of Gettysburg, when at last finding the "Captain" in a transport train, he went up to him, simply saying, "How are you, Bob?" and he replying, "How are you, Dad?"—stating at the same time, "Such is the force of our national habit that, especially in the presence of strangers, we suppress the impulse of our most ardent feelings," or words to that effect. A similar proceeding under such circumstances would be considered "unnatural" among Germans.

Regarding the change of features, as between foreign-born (German) parents and their English-speaking offspring, by which the latter's assume a shape which makes the œsophagus predominate over the trachea, it will be as impossible for these children to speak idiomatically correct German as it is for their parents, with whom the trachea predominates over the œsophagus, to speak idiomatically correct English. When my features assume the proper shape for English speech, I cannot produce a single correct German sound, and when they assume the proper shape for German speech, it is as impossible for me to produce a correct English sound.

I expect that this statement will be hotly disputed. The measure of our ordinary mode of listening, however, must not be applied to these matters. In some rare instances the difference is so slight that it takes a very acute ear to notice it.