And then Professor Lounsbury cites in illustration the rule which was brought up against Mr. Kipling: “There is a rule of Latin syntax that two or more substantives joined by a copulative require the verb to be in the plural. This has been foisted into the grammar of English, of which it is no more true than it is of modern German.... The grammar of English, as exhibited in the utterances of its best writers and speakers, has from the very earliest period allowed the widest discretion as to the use either of the singular or the plural in such cases. The importation and imposition of rules foreign to its idiom, like the one just mentioned, does more to hinder the free development of the tongue, and to dwarf its freedom of expression, than the widest prevalence of slovenliness of speech, or of affectation of style; for these latter are always temporary in their character, and are sure to be left behind by the advance in popular cultivation, or forgotten through the change in popular taste.”
This is really a declaration of independence for writers of English. It is the frank assertion that a language is made by those who use it—made by that very use. Language is not an invention of the grammarians and of the word-critics, whose business, indeed, is not to make language or to prescribe rules, but more modestly to record usage and to discover the principles which may underlie the incessant development of our common speech. And here in discussing the syntax Professor Lounsbury is at one with Mr. George Meredith discussing the vocabulary of our language, when the British novelist notes his own liking for “our blunt and racy vernacular, which a society nourished upon Norman English and English Latin banishes from print, largely to its impoverishment, some think.”
Those who have tried to impose a Latin syntax on the English language are as arbitrary as those who have insisted on an English pronunciation of the Latin language. Their attitude is as illogical as it is dogmatic; and nowhere is dogmatism less welcome than in the attempt to come to a just conclusion in regard to English usage; and nowhere is the personal equation more carefully to be allowed for. A term is not necessarily acceptable because we ourselves are accustomed to it, nor is it necessarily to be rejected because it reaches us as a novelty. The Americanism which a British journalist glibly denounces may be but the ephemeral catchword of a single street-gang, or it may have come over in the ‘Mayflower’ and be able to trace its ancestry back to a forefather that crossed with William the Conqueror. The Briticism which strikes some of us as uncouth and vulgar may be but a chance bit of cockney slang, or it may be warranted by the very genius of our language.
Most of the little manuals which pretend to regulate our use of our own language and to declare what is and what is not good English are grotesque in their ignorance; and the best of them are of small value, because they are prepared on the assumption that the English language is dead, like the Latin, and that, like Latin again, its usage is fixed finally. Of course this assumption is as far as possible from the fact. The English language is alive now—very much alive. And because it is alive it is in a constant state of growth. It is developing daily according to its needs. It is casting aside words and usages that are no longer satisfactory; it is adding new terms as new things are brought forward; and it is making new usages, as convenience suggests, short-cuts across lots, and to the neglect of the five-barred gates rigidly set up by our ancestors. It is throwing away as worn out words which were once very fashionable; and it is giving up grammatical forms which seem to be no longer useful. It is continually trying to keep itself in the highest state of efficiency for work it has to do. It is ever urging ahead in the direction of increased utility; and if any of the so-called “rules” happens to stand in the path of its progress—so much the worse for the rule! As Stephenson said, “It will be bad for the coo!”
The English language is the tool of the peoples who speak English and who have made it to fit their hands. They have fashioned it to suit their own needs, and it is quite as characteristic as anything else these same peoples have made—quite as characteristic as the common law and as parliamentary government. A language cannot but be a most important witness when we wish to inquire into the special peculiarities of a race. The French, for instance, are dominated by the social instinct, and they are prone to rely on logic a little too much, and their language is therefore a marvel of transparency and precision. In like manner we might deduce from an analysis of the German language an opinion as to the slowness of the individual Teuton, as to his occasional cloudiness, as to his willingness to take trouble, and as to his ultimate thoroughness.
The peoples who speak English are very practical and very direct; they are impatient of needless detail; and they are intolerant of mere theory. These are some of the reasons why English is less embarrassed with niceties of inflection than other languages, why it has cut its syntax to the bone, why it has got rid of most of its declensions and conjugations—why, in short, it has almost justified the critic who called it a grammarless tongue. In every language there is a constant tendency toward uniformity and an unceasing effort to get rid of abnormal exceptions to the general rule; but in no language are these endeavors more effective than in English. In the past they have succeeded in simplifying the rules of our speech; and they are at work now in the present on the same task of making English a more efficient instrument for those who use it.
This effort of the language to do its duty as best it can is partly conscious and partly unconscious; and where the word-critic can be of service is in watching for the result of the unconscious endeavor, so that it can be made plain, and so that it can be aided thereafter by conscious endeavor. The tendency toward uniformity is irresistible; and one of its results just now to be observed is an impending disappearance of the subjunctive mood. Those who may have supposed that the subjunctive was as firmly established in English as the indicative can discover easily enough by paying a little attention to their own daily speech and to the speech of their educated neighbors that “if I be not too late,” for instance, is a form now rarely heard even in cultivated society.
And the same tendency is to be observed also in the written language. Letters in the London Author in June and July, 1897, showed that in a few less than a million words chosen from the works of recent authors of good repute there were only 284 instances of the subjunctive mood, and that of these all but fifteen were in the verb “to be.” This reveals to us that the value of this variation of form is no longer evident, not merely to careless speakers, but even to careful writers; and it makes it probable that it is only a question of time how soon the subjunctive shall be no longer differentiated from the indicative. Where our grandfathers would have taken pains to say “if I were to go away,” and “if I be not misinformed,” our grandchildren will unhesitatingly write, “if I was to go away,” and “if I am not misinformed.” And so posterity will not need to clog its memory with any rule for the employment of the subjunctive; and the English language will have cleansed itself of a barnacle.
It is this same irresistible desire for the simplest form and for the shortest which is responsible for the increasing tendency to say “he don’t” and “she don’t,” on the analogy of “we don’t,” “you don’t,” and “they don’t,” instead of the more obviously grammatical “he does n’t” and “she does n’t.” A brave attempt has been made to maintain that “he don’t” is older than “he does n’t,” and that it has at least the sanction of antiquity. However this may be, “he don’t” is certain to sustain itself in the future because it calls for less effort and because any willingness to satisfy the purist will seem less and less worth while as time goes on. It is well that the purist should fight for his own hand; but it is well also to know that he is fighting a losing battle.
The purist used to insist that we should not say “the house is being built,” but rather “the house is building.” So far as one can judge from a survey of recent writing the purist has abandoned this combat; and nobody nowadays hesitates to ask, “What is being done?” The purist still objects to what he calls the Retained Object in such a sentence as “he was given a new suit of clothes.” Here again the struggle is vain, for this usage is very old; it is well established in English; and whatever may be urged against it theoretically, it has the final advantage of convenience. The purist also tells us that we should say “come to see me” and “try to do it,” and not “come and see me” and “try and do it.” Here once more the purist is setting up a personal standard without any warrant. He may use whichever of these forms he likes best, and we on our part have the same permission, with a strong preference for the older and more idiomatic of them.