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.