A gentleman once told me that, travelling on a steamboat on one of the New England rivers, he had been inadvertently listening to a conversation carried on behind him, between what seemed to be two New England farmers. On rising from his seat, he saw that one of the men was a Chinaman, dressed like the other and conversing precisely as he did.
Seeing an acquaintance, he pointed out the Chinaman and asked if he knew who he was.
"That's Jimmy O'Connor; he's from So-and-so."
"I mean the Chinaman."
"Yes, the Chinaman; that's him. You know he was picked up at sea, when still a baby, by a New Bedford whaler, and was brought up in the captain's family, who adopted him. He's as good a farmer and as true an American as you can find anywhere."
These studies are meant to be purely objective, and have no concern with politics or policies, regarding undesirable immigration, or issues of a similar nature. But language is nationality, and nationality language, always, in the first instance; and the purer a language is spoken, the truer, purer, and better such nationality will be expressed and represented by those who thus speak it. What an incentive to aim at the purest and best expression of language, for any people! But it will be said that language is subject to change. If it is, so will the people who speak it to some extent change with it. Such change, however, is in its dress, in words mainly; rarely and at long intervals, and under very peculiar circumstances only, in its expression. As a matter of fact, I doubt whether a change of the idiomatic expression ever takes place.
The difference existing between the English spoken in the United States and the mother country might be cited as an example. The idiomatic expression is precisely the same. But the necessary self-reliance of the first settlers, the privation, the barter and exchange, the vast extent of the territory of this country, the greater independence enjoyed by its people, etc., might be named as reasons for the greater dash and freedom, together with a possible want of culture, as compared with the language spoken by educated Englishmen, prevailing in its utterance.
The same influences prevail regarding the general appearance, motions, and characteristic traits of these respective nations. Though closely allied and connected in a specific, and very nearly allied to each other in a general sense, there is that which distinguishes the English of the old world from those of the new, and which can be easily recognized.
Being centrifugal, the English idiom, octopus-like, embraces anything and everything that comes within the radius of its omnivorous capacity, without, however, losing its original character. It is like a fisherman who has hung out his net in the ocean, taking in all that comes along; or like the sea itself, greedy without end. It has no scruples about roots and construction, but construes everything according to its wants and adapts it to its uses as it comes along from any quarter.