Diary in America, Series One

by Frederick Marryat

Volume Three—Chapter One.

Remarks—Language.

The Americans boldly assert that they speak better English than we do, and I was rather surprised not to find a statistical table to that effect in Mr Carey’s publication. What I believe the Americans would imply by the above assertion is that you may travel through all the United States and find less difficulty in understanding or being understood, than in some of the counties of England, such as Cornwall, Devonshire, Lancashire and Suffolk. So far they are correct; but it is remarkable how very debased the language has become in a short period in America. There are few provincial dialects in England much less intelligible than the following. A Yankee girl, who wished to hire herself out, was asked if the had any followers or sweethearts? After a little hesitation, she replied, “Well, now, can’t exactly say; I bees a sorter courted and a sorter not; reckon more a sorter yes than a sorter no.” In many points the Americans have to a certain degree obtained that equality which they profess; and, as respects their language, it certainly is the case. If their lower classes are more intelligible than ours, it is equally true that the higher classes do not speak the language so purely or so classically as it is spoken among the well educated English. The peculiar dialect of the English counties is kept up because we are a settled country; the people who are born in a county live in it, and die in it, transmitting their sites of labour or of amusement to their descendants, generation after generation, without change: consequently, the provincialisms of the language become equally hereditary. Now, in America, they have a dictionary containing many thousands of words, which, with us, are either obsolete or are provincialisms, or are words necessarily invented by the Americans. When the people of England emigrated to the states, they came from every county in England, and each county brought its provincialisms with it. These were admitted into the general stock; and were since all collected and bound up by one Mr Webster. With the exception of a few words coined for local uses (such as snags and sawyers, on the Mississippi,) I do not recollect a word which I have not traced to be either a provincialism of some English county, or else to be obsolete English. There are a few from the Dutch, such as stoup, for the porch of a door, etcetera. I was once talking with an American about Webster’s dictionary, and he observed, “Well now, sir, I understand it’s the only one used in the Court of St. James, by the king, queen, and princesses, and that by royal order.”

The upper class of the Americans do not, however, speak or pronounce English according to our standard; they appear to have no exact rule to guide them, probably from the want of any intimate knowledge of Greek or Latin. You seldom hear a derivation from the Greek pronounced correctly, the accent being generally laid upon the wrong syllable. In fact, every one appears to be independent, and pronounces just as he pleases.

But it is not for me to decide the very momentous question, as to which nation speaks the best English. The Americans generally improve upon the inventions of others; probably they may have improved upon our language.

I recollect some one observing how very superior the German language was to the English, from their possessing so many compound substantives and adjectives; whereupon his friend replied, that it was just as easy for us to possess them in England if we pleased, and gave us as an example an observation made by his old dame at Eaton, who declared that young Paulet was, without any exception, the most good-for-nothing-est, the most provoking-people-est, and the most poke-about-every-corner-est boy she had ever had charge of in her life.

Assuming this principle of improvement to be correct, it must be acknowledged that the Americans have added considerably to our dictionary; but, as I have before observed, this being a point of too much delicacy for me to decide upon, I shall just submit to the reader the occasional variations, or improvements, as they may be, which met my ears during my residence in America, as also the idiomatic peculiarities, and having so done, I must leave him to decide for himself.

I recollect once talking with one of the first men in America, who was narrating to me the advantages which might have accrued to him if he had followed up a certain speculation, when he said, “Sir, if I had done so, I should not only have doubled and trebled, but I should have fourbled and fivebled my money.”

One of the members of congress once said, “What the honourable gentleman has just asserted I consider as catamount to a denial;”—(catamount is the term given to a panther or lynx.)