American Language Supplement 2 Read online

  BOOKS BY H • L • MENCKEN

  THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

  THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE: Supplement I

  THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE: Supplement II

  A NEW DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS

  TREATISE ON THE GODS

  CHRISTMAS STORY

  A MENCKEN CHRESTOMATHY (with selections from the Prejudices series, A Book of Burlesques, In Defense of Women, Notes on Democracy, Making a President, A Book of Calumny, Treatise on Right and Wrong, with pieces from the American Mercury, Smart Set, and the Baltimore Evening Sun, and some previously unpublished notes)

  MINORITY REPORT: H. L. MENCKEN’S NOTEBOOKS

  THE BATHTUB HOAX and Other Blasts and Bravos from the Chicago Tribune

  LETTERS OF H. L. MENCKEN, selected and annotated by Guy J. Forgue

  H. L. MENCKEN ON MUSIC, edited by Louis Cheslock

  THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE: The Fourth Edition and the Two Supplements, abridged, with annotations and new material, by Raven I. McDavid, Jr., with the assistance of David W. Maurer

  H. L. MENCKEN: THE AMERICAN SCENE. A READER, selected and edited, with an introduction and commentary, by Huntington Cairns

  These are BORZOI BOOKS, published by ALFRED A. KNOPF in New York

  COPYRIGHT 1948 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper..

  Published April 5, 1948

  Reprinted Nine Times

  Eleventh Printing, March 1990

  eISBN: 978-0-307-81344-2

  v3.1

  PREFACE

  This Supplement follows the plan of Supplement I. In the latter I tried to give some account of the new material relating to the subjects discussed in the first six chapters of “The American Language,” fourth edition, 1936. In the present volume I deal with such material as relates to the five chapters following them. I had hoped also to give a little space to the subject of Chapter XII, to wit, the future of American English, and to present some new matter about the non-English languages dealt with in the Appendix. Yet more, I had hoped to take up in a second Appendix certain themes not discussed at all in the fourth edition – for example, the language of gesture, that of children, the names of political parties, cattle brands, animal calls, and so on. But my notes turn out to be so enormous that I have been forced to close the present volume with Chapter XI, lest it grow to an impossible bulk. It is highly improbable that I’ll ever attempt a Supplement III, but meanwhile my notes are preserved and indeed still piling up, and I may be tempted from time to time to present some of them in articles for the periodicals devoted to or showing some interest in American speech. At my age a man encounters frequent reminders, some of them disconcerting, that his body is no more than a highly unstable congeries of the compounds of carbon. In order to avoid fretting about this unpleasant fact I have arranged that all my books, pamphlets, journals, newspaper clippings and letters on speech shall go, at my death, to a place where they will be open to other students. Meanwhile, I’ll be glad as always to hear from such students, and ask them to address me at 1524 Hollins street, Baltimore-23.

  I am not trained in linguistic science, and can thus claim no profundity for my book. It represents the gatherings, not of an expert in linguistics, but simply of a journalist interested in language, and if there appears in it any virtue at all it is the homely virtue of diligence. Someone had to bring together the widely scattered field material and try to get some order and coherence into it, and I fell into the job. My professional friends, I have no doubt, have often had their teeth set on edge by some of my observations and conclusions, but they have nevertheless shown a generous and accommodating spirit, and I owe a great deal to their friendly if somewhat pained interest. Many of them are given specific credit for their aid in my footnotes, and others have been thanked in previous prefaces. But I must recall once again some men and women who have helped me most, including laymen who have greatly augmented my materials. Mention the American language, and you have mentioned Dr. Louise Pound. Read this book, and you will find countless proofs of it. Others upon whom I have leaned heavily are Dr. Joseph M. Carrière, P. E. Cleator, Monsignor J. B. Dudek, Fred Hamann, Alexander Kadison, Charles J. Lovell, Dr. Raven I. McDavid, Jr., Lieut. Col. F. G. Potts and Dr. Harold Wentworth. But these are only a few: there have been many more. Most of all I am indebted to my secretary, Mrs. Rosalind C. Lohrfinck, whose heroic struggles with a maddening manuscript make her deserve a large part of the credit for the diligence that I have just claimed for myself.

  As in my two previous volumes I have been very liberal with references. Experience has taught me that readers of such books as this one like to explore the byways of the subject, and thus do not object to frequent guideposts. Such explorations are greatly facilitated, as my own inquiries have been facilitated, by the incomparably efficient photostat service of the New York Public Library. Find your reference and send in your order, and you will have your photostat within a few days. The library very seldom reports that what is wanted is not on its shelves: its collections, especially in the more picturesque departments of Americana, appear to be unsurpassed on this or any other earth. Moreover, its staff is highly competent, and I have got frequent valuable help from one member in particular, Mr. G. E. Fielstra. I need hardly add my thanks to writers and publishers for permission to quote from their books and magazine articles, for my debt to them is visible on every page. Such a work as this, in fact, is essentially a collaboration, and in the present case it is a collaboration covering a large area. In the field of the speech of homicidal endeavor I have received contributions from generals and admirals, privates and seamen; in that of pedagogy from the presidents of universities and country schoolma’ams, and in that of language in general from high ecclesiastical dignitaries and lifers in prison.

  The plan of this volume is exactly like that of Supplement I. It follows the order of “The American Language,” fourth edition, and each section is hooked to that work by identical headings. But it is not necessary for the reader to have the fourth edition before him to make his way, nor even to have read it, for the new matter here presented is almost always self-contained, and I have included in brackets, wherever they seem useful, explanatory catch-lines or quotations. The figures at the beginnings of sections all refer to the fourth edition.

  Baltimore, 1948

  H. L. M.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Preface

  VII. THE PRONUNCIATION OF AMERICAN

  1. Its General Characters

  2. The Vowels

  3. The Consonants

  4. Dialects

  VIII. AMERICAN SPELLING

  1. The Influence of Noah Webster

  2. The Advance of American Spelling

  3. The Simplified Spelling Movement

  4. The Treatment of Loan-Words

  5. Punctuation, Capitalization, and Abbreviation

  IX. THE COMMON SPEECH

  1. Outlines of its Grammar

  2. The Verb

  3. The Pronoun

  4. The Noun

  5. The Adjective

  6. The Adverb

  7. The Double Negative

  8. Other Syntactical Peculiarities

  X. PROPER NAMES IN AMERICA

  1. Surnames

  2. Given Names

  3. Place-Names

  4. Other Proper Names

  XI. AMERICAN SLANG

  1. The Nature of Slang

  2. Cant an
d Argot

  About the Author

  ABBREVIATIONS

  To save space some of the books referred to frequently in the text are cited by the following catch-words and abbreviations:

  AL1 The American Language, by H. L. Mencken; first edition; New York, 1919.

  AL2 The same; second edition; New York, 1921.

  AL3 The same; third edition; New York, 1923.

  AL4 The same; fourth edition; New York, 1936.

  Bardsley A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames With Special American Instances, by Charles Wareing Bardsley; London, 1901.

  Barrère Argot and Slang, by A. Barrère; London, 1887.

  Bartlett A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States, by John Russell Bartlett; New York, 1848; second edition; Boston, 1859; third edition; Boston, 1860; fourth edition; Boston, 1877.

  Bentley A Dictionary of Spanish Terms in English, by Harold W. Bentley; New York, 1932.

  Berrey and Van den Bark The American Thesaurus of Slang, by Lester V. Berrey and Melvin Van den Bark; New York, 1942; fifth printing, 1947.

  Black The Surnames of Scotland, by George F. Black; New York, 1946.

  Bristed The English Language in America; in Cambridge Essays, Contributed by Members of the University; London, 1855.

  Burke The Literature of Slang, by W. J. Burke; New York, 1939.

  Clapin A New Dictionary of Americanisms, by Sylva Clapin; New York, n.d.

  Concise Oxford The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, adapted by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler; third edition, revised by H. W. Fowler and H. G. Le Mesurier; Oxford, 1934.

  DAE A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles, edited by W. A. Craigie and James R. Hulbert; four vols.; Chicago, 1938–44.

  Dunglison Americanisms, in the Virginia Literary Museum and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c, signed Wy and supposed to be by Robley Dunglison; Charlottesville, Va., 1829–30.

  Ewen A History of Surnames of the British Isles, by C. L’Estrange Ewen; New York, 1931.

  Farmer Americanisms Old and New, by John S. Farmer; London, 1889.

  Farmer and Henley Slang and Its Analogues, by John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley; seven vols.; London, 1890–1904.

  Grose A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, by Francis Grose; London, 1785; new edition edited by Eric Partridge; London, 1931.

  Heintze Die deutschen Familiennamen, by Albert Heintze; Halle a. S., 1903.

  Holt American Place Names, by Alfred H. Holt; New York, 1938.

  Horwill A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, by H. W. Horwill; Oxford, 1935.

  Humphreys Glossary appended to The Yankey in England, by David Humphreys; n.p., 1815.

  Jones An English Pronouncing Dictionary, by Daniel Jones; fourth edition, revised and enlarged; London, 1937.

  Kennedy A Bibliography of Writings on the English Language From the Beginning of Printing to the End of 1922, by Arthur G. Kennedy; Cambridge & New Haven, 1927.

  Kenyon and Knott A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, by John Samuel Kenyon and Thomas Albert Knott; Springfield, Mass., 1944.

  Krapp The English Language in America, by George Philip Krapp; two vols., New York, 1925.

  LA Linguistic Atlas of the United States; Linguistic Atlas of New England, by Hans Kurath, Miles L. Hanley, Bernard Bloch, Guy S. Lowman, Jr., and Marcus L. Hansen; Providence, R. I., 1939.

  Maitland The American Slang Dictionary, by James Maitland; Chicago, 1891.

  Mathews The Beginnings of American English, by M. M. Mathews; Chicago, 1931.

  NED A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, edited by James A. H. Murray, Henry Bradley, W. A. Craigie, and C. T. Onions; ten vols.; Oxford, 1888–1928.1

  NED Supplement A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Introduction, Supplement and Bibliography; edited by James A. H. Murray, Henry Bradley, W. A. Craigie and C. T. Onions; Oxford, 1933.

  Partridge A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, by Eric Partridge; second edition; New York, 1938.

  Pickering A Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases Which Have Been Supposed to be Peculiar to the United States of America, by John Pickering; Boston, 1816.

  Practical Standard Funk & Wagnalls New Practical Standard Dictionary of the English Language, edited by Charles Earl Funk; New York, 1946.

  Schele de Vere Americanisms: The English of the New World, by M. Schele de Vere; New York, 1871; second edition, 1872.

  Sherwood Gazetteer of the State of Georgia, by Adiel Sherwood; third edition; 1837.

  Shorter Oxford The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, prepared by William Little, H. W. Fowler and J. Coulson, and revised and edited by C. T. Onions; two vols.; Oxford, 1933.

  Stewart Names on the Land, by George R. Stewart; New York, 1945.

  Supplement I Supplement I: The American Language, by H. L. Mencken; New York, 1945.

  Thornton An American Glossary, by Richard H. Thornton; two vols.; Philadelphia, 1912. Vol. III published serially in Dialect Notes, 1931–39.

  Tucker American English, by Gilbert M. Tucker; New York, 1921.

  Ware Passing English of the Victorian Era, by J. Redding Ware; London, n.d.

  Warfel Noah Webster, Schoolmaster to America, by Harry R. Warfel; New York, 1936.

  Warrack A Scots Dialect Dictionary, by Alexander Warrack; London, 1911.

  Webster 1806 A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster; New Haven, 1806.

  Webster 1828 An American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster; New York, 1828.

  Webster 1852 An American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster; revised and enlarged by Chauncey A. Goodrich; Springfield, Mass., 1852.

  Webster 1934 Webster’s New International Dictionary of The English Language, edited by William Allan Neilson, Thomas A. Knott and Paul W. Carhart; Springfield, Mass., 1934.

  Weekley An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, by Ernest Weekley; New York, 1921.

  Wentworth American Dialect Dictionary, by Harold Wentworth; New York, 1944.

  Weseen A Dictionary of American Slang, by Maurice H. Weseen; New York, 1934.

  Woulfe Irish Names and Surnames, by Patrick Woulfe; Dublin, 1923.

  Wright The English Dialect Grammar, by Joseph Wright; Oxford, 1905.

  Wyld A History of Modern Colloquial English, by Henry Cecil Wyld; London, 1920.

  In some cases the authors whose principal works are listed above are also the authors of other works. All references to the latter are in full.

  1 This work is often referred to as the OED or OD (Oxford Dictionary), but it seems to me to be preferable to use an abbreviation of its actual title.

  VII

  THE PRONUNCIATION OF AMERICAN

  1. ITS GENERAL CHARACTERS

  The fact that there are differences between the way the average literate American speaks and the way the average literate Englishman speaks has long been noted.1 Many of these differences, as everyone is aware, have to do with vocabulary, and some are so striking that they inevitably attract attention. Thus the American, when he first hears an Englishman mention corn, is apt to assume that he means the Indian maize that goes under that name in this country, and is surprised to learn that he uses it as a generic term for all sorts of edible grain, including wheat, rye and barley. Contrariwise, the Englishman is puzzled and maybe a little upset when he discovers that bowler, which to him means what we call a Derby hat, means in the United States only a person engaged in bowling, and not any object at all. But these differences, though they still engage the scrutiny of persons who write about the two languages, are not as important as they used to be, for in recent years the English have picked up so many terms from the United States that they understand American more or less even when they do not undertake to speak it; and in any case the subject need not be pursued here, for it has been dealt with at length in Chapter VI of Supplement I and at various other
places in the same book.

  The differences in pronunciation, however, show a higher degree of resistance to change, despite the ever-growing influence of American talkies, and some of them promise to survive for a long while. They extend to many common words, e.g., can’t, deficit, and secretary. The Englishman, using the first of these, gives it a broad a that is rare in the United States save in those areas – for example, the Boston region and the swankier suburbs of New York – where emulation of English usage is still potent in speechways; and most Americans, when they seek to imitate him or his imitators in speaking, are careful to throw in plenty of cawnts, and some even add a few cawns, though he actually pronounces can exactly as we do, to rhyme with pan. In words of the deficit class – other examples are compensate, confiscate and demonstrate – the difference is one of stress rather than of vowel-quality, for the Englishman puts the accent on the second syllable, whereas the American commonly stresses the first. In secretary what the Englishman does is to get rid of a syllable altogether, so that the word becomes, to American ears, secretry; the American himself almost always gives it its lawful four, and lays a slight but unmistakable second stress on the third, which he rhymes with care.

  This last difference is typical of many others, for American speech, on the whole, follows the spelling more faithfully than English speech, and is thus clearer and more precise. A musician might describe the divergence by saying that the latter tends toward glissando, whereas the former is predominantly staccato and marcato. Why this should be so is not known with any assurance, though a great many persons have put forth confident theories, some of which have to do with alleged differences in the vocal apparatus of Americans and Englishmen, produced by differences in climate. But there is really no evidence that climate has any such effects. Even the adenoidal nasalization that Englishmen so often complain of in American speech, putting the blame for it on the comparative dryness of the American air, is really not peculiar to this country, for it is encountered also in the speech of the London cockneys, and is characteristic of the speech of all Frenchmen. Moreover, the mean annual rainfall in New York, Chicago and St. Louis is actually higher than it is in London, Liverpool or Edinburgh, and in the American South, where the American whine is seldom heard, it is higher still – in New Orleans, more than twice as high.1