The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1888-12-12
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The Great American Language.
Cornhill Masaziue.


OF course the American language
varies somewhat from place 10 place.
according to the tastes and climate of
the speaker. Like everything else in
the modern world, it has learned 70
| accommodate itself exactly TO the en-
vironment. In the Northwest il dis
/ courses OF billiards and cordwood; in
| the Southwest it discusses rather the
refrigerator. the sombrero, and'that pc
culiar form of roaring hurricane play
fully described as the gentle Kansas
zephyr" You cannot expect the same
minor peculiarities OF idiom in down
East storekeeper and in the high-spir-
tied cattle kings who come into town
once month TO shoot free on the high
way in the saloon-wheneyer he sees
tit. He is at home where the ten
derfoot" from the East" Is
lonesome, in city consisting in fair
proportions of ten saloons. three gun
shops, lumber yard, dance house, faro
bank, shooting gallery, ten-pin alley,
concert hall and a Chinese laundry
The free-born Westerner thinks the
blamed Yankee puts on a yard too
much style-the boys don't approve of
style-and suavely proposes to take
the starch out of him. The Yankee
considers the Westerner, in his hickory
shirt, wanting IN tone, insinuates gem
tly that he's low mob, and inelines to
put him through a university curricu-
lum, 10 graduate in the class of 1890.
But IN whatever section he may
happen to have been inaugurated,
whether raised civilized or raised
before the woods was burnt" the
true American talks American still.
He may be for hard money or for
greenbacks; he may be a Broadway
dude and wear store clothes, or he may
be an unSophiiticated frontiersman
who lives on bar meat and corn cake
washed down with a generous slosh of
whisky; but in one dialect or another,
wherever he may be, he now talks
pure American. Even the hated and
despised AnglOmaniac himself, who
drops his Rs and drawls his As, and
initiates the chappies and otherwise
effects the clipped English OF Pail
Mall and Piccadilly. can always be de-
tected for a born Yankee in certain
minor idioms and constructions.
know an American who has lived for
20 years in England who is more Eng
lish than the inhabitants of the ward
of Cornhill, and who bushes up to his
eyes il you remind him vi the fact
that, a fate would have il. he was
born in Boston. But 70 this day he
consistently says al the time" for
always and instead of perhaps"
invariably uses maybe"
The Western dialect came, indeed.
somewhat as 4 relief to Eastern speak
ers. especially those of the scattered
farms; and one must never forget that
even to-day America is essentially an
agricultural country. On the stereo-
typed Eastern fun-the fun of a sordid
farming life, where the boys split the
cordwood and peel the potatoes; where
the girls do the ironing and then ia
themselves up for their lovers. where
the family borrowS freely from neigh
bors; where the young women are pro
pitia'ed by gifts OF pecan nuts and
candy from their admirars-the fresh
Wild tuu OF the boisterous West burst
a new and delightful DEVELOPMENT.
That was the secret OF Bret HaTte and
Mark Twain-relief from the dreary
Yankee mOnotony.