The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1889-05-24
THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE.
Much of 1t Is English That Has Become
Obsolete In England.

Obsolete In England.
Americanese is not a mere modern
Improvement or corruption-which-
ever we like to call it-of the language
which is spoken in these islands. Quite
the contrary. DR.. Freeman, in one of
his essays, has pointed out that, while
in some respects Americans are a great
deal ''newer" than ourselves, in some
others they are considerably older
Much that has died out of our politics.
our societies. our habits and customs.
still survives in the States. So il is
with the language. AS every investi-
gator knows, much of it is not new En-
glish at all, but genuine old English.
Old provincial forms, old local words.
old dialectical peculiarities, which
have become obsolete or mere vul-
garisms with us, have kept their
freshness in the New England States
and thence have spread over the CONT
nent-to spread in time over the world.
A good deal of what we regard as Yam
kee vulgarism is good, honest Anglo
Saxon that was current in conversa-
ton and books for centuries before the
Mayaower sighted Plymouth rock. The
perpetual 81 guess of the New En-
glander is case in point. "Full twenty
year he was of age, 1 guess" says
Chaucer, concerning the '.yonge
squire" of the Canterbury pilgrimage.
Hosea Biglow would hardly have used
the phrase differently. Similarly such
words as ''peart" and 'brash'' and
''slick" and even 'squirm," which
strike us as specially racy of the States,
are used to this day in the common
speech of the common people in north
ern and eastern England. In the works
OF that eminent philologist Sam Slick
one may find mention of person be-
ing ''smoked''-that is, made a butt of
just as in Smollett and Fielding and
others OF our last century novelists. An
American will use ''sick" or .smadn
just as their forefathers would have
done in places where we should en-
ploy clip and ''angry."
We owe our cousins certain amount
OF gratitude for reclothing with con-
versational responsibility many of the
highly-convenient words which had
somehow dropped out and been re-
placed by much less direct and much
less expressive substitutes. Whether
we need be so much obliged to them
for the odds and ends which they have
picked up everywhere and put into
current circulation is more questiona-
BILE. For the American is the most lar
cenous of linguists. He has ''been at
feast of languages and stolen the
scraps" The slang of the Chicago or
San Francisco lOafer has levied con-
tributions on half the Aryan and two
or three of the non Aryan tongues. All
the elements that go to make ND the
cosmopolitan population of the union
have contributed something to the
medley. There is little French,
good deal of DUTCH" fair quantity
of Spanish. a sprinkling of Scandinav-
ian, Italian, a hint at Chinese, and
something more than a perceptibe
dash of the tongue of the red man. 1t
is altogether a strange amalgam, this
American language-not unlike the
equally remarkable mixture out of
which in due course the American peo-
pie is to be evolved. But at present
both the people and the language are
in the process of making, and it is
pretty certain that they will exhibit
more remarkable developments still be-
fore the manufacture is completed.
London Telegraph.