The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-07-09
THE ENGLISH OF THE FUTURE.
Incidence and Ignorance Making Hid.
eous Barbarisms Popular
L.,

From the London Daily Neps
The countrymen of George Washington
may very plausibly consider that they are
making tina English tongue of the future.
However we may explain it, America gives
us far more phrases than we give America.
They reach the colonies (Which in language
are mor9 American than English, and they
come over here In papers, novels, auscdotes
Ii American is to be the language of the
world, Americans may, and do, ask
them elves if they are making that
language wisely and well. AS mere speakers
Of the old branch of the English speech, we
may be prejudiced, but it has occurred TO
an American writer that the language is
not in the best health. If phonetic decay
has not begun, neologisms, or new-fangled
terms have come in like q flood, The
American critic in the Critic divide. tbs
fresh phrases into the hyper elegant" and
the "sub-slangy," not very elegant ex-
preston, but intclligibl,. The word
elegant is now, to Ameri-
cans, what VASTLY fine" was
to English, an what "jollyn is now. Ele-
CANT haunts the vocabulary; it appears at
the elegant cradle Of the elegant baby, and
beside the elegant caske5 Of the elegant
corpse. A lauHdress, or washer oman, is
now "lady launderer," who "operates'
her mangls. LADY laundsrsr" is demo
cratic. and not bad, but to Operate" h
lnangle Is to consider too curiou,ly. at is
more blessed to donate than to give" in
the new speech. The vocaole "nW comes
in evsrywhsre. Statements have a fact
ual basis Id dentist is 'dentalist," a
party man and 'fsctionalist," a talker
"conversationalist." On the other hand
and unexpectedly, our old friend "smo-
tional" becomes "smotive." Nouns become
verbs with pdntomimio rapidity; man
meals in one play and rooms in an Their
No one states, or alleges, but claims :"
nobody asserts, he allows It was a
western poet who made Goethe rhyme to
teeth, ""Cyclades' TO maids "Kn has
come to his own again in ''sks tic" but it
does not follow, as the critic thinks, that he
who writes "sksptic" should write school y
Even "kritiks" may make blunders
Perhaps there is no use in demonstrating
with novelties in language. If they take"
II they catch on" what can be sSid or
donea They fit into the great scheme Of
evolution, and the fittest survive. And WHY
are all sorts of hide0us barbarisms the
ttteSt to survives! There must be some law
of nature in their favor. Probably these
new aud dreadful expressions are adspte |
to the laws of least resistance and of human
conceit. A piece of slang may have origi-
naiiy possessed some humor, as when an
is reported to "allow" instead of to assert -
There is kind OF litotes, Of i ton
tional understatement. This catches the
fancy. and. becoming familiar, becomes
easy. The careless writer scribbles on the
lines or least resistance. He has a number
OF slang catchwordx, ,nd he lets all his ideas
flow into the mplds already provided. He
deals in stereotyped phrases which demand
no thought at all. A modern French
humoriSt, NJ. GrosclGude, has invented a
style Of writing ii which there is nothing
but stereotyped phrases. 1t is he who de-
scribed NJ. Freycinet cutting a cake with
the gravity which ne imports even into
serious matters a great many people are
Grosclsudes without humor. and solemuly
state everything in kind OF conventional
lingo which is born Of laziness, and follows
the line Of least resistance in the mind.