Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1890-11-14
EFFECTS OF SLANG.
Only 5000 to 5000 Words Employed In
Ordinary American Speech.

A writer who has made the use of
words a thoughtful study estimates
that the ordinary American employs
from 5000 to 1000 English words in
ordinary speech. When it is consid-
cred, says the Philadelphia Bulletin,
how numerous are the things in the
house, store, in the street, in church.
and all about us, all of which have
names which we make use of con-
tinually, and what perpetual motion
we see and spea of in the form of
verbs, and the propositions and con-
functions we have to use to make the
things properly related, and the quail
ties we have to describe with adjectves
and adverbs, and other parts of speech
necessary to complete sentences. we
behold how limited is the general ac-
quaintanceship with the language of
which the root-words alone, rs COM
piled by Webster, number ia, 900 ire
spective of proper nouns or names Of
persons.
And it is one of the noticeable fea-
lures of n fancy, habit, fad" or fash
ion of Our civilization. existing us well
in the fairly educated as among the
illiterate and ignorant. that the popu-
lar spoken vocabulary is growing con-
tinually less on account of an increas-
ing tendency to generalize qualities
and characteristics in pat or pet words
which are among the stylish" men
and women considered en- reggie, and
among the no less ambitious but not
so well educated classes deemed evil
1anco AE Ga a.
daily march OF events and the customs
of speech, the continual use and reitera-
ton of slangy words that are "all the
go" and constitute the badge of proper
rapid tendencies.
With the smart young misses every
thing that is beautiful, sweet delicious,
melodious, resplendept, soft, and win
ming, whatever pleases to excess the
eyes, ears, taste, touch. or smell, ia
lovely" Whatever is ugly, distorted,
jarrlng. unsymmetrcal, uncouth, dis
cordant, and generally unpleasant to
the eye, taste, touch, or smell, is Choir
rid" The man about town, the swell
of the parlor, the clerk in the store,
the alert man of business, the critical
attendant on the art gallery, and
the habitual theater-goer characterize
equally the slow, the deliberate, the
careful, the plainly dressed, the pious,
the plain-spoken, the steady-going, the
painstaking individual as fresh, :"
while the quick-witted. the alert, the
tricky. the volatile, the gaseous, the
oratoricaL the romancer, and the jo-
cose are alike spoken of-in sort of
deprecatory sarcasm-as funny" So
also a man who has audacity, rs well us
one who is self-assertive and strenuous
for his rights is equally said to be
possessed of gall" And thus isolated
words used frequently to express the
widest range of qualities, habits, or
characteristics have come into vogue
as nee ssary essentials or credentials
TO admission into the vanguard of pro-
gressive Americanism. to the curtail-
ment of the talking vocabulary and the
narrowing of ideas.
The difference in the meaning of
words is thus lost or become obsolete,
and with the disappearance of the
word to express exactly the quality or
characteristic intended there follows
an obtuseness of discerment. con-
fusion of thought, and an Obvious pau
city and shrinking of ideas. indie
pendently therefore of the bad taste Of
using slang words and expressions,
they are making our people poor in
tellectually and less able colloquially
to hold their own among the other En-
glish-speaking people of the globe.