Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-08-06
FORCED USE OF SLANG
ExAGaERATIoN OF AUTHORS IN
PRESENTING Low TYPES.
The Jargon Of Poor Literature Not
That Heard In Real Life In
sIums Of Big Cities.
From the Independent.


be SO broke ter pieces'd never get togedder
agin- / feels like ready money, see, an
all dere is OF it, but looks like block O.
subway, cause l amt blinked me peppers
rr two days an nights. an IL youse was
to shake me body I'd rattle like bag O.
pebbles
Permit me to inform you that the above
is not Pigment of imagination nor lin
quail specimen of the dialect OF some for
eign race, but is an exact excerpt from q
realistic story of low life. taken from
magazine, which enjoys an enormous and.
supposedly. intelligent circulation. 1t
would be a waste of time to translate this
and other freakish contortions of our
mother language. Yet, the mother Ian
guage. really spoken by the slum peo-
pie is capable of Improvement.
The sharpest difference exists between
slang" and the 5argon put into the mouths
of low life characters by contempcraneous
writers. The former is admittedly forced
and manufactured, while the other is sup
posed to be the everyday vernacular OF
the poor
From time immemorial the Bowery has
been cited the birthplace of slang. In
general slang passes the expression of
coarse witticism, and II you will note
the complexion of the Bowery population
you will scarcely deem 1t the parent of
IT.
crowd the lodging houses are. in the ma
joTity, not native New Workers. but, the
disgraced sons and black sheep of respect
able families, they come there from all
parts of the country and the globe, with
no heavier baggage than their home dia-
lect. OF course. lingual mosaic results
therefrom, but not slang. The life of these
men is precarious. Waking and dreaming
theirs is the constant worry of how to OBJ
tain the absolute necessities of existence.
This leaves very little time for anything
else. and the manufacturing Of slang re-
quires time and a mind possessed of
happy go-lucky philosophy.
To be sure, ten and fifteen years ago,
when the Bowery was still the happy
hunting ground of the festive gold-brick
investor and the celebrating sailor, there
was a certain element, which. besides at
tending to the visitor, had enough time
nd inclination to coin many phrases which
were the very essence of slang philosophy.
Since then the Bowery has changed. While
then men were done. now things are done
on the Bowery and the dives have been
replaced by commercial and manufacturing
concerns. And that sort OF environment is
not favorable to slang or its manufacturers.
When the hard times came to the Bow
cry the gentlemen of sorts and leisure
sought pastures new and found them In
the Tenderlon. There, In close proximity
to the "swells." their slang and type was
more appreciated and eventually presented
on the stage. The city oozed slang, slang
books. slang plays and slang poems were
the literature of the day. In the course of
time recognized writers-aye, geniuses-
took a hand at slang-making, and then II
became a thing weird and unholy. Before
the evolution of slang had far proceeded
1t had become as ineligible to the average
Bowery loafer as it would have been to
professor Of old Oxon.
Slang Classic.
One of the hits of last season was a
vaudeville sketch billed as a "Bowery
IdyI'' and praised by the critics slang
classic" Three hundred words were ste
taken and read to a man
who has not left the Bowery in over if
teen years. He listened to it with the
expression Of cat hearing distant thunder,
and his comment was: What kind O.
stuff Is that? What are you doing, kid
ding me?
Still, lovers OF slang who come to the
Bowery need not go away disappointed. A
number of places make a speciality of keep
Ing up the old bluff. Several types" are
always on hand TO offer you the real
thing" slang, heard by them the night
before at the London or Miners Bowery
Theater.
The imagination of low life writers is
proverbial and makes them see things in
visible to ordinary eyes. Everything is
grist that comes to the graft mills of the
Bowery, and when apparently sane men
will insist on discovering types in the
most transparent frauds. the types will
a certain saloon on the edge of China
town has long been the Mecca ot low-life
writer's. The approach OF the genius is
duly heralded. and before the American
Dickens in embryo has reached the prem
Uses the types are already posed for him.
Ordinary, harmless buns and trampS be-
come ferocious, hulking braves, with hats
cooked daring over their ewes. hands bored
into pockets, shoulders hunched up to their
ears and leering mouths, eiecting pro-
family and expectoratlons Their speech
becomes rivalry in distortion. and the
idiom. inspired by the moment, abounds in
"hully gee" STATS peppers" and other
terms of equally classic degree.
As a particularly interesting sign of the
times II might be stated here that, while
most of the low-life writer's of the male
gender have seen the error of their ways
and have partly reformed. the field is now
largely covered by those brilliant young
women who, students. sociologsts and ro-
mancers, have. besides their realism, the
gentle gift of maudlin pathos, which makes
out OF every lazy loafer veritable Bow
cry Villon.
The defective language OF the poor is the
result of the careless Indifference which
affects their entire existences. 1t is sound
logic to assume that men who become care
less in their appearance and sanitary con-
dtion will also become careless in their
speech. This carelessness of speech does
not deteriorate into witty slang, but shows
itself in faulty grammar and enunciation.
Shall and will are used most arbi-
trarily. Racial and national combines of
dialects make them" frequently become
the substitute for these and those" and
from that 1t is only step to the supplant-
ing of the TIL by the dull "a
The lavish use of negatives in one SEN
tence is not only typical of the East Side
and is also found west, north and south,
but here the harsh intonation-a reflection
OF their lifes tenor-malSes II more graf
ing and noticeable
There is abundant proof that environment
and association will improve or deteriorate
ones speech. The environment OF the East
Side is responsible for its lingo. And Just
because the environment is degenerating
We have no standard by which to Judge
the jargon presented to us by low-life writ
ers. l have lived most of my life in this en-
vironment and have had opportunities In
plenty to observe. many deteriorations of
speech. AS for Instance:
The son of emiiiently respectable parents
landed via many devious and somewhat
crooked paths in our ward. Something in
the past had made him outcast among
his own kind. so he came to us. who are
supposedly sufficiently wicked to receive all
scoundrels with open arms. There was
method In his madness He knew that an
ex-coachman on his family was now the
owner of the most prosperous saloon In our
ward, and this friend In need installed him