Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-09-16
THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE.
It is Meet That Eighty Millions of
PEOPLE Should Coin Their Own Words.

A letter to the editor of the New York Sun.
As a member of an English university,
should like to say that there seems to me
no reason whatever why the American
language should not have its own pecu-
Iiarities, as distinct from the kings En-
glish' on the other side, of the water.
have come to this conclusion after residing
in this country for very nearly a quarter
of century.
lin Disraeli's letters to his sister he sneers
at Daniel Webster because he spoke of
having attended her majesty's ''La-vee."
but why should not the great American
scholar and orator be at perfect liberty to
pronounce the word ''levee as he thought
fit lust as Mr. Disraeh pronounced Paris
and other such words in his own English
fashion? The same with the word lieu
tenant" - Englishmen pronounce the word
.Ieftenant" which has the authority of
all the great dictionaries, but the Amer
lean retains the French pronunciation.
The American is criticised for his pro-
vineial pronunciation of the letter "a, but
he has surely a right to give 1t the uni
form pronunciation of the "a" in gas
and salmon" Some time ago my atten-
ton was drawn to the American pronun-
citation of the "a in man. and sar-
castle reference was made to a highly edu-
Gated New England clergyman because it
was said he affected the English pronun-
citation of the broad "a in the word
man" Now 1t is matter of pathological
history tnat the flSTiIlS anu the
pronounced the word man" with the
broad IA" Besides this. there evil
dences in New England of the old English
pronunciation being retained just as II was
brought over by the Puritan settlers. And
we must remember that these early set
tiers were for the most part educated
Englishmen. and that their clergy, like
Eliot, Thatcher, Harvard and Mather, were
graduates of either oxford or Cambridge.
AS regards colloquialiSms. the american
is much freer from them than the English
man. The American never misplaces the
letter Oh" a very notable circumstance
when you bear in mind that the early set
tiers of Louisiana and Missouri never pro-
nounced it. In America, with the eNcep-
ton of some very remote Villages you
never meet with such perversions of En-
glsh you find among the cockneys of
Old Kent road and the villagers of York
shire and Cornwall The American speaks
English on the whole more correctly than
the average Britisher.
Americans have coined certain express
sionS which have become part of the
American language. 1t is no longer a
calculate or to locate" man instead of
placing him. Considering the tremendous
influx of the foreign population, II is really
marvellous how correctly the English Ian
guage is spoken by the average American.
1t is a known fact that Queen Victoria
frequently injected a German idiom into
her English conversation: and even King
Edward finds little difficulty with the
'th'' In the word the" but he is an edu-
Gated Englishman and speaks the kings
English" If the Englishmen on the other
side of the water can send u.s. unlimited,
such words as boycott" and ''fscalitis.'
surely the American can retaliate with
something new and terse in words which
do good service in the wild and woolly
west.
A great country with a growing popula-
ton of eighty millions of people must coin
its own words. and it cannot afford to wait
until these words are Endorsed by the au-
ifat sanction of the British house
of commons where new words are coined
almost every day.