Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-07
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

! Who that has ever read them will
forget Joel Chandler Harris Uncle
Remus" stories? Or Cohen's delight
full stories of Negro life in the Satur-
day Evening Post? Who that hears
Amos n Andy" but knows the charm
! inherent in naturalneSs?
Use requested" is the popular express
sion of the Gay. Although it is terrible
from a linguistic and grammatical
standpoint, it seems perfectly pat. It
| is heard on every tongue now, not he
| cause it is correct, but because il is so
overwhelmingly natural.
We are brought back at once to the
origin of language. The truth seems to
be that many of our most used and an
preciated words are guttersnipes, or
worse. All of us today use words
which 100 years ago, or 200, or maybe
! 500 years ago, were not permissible
among cultured people.
| Sweet women sometimes use words
and expressions which have passed into
! the language, their original meanings
| happily forgotten, and no one is anv
the worse for it. Yet if a curious per-
son starts to investigate them. he
pauses to marvel at the cleansing ef-
! fects of time and customs.
| One school of philology holds that the
very sinew and backbone of the Eng
| lish language comes from the coarse.
expressive words which finally crept
into house and castle from the stable
and the street.
These words and expressions. redolent
| Of the soil, mother of man, arose natu-
rally from the minds and hearts of I'M
refined human beings when they at
tempted to express what was bubbling
! in heart and mind.
They knew nothing of grammar. and
! foJ 81
say what they wanted to say. Is not
/ that life? And if somehow a miracle
| is needed, and the miracle involves a
word that does not exist, is not he a
miracle worker who reaches into thin
air and brings it down for our personal
! inspection?
Yet we of today have been brought
| up so very carefully in the matter of
words. sentence structure and so on
! that our first instructive reaction is
/ against the new, the unusual. and
especially against what we knowingly
/ call the ungrammatical.
! The wrong tense coming unguardedly
| from companion, cuts us like a knife,
so that often we leap to the defense
! Of sacred Grammar, as If she were
! utterably unable to take care of herself.
| and as If somehow upon this slight
conversation between us, almost without
merit, there hung the destiny of nations.
| This instructive resentment, we are
| convinced. is one of the greatest foes
of thought. Unless we fight it we come
| to think first and foremost of the letter
of the law and not of the law itself.
| We ought rather to delight in the odd
! the queer, the ungrammatical, and
! look closely to see if there is not some
aspect of the thing which in measure
| is working or will ultimately work
toward the bettermsnt of human ideals
and ideas and their appropriate express
| sion in talk or words.
After all. there is something entirely
| fetching about Il clomb the hill' or
I'VE clomb the hill together" and SINH
lar usages, which by the strictly lettered
herd are held to be pedantic, archaic,
poetic or simply "nutty."
| For all our dissatisfaction with our
| careful rules of grammar. the IMAM in
the street" goes right ahead talking as
he wants to talk, expressing himself
as he thinks best. because by so doing
he gets closest to his own thought.
comes nearer to his own heart and
bosom, makes others understand him
better What he says on the street
today will be heard in the office tomor-
row and in the home next week.