The second class-English words which have survived in America but have become obsolete in England or have acquired a new sense in England-may be illustrated by such words as fall (Engl. autumn), chores, a word known in Old and Middle English and surviving in charwoman, and the changed meaning of sick in England, which as a complement has had its signification restricted to the sense of 'affected with nausea,' the general sense being denoted by ill. In America the old sense, still preserved in the Authorized Version, is retained. This survival of older forms in American English is very striking in the pronunciation, many typical seventeenth and eighteenth century English vowels being preserved in American speech, e.g. a (for English ā), as in father, a (for English o) as in not, or the omission of j in the combination jū (‘noo' for 'new', etc.)

Finally there are the new words formed from English speech-material coined on American soil, or the new uses to which English words are put in America. This category is the most interesting for the light it throws on American speech habits-especially on the vivid, pungent humour which is characteristic of a great many coinages of this type. It also throws light on certain American habits and institutions. A few points may be noted in this connexion. First, the tendency in America to coin learned words of a Latin type, especially with such endings as -ate, -fy, -ize, an example of which we had lately in the launching of normalcy. Some of these words, such as advocate, immigrate, demoralize, antagonize, influential, have found acceptance in England; others, such as concertize, obligate, eventuate, or the hybrid happify, are rejected; while the fate of a third class, such as deputize, donate, gubernatorial, seems uncertain. Then one might note in American speech the greater freedom with which a word may be used as a different part of speech. Thus the cinema has succeeded in spreading the verb to feature in England, though its use is more restricted than in America, but such forms as to suicide or eats (for food) have so far found no footing in England. Many Americanisms of this type, however, are well known in England: to corner, to boom, to wireless, etc. There are regions of the American

vocabulary in which these differences are very striking, for instance railway terminology, where American and English have very few terms in common, most of the American terms being new formations of the type now under discussion. And in the sphere of conviviality American speech has certainly shown equally great inventiveness, the number of names for drinks in America being legion, a curious irony in view of present conditions. American political institutions reveal the same richness of special terminology: boost (apparently an obsolete form of boast which has survived in America), graft, platform (in the sense of political programme),. ticket being a few of the many terms of this nature. It is this department of the American vocabulary that has found most ready acceptance in England and even in foreign languages; such expressions as highbrow, to be up against, to make good, crook, etc., are well known in England, while bluff, for instance, has passed into many foreign languages (French le bluff, German bluff, Swedish bluff, bluffa, etc.).

To illustrate the total effect of these differences Mencken gives a long list of examples and also an amusing section in which he traces such differences in various departments of English life. In this collection there are unfortunately a good many errors. Mencken has often placed words together which are not really synonymous, has accused English of using words which are rare or unknown, or of ignorance of words which are perfectly familiar. Thus he puts Eng. biscuit and Amer. cracker as synonymous, or Amer. (street) corner and Eng. crossing, etc.; he states that the English equivalent of Amer. drummer is bagman, a term that surely passed out of use with Dickens, or that Amer. coal-skuttle is Eng. coal-hod, Amer. proof-reader, Eng. corrector-of-the-press, etc. He suggests that we have no money-orders in England, that an Englishman carries his clothes not in a trunk or suit-case, but in a box, that we talk about footways as well as pavements, that we do not know the box-office of a theatre, that an Englishman calls a pocket-book a purse, says seven and forty, etc., instead of forty-seven, does not know what a joy-ride means, and so on. These are a few out of a larger number of rather serious

misstatements about English usage. But these inaccuracies do not affect Mencken's main thesis: that these new formations give a very distinct colour to American speech.

In Mencken's chapter on The Common Speech, he describes some characteristics of uneducated speech in America, which he says, rightly enough, is not to be condemned outright because it shows deviations from the rules laid down by grammarians. Here, too, he is able to point to phenomena which, though now the mark of the uneducated, are well established in older forms of English. A case in point is the repeated negative, which is common in Old and Middle English and is frequent in Shakespeare, and which, according to Mencken, is perhaps the chief characteristic of vulgar American from a syntactic point of view. But this, as he admits, is also quite common in the uneducated speech of England, and cannot therefore be claimed as a specific Americanism. And, as most of the phenomena contained in this chapter could be paralleled from corresponding strata in English speech, they have little value as tests of American English.

Mencken's reaction against the doctrines of grammarians obviously goes too far. Much of his protest against the teaching of formal grammar is no doubt warranted, but the suggestion that one is tempted to read between the lines of his protest, namely that we should not attempt to stem the tide of natural linguistic development as it is manifested in vulgar speech, is unacceptable. There must be some standard of correctness, even if one admits that the standard often insisted on in the schools by inexpert teachers is too pedantic. What that standard is and who is to establish it, are difficult questions, which we cannot enter into here, but a rough, approximate standard-or perhaps, more correctly, a number of standards-exists in England, and one feels that something of the sort must exist and be taught, however unscientifically, in America. Otherwise, why trouble to teach reading and pronunciation at all? Why not leave the child merely to acquire the speech of its home environment and work out its own linguistic salvation? Such a policy of non-interference, interesting though it would be from a purely scientific point of view, would have very undesirable practical and aesthetic results.

Mencken's discussions of euphemism, titles, proverbs and 'canned sagacity' in American speech are full of valuable and interesting information, imparted in a humorous way, as are also his remarks on two elements a little outside the ordinary language, place names and personal names, which show special American characteristics. His material shows that American speech is often more euphemistic and less downright than English speech; Americans are more fond of titles and of proverbial or semi-proverbial phrases and catchwords. American personal names reflect very faithfully the mixed nature of her population, while her place names afford interesting and valuable information on the mode of her early settlement and the habits of mind and the customs of her settlers. Mencken's book thus contains a great mass of information, but it obviously needs fairly thorough re-examination both of its evidence and its conclusions.

From a scientific point of view the works by Krapp and Grandgent are of considerably greater merit, though far more restricted in scope and not nearly so interesting to the layman. Grandgent deals with a few specific points in American pronunciation, while Krapp gives a survey of the pronunciation of standard English in America, i.e. a discussion of the outstanding points of difference and agreement between American and English pronunciation. This serves to supplement Mencken's rather meagre and unsystematic account of American speech sounds.

Finally, a word as to the future. Mencken looks forward hopefully to the time when the speech of America, spoken by three times as many people as the language of Great Britain and developing on its own lines, will be predominant and will ‘determine the final form of the language." As evidence of this tendency he cites Canadian speech, which he holds is rapidly becoming Americanized, and the adoption of American terms in England.

There is a certain amount of truth in this, but we feel that he exaggerates the importance of the American influence. Consciously or unconsciously, the English language seems to exercise a certain selection in adopting American words or

loc cit., p. 317.

expressions; some it receives gladly, others find no footing at all in England, others remain very definitely in the category of slang. The number of fully accepted Americanisms is as yet insufficient to colour our speech to any great extent. And, at the same time, though Mencken tends to minimize this, we are able to coin or revive our own neologisms in England; witness the number of new words introduced during the war, some of which certainly had but a brief existence, while others are still with us. Further, the process will depend on the relations between the spoken and the written language. Most of the differences Mencken has pointed out belong to the domain of colloquial language. The literary language of England and America shows but slight differences. A novel by Mr. Hergesheimer or even by Mr. Sinclair Lewis would, apart from the dialogue and references to specific American institutions and processes, contain few examples of distinctly American phraseology. Even Mr. Mencken's English is on the whole indistinguishable from that of a British writer. But if, as seems to be the case, the colloquial language in America is exerting a very strong influence on the literary language, especially through the medium of the press and the magazine, it may in the course of time bring about divergence between the literary language of the two countries. This, however, is a slow process; with the spread of education and rational methods in teaching English the conservative effect of literary tradition ought to make itself felt in America as it undoubtedly does in England, and the degree of variation ought not to be very great. In the spoken language the deviations may be wider, but even here we need not fear either divergence of such a nature as to cause any practical difficulties in communication or the swamping of our English speech by a mass of Americanisms. English, as we have seen, exercises a certain eclecticism in its adoption of these Transatlantic forms; some find ready acceptance, others appear crude or outré and make no appeal to English speakers. This process of unconscious selection will no doubt continue and will prevent overAmericanization of English speech. And finally it must be

1919.

"See, for instance, the appendix to Cassell's New English Dictionary,