The King’s English and the Prince’s American

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 150, 24 March 1928, Page 15

The King’s English and the Prince’s American

A Whimsical Dissertation on Slang

(By

“Y.Y."

” in the “ New Statesman ”)

DURING the week I have heard two directly opposite opinions expressed on the Prince of Wales’s introduction of American slang into his most recent speeehces—the speech he delivered at the dinner of the Birmingham Jewellers’ and Silversmiths’ Association on Saturday and the speech he delivered at the O.P, Club dinner on Monday. One opinion was highly favourable. The Prince’s slang, it was held, was evidence of a charming disposition to speak the democratic language of a democratic age, and to speak to genial Englishmen, not in the trappings of princely oratory, but as another genial Englishman like themselves. The second opinion was just as unfavourable as the first was favourable. It was to the effect that, at a time when the film and other influences are threatening to defile the English language with the dregs of the vocabulary of Hollywood, the Prince’s example will help to popularise the speech of the film-caption in England, and that it is the duty of the King’s son to defend the King’s English against the undesirable aliens of speech. There is, of course, much to be said in favour of slang on general grounds. A healthy language is not a language created by professors and kept in cotton-wool by professors all the days of its life. It is born on the lips of human beings, and orators and authors alike must follow the great stream of living speech. They may attempt to keep its waters from defilement, as laws are made against the defilement of rivers, and they may add their own tiny tributaries to it. but, apart from this, they have very little control over it. The language accumulates slang in its progress, and later generations discover that it has even been enriched by doing so. The Chancellors of the Universities to-day probably use phrases that would have seemed the most vulgar slang to their predecessors. Even the greatest purist does not object'to-day to the inclusion of the word “bogus” in a literary English vocabulary, though a hundred years ago “bogus” was an American slang word meaning an apparatus for coining false money. “Carpet-bagger” and “bunkum” are other American slang words that have naturalised themselves in English speech, and “mob” is an example of English slang that was once as vulgar as “incog.” or “photo.” Slang, as well as Latin, has made its contributions to the rich mixed vocabulary of the English language, and it is only a pedant who would refuse to make use of a good word because of the doubtful circumstances of its birth. Some of the best English of our time has been written by men who know how to introduce a slang phrase in such a way as to surprise us into pleasure. I Apart from this, spoken speech makes many more concessions to the language of the hour than "written speech. And speech in conversation makes many more concessions than speech in oratory. In conversation we all use a certain amount of slang. Men of letters, who would swoon at the sight of a split infinitive, such wowsers they are in regard to pure English, will in conversation address you as “Old thing," or the latest equivalent of “Old thing,” will tell you about so-and-so’s getting “squiffy” at a dance, will offer you a “gasper,” will assure you that they are “frightfully” sorry about something or other, will ask you you have heard that some firm as “gone west,” will speak of a friend who has “got cold feet” as a result of some rash enterprise. Conversation cannot be carried on in words like “irrefragable.” and “mansuetudc.” Conversation is, or ought to be, speech in its carpet slippers. It is speech freed from the conventions and not yet arrayed in the “boiled shirt” of formality. And for some reason or other the slang of the hour appears to put many people at their ease, and thousands of men who would be dumb if they had to speak literary English become perfect fountains of eloquence if .they are in company in which they feel free to express themselves in such words as “topping,” “top-hole,” “peeved,” "chewing the rag,” “ripping,” “perfectly marvellous,” “good egg,” “fan,” “under the weather,” “O.K.”—to name a few of the additions made to spoken English within living memory. If carried too far, this use of language is a corruption of conversation, and reduces it to the level of a scarcely articulate yammer. But, used within bounds, it gives men, and especially boys, the feeling that they are the members of a club, and who can measure the debt they owe to the great freemasonry of slang? In public speech, slang may still be used to some extent but not to the same extent. Here speech is more formal, and a speaker who got up after dinner and said nothing but “Frightfully pleased . . . perfectly marvellous .•. . top-hole . . . blow-out .... cheerio!” would be laughed at as a "boob.” Obviously, however, a speaker may take liberties with the language such as would never be permitted to a writer, and Mr. Lloyd George can use with effect phrases that would be out of place in a leader in the "Times.” The appropriate-

ness of slang in public speeches varies, of course, from occasion to occasion. A phrase that would be permissible at a dinner of the Variety Artists’ Federation would not be permissible during a discussion in the House of Lords on the Prayer Book, If a Bishop addressed the Lord Chancellor as “Old top,” or referred to a fellow-Bishop as a “rotter,” we should think he had gone mad, though his meaning would give no offence if expressed in more formal English. And, even on lighter occasions, the danger of excessive slang is that it is nearly always not a means of speaking humourously, but a substitute for humour. Slang is, after all, composed of colloquial cliches, and we get tired—or, if you prefer it, fed up—with an unmixed diet of cliches. This is shown by the speed with which slang phrases go out of fashion. Yes, we do not say “Yes, we have no bananas” to-day.

Such, then, being the uses and the perils of slang, the question remains how far one nation should import the language of another. It is a question on which I confess I am a convinced Protectionist. I should like to see England building a high tariff wall against the slang of America, and America building a high tariff wall against the slang of England. All the really vital words would climb this wall, and yet each country would be left speaking its own language in its own tradition. Americans would continue to “fall for” this, to be “up against” that, to "get away with it,” to “put it across,” and all the rest of it—excellent phrases, racy of the soil, but phrases that look the sorriest weeds in the garden of English speech. American slang is possibly the American language in the making, and it is so sturdy and fascinating an infant that it is impossible not to admire it and to look forward with the highest hopes to its future. American slang, to my mind, however, requires to be spoken with an Amercan accent, and until Englishmen learn to speak with American accent, they should not try to talk American slang. Many Englishmen used to look forward to the time when English would be the common language of the inhabited world, and, if that time ever comes, we shall no doubt all be talking with an American accent. In the interests of the English language, however, many people hope that it will never become a world language, and for this purpose they would like to see the English and American languages as independent of one another as French and Italian. If simplified spelling were adopted by one or other of the countries, this linguistic independence would be easily achievable. President Roosevelt suggested the introduction of simplified spelling into America some years ago, and, if he had succeeded in his object, the gulf between the two languages would, in time, have grown so wide that the works of English authors would have to be translated into American, and the works of American into English. Many internationalists would regrjt this, but there is little evidence in history that the use of a common language makes for mutual understanding.

In the absence of some such drastic measure, it is almost impossible to think of any way of saving the English language from the caption-writers for the films. It would be possible, of course, to pass a law laying it down that, before any American film is exhibited, the captions must be translated into English by the Society for Pure English., But it is likely that such a law would be extremely unpopular, and the general public would look on the members of the S.P.E. as a bunch of rubbernecks. Anyone attempting to reform the English language to-day, indeed, is up against a tough proposition. It is a cinch that he would be regarded by most people as a stunt-merchant, and he would be left unsupported except by a few suckers. I doubt whether, if Mr. Baldwin himself put the reform on his Parliamentary programme, he would be able to deliver the goods. For one thing, the mutts who go to the cinema wouldn’t stand for it, and it is improbable that the proposal would cut any ice, even among the big bugs of his own Cabinet. You may think it is up to the Prime Minister to do something in the matter, and he is certainly a whale of a Prime Minister at uplift and that sort oFthing, but he i? not enough of a hustler to put it across his own crowd, who would only chew the rag if he did anything unpopular. Mr. Churchill, lam sure, would regard the whole thing as punk unless he were allowed to put a penny tax on every Americanism used by a British subject in England. That, perhaps, would be the simplest way of saving the language, but it is not likely to eventuate. There are too few pure-language fans to make thia possible. How things will pan out in the end Ido not know, unless Englishmen as’ a whole keep their eyes peeled for new American importations into the English language. And the trouble is that not one man in a thousand gives a hoot for the English language—not more than a bellhop or a bootlegger.