AMERICAN SLANG

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 11, 14 July 1928, Page 20

AMERICAN SLANG

NOT ACCEPTED.IN ENGLAND. In -England literary influences—ospccially that of the Bible—aro so much stronger than in America that the English people do not admit \ slang words and phrases into their generally accepted speech anything as readily as their cousins 3000 miles removod (writes E. B. Osborn in "John o' London's Weekly"). That is the chief reason why an "American language" already exists on the lips of Americans which tho average Englishman can only follow with difficulty, tho difference of intonation adding to his bewilderment. In a century or so, it may well be, an Englishman will requiro a dictionary to understand ono of tho stories of everyday life in the "Saturday Evening Post." Even now, when, in the course of a column, you happen on ''chirked up," "blah-blah," "fade-out flavoured," "peeved," "poor prsne," serious gink," "a jolly," "plutes," "Razzing," and "jay burg," you might want a glossary to understand one of them. There are more kinds of slang and "cant" (jargon of vagrant classes) and more dialects in England than in polyglot America, but. fortunately for our "noble English," our selection of what is suitable for tho common stock is conducted in conservative lines. A' | long probation has to be served, as it were, and the plebeian word, when finally admitted, is almost always regarded as. unsuitable for poetry.