THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13533, 2 March 1908, Page 3

THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE.

In a tolerant- but not over-appreciative

spirit, Mr Charles Whibley discusses the "American language" in the January "Blackwood."' lie pokes fun at Americans for their claim to a more antique purity for their speech, and now declares that a. vast edifice of mistaken pride has been established upon the insecure basis of three words —"fall," "gotten," and "bully." Possibly and American might add the national use of the word "guess" in the

•ense of "suppose," which seems to have

:ome precedent, in Chaucer. Mr Whibley ;iavs due tribute to the richness and live-

liness of metaphor in popular American sj>eech—"a language of the street ami camp, brilliant in colour, multiform in character, which has not a rival in the history of speech." This is, indeed, the great strength of the "American language." JI is constantly in the making; its figures of speech are not. literary fossils. One could wish that -Mr Whibley had made a collection of illustrations. Mark Twain's horse that- "lit out of the country liko « telegram,"' ' and the smile that faded off the man's face "like breath offen a razor," are unmistakably of individual art, but nearly all Americans seem to possess the same skill 111 a greater or less degree. Tht-y treat the language. mC a.s an heirloom Iml as au article of modern utility. In some degree they seem even to have kept nr recovered the power of compounding to create n-'.v words —a sure -mark of fluidity and vitality in a. language. We do not in England talk of "side-stepping a motor-car" or "side-tracking" a train or a. discues-ion. Yet these are English formations —the latter a thoroughly sound one, and more expressive than " dodging." " shunting." or "drawing a red helling across the trail''— the last a somewhat- remote metaphor to a mainly urban population. To the American popular pronunciation Mr Whibley

allows the merit- of disl metmr;s. If that is true, perhaps it accounts for the fact, rather melancholy to an Englishmen, that] British colonials and seamen, and wanderers and bordereis generally, stem to speak with >omell)ing of an American accent — nasal and monotonous in ! one and stress. Li it- possible that, the American accent its the mean of all the various pronunciations of English—the "Midland" dialect of the wider Knglish-spcaking world of today Manchester Guardian.")