American Language (131 page)

In 1930, 30,121 persons living in the United States reported to the Census enumerators that Serbian was their mother-tongue, 79,802 reported that it was Croat, and 77,671 that it was Slovene. Serbian and Croat are identical, though the former is written in the Cyrillic or Russian alphabet and the latter in the Latin, and Slovene differs from the two, according to Louis Adamic,
¹⁰⁶
hardly more than the German of Vienna differs from that of Hamburg. There are twenty-two Serbo-Croatian-Slovene publications in the United States and Canada, including no less than seven daily newspapers. Mr. Adamic is the author of the only study of the changes undergone by Serbo-Croat in America that I have been able to find.
¹⁰⁷
He says that, as it is printed in the vernacular press, it remains virtually Standard Serbian. “So far,” he says, “I have noticed but a dozen or so of [loan-words] in the news and editorial colunms,
e.g., majnar
and
majna, farmar
and
farma, štrajk
and
štrajkar, štor, viska
and
lota
(lot). There are one or two humorous columnists who go further in this direction, but they are exceptions.” In the everyday speech of the immigrants, however, there is a much larger admixture of Americanisms. Says Mr. Adamic:

In
gauz
(house),
obergoz
(over(h)alls) and
garjep
(hurry up) the commonly Slavonic tendency to turn
h
into
g
is visible. Other nouns in common use are
dzez
(jazz),
salun
(saloon),
bara
(bar),
džhumper
(jumper),
vikend
(week-end),
boom
(bum),
boj
or
poj
(boy),
ledi
(lady),
štrita
(street),
karpet
(carpet),
park
(park),
vošinmašina
(washing-machine),
redietor
(radiator),
penta
(paint),
livirum
(living-room),
lampa
(lamp),šo (show),
pajpa
(pipe),
šrickara
(street-car),
pence
(pants),
tutbroš
(tooth-brush),
rog
(rug),
papir
(writing-paper or newspaper),
pauder
(powder),
fekteria
(factory),
mila
(mill),
sajdvok
(sidewalk),
štepce
(steps),
porě
(porch),
redjo
(radio),
polisman
(policeman),
major
(mayor),
kort
(court),
taksa
or
teks
(tax),
džuž
(judge),
džail
(jail),
tičar
(teacher),
pokbuk
(pocketbook),
džuri
(jury),
pučer
(butcher),
stejž
(stage),
noors
(nurse),
senvič
or
šenič
(sandwich),
štajl
(style) and
sajn
(sign),
¹⁰⁸
and, among the Croats,
unij
(union),
masina
(machine),
boykotirat
(boycott),
raketir
(racketeer),
situaciya
(situation) and
garaž
(garage).
¹⁰⁹
Most loan-nouns are given grammatical gender and declined according to the Serbo-Croatian system, but some,
e.g., karpet
and
park
, are taken in unchanged and not so declined. These last are commonly thought of as masculine. Very few adjectives have been incorporated, and not many verbs. A number of phrases and idioms have been adopted,
e.g., majgundeš
(my goodness),
gerarehir
(get out of here), and the expletives
dži
(gee) and
džizakrajst
(Jesus Christ).
Yes
has displaced the Slavic
da
, and often appears as
yah
or
yeah
. A number of Americanisms have returned to the Old Country and are in common use there,
e.g., džež
(jazz),
salun
(saloon),
bos
(boss),
nigr
(nigger) and
probišn
(prohibition).

The only study so far undertaken of the changes undergone by the Lithuanian language in the United States is that of Dr. Alfred Senn of the University of Wisconsin, made on a Sterling research fellowship from Yale. Dr. Senn is a Swiss and his monograph was written in German and printed in Rome
¹¹⁰
— a combination that bears striking witness to the opportunities overlooked by American scholarship. His investigation was chiefly made in Connecticut, where there are several Lithuanian colonies, but he also extended it to New York City and Chicago. The first Lithuanians came to the United States before the middle of the last century, but there was no considerable immigration until 1863, when an unsuccessful rebellion against Russian rule drove many thousands into exile. It has been estimated that fully a third of all the patriots who survived the rebellion came to this country, and that there are 1,000,000 persons of Lithuanian blood, either pure or mixed, in the population today. The Census of 1930 unearthed less than half that number (193,606 born in Lithuania, 221,472 born in this country of Lithuanian parents,
and 24,117 born here of partly Lithuanian parentage, or 439,395 in all), but it is possible that the returns credited many Lithuanians to Russia or to Poland. In Chicago, says Dr. Senn, the Lithuanian colony numbers at least 80,000. In Waterbury, Conn., there is another of 15,000, and yet others are in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maryland. The Lithuanians in the United States support fourteen newspapers, of which four are dailies — three in Chicago and one in Brooklyn.

From 1864 to 1904 the Russian government made violent efforts to Russify the Lithuanians remaining in Lithuania. Their schools were closed and the printing of books in their native tongue was forbidden. Thus the colonies of exiles became centers of Lithuanian culture, and publishing houses were set up in Chicago, Boston, Shenandoah, Pa., and other American towns. In 1904 the interdict on Lithuanian books was removed by the Russians, and there began a great cultural revival in Lithuania. One of its fruits was an effort to purge the language of the Polish and Russian elements that had invaded it. This movement gathered fresh impetus after the World War, and so effective has it been that a young Lithuanian of today finds it difficult, on coming to the United States, to understand the speech of his compatriots here, which still retains most of the old loan-words. Even the names of the days of the week differ in the two forms of the language. In addition, American-Lithuanian has taken in a large number of American words and phrases, so the difficulty of intercommunication is really formidable. Meanwhile, the various Lithuanian dialects tend to disappear in this country, and all Lithuanians move toward a common speech. It consists, says Dr. Senn, of “a disorderly mixture of dialects, old Slavic loan-words brought from home, and new English loan-words picked up in America. It is a Pidgin-Lithuanian.”

But this American-Lithuanian, though it may sound barbaric to a Lithuanian scholar, yet preserves most of the forms of the mother-tongue. The loan-noun, for example, is inflected precisely as if it were a native word. Thus
bòmas
(from the American bum) takes the masculine gender, is put into the second accent class, and undergoes the following changes for case and number:

Save it be feminine logically, an American loan-noun usually takes the masculine gender, which may show any one of five endings in the nominative singular —
as, -ỹs, -is, -us
or
-uo
. The ending attached is determined to some extent by the meaning, and by the form in English. Most names of inanimate objects seem to be given the
-as
ending,
e.g., Amèrikas
(America),
háuzas
or
áuzas
(house),
bàksas
(box),
bólas
(ball),
divòrsas
(divorce),
fréntas
(friend),
fòrnisas
(furnace),
kãras
(car),
káutas
or
kótas
(coat),
kìsas
(kiss),
krýmas
(cream),
lãtas
(lot),
mùnšainas
(moonshine),
òfisas
(office),
pòket-bukas
(pocketbook),
rèkordas
(phonograph-record),
saliúnas
(saloon),
sáidvokus
(sidewalk) and
štòras
(store). But agent-nouns in
-er
take the
-is
ending,
e.g., békeris
(baker),
gròseris
(grocer),
blòferis
(bluffer),
bùtlegeris
(bootlegger) and
làbsteris
(lobster in the opprobrious sense), and so, by analogy, do most other nouns in
-er, e.g., bòmperis
(bumper) and
fénderis
(fender). So, also, do nouns whose ending suggests
-er
to the Lithuanian ear,
e.g., dóleris
(dollar) and
mūvingpìkčeris
(moving-picture). So, finally, do nouns in
-le, e.g., báisikelis
(bicycle) and
tròbelis
(trouble). One English noun,
business
, seems to the Lithuanian to have an
-is
ending ready-made, so he leaves it
bìznis
. When the last part of a compound word has already come into American-Lithuanian with an
-as
ending,
e.g., štòras
(store), the compound itself sometimes takes the
-is
ending,
e.g., drùgštoris
(drug-store). A few American loan-words take the
-(i)us
ending, chiefly by analogy. Thus
redietorius
(radiator) is suggested by the Lithuanian word
dirèktorius
(director). When the singular form of a loan-noun can’t be fitted into the Lithuanian system of declensions, the plural is used as a singular,
e.g., bòisas
(boy) and
šúsas
(shoe). The relatively few loan-words that take the feminine endings,
-a
and
-e
, not being themselves feminine in significance, usually do so because their English forms show those endings, or something approximating to them,
e.g., ambrèla
(umbrella),
pãre
(party),
balióne
(bologna) and
pédė
(pay-day).
Sínka
(sink),
krèkė
(cracker),
bètspredė
(bedspread) and
hėmė
(ham) are probably made feminine because they suggest the
Frauenzimmer
, and Dr. Senn says that
šapà
(shop) may be influenced by
shoppe
. The nouns
lòkė
(luck) and
fònė
(fun) were plainly suggested by the adjectives
lucky
and
funny
rather than by the corresponding English nouns. Even proper names are given Lithuanian endings, and regularly inflected. Thus
New York
, in the nominative singular, becomes
Nãjorkas, New Haven
becomes
Najévenas, Waterbury
(Conn.) becomes
Vòlberis, Vòrberis, Vòrbelis
or
Vòterburis
, and
Grand avenue
, a street in the last-named, becomes
Grináunė
.