American Language Supplement 2 (30 page)
Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
The great institutions of learning of Maryland appear to take but little interest in the curiously diverse and instructive speech of the State. Dr. Kemp Malone, of the Johns Hopkins, has concerned himself to good effect with American speech in general
1
but not with that of Maryland in particular, and J. Louis Kuethe, of the same university, has published several brief notes on the latter
2
but is mainly devoted to place-names and topographical terms. The Johns Hopkins participates officially in the field-work for the projected Linguistic Atlas of the Middle Atlantic States, supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, but apparently its participation is more formal than active.
3
I have long had it in mind to attempt a vocabulary of Baltimore speech in the 80s and 90s, for a number of terms that were in common use there and then do not seem to have been noted elsewhere,
e.g., Araber
, a street huckster;
to arab
, to go huckstering;
4
front steps
, the steps before a dwelling-house, usually in those days, of marble; and
Yankee jumper
, a sled for girls, with the platform raised 9 or 10 inches above the runners,
and the runners curved upward in front.
Leapfrog
was always called
par
, and the word
garden was
almost unknown: it was always either the
backyard
or
frontyard
, or simply the
yard
. The outdoor privies that still survived in most backyards were called
postoffices
, and the men who cleaned them at intervals operated an
O.E.A
. (
i.e.
, odorless excavating apparatus). The grades in school were designated
first reader, second reader
, etc. The best public room of a house was always the
parlor
. The street before it, at least for purposes of play, was
out front
.
The sweetmeats bought by children from the little stores which then hugged every schoolhouse had names that are now forgotten,
e.g., nigger-baby, shoe-string
, and
cow-flop
. A
nigger-baby
was a small, hard, black licorice candy cast in the image of a colored baby. It sold at four or five for a cent. A
shoe-string
was a length of softer licorice candy, perhaps a foot or more long. It sold for a cent. A
cow-flop
was a round, flat cake made of flour and molasses, with some ginger added and ground cocoanut mixed in. No well-mannered child of the time would dare to refer to an actual
cow-flop
, but the term was tolerated when applied to the cake, and the resemblance between the cake and the droppings of a cow was acknowledged with winks. Another delicacy of the young was
Washington pie
, which was about two inches thick and was vended in blocks about two inches square. It was made of stale pies, ginger-cakes, etc., ground up and rebaked. The price was a cent a square. All the schoolhouse stores sold
spit-blowers
, which were thin cylinders of tin. A bad boy who owned one would buy a cent’s worth of putty, and let fly with small pellets of it at schoolma’ams, blind men and the aged. Dried peas were also used for this purpose. In the schoolroom he concealed his
spit-blower
in one of the legs of his knee pants, with the lower end caught in his long stocking. When one was discovered by the teacher, the principal was called in, and the offender was rattaned. The same stores sold many other things now forgotten – for example, colored tissue for making kites and
passapool
(
i.e., Sebastopol
) flags.
1
How Massachusetts is divided between the Boston dialect and General American has been described in the section on American dialects in general. An enormous amount of material about both forms of Massachusetts speech is to be found in the six volumes of the Linguistic Atlas of New England, and there is more in the files of
Dialect Notes
and
American Speech
and in the phonological and lexicographical studies already mentioned in dealing with New England. Cape Cod alone has produced a considerable literature, and Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard have produced scarcely less. The first Cape Cod study of scientific pretensions was published by George Davis Chase, of Wesley an University, in 1903;
1
it was followed by two others in 1904 and 1909.
2
Further reports have come from Herbert W. Smith,
3
Henry J. James,
4
and Mrs. Wendell B. Phillips.
5
Chase’s first paper was based on the speech of his parents, both born and brought up at West Harwich, a small village on the south shore of the Cape, and it represented the dialect prevailing
c
. 1850. He said that this dialect was already changing when he wrote, chiefly under the admonitions of the schoolmaster, who frowned upon such pronunciations as
chimley
for
chimney
and
cramberry
for
cranberry
, and the use of
ar
instead of
er
in
serve, perfect, serpent, nervous
, etc. The
r
was usually dropped before consonants,
oi
became
ai
, the flat
a
was used before
l
, there was no
y
-glide before
ew
, and
w
itself often disappeared, as in
forrard
for
forward
and
ekal
for
equal
. The verb
to be
was inflected as follows:
There was a tendency to make strong verbs weak,
e.g., growed, drawed, busted, dinged, drinked, freezed, teared
and
catched
,
2
and verbs remaining strong had the same forms for the past and perfect participle. Elderly people were called
Aunt
or
Uncle
, and a married woman was known by her own and her husband’s given names,
e.g., Hope Austin
(
Hope
, the wife of
Austin
Baker). Many of the terms in the local vocabulary came from the sea,
e.g., aback
, at a standstill;
gangway
, any passage way;
to get to windward
, to gain an advantage;
to go by the board
, to be lost;
to keel up
, to be laid up by illness;
ship-shape
, in good order, and
stern foremost
, backward. Other localisms listed by Chase were
bitch-hopper
, a provoking woman; blunderbuss, a blunderer;
to buckle
, to run fast;
chicken-flutter
, excitement;
ginger-leap
, wintergreen;
lug-wagon
, a four-wheeled farm vehicle;
meet-up
, a, crony;
quuf
, the letter G;
slobber-chops
, a child or animal that scatters its food; and
tuckout
, a fill of food. In his second and third lists he added
chowder-head
, a stupid person;
fiddle-a-ding
, a trifler;
gentleman passenger
, a well-behaved boy;
harness-cask
, a barrel for salt meat;
hog age
, a boy’s awkward age;
Lady Haley
, a well-behaved little girl;
to limp-to-quaddle
, to hobble;
to talk underground
, to speak indistinctly;
yeppit
, a small boy;
boiled yarn
, a dish made of brown bread crusts boiled in sweetened milk and water;
grave-stones
, prominent front teeth, and
Jack White
, a shirttail. Smith dealt with more recent locutions, and listed, among others,
facultized
, versatile;
cow-storm
, rain without wind;
nail-sick
, applied to wood so rotten that it won’t hold nails;
to fly-blow
, to depreciate;
narrow-gutted
, stingy;
fumble-heels
, a clumsy person; and
to rootle
, to root (as a hog). To these, in 1924, James added
cod-head
, a knee-length boot;
hog’s back son-of-a-bitch
,
boiled codfish with scraps of pork, and
fat cat
, leapfrog.
Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, the two islands lying to the southward of Cape Cod, were both settled before 1650, and, like the Cape itself, show some survivals of archaic speech. The sea has played a salient part in their history, and its terms supply their dialect with frequent pungent metaphors,
e.g., poor craft
, a sorry figure of a man;
long-sparred
, having long limbs;
down by the head
, bowed by age or infirmity;
fair wind
, good fortune;
astern the lighter
, tardy; and
to square the yards
, to pay a debt. There is some animosity between the two islands, as is shown by the nicknames applied to the people of one by those of the other –
Scrap Islander
for a Nantucketer on Martha’s Vineyard, and
Old Town Turkey
for a citizen of Martha’s Vineyard on Nantucket.
1
In 1915 William F. Macy and Roland B. Hussey published a book on Nantucket which listed a large number of localisms.
2
Some of them were Cape Codisms, but others were words and phrases that have not been recorded elsewhere,
e.g., to clip in to
, to make a call at;
Coff
, a native of Cape Cod, and, by extension, any other off-islander;
cornstarch airs
, formal manners;
flink
, a good time;
gallied
, frightened;
gam
, a social visit;
huddle
, a dancing party;
polpisy
, awkward, countrified;
quint
, an old maid;
to shool
, to saunter;
to sit in the butter-tub
, to marry well;
stingaree
, a persistent person;
to tivis
, to wander about;
wadgetty
, fidgety, and
to wilcox
, to lie awake at night.
3
In 1918 Byron J. Rees published a similar list of Martha’s Vineyard terms, gathered at Chilmark the year before.
4
It included
current
, in good health;
flake
, any section or piece;
flared
, deranged mentally;
hickory
, rough, tempestuous;
pinkletink
, a young frog;
to studdle
, to stir up, and
turkler
, a man of great energy.
5
The large literature upon the so-called Boston accent has been
noticed in the preceding pages, and there is no need to return to the subject here.
1
In 1943 George L. Trager published a posthumous paper on its phonology by Benjamin L. Whorf, an amateur linguist of high attainments,
2
but that paper is too technical to be summarized for the lay reader. There has been some infiltration of loanwords in the sections of Massachusetts invaded by non-English-speaking immigrants, but if any study of them has ever been published I have not encountered it. Mr. Charles J. Lovell, an acute observer of speechways, tells me
3
that in the New Bedford and Fall River area two Portuguese loans,
cabaca
, head, and
lingreesa
, sausage (Port,
linguica
), are in common use. He also says that
bobo
, apparently from the Canadian French, is widely used for chamber-pot. The children of the immigrants reciprocate by speaking a magnificent vulgar American. Mr. Lovell offers the following specimens:
4
After supper my dad taken off his shoes and lain down on the couch.
He gotten hell for what he done.
You must have been brang up in a pigpen.
His mother should of learned him not to pick the snots from his nose.
I known her since she was a little girl.
Mrs. Robinson given me those pants what Phil outgrown.
She shouldn’t of letten him touch her.
I been down there myself.
He helt on to Watkins and broughten him down.
He use to work for me but I fire him.
Teacher say I an’ him should of went too.
They all know he ain’t no good.
5
Mrs. R. H. Hoppin, of Belmont, Mass.
1
calls my attention to a number of locutions apparently peculiar to the Boston region,
e.g., tonic
for
soda-water, drymop
for
dustmop, dry-cleansing
for
dry-cleaning, spa
for a sandwich and ice-cream shop, and
apparatus
for fire-engine, and Mr. Howard S. Russell reminds me
2
that the English
moor
survives on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, and that
common, green
and
brook
continue in use elsewhere in the State.
Michigan is within the Great Lakes-Ohio river area being investigated by Albert H. Marckwardt and his associates, mentioned under Illinois and Indiana. They began by confining their inquiry, save for Sault Ste. Marie, to the lower peninsula of the State. I know of no other study of Michigan speech save a brief note on its phonology, published in 1934.
3
