American Language Supplement 2 (31 page)
Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
All the writers upon the speech of Minnesota call attention to the influence of non-English dialects upon it, especially Swedish, Dano-Norwegian and German. In
American Speech
in 1946 there was an interesting account, by Mrs. W. L. S. Mackintosh, of Kampala, Uganda, East Africa, of the language of her native village of Hawley, in the northwestern part of the State, about thirty miles from the North Dakota border.
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Mrs. Mackintosh’s people, on her father’s side, were Scots who came to the United States by way of Nova Scotia, and on her mother’s side, half northern Irish, a quarter Scottish and a quarter Pennsylvania German. “I grew up,” she said, “with Scandinavians for the most part, with a sprinkling of
English who were early settlers, a few later-arriving Scotch-Irish from Ontario, and a very few Irish and Germans who came later.” She went on:
All our Norwegian, Swedish and Danish friends and neighbors without exception said “Can I go
with?
” instead of “Can I go
with you?
” … They also said, in asking if a certain person was included in, or accompanied others at any gathering, “Was he
with?
”… Both of these expressions were exclusively Scandinavian, and others in town never used them except in quotation marks.… News to the Scandinavians in Hawley always
stood
in the
Herald
.… My mother often said when she lost or mislaid something, “I wonder what
went
of it.” … I vaguely considered it Canadian, but none of the other Canadians used it.… We always said, as the town still does, “
Who-all
was there?” and “
What-all
did you do?” Many of the Irish also use
who-all
and
what-all
.
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As children we asked, “May we have a
piece?
,” which meant a between-meal snack of bread and butter, usually superimposed with brown sugar, jelly, peanut-butter or anything available.… We said in sleighing talk, “Let’s
slug
around this next bend,” whipped up the horses and skidded with as wide a sweep and swoosh as possible around the curve.… My younger sister caught me out in the use of
reuse
for
rinse
in recent years, but … we never heard
rench
.…
A-going
sounded quite foreign to us, as did
that-a-way
, both of which were used by a Nebraska family which moved into our community.… We wore
tossle
caps, certainly never
tassel
caps, and there were
tossles
on the ends of bath-robe cords, but on articles of furniture or other garments they were
tassles
.… Children in Hawley studying for confirmation in the Lutheran church under the tuition of the minister always did, and still do,
read for the minister
. I have heard my Swedish sister-in-law say hundreds of times that she would now
cook
the coffee.…
To carry on
in Hawley and generally among Scandinavians in Minnesota means to make a fuss or a scene, as in “She
carried on
until we were ashamed of her.” …
Chores
always carried with it a flavor of the barnyard.… The Scotch-Irish commonly said, “I don’t
dast
” for “I don’t dare.” “I
dasn’t
” was far more rarely heard.
Here we have linguistic legacies from all over.
Dast
is New England, but is also common in the South.
To stand
(in the newspaper) is used in Pennsylvania. Wentworth finds
piece
in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Ohio, and it appears in William Dean Howells’s novel of early Ohio, “The Leatherwood God.”
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That-a-way
, like
this-a-way
, is ancient in English, and was probably
that-there-way
originally.
Rense
is from New England, and appears in “The Biglow Papers.”
Tossle
ranges from Maine to Louisiana.
To carry on
has been in almost universal American use for more than a century, and probably originated in the West: the DAE traces it to 1828, but it is not recorded in England until 1856. Nils Flaten called
attention to
to go with
so long ago as 1900:
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he suggested that it was a translation of the Norwegian “Vil du
gaa med?
,” but it may-have come into Minnesota speech from the German, in which the analogous form is “Gehst du
mit?
”
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Says William J. Griffin, of the State Teachers College at St. Cloud:
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In central Minnesota we are well acquainted with the influences of Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, German, and Irish. But the characteristic of the common speech that impressed me most is the pronunciation of
aunt
. The vowel (not at all diphthongized) is unbelievably broad. The closest analogy I can suggest is to
flaunt
. It is the only word which is given this broad value, so far as I have observed.
Sinclair Lewis, a native of Minnesota, says that the rustic speech of the State turns
creek
into
crick
and
muskrat
into
mushrat
. Wentworth presents evidence that the former is not common in Maine, in the South, or in Appalachia, but he finds
mushrat
in New England, in Appalachia, in up-State New York, and in Wisconsin. Several localisms of the Twin Cities have been reported by William Randel,
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e.g., resort
in the restricted sense of an individual establishment in a resort community,
boulevard
in the sense of the grassed area between curb and sidewalk on a city street, and
to go to the lake
in the sense of to go upon any holiday, whatever one’s designation. Minnesota lies within the area of the Marckwardt survey of Great Lakes speech, and the study of its dialect has been undertaken by Harold B. Allen, of the State university. It will probably be some years, however, before the field-work for this investigation is completed.
In 1893 a young Mississippian named H. A. Shands, seeking his doctorate at the State university, chose the local speechways as the theme of his dissertation.
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“No previous study of this special subject,”
he said in his introduction, “has, within the knowledge of the writer, been made,” nor has there been any other, so far as I know, since. Shands did his work under the direction of the Rev. William Rice Sims, Ph.D., and had the aid of Dr. H. Schmidt-Wartenberg, professor of modern languages at the university. He gave attention to speech on three levels – that of the educated whites, that of the illiterate whites, and that of the Negroes. He omitted “the majority of the provincialisms that are noted as common by Bartlett or other lexicographers,” and made an effort to disregard “those words and expressions that have been introduced into Mississippi by foreign immigrants.” What he found was in substance what is now usually called Lowland Southern, though, as usual, it showed traces of Appalachian influence. Some of his observations follow:
1. The final
a
was converted into
i
, as in
Minnesoti
and
sofy
.
2. The palatal glide after
a
and before
r
, as in
gyarden, cyar
and
cyarpet
, appeared in the speech of all illiterates, and in that of educated immigrants from Virginia and South Carolina.
3. Among the illiterates a was flat almost invariably, as in
ask, answer, last, grass, calf, half
, and even
aunt, palm
and
calm. Papa
became
pappy
.
4. The flat
a
before
r
was broadened, so that
barrel
became
bahr’l
and
bare
became
bahr
. In
radish, carriage
and
carry
it became short
e
.
5. The long
e
in
teat, Negro, fear, here
and
steer
became short.
6. Negroes, but not whites, used
haid
for
head, aidg
for
edge, sont
for
sent
, and
sot
for
set
.
7. Both races used
tarrier
for
terrier, thrash
for
thresh, tarrible
for
terrible
and
trassel
for
trestle
.
8. The Negroes alone used
bres
for
bless, gwine
for
going, cyo
(with a long
o
) for
cure, heaben
for
heaven, gib
for
give, sabe
for
save, debl
for
devil
and
smoove
for
smooth
.
9. He found
r
“so seldom pronounced in the middle or at the end of words by any class that its pronunciation forms an exception.” Such exceptions, he noted, were found only “in a class of very illiterate whites,” and their occurrence constituted “the most distinguishing feature of the real po’ white trash dialect as contrasted with the Negro dialect.”
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10. In Negro speech
th
at the beginning of words often became
d
or
f
, and in other situations,
d, f, b
or
v
. Examples:
den, dat, dis, froo
(
through
),
nuffin
(
nothing
),
anudda
(
another
),
breaf
(
breath
), and the before-mentioned
smoove
for
smooth
. But they sounded
th
in
otha
(
other
),
thrash, thumb, thunder
and
thout
(
without
).
11. All persons of the verb
to be
, in the present tense, indicative, were “involved in inextricable confusion” by Negroes, who used
I is, I are, You is, We am
, etc.
12. As compensation for the use of
bile
for
boil, boil
was used for
bile
.
13. There was a confusion between
ever
and
every
, as in “he hit
ever
man in the crowd.”
14.
Very
was often used in a sense opposite to its usual meaning. “In spoken discourse its meaning depends entirely on the tone in which it is uttered. If it is pronounced quickly, without any special stress, it means small extent, to a very moderate degree. Thus, sometimes, when a thing is said to be
very good
it is meant that the thing is moderately good, or not so good after all;
e.g.
, if someone were asked whether a dog is a good one or not, and should reply, ‘Well he is very good,’ it would in all probability be meant that the dog was not entirely good, but that he had some good qualities. When the necessity arises for using
very
in its emphatic or intensifying sense Mississippians nearly always employ some other term, a few of which I shall give:
real, real down, mighty, quite, tarnation, awful, uncommon, monstrous, rattling;
all of which are used as adverbs when taking the place of
very
.”
“The dialect of the illiterate whites of the extreme backwoods,” said Shands, “possesses a characteristic that cannot be adequately represented by written characters—a kind of drawling, nasal twang.” Most of the localisms he listed were loans from Appalachia,
e.g., to hone for
, to pine for;
jewlarky
, a sweetheart;
to projick
, to trifle;
jodarter
, anything superior; and
we-uns
, but he also gave a few that have not been reported elsewhere,
e.g., barbershela
, a friend (borrowed from the Choctaw and used only in the south central part of the State);
to bip into
, to attack;
jimmy-jawed
, with protruding lower jaw;
to give him scissors
, to lash with the tongue;
elected
with, provided with;
to be due one a compliment
, to owe an apology;
to chaw tobacco more than onc’t
, to repeat;
brief
, dressed up, and to
fisticuff
, to fight. Rather curiously, he did not mention
you-all
.
Missouri, said Allen Walker Read in 1932,
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“presents a welter of speech-groups, with jumbled overlappings and complex origins. The early French occupation has left its mark (very distinctly in some speech-pockets), the Southern and Northern influences have jostled, immigrant races such as the German have contributed, the Negro has brought his characteristic speechways, and geographical factors have split the State even further: the distinctive river regions, the southeastern swamplands, the Ozarks, the plains near Kansas, the
corn country near Iowa. This variety makes, for dialect study, an unlimited wealth.” Basically, Missouri speech is predominantly Southern, but most of the early schoolmasters were New Englanders, and they left many traces of their tutelage. The first formal study of the speech of the State, by R. L. Weeks, was published in 1893
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and dealt with the dialect of Jackson county, the county-seat of which is Independence, the home-port of the Hon. Harry S. Truman. Unhappily, the “peculiar words and usages” presented by Weeks were all common to various other parts of the country, and some of them were nearly universal. Nor was there much that was singular in his list of “pronunciations and grammatical points.”
D. S. Crumb, who followed him in 1903 with a lengthy study of the speech of the southeastern part of the State,
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unearthed a great deal more that was specially Missourian,
e.g., to run a blind calf over
, to impose on;
buckshot land
, poor clay soil;
to cheep
, to mention or hint at;
clay-bank
, cream colored, applied to a horse;
to cut the comb of
, to humiliate;
door-shutter
, a door;
enthralled
, in debt;
glut
, a large wooden wedge;
groundhog case
, an irremediable situation;
like a hog to war
, sideways;
meals
, a meal, used in the singular;
to pack guts to a bear
, to engage in a low occupation;
to rehaul
, to overhaul or repair;
slack-jaw
, impudent language;
snurl
, a gnarled place in a log, and
spouty
and
water-sobbed
, water-logged, none of them found elsewhere by Wentworth. Crumb found many Southernisms,
e.g.
, the
y-glide
before
ar, you-all, evening
for
afternoon
, and
hit
for
it
in emphatic situations. He also found a large number of Appalachianisms, apparently migrant from the Ozarks.
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Perhaps the best report upon the dialect of eastern Missouri, along the Mississippi, is to be found in the works of Mark Twain. He knew it thoroughly and recorded it lovingly, especially in “Huckleberry Finn.”
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