American Language Supplement 2 (44 page)

Richardson says that Spanish also influences the Puerto Rican English vocabulary through deceptive cognates. Thus
actual
is used for
present
in “the
present
state of affairs,”
sympathetic
is used for
agreeable, artist
for
actor
, and
compromised
for
engaged
(to marry). Synonyms of Romance origin are preferred to those of Germanic origin,
e.g., force
rather than
strength, implement
or
instrument
rather than
tool
, and
arm
rather than
weapon
. Most American newspapers spell the name of the island
Porto Rico
, but its people prefer the Spanish form
Puerto Rico
, and it is official in all government publications.
²
I know of no published study of the English spoken in Puerto Rico, but the Spanish has been the subject of a number of investigations.
³
It shows many loans from English.

The English of the Virgin Islands, which is described briefly in AL4, p. 378, is basically archaic English, not American, and seems to be common, with local changes, to the whole British West Indies. The Danes held the group from 1668 to 1917, when the United States bought them for $25,000,000, but Danish never made any progress as the local language against English. The only report upon the speech of the native Negroes that I am aware of was made by Henry S. Whitehead in 1932;
¹
it included a somewhat longish story told by a colored brother in St. Croix to the white pastor of his church. A specimen passage:

The use here of
a’wee
(
all-we
), a first person analogue of the Southern American second person
you-all
, will be noted. Whitehead reported a number of loans from West African languages,
e.g., buckra
, a white man;
shandrámadan
, a rascally act, and
caffoon
, a fall or other mishap, and some survivals of French, Portuguese, French, Dutch and Spanish loans from Crucian (and St. Thomian) Creole,
“a lingua franca
invented [for the slaves] by early Moravian missionaries who combined the language of their European masters’ families with their own African dialects, and who needed the common tongue to serve them when they passed by purchase or otherwise from one estate to another where a different European language was spoken.” The basis of the dialect, he said, is “late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Century English – traditionally the language of trade and of the buccaneers throughout most of the West India islands.” This dialect, he added, is not only “the language of the normally English-speaking islands, such as St. Kitts and Antigua,
but also of Dutch Saba and Dutch and French St. Martin.” It tends to throw the accent back whenever possible, so that
good-morning
becomes
gu-marnín;
it elides
s
before a consonant, so that
spoon
becomes
poon
, it changes
th
to
d
, and it includes many pronunciations recalling the American Negro,
e.g., sarmin, lebben, gwine, wuk
and
fotch
. There are also some traces of Irish influence, or perhaps they are only vestiges of Seventeenth Century English,
e.g., woife
and
toime
.
¹

Palmer, Martin and Blandford, in their “Dictionary of English Pronunciation With American Variants,”
²
group American and Canadian speech together as facets of the same gem. The earliest writer on the latter, the Rev. A. S. Geikie, noted so long ago as 1857 that a large number of Americanisms were already in use,
e.g., bug
, in the general sense of insect;
to fix
, in its numberless American senses;
to guess, to locate, first-class
³
and
rooster
,
⁴
and his first successor, writing twenty-eight years later,
⁵
added
cars
, a railroad train;
drygoods
,
sidewalk, store
, and
dock
, a wharf.
¹
In 1890 A. F. Chamberlain attempted a linguistic survey of the Dominion,
²
but had to confess that there was not enough material accumulated to make it comprehensive. He noted, however, that in Ontario, which was settled in Revolutionary days by fugitive Loyalists from New York and Pennsylvania, “much that characterized the English speech of those States” was “still traceable in their descendants,” and that the speech of the Eastern Township of Quebec did not differ “to a very marked extent from that of the adjoining New England States.” Says a more recent observer:

This was rather too sweeping, for it disregarded the survival of regional dialects in the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland, the prevalence of French loans in Quebec, and the effects of social aspiration in the larger cities. The last-named is powerful indeed, for it has sufficed to keep English spelling in countenance, so that
labour
and
centre
are still in use, though the American
tire, curb
and
jail
have conquered. The fashionable private schools, as in the United States, inculcate something vaguely approximating Oxford English, and many of their teachers are Englishmen. Among the super-loyal
noblesse
of Montreal
pram
is used for
baby-carriage, tin
for
can,
sweet
for
dessert, level crossing
for
grade crossing, tram
for
streetcar, braces
for
suspenders, long holidays
for
Summer vacation
and
shallot
for
scallion
. Also,
schedule
is pronounced with the
sch
soft, and the letter
z
is
zed
, not
zee
.
¹
But this is a class dialect, not the common speech. Among the plain people
baby-carriage, street-car
and the like are in everyday use.
²
Moreover, the talkies, the radio and the constant travel across the border are bringing in the newest American inventions as they appear,
³
and nearly all the slang in current use is unmistakably American. “The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence river,” said an observer in 1939,
⁴
“are highways of communication rather than barriers.… Canadian is a variant of General American, but not so striking a variant as Southern American.… Canadian intonation is identical with General American, or nearly so.” There are, of course, some differences, especially in pronunciation, and this observer thinks they are sufficient “to enable Canadians and Americans usually to place one another very quickly by speech alone.” He lists some of them,
e.g., cornet
is accented on the first syllable, not on the second, as in the United States;
⁵
been
is
bean
, not
bin;
an intrusive
y
appears before
u
in
constitution, duke
, and the like;
economics
is
eek-
, not
ek-; lieutenant
“is always
leftenant”; vacation
is
vuk-
, not
vaik-
, and “a few Canadians still say
clark
instead of
clerk
.”

But such differences are obviously small, and set against them are many popular preferences for American as opposed to English usage,
e.g.
, the
r
is always sounded, “if anything,” says Ayearst, “more heavily than in the Middle West”; “
movies
are never the
cinema
”; “
street-car
and
sidewalk
are never
tram
and
pavement
”; and “
bloody
has no more shocking significance to a Canadian than to an American.” In sum, “despite the best efforts of the pedagogue and the plaints of visiting Englishmen,… Canadian speech can only be regarded as a variant of Standard American, [and] it seems most probable that the tendency to assimilate American usage will continue.” With all this another phonological observer agrees, at least for Ontario.
¹
The dominant influence upon the local speech, she says, has been that of Scottish immigrants. The broad
a
is never heard, even in
aunt
and
rather
. The flat
a
, as in
care
and
carry
, often approaches the
e
of yet. In
not, log, watch, sorry, stop, on, rotten
and
foggy
the vowel is
aw
, not
ah
. “Most Canadians are inclined to regard American speech habits disparagingly, [but they] are no more fond of Southern British speech.”

There is a considerable effort by social-minded persons of the tonier classes to put down the prevalent yielding to American example, but they are seldom clear as to what they want Canadian English to be. Sir Andrew Macphail, writing ’n 1935,
²
was content to argue that “the flat vowels in our Canadian speech” – especially, I assume, the flat
a
– were “unpleasant”; the only remedy he had to suggest was “to take thought, to listen acutely to beautiful [British?] speech, and to listen with equal acuteness to our own.” “In England,” he continued, “a man cannot pass from the lower to the higher social scale until he has mastered the letter
h
, and few succeed in the attempt.… But in England there is a standard of beauty and an established correctness of speech which the wise ones strive to achieve if it is not theirs by right, and they conform with that standard when they are to the manner born.” Mr. Justice A.
Rives Hall, of the Canadian Court of Appeals, delivered many indignant pronunciamentoes on the subject during the 30s, but he was equally vague about what was to be done.
¹

The remoter parts of Canada, like the remoter parts of the United States, have developed local dialects that show some interesting oddities, but they are confined to small and thinly-populated areas, and give no sign of spreading. That of the Northwest is substantially identical with that of the American Northwest.
²
Those of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were the subjects of a report by W. M. Tweedie, of Sackville, N. B., in
Dialect Notes
in 1895.
³
Among the terms he listed were:
abito, bito
or
aboideau
, a sluice so arranged that water can flow through a dike at low tide;
admiral
, the oldest man in a settlement;
barber
, the vapor arising from water on a frosty day;
breastner, burn
or
turn
, a stick of firewood;
Colcannon Night
or
Snap-Apple Night
, Hallowe’en;
copying
, jumping from piece to piece of floating ice;
cracky
or
gaffer
, a small boy;
crunnocks
, kindling;
dirt
, bad weather;
drung
, a lane leading to a pasture;
dunch
, bread not properly baked;
dwy
, a sudden squall, with rain or snow;
all of a floption
, unawares;
hand-signment
, signature;
huggerum buff
, fish and potatoes fried in cakes;
to play jig
or
to slunk
, to play truant;
leaf
, the brim of a hat;
livier
, a merchant or trader;
nippent
, merry;
nunny-bag
, a bag for holding lunch;
prog
, food;
puck
, a blow;
rampole, rampike
or
ranpike
, the trunk of a dead tree;
to establish a raw
, to make a beginning;
silver thaw
, a sleet storm leaving trees covered with ice;
slob
, soft snow or ice;
to spell
, to gather;
starigan
, any small evergreen cut for firewood;
tilt
, a one-story house;
twinly
, delicate;
to yap
, to scold, and
yarry
, smart, quick. Most of these came from Newfoundland, and many of them were borrowings from various English and Scotch dialects.

In 1916 Lewis F. Mott added
handy
, nearby, and
just now
, shortly, from Newfoundland,
¹
and in 1925 George Allen England
²
added the following, gathered in 1920 and 1922:
puckerin’
or
turned over
, sick in bed;
adurt
, across;
airsome
, cold, stormy;
andramarten
, a prank;
astray
, different;
bake
or
white-nose
, a newcomer;
batch
, a fall of snow;
baving
, thin kindling;
bedfly
, a bedbug or louse;
coaleys
, the court cards in a pack;
cockabaloo
, a bullying boss;
conkerbill
, an icicle;
corner boy
, a city man;
cowly
, hard, severe;
cozy
, energetic, fast;
cuffer
, an incredible story;
to douse
, to fool;
down the Labrador
, the North;
drop-ball
, an earring;
to fathom out
, to explain;
feller
, a son;
to fist
, to grasp;
flute
, the mouth;
front
, the region east of Newfoundland;
garagee
, a free-for-all-fight;
gazaroo
, a boy;
to glutch
, to swallow;
to go on the breeze
, to get drunk;
to go to oil
, to become valueless;
gobby
, crazy;
hang-ashore
, a loafer;
hardware
, intoxicants;
to heck it
, to walk quickly;
hocks
, boots;
humgumption
, common sense;
keecorn
, the Adam’s apple;
lassie loaf
, bread and molasses;
to live hard against
, to have a grudge against;
liverish
, sick, nauseated;
look-after
, damages;
to make fire
, to make a row;
to make wonder
, to be surprized;
merry-me-got
, a bastard;
moor
, the root of a tree;
muckered
or
spun out
, exhausted;
omaloor
, an ungainly fellow;
oxter
, the armpit;
passionate
, patient in suffering;
on a pig’s back
, in good condition;
proud
, glad;
rack
, a haircomb;
raw
, a rough fellow;
to saddle
, to agree;
scheme
, mischief;
scudge
, a flurry;
shad
, a light fall of snow;
sharooshed
, taken aback, surprised, disappointed;
all of a slam
, in a hurry;
slinky
, thin;
slovey
, soft;
smack
, a short time;
smatchy
, tainted (as of meat);
snaz
, an old maid;
stage
, a wharf;
streel
, a slovenly woman;
to vamp it
, to walk, and
way
, home. England reported some curious pronunciations. Both sounds of
th
, he said, were commonly changed to
t
, the
h
was manhandled as in Cockney,
a
was often changed to
i
, and as often substituted for both short and long
e
, as in
age
for
edge
and
ape
for
heap
.
Oil
became
hile; easterly, easly; empty, empt
, and
pneumonia, eumonia. Flipper
was pronounced
fipper
.
Jersey
was
joisie
, as in New York City, and
to murder
, signifying to bother or pester, was
to moider
. The
f
often became
v
, as in
vin
for
fin
and
vur
for
fur
. As in the South,
evening
was used to designate the time
from noon to 6 p.m.
Morning
was used for day in general, and any time after 6 o’clock was
night
. The preterite of
to save
was
sove
, and that of
to stow
was
stole
.
¹