American Language Supplement 2 (75 page)
Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
11
In The Past Tense of
to tread water, American Notes & Queries
, Feb., 1946, pp. 168–69, H. B. Woolf shows that
trod
is historically supported, but that
treaded
seems to be supplanting it. In 1939 the Baltimore
Evening Sun
made a low bow to history with “Buffaloes … bothered the railroads by
trodding
the tracks in great herds.” On June 10 (editorial page) it poked fun at its own slip under the heading of New Words For Old.
12
Mr. R. P. Whitmer, of the American Foundry & Furnace Co., Bloomington, Ill., tells me that
het
is almost invariably used for
heated
by workmen in the heating industry.
1
The new verbs listed in Supplement I, pp. 382–406, belong mainly to rather pretentious levels of American speech, but there are always novelties on the popular level,
e.g., to barbecue, to hitch-hike
and
laundried
. The NED gives
to launder
as the verb form of the noun, and
laundered
as its perfect participle, but
laundried
seems to be preferred. See The Value of English Linguistics to the Teacher, by Louise Pound,
American Speech
, Nov., 1925, p. 102.
2
Concerning the American Language, in The Stolen White Elephant; Hartford, 1882, p. 269.
3
The NED traces it to
c
. 1340, but marks it “now rare except in
illgotten
.”
4
Gotten, American Speech
, Sept., 1927, pp. 495–96. See also
Get
and
Gotten
, by Wallace Rice,
American Speech
, April, 1932, pp. 280–96.
5
In The Obsolescent Past Participle,
Saturday Review of Literature
, May 19, 1945, p. 15, Silas Bent quoted Bernard M. Allen, professor of Latin at Andover, as follows: “Some seventy-five or more years ago some American grammars began to talk against
have got
for possess or have.
Got
seemed superfluous. So grade teachers began to say, ‘Don’t say
have got
, say
have
. Don’t use the
got
.’ After a while it resulted in a subconscious avoidance of it in other uses, and going back to
gotten
.”
1
Private communication, Sept. 23, 1946.
2
In A Letter From Texas,
American Speech
, April, 1940, pp. 214–15, Wilmer R. Park reports that
used to could
is often reinforced, in that great State, by
might could, might would, ought to could, may can
and
might can
. He says that these forms are encountered “even among educated people who should, and frequently do, know better.”
1
The Speech of East Texas, before cited, p. 98.
2
The Dialect of Southeastern Missouri,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. II, Part V, 1903, p. 312.
3
Verb Plus
to, American Speech
, Dec., 1939, pp. 319–20.
1
Wyld, p. 166. The DAE’s first example is antedated, in the form of “I should
of
sent it before now,” in a letter of Stutley Medbury, a Yankee pedlar, dated Paducah, Ky., Dec. 26, 1841. It is printed in New Light on the Yankee Peddler, by Priscilla Carrington Kline,
New England Quarterly
, March, 1939, p. 90. A modern example from Ringside View of Elliott Roosevelt, by Henry J. Taylor, New York
World-Telegram
, Feb. 8, 1947, p. 2: “Mr. Roosevelt, in Mr. Lewis’ opinion, must not
of
known the meaning of the word
interloper
.” I am indebted here to Mr. Alexander Kadison.
2
Might of
, by E. R. Wallace, June 5.
3
Of
and
Have
, by J. W. Sowan, June 12. Mr. W. G. Sullivan, of Indianapolis, calls my attention to the fact that “He
might of
been run over” and “people who gave theirselves airs which they had no business to
of
done” are in Compton Mackenzie’s Youth’s Encounter; New York, 1915, pp. 28 and 62. This book was published in England as Sinister Street.
4
The Grammar of the Ozark Dialect,
American Speech
, Oct., 1927, p. 4.
5
Piccalillie on the Vernacular,
Saturday Review of Literature
, March 3, 1945, p. 22. See also AL4, p. 444.
6
pp. 199–201 and 445.
7
p. 318.
8
Vol. II, p. 264.
1
American English Grammar, before cited, pp. 152–53.
2
Shall
and
Will, American Speech
, Aug., 1929, pp. 497–98.
3
The Future Tense in English,
College English
, March, 1944, pp. 333–37.
4
Says Eldon Emerson Smith, of Sterling, Colo. (private communication, Sept. 2, 1938): “The common speech future of all verbs in the indicative mode is ‘I’m
gonna
bite,’ or whatever verb.
Gonna
is pronounced with a long
o
. The future tense is frequently confused with the present progressive, as in ‘I’m
going
to Europe next Summer.’ ” In the potential mode
may
has been almost completely displaced by
can
.
1
Is the Subjunctive Dying?,
English Journal
(College Edition), May, 1937, pp. 369–73.
2
Ernest Weekley, in On Learning English. London
Times Literary Supplement
, Aug. 12, 1944, p. 391, says that the same is true for England.
3
American Use of the Subjunctive,
American Speech
, Feb., 1931, pp. 207–15.
448. [The use of
n
in place of
s
, as in
ourn, hern, yourn
, and
theirn
is not an American innovation. It is found in many of the dialects of English, and is, in fact, historically quite as sound as the use of
s
.] Joseph Wright, in his “English Dialect Grammar,” gives some curious double forms, analogous to
hisn, e.g., hers’n
in Cheshire,
wes’n
in Gloucestershire, and
shes’n
in Warwickshire, Berkshire and other counties. David Humphreys, in his glossary of 1815, listed
hern
as an Americanism, and Adiel Sherwood, in 1827, put
hisn
into the same category, though noting that “many of our provincialisms are borrowed from England.” Thomas G. Fessenden denounced both in “The Ladies’ Monitor,” 1818, as “provincial words … which ought to be avoided by all who aspire to speak or write the English language correctly.”
Hern
, in the form
of
hiren
, is actually traced by the NED to 1340;
ourn
, in the form of
ouren
, to
c
. 1380;
yourn
, in the form of
youren
, to 1382, and
hisn
, in the form of
hysen
, to
c
. 1410. The grammarians of the Seventeenth Century declared war on all these possessives, and they have been denounced in the grammar-books ever since,
1
but they survive unscathed in the popular speech. Curme indicates that the somewhat analogous
thisn, thatn, thesen
and
thosen
are now mainly American, but shows that
whosen
occurs “in the south of England and in the Midlands.”
2
I find some exhilarating specimens in my collecteana:
Whatever is
ourn
ain’t
theirn
.
If it ain’t
hisn
, then
whos’n
is it?
I like
thisn
bettern
thatn
.
Let him and her say what is
hisn
and
hern
.
Everyone should have what is
theirn
.
3
The last of these reveals a defect in English that often afflicts writers and speakers on much higher levels, to wit, the lack of singular pronouns of common gender.
4
When, on September 27, 1918, Woodrow Wilson delivered a speech at a Red Cross potlatch in New York, he permitted himself to say “No man or woman can hesitate to give what
they have
,” but when the time came to edit it for his “Selected Literary and Political Papers and Addresses” he changed it to “what
he or she has
.” Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt fell into the same trap in 1941, when she wrote in “My Day”: “Someone told me last night that
they
…”
5
On lower levels there are specimens almost innumerable,
e.g
., “When a person has a corn
they
go to a chiropodist.”
6
Since 1858, when Charles Crozat Converse,
the composer (1832–1918), tried to launch
thon
for
he or she
(and apparently also for
him or her
) and
thon’s
for
his or her
, various ingenious persons have sought to fill this gap in English, but so far without success. In the days of her glory as the queen of American schoolma’ams, Ella Flagg Young (1845–1918), superintendent of the Chicago public schools, asked the National Education Association to endorse
hiser
(
his
plus
her
) and
himer
(
him
plus
her
), but the pedagogues gagged. Both terms, however, were listed in the College Standard Dictionary, 1922, and in 1927 the late Fred Newton Scott (1860–1930)
1
gave them a boost in a magazine article,
2
though with
hiser
changed to
hizzer, himer
to
himmer
, and
hesh
(
he
plus
she
) added. In 1934 James F. Morton, of the Paterson (N.J.) Museum, proposed to change
hesh
to
heesh
and to restore
hiser
and
himer
. But none of these terms has ever come into use, even among spelling reformers, nor has there been any enthusiasm for the suggestion that English adopt the French indefinite pronoun
on
, which is identical in singular and plural.
3
This
on
, in the Fifteenth Century, seems to have begot the English pronoun
one
, but the latter continues to have so foreign and affected a smack that the plain people never use it, and even the high-toned seldom use it consistently, at least in this country. In England one occasionally encounters a sentence through which
ones
run like a string of pearls, but in the United States the second and succeeding ones are commonly changed to
he
or
his
.
4
In 1938 Gregory Hynes, an Australian lawyer, proposed
se
for
he
plus
she, sim
for
him
plus
her
, and
sis
for
his
plus
her
,
5
but there were no audible yells of ratification. Nor did any follow the suggestion of a reformer of Primghar, Iowa, Lincoln King by name, that
ha
be used in the nominative case,
hez
in the possessive and
hem
in the objective.
Nor the suggestion of a correspondent of the Washington
Post
1
that
hes, hir
and
hem
be adopted. Nor has
thon
ever got beyond the blueprint stage, though it made the Standard Dictionary and Webster 1934, along with
thon’s
. In despair of getting rid of the clumsy
his or her
otherwise, the late Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) once proposed a bold return to “the rude days … when we used merely to use
his
.”
2
When, in 1926, the twenty-six linguists consulted by Sterling Andrus Leonard decided by a vote of 23 to 3 that
it is me
is sound English, and when, during the same year, the College Entrance Examination Board decided that nascent freshmen were free to use it, there was an uproar in academic circles but no noticeable jubilation among the plain people, for they had been using the form for centuries, and, what is more, they had been supported by many accepted authorities. Noah Webster allowed it in his “Grammatical Institute of the English Language,” 1784, and the celebrated John P. Mahaffy, provost of Trinity College, Dublin (1839–1919), not only allowed it but did a lot of whooping for it. In defense of it he devised the following dialogue:
A. We saw you and your wife on the beach this morning.
B. Oh, but we didn’t go out, so it can’t have been
us
.
What rational person, demanded Mahaffy, would have said, “it can’t have been
we?
”
3
Rather curiously,
American Speech
, then edited by Dr. Louise Pound, took an editorial slap at the College Entrance Examination Board for its action,
4
but this was atoned for in 1933 by the publication of a thundering defense of
it is me
by Wallace Rice.
5
Rice mustered an array of sages ranging from Joseph Priestley to W. D. Whitney, from A. H. Sayce to Havelock
Ellis, and from Thomas R. Lounsbury to Alexander J. Ellis, all of whom upheld it as sound idiom. He might have gone much further, for George H. McKnight had assembled dozens of examples of
it is me
and even of
it is him
and
her
from sound authors in the first issue of
American Speech
,
1
and Otto Jespersen had brought together many others, and discussed the whole question with his accustomed good sense in 1894.
2
In Shakespeare’s time the use of the objective pronoun had not yet established itself, and
it is I
was still the commoner form, though everyone will recall “Damned be
him
that first cries, ‘Hold! Enough!,’ ”
3
but
c’est moi
, exactly analogous to
it is me
, had come into French in the Sixteenth Cenury, and it was soon influencing English.
4
Today most American philologians, though perhaps not most schoolma’ams, would probably agree with Rice:
