Owing partly to the nearness of the United States to Japan, as compared with Great Britain, and partly to the larger number of American teachers of English in Japanese schools, English in Japan has more of an American flavor than a British. Also, a large number of different American periodicals and books — far more than British publications — which are read by a great many people here, including the British themselves, evidently exert a constant influence upon the English used in this country.…
American-English is spoken by a large majority — at least two-thirds — of the English-speaking people of the world,… and its claim is growing year after year with the continued increase in the wealth, influence and population of the United States.… Common sense teaches us the wisdom of deciding for the majority where the question concerned is that of greater utility.
Ichiya noted that there was some prejudice against American speechways in Japan because of “the increasing haughtiness of the United States as a nation, and the bombastic utterances and idiotic and vulgar behavior of many irresponsible Americans both at home and abroad who are pleased to call themselves 100% American,” but he hastened to assure his Japanese readers that “the majority are not like that. As a matter of fact, real Americans are as refined as any other cultured nationals; they are much freer from a foolish snobbery than some so-called ‘cultured’ Englishmen. It is indeed impossible to dislike such Americans or their speech.”1
As in Germany, there is a considerable popular literature on the English language, with notes on American variants. In the days before World War II all the stewards and waiters on the Japanese Pacific liners were provided with more or less illuminating handbooks instructing them in the mysteries of English idiom, with special attention to the idioms of Americans. That of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japan Mail Steamship Company) included the following:
Although Americans speak English they often use words which are different from those the passengers from London and other British ports use. For example, Americans like to call the first-class cabins staterooms, but English people say first-class cabin, second-class, etc. A London passenger brings a portmanteau, Gladstone and hold-all, but the American would call the same things trunk, suit-case, grip and rug-strap.
To this was appended a list of variants, in part as follows:
English American
walking-stick cane
waterproof raincoat
galoshes rubbers, or overshoes
boots shoes
boot-laces shoe-strings
braces suspenders
waistcoat vest
stud collar-button
postcard postal-card
lift elevator
1 Dialect Notes, Vol. VI, Pt. VI, 1933, pp. 313–334.
2 The Chippewas, or Ojibwa Indians were of the Algonquian race and held a large territory at the head of the Great Lakes. They were warlike, and fought against the Americans in the colonial wars, in the Revolution and in the War of 1812. The few that survive are now caged on reservations in the upper lakes country. They first appear in American records in 1671, when they were called Chipoës. The Orundaks were apparently inhabitants of the Adirondack region.
3 The Six Nations were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscaroras. They came from the St. Lawrence region, but by 1700 had more or less control of a territory stretching from Hudson’s Bay to what is now North Carolina, and from Connecticut to the Mississippi. Most of them took the English side in the Revolution and were settled in Canada after it was over.
5 Calumet was not an Indian word, but came from a French dialect word signifying a pipe. Robert Beverley, in his History and Present State of Virginia, 1705, said: “This calumet is used in all their important transactions. However, it is nothing but a large tobacco pipe made of red, black or white marble.” The colonists soon dropped the French word and used pipe of peace instead.
6 The speech-belt was a belt of wampum (beads used as ornament, and also as currency). The DAE’s first (and only) example of its use is credited to George Washington, 1753, but it must have been familiar to the colonists long before then.
1 Cambridge (1717–1802) was a Londoner, educated at Eton and Oxford. After 1751 he lived at Twickenham and was one of the intimates of Horace Walpole. His Scribleriad, a mock-heroic poem, appeared in 1751.
2 The Connoisseur belonged to the second flight of English essay periodicals, and was founded by George Colman the elder in 1754. It ran on until 1756, and, like the Spectator before it, was reprinted as a book. There was a third edition of that book in three volumes in 1760, containing some new matter. Read’s citation comes from this new matter. The Connoisseur was contemporaneous with Samuel Johnson’s Rambler (1750–52); the Adventurer (1752–54), to which he also contributed; the World (1753–56), to which Chesterfield and Walpole contributed; the Idler (1758–60), also Johnson’s; and the Citizen of the World (1760), written by Goldsmith.
3 La Lennox was born in 1720 in New York, where her father was the royal lieutenant-governor. She went to England at 15 and married there. Johnson knew her and esteemed her. The novel he quoted from was The Female Quixote, 1752. She also wrote Henrietta, 1758; Sophia, 1761; and Euphemia, 1790, but she is best known for her Shakespeare Illustrated, in which she reprinted some of the sources of Shakespeare’s plays and argued that they were better than the plays. Johnson, who agreed, wrote a dedication for the book.
1 Talented was actually quite sound in English, but it had dropped out of use. S. T. Coleridge argued against it in his Table-Talk so late as July 8, 1832. “I regret,” he said, “to see that vile and barbarous vocable, talented, stealing out of the newspapers into the leading reviews and most respectable publications of the day. Why not shillinged, farthinged, tenpenced, &c? The formation of a participle passive from a noun is a license that nothing but a very peculiar felicity can excuse. If mere convenience is to justify such attempts upon the idiom, you cannot stop till the language becomes, in the proper sense of the word, corrupt. Most of these pieces of slang come from America.” Coleridge seems to have overlooked moneyed (or monied), used by Marlowe, Bacon, Clarendon and Wordsworth.
2 No. 40, 1759.
3 Philadelphia, 1755.
4 A variant of trace, and already becoming obsolete in Johnson’s time.
5 In Croft’s fling at Johnson, and perhaps also in his praise of American writings, there was more than a little self-interest, for he had announced a dictionary of his own in 1788, and hoped to find a large market for it in America. Down to Johnson’s death in 1788 he and the lexicographer were on good terms, and he contributed the life of Edward Young to the Lives of the Poets. In this he achieved a slavish imitation of Johnson’s thunderous style. Croft was a graduate of Oxford and a clergyman. In 1780 he published a novel in letter form called Love and Madness, and in it used certain letters by Thomas Chatterton, obtained under what amounted to false pretenses from the poet’s sister, Mrs. Newton. For this he was roundly denounced by Southey in the Monthly Review. Nothing came of his projected dictionary. When he died in 1816 it existed only as 200 volumes of manuscript.
1 British Criticisms of American Writings, 1783–1815; Madison, Wis., 1918, p. 21.
2 Nov., 1783.
3 This one, incidentally, was apparently his own invention. The DAE’s first example comes from his Notes on Virginia, written in 1781–2. See Belittle, by W. J. Burke, American Speech, April, 1932, p. 318.
4 In his journal for July 19, 1777.
5 British Recognition of American Speech, op. cit., p. 322.
1 At all events, his specific claim to its invention has never been challenged, and the NED allows it, though fixing the date, erroneously, as c. 1794 instead of 1781. The word was adopted by Noah Webster in 1809 and by John Pickering in 1816. In 1836 it appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger, then edited by Poe. The first occurrence of American, applied to the English of the United States, was apparently in the Georgia records of 1740, where it appeared as American dialect. Webster made
it American tongue in his Dissertations on the English Language in 1789, and fours years later Dr. William Thornton made it American language in his Cadmus; or, a Treatise on the Elements of Written Language. This book was published in Philadelphia, and was awarded the Magellanic Gold Medal of the American Philosophical Society. See American Projects for an Academy to Regulate Speech, by Allen Walker Read, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, Dec., 1936, p. 1142. American language appeared in the debates in Congress in 1802, and by 1815 the North American Review was using it. The DAE lists no example of its use between 1822 and 1872, but no doubt it appeared with some frequency. It is to be found in the Rev. John Mason Peck’s Guide to Emigrants, 1831 (John Mason Peck and the American Language, by Elrick B. Davis, American Speech, Oct., 1926, p. 25), and in Harper’s Magazine, Aug., 1858, p. 336, col. 1, in an anonymous article entitled Vagabondizing in Belgium: “In an instant I was by her side and speaking to her in her own language — the American language.” It thus had a long history behind it when I used it for the title of my first edition in 1919. In late years the English, after long resistance, have begun to use it. See, for example, a headline in the Literary Supplement of the London Times, May 15, 1937, p. 371.
1 i.e., Thomas Paine. Common Sense had been published on Jan. 9, 1776.
1 Schoolma’am, incidentally, is itself an Americanism. The DAE’s first example of it is dated 1844, but it is no doubt older. Schoolmarm is traced to 1848.
1 H. C. Wyld shows in A History of Modern Colloquial English; London, 1920, p. 161, that can’t, han’t, shan’t, couldn’t, isn’t, etc., were in common use in England. Swift noted them in his Polite Conversation, 1712. An’t is traced by the DAE to 1723; the NED carries it back to 1706 in England. Ain’t had begun to supplant it before Witherspoon’s day. It is probable that the word he gives as han’t was really pronounced haint. In that form it still survives in the dialect of Appalachia.
1 II Kings XXI, 13; Psalms CXLVI, 9; Isaiah XXIV, 1; XXIX, 16; Acts XVII, 6.
2 In his first article, published May 9, 1781, he promised to close his discussion with “technical terms introduced into the language,” and at the end of his fourth article, published May 30, he renewed that promise, but The Druid did not proceed any further.
3 I am indebted here to M. M. Mathews, who reprints the four Druid papers in full in Chapter II of The Beginnings of American English; Chicago, 1931, a little book that is indispensable to every serious student of American speechways.
1 Cf. John Fox, Jr.’s Hell fer Sartain, 1897.
2 For example, see Cape Cod Dialect, II, by George Davis Chase, Dialect Notes, 1904, p. 428; A List of Words From Northwest Arkansas, by Joseph William Carr and Rupert Taylor, the same, 1907, p. 208; A Central Connecticut Word-List, by William E. Mead and George D. Chase, the same, 1905, p. 22. See also The English Language in America, by George Philip Krapp; New York, 1925, Vol. I, p. 118. In his second volume, p. 168, Krapp discusses the change of e to a in such words as (e)ternal, clerk, Derby and sergeant. Dr. Louise Pound has demonstrated that tarnal was probably the mother of darn. See Chapter VI, Section 8.
1 A History of Modern Colloquial English, p. 175.
1 Dr. Arthur M. Schlesinger of Harvard informs me that this letter was also printed in the New-Hampshire Gazette, April 22, 1775. It was addressed To the Literati of America.
2 Adams borrowed this phrase from Swift’s Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue, in a Letter to the Lord High Treasurer of Great Britain, Feb. 22, 1711/12.
1 I am indebted for both the anonymous article and Adams’s signed letter to Mathews, pp. 40–43. The latter is also to be found in The Works of John Adams, edited by Charles Francis Adams; Boston, 1852; Vol. VII, pp. 249 ff.
1 The book was The Diversions of Purley, published in 1786. It had much influence upon Webster, who greatly admired it. Born in 1736, Horne added the name of Tooke to his patronymic in compliment to William Tooke, of Purley, his frequent benefactor. He got into trouble in 1777 for printing an advertisement soliciting funds for the Americans “murdered by the king’s troops at Lexington and Concord.” He served a year in the King’s Bench prison and had to pay fines and costs amounting to £1,000. He died in 1812.
2 Hoffman (1766–1837) was one of the salient figures in the New York of his day. The descendant of a Baltic German who immigrated in 1657, he was connected with many of the rich families of the town, and was himself a leader in its fashionable society. He was a successful lawyer, and was a member of the State legislature in 1791–95 and again in 1797, attorney-general of the State in 1798–1801, and recorder of New York City in 1808–15. He was a Loyalist during the Revolution, became a Federalist afterward, and opposed the War of 1812. His daughter Matilda was betrothed to Washington Irving, but died before they could be married. Two of his sons attained prominence — Charles Fenno as a poet and novelist, and Ogden as a lawyer and politician.
3 Dunlap (1766–1839), a native of Perth Amboy, N. J., studied painting under Benjamin West in London, but on his return to the United States devoted himself mainly to the theatre. He wrote plays and managed the Park Theatre in New York. Late in life he returned to painting and became one of the founders of the National Academy of Design. He also did a great deal of writing, and is perhaps best remembered for his History of the American Theatre, 1832.
1 I am indebted for this to The Philological Society of New York, by Allen Walker Read, American Speech, April, 1934, pp. 133 and 134. See also his The Constitution of the Philological Society of 1788, American Speech, Feb., 1941, pp. 71 and 72.
2 American Projects for an Academy to Regulate Speech, by Allen Walker Read, Publications of the Modern Language Association, Dec., 1936, p. 1141.
3 There were, however, several local academies which occasionally showed some interest in language. One was the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, the heir and assign of Franklin’s Junto of 1727. Another was the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences of New Haven, of which Webster was a member. He joined it at some time before 1799 and in 1804 made over to it 50 cents for every 1,000 copies of his spelling-book printed in Connecticut. But both organizations were much more interested in the sciences than in letters.
1 Here again I am in debt to Read. The constitution of the academy is reprinted in full in his American Projects for an Academy to Regulate Speech, just cited, pp. 1154–56.
2 Cardell (1780–1828) was a native of Norwich, Conn., and after 1816 devoted himself to teaching English and French. He was the author of a number of books, including Essay on Language; New York, 1825; and Elements of English Grammar; New York, 1826. He also wrote a very successful story for boys, Jack Halyard.
3 All of them denounced by the English critics of the time as Americanisms that were barbaric, immoral and against God.
1 A full list of the first members — honorary, resident and corresponding — is in The Membership of Proposed American Academies, by Allen Walker Read, American Literature, May 1935, pp. 145 ff.
2 There is a history of the whole matter in Read’s paper, just cited, including some curious details. In another paper, Suggestions for an Academy in England in the Latter Half of the Eighteenth Century, Modern Philology, Nov., 1938, pp. 145 ff, he deals with similar schemes in England. His inquiries into the obscure literature of such projects have thrown much light upon the subject.
1 An Introduction to the History of Medicine, fourth ed.; Philadelphia, 1929, p. 330.
2 For this I am indebted to Mr. Henry Burnell Shafer of Haddon Heights. N. J.
3 New York, 1936.
1 It first appeared in 1783, as the first part of his Grammatical Institute of the English Language, published at Hartford. It was the most successful book ever brought out in America, and is still in print. The New International Encyclopedia says that 62,000,000 copies had been sold by 1889.
2 Letter to James Madison, Aug. 12, 1801.
3 Belknap (1744–98) was a New Hampshireman and a Congregational clergy
man. He was one of the earliest of American antiquarians.
4 Warfel, p. 234.
1 p. 189.
2 Madison, Wis., 1929, p. 14. This is a very valuable book and presents a great deal of matter not otherwise accessible.
3 His blistering opinion of democratic government, set forth in a letter to the New York Spectator for Aug., 1837, is reprinted by Warfel, pp. 425–27.
1 Neither of these was actually an Americanism. The former, according to the NED, has been used in England since 1529 and the latter since 1599. But both had attained to wider acceptance on this side of the ocean.
2 Led by Timothy Dwight.
3 Boston, 1789. The book was dedicated to Benjamin Franklin.
4 This was a good prophecy. The United States, Canada and the British West Indies actually reached 100,000,000 population, taken together, about 1912, which was a century and a third after 1789.
5 pp. 20–22.
6 In an anonymous advance puff of his 1806 dictionary in the New Haven newspapers, June 4, written (like many another such sly boost) by himself.
7 p. 65.
8 His own words in his Dissertations, p. 24, are “the general practise of the nation.” On p. 167 he quotes with approval the following from a Dissertation on the Influence of Opinions on Language and of Language on Opinions by the German Hebrew scholar, Johann David Michaelis (1717–91), professor of oriental languages at Göttingen: “Language is a democratical state where all the learning in the world does not warrant a citizen to supersede a received custom till he has convinced the whole nation that this custom was a mistake. Scholars are not so infallible that everything is to be referred to them.” Michaelis was one of the first to study the Bible scientifically.
1 p. viii.
2 p. ix.
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