American Language
Page 55
But though he was thus forced to give occasional ground, and in more than one case held out in vain, Webster lived to see many of his reforms adopted by his countrymen. The influence of his Spelling Book was really stupendous. It took the place in the schools of Dilworth’s “Aby-sel-pha,” the favorite of the Revolutionary generation, and maintained its authority for nearly a century. Until Lyman Cobb entered the lists with his “New Spelling Book,” its innumerable editions had no really formidable rivalry, and even then it held its own. I have a New York edition, dated 1848, which contains an advertisement stating that the annual sale at that time was more than a million copies, and that more than 30,000,000 copies had been sold since 1783. In the late 40’s the publishers, George F. Cooledge & Bro., devoted the whole capacity of the fastest steam press in the United States to the printing of it. This press turned out 525 copies an hour, or 5,250 a day. It was “constructed expressly for printing Webster’s ‘Elementary Spelling Book’ [the name had been changed in 1829] at an expense of $5,000.” Down to 1865, 42,000,000 copies had been sold, and down to 1889, 62,000,000. The appearance of Webster’s first Dictionary, in 1806, greatly strengthened his influence. Four other dictionaries had been published in the United States since 1798 — Samuel Johnson, Jr.’s, John Elliott’s, Caleb Alexander’s and William Woodridge’s — but Noah’s quickly dominated the popular field, and in those days dictionaries were accepted even more gravely than they are today.7 Thus he left the ending in -or triumphant over the ending in -our, he shook the security of the ending in -re, he rid American spelling of a great many doubled consonants, he established the s in words of the defense group, and he gave currency to many characteristic American spellings, notably jail, wagon, plow, mold and ax. These spellings still survive, and are practically universal in the United States today; their use constitutes one of the most obvious differences between written English and written American. Moreover, they have founded a general tendency, the effects of which reach far beyond the field actually traversed by Webster himself. His reforms, of course, did not go unchallenged by the guardians of tradition. A glance at the literature of the first years of the Nineteenth Century shows that most of the more pretentious authors of the time ignored them, though they were quickly adopted by the newspapers. For example, the Rev. Aaron Bancroft’s “Life of Washington” (1807) contains -our endings in all such words as honor, ardor and favor. Washington Irving, who began to publish in the same year, also inclined toward them, and so did William Cullen Bryant, whose “Thanatopsis” came out in 1817, and most of the other literary bigwigs of the era followed suit. After the appearance of the “American Dictionary” in 1828 a formal battle was joined, with Lyman Cobb and Joseph E. Worcester as the chief formal opponents of the reformer. His inconsistencies gave them a handy weapon for use against him — until it began to be noticed that the orthodox English spelling was quite as inconsistent. He sought to change acre to aker, but left lucre unchanged. He removed the final f from bailiff, mastiff, plaintiff and pontiff, but left it in distaff. He changed c to s in words of the offense class, but left the c in fence. He changed the ck in frolick, physick, etc., into a simple c, but restored it in such derivatives as frolicksome. He deleted the silent u in mould, but left it in court. These slips were made the most of by Cobb in a furious pamphlet in excessively fine print, printed in 1831.8 He also detected Webster in the frequent faux pas of using spellings in his definitions and explanations that conflicted with the spellings he advocated. Various other purists joined in the attack, and it was carried on with great fury on the appearance of Worcester’s Dictionary, in 1846, three years after Webster’s death. The partisans of conformity rallied round Worcester, and for a while the controversy took on all the rancor of a personal quarrel. According to McKnight,9 Harvard University required candidates for matriculation to follow Worcester’s spellings “as late as the last decade of the Nineteenth Century.”
Both Cobb and Worcester, in the end, accepted the -or ending and so surrendered on what was really the main issue, but various other champions arose to carry on the war. Edward S. Gould, in a once famous essay,10 denounced the whole Websterian orthography with the utmost fury, and Bryant, reprinting this philippic in the Evening Post, said that on account of Webster “the English language has been undergoing a process of corruption for the last quarter of a century,” and offered to contribute to a fund to have Gould’s denunciation “read twice a year in every school-house in the United States, until every trace of Websterian spelling disappears from the land.” But Bryant was forced to admit that, even in 1856, the chief novelties of the Connecticut schoolmaster “who taught millions to read but not one to sin” were “adopted and propagated by the largest publishing house, through the columns of the most widely circulated monthly magazine, and through one of the ablest and most widely circulated newspapers in the United States” — which is to say, the Tribune under Greeley. The last academic attack was delivered by Bishop A. C. Coxe in 1886, and he contented himself with the resigned statement that “Webster has corrupted our spelling sadly.” T. R. Lounsbury, with his active interest in spelling reform, ranged himself on the side of Webster, and effectively disposed of the controversy by showing that the great majority of his spellings were supported by precedents quite as respectable as those behind the fashionable English spellings. In Lounsbury’s opinion, a great deal of the opposition to them was no more than a symptom of antipathy to all things American among certain Englishmen and of subservience to all things English among certain Americans.11
Thus Webster gradually conquered the country, and many, though certainly not most, of the reformed spellings he advocated at one time or another are the American standard today. Moreover, not a few of them have been adopted in England, and others seem to be making headway there. This invasion, of course, does not go without resistance, and every now and then there is an uproar in the English papers against American orthography, matching in virulence the perennial uproars against American slang. Back in 1892 Brander Matthews noted sadly “the force, fervor and frequency of the objurgations in the columns of the Saturday Review and of the Athenœum.”12 Those objurgations continue to be launched in the more finicky section of the English press to this day. Here is a specimen from a letter in the Literary Supplement of the London Times, the object of the assault being an edition of Walter Pater’s “Marius the Epicurean” with certain somewhat gingery concessions to American usage:
Hardly a page but is blistered with hideous vulgarisms such as offenses, skillful, fiber, theater, somber, traveling, moldering, marvelous, jeweler, worshiper, esthetic; things which to Pater, one feels, would have been merely horrible. Nor is there even the grace of consistency in evil-doing; since we get mouldering, and moldering, favour with favor four pages farther on, and traveller on dust-cover and title-page against traveler throughout the book.
The reason? Small doubt that these monstrous hybrids in “English” publications of “English” literature are bred by mass-production out of Copyright Law; making the best of both worlds by slipping into an English series-cover a book printed from stereo-plates made in U.S.A.
Surely the re-issue of English classics in the “nu speling” from “America” might be left to American publishers. And if it pays London to cater for U.S.A. readers, one might at least expect some warning for those who prefer the King’s English undefiled: such as asterisks in the list against those volumes in which the “nu speling” is used, or the use of the “nu speling” itself in the covers, title-pages, and advertisements.13
2. THE ADVANCE OF AMERICAN SPELLING
But such uncompromising defenders of English spelling lead a forlorn hope. Not only is there a general movement toward American forms in the newspapers — including the Times itself —; there is also a general yielding by English “authorities.” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Brothers Fowler, which came out in 1914, offers plenty of examples. The authors say in their preface that they “stop short of recognizing forms that at p
resent strike every reader as Americanisms,” but they surely go far enough. In all the words ending in -ise and -isation the English s is changed to the American z. They prefer leveler to leveller and riveted to rivetted, though clinging sentimentally to traveller. They retain the first e in judgement, but omit it from likeable, and even go ahead of American usage by omitting it from mileage. They dismiss the -or ending as “entirely non-British,” but concede that it is necessary in horror and torpor. Finally, they swap the English y for the American i in tire, cider and siphon, recognize a as a variant for y in pyjama, concede that jail is as good as gaol, prefer the American asphalt to the English asphalte, toilet to toilette, and balk to baulk, and admit program, wagon, check (on a bank) and skeptic without precisely endorsing them. The monumental Oxford Dictionary upon which the Concise Oxford is grounded shows many silent concessions, and quite as many open yieldings — for example, in the case of ax, which is admitted to be “better than axe on every ground.” Moreover, many English lexicographers tend to march ahead of it, outstripping the liberalism of its editor, the late Sir James A. H. Murray. In 1914, for example, Sir James was still protesting against dropping the first e from judgement, but two years earlier the “Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary,” edited by Horace Hart,14 Controller of the Oxford University Press, had dropped judgement altogether. “The Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary” was, and is, an authority approved by the Master Printers’ and Allied Trades’ Association of London, the Edinburgh Master Printers’ Association, the Belfast Printing Trades Employers’ Association, and the executive committee of the London Association of Correctors of the Press, i.e., proofreaders. Hart is now dead, but the seventh edition (1933), revised by some unnamed hand, continues to show a great many characteristic American spellings. For example, it recommends the use of jail and jailer in place of the English gaol and gaoler, drops the final e from asphalte and stye, changes the y to i in cyder, cypher and syren, and advocates the same change in tyre, drops the redundant t from nett, changes burthen to burden, spells wagon with one g, prefers fuse to fuze, and takes the e out of storey. “Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford,” also edited by Hart (with the advice of Sir James Murray and Dr. Henry Bradley) is another very influential English authority.15 It gives its imprimatur to bark (a ship), cipher, siren, jail, story, tire and wagon, and even advocates kilogram, tiro and omelet. Cassell’s New English Dictionary16 goes quite as far. Like the “Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary” and the Concise Oxford it clings to the -our and -re endings and to the redundant a in such words as æsthete and anœsthesia, but it prefers jail to gaol, net to nett, story to storey, asphalt to asphalte, tire to tyre, wagon to waggon, vial to phial, and pygmy to pigmy.
There is, however, much confusion among these authorities; the English are still unable to agree as to which American spellings they will adopt and which they will keep under the ban for a while longer. The Concise Oxford and the “Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary” prefer bark to barque and the late Poet Laureate, Dr. Robert Bridges,17 adopted it boldly, but Cassell still clings to barque. Cassell favors baritone; the Oxford and the A. and P. are for barytone. The Oxford is for czar; Cassell and the A. and P. for tsar. The Oxford admits program; Cassell and the A. and P. stick to programme. Cassell and the A. and P. adopt the American scimitar; the Oxford retains the English scimetar. All three have abandoned enquire for inquire, but they remain faithful to encumbrance, endorse and enclose, though the Oxford and Cassell list indorsation and the Oxford also gives indorsee. Both the Oxford and Cassell have abandoned œther for ether, but they cling to œsthetic and œtiology. Neither gives up plough, cheque, connexion, mould, mollusc or kerb, and Cassell even adorns the last-named with an astounding compound credited to “American slang,” to wit, kerbstone broker. All the English authorities that I have consulted prefer the -re and -our endings; nevertheless, the London Nation adopted the -or ending in 1919,18 and George Bernard Shaw had adopted it years before,19 as had Walter Savage Landor before him. The British Board of Trade, in attempting to fix the spelling of various scientific terms, has often come to grief. Thus, it detaches the final -me from gramme in such compounds as kilogram and milligram, but insists upon gramme when the word stands alone. In American usage gram is now common, and scarcely challenged. A number of spellings, some of them American, are trembling on the brink of acceptance in both countries. Among them is rime (for rhyme). This spelling was correct in England until about 1530, but its recent revival was of American origin. It is accepted by the Concise Oxford, by the editors of the “Cambridge History of English Literature,” and by many English periodicals, including Notes and Queries, but not by Cassell. Grewsome has got a footing in both countries, but the weight of English opinion is still against it. Develop (instead of develope) has gone further in both. So has engulf, for engulph. And most English newspapers have begun to drop the redundant a in medieval, esophagus, etc. But they still spell bologna (sausage) balony, thus rivaling but not imitating Al Smith’s baloney.
There is not much movement of English spellings in this direction; the traffic, as in the case of neologisms, runs heavily the other way. At Bar Harbor, in Maine, a few of the more Anglophil Summer residents are at pains to put harbour instead of harbor on their stationery, but the local postmaster still continues to stamp all mail Bar Harbor, the legal name of the place.20 In the same way American haberdashers of the more doggy sort sometimes advertise pyjamas instead of pajamas, just as they advertise braces instead of suspenders, and boots instead of shoes. But this benign folly does not go very far. Even the most fashionable jewelers in Fifth avenue still deal in jewelry, not jewellery. The English ketchup has made some progress against the American catsup, and cheque has come into use of late among American accountants, but only as a convenient means of distinguishing between a bank check (to which it is applied) and check in the sense of a verification. Sometimes an American book, intended also for circulation in England, is printed in what American printers call English spelling. This English spelling, at best, is a somewhat lame compromise, and seems to be passing out. As used at the Riverside Press,21 it embraced until a few years ago, all the -our endings and the following further forms:
cheque
chequered
connexion
dreamt
faggot
forgather
forgo
grey
inflexion
jewellery
leapt
premiss (in logic)
waggon
But in the latest edition of the Riverside Press’s Handbook of Style22 all save the -our endings have been omitted, and I am informed by Mr. Henry A. McLaughlin of the Press that English spellings are used “only when we are doing books by English authors, and the English author prefers to have us follow the English usage rather than our own.” Another great American press, that of the J. S. Cushing Company, follows a list which includes both the -our endings and these words:
behove
gaiety
lacquey
shily
briar
gaol
moustache
slily
cheque
gipsy
nought
staunch
connexion
inflexion
pigmy
storey (floor)
drily
instal
postillion
verandah
enquire
judgment
reflexion
waggon23
This list, along with the -our endings, appears also in the style-book of the Macmillan Company, the largest of the English-American publishing firms.24 It would seem to need revision, for, as we have seen, the English themselves have begun to abandon gaol, storey, waggon, judgement and pigmy, and are showing a considerable uncertainty about enquire. “The Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary,” indeed, now prefers the American brier to the English briar, dry
ly to drily, install to instal, lackey to lacquey, naught to nought, postilion to postillion, shyly to shily and veranda to verandah, and allows reflection for reflexion. Thus there is little of English spelling left save the -our and -re words and the charges of fraud. The Government Printing Office at Washington has followed “Webster’s New International” since 1864, when the Superintendent of Public Printing (he became the Public Printer in 1895) was authorized by law to determine “the forms and style in which the printing … ordered by any of the departments shall be executed.” He issued his first Style Manual in 1887 and it has been revised a number of times since. Down to 1929 it was edited by a board of employés of the Government Printing Office, but in that year representatives of the State, Commerce, Agriculture and Interior Departments and of the Smithsonian Institution were invited to participate. A copy of this work is in the proofroom of nearly every American magazine and newspaper. It favors American spelling in all cases, and its rules are generally observed. The Atlantic Monthly, alone among American magazines of wide circulation, is inclined to be more conservative, probably under the influence of Worcester. It uses the -re ending in words of the center class, retains the u in mould, moult and moustache, retains the redundant terminal letters in such words as gramme, programme and quartette, retains the final e in axe and adze, and clings to the double vowels in such words as mediœval and anœsthesia. In addition, it uses the English plough, whiskey, clue and gruesome, differentiates between the noun practice and the verb to practise, and makes separate words of to ensure, to make certain, and to insure, to protect or indemnify.25
But American spelling is plainly better than English spelling, and in the long run it seems sure to prevail. The superiority of jail to gaol is made manifest by the common mispronunciation of the latter by Americans who find it in print, making it rhyme with coal. Other changes also carry their own justification. Hostler is obviously better English, etymologically speaking, than ostler, and cozy is more nearly phonetic than cosy. Curb has analogues in curtain, curdle, curfew, curl, currant, curry, curve, curtesy, curse, currency, cursory, cur, curt and many other common words: kerb has very few, and of them only kerchief and kernel are in general use. Moreover, the English themselves use curb as a verb and in all noun sense save that shown in kerbstone. Such forms as monolog and dialog still offend the fastidious, but their merit is not to be gainsaid. Nor would it be easy to argue logically against gram, toilet, mustache, ax, caliber, gayety, gray, anesthetic, draft and tire. Something may be said, even, for chlorid, brusk, lacrimal, gage, eolian, niter, sulfite and phenix,26 which still wait for general recognition. A number of anomalies remain. The American retention of e in forego and whiskey is not easily explained, nor the unphonetic substitution of s for z in fuse, nor the persistence of the y in gypsy and pygmy, nor the occasional survival of a foreign form, as in cloture.27 Here we have plain vagaries, surviving in spite of attack by orthographers. Webster, in one of his earlier books, denounced the k in skeptic as a “mere pedantry,” but later on he adopted it. In the same way pygmy, gray and mollusk have been attacked, but they still remain sound American. The English themselves have many more such illogical forms to account for. They have to write offensive and defensive (nouns), despite their fidelity to the c in offence and defence28 They hesitate to abandon programme, but never think of using diagramme or telegramme. Worst of all, they are inconsistent in their use of the -our ending, the chief glory of orthodox English orthography.29 In American the u appears only in Saviour and then only when the word is used in the biblical sense. In England it is used in most words of that class, but omitted from agent nouns, e.g., ambassador, emperor and progenitor, and also from various other words, e.g., horror and torpor. It is commonly argued in defense of it over there that it serves to distinguish French loan-words from words derived directly from the Latin, but Gilbert Tucker shows30 that this argument is quite nonsensical, even assuming that the distinction has any practical utility. Ancestor, bachelor, error, exterior, governor, metaphor, mirror, senator, superior, successor and torpor all came into English from the French, and yet British usage sanctions spelling them without the u. On the other hand it is used in arbour, behaviour, clangour, flavour and neighbour, “which are not French at all.” Tucker goes on: