American Language

by H. L. Mencken

  Dr. Menner argues that any list of conjugations of the verbs of the vulgate should include a “liberal intersprinkling of normal principal parts, at least as alternatives.” But it must be manifest that this intersprinkling would be of little significance unless it were accompanied by statistical evidence as to the prevalence of the varying forms in a typical section of the general population. That evidence is still lacking, but meanwhile one may certainly give some credit to the testimony of one’s ears. The vulgar, to be sure, occasionally say I saw, but no one who has ever listened to their speech attentively can doubt that they usually say I seen, just as, at the other end of the scale the illuminati occasionally say I done,10 but usually say I did. If the study of dialects had to include the investigation of all shadings up to the purest form of the standard speech, then the study of dialects would be vain, and indeed absurd. As Dr. Menner himself says, there are verbs which the people of his lowest class conjugate improperly “without exception,” e.g., to come and to run. These, at least, need not be outfitted with alternatives. In the case of other verbs, usage among the humble is not fixed, and both the standard preterites and perfect participles and their vulgar variants are heard. In yet other cases, all persons not downright illiterate reveal a distaste for certain forms, e.g., brung, fit and druv, and seldom employ them save in conscious attempts at waggishness. But all these verbs, save only those of the third class, actually belong to the vulgate, though they may not be used invariably, and their grammatical and syntactical history and relations deserve a great deal more patient study than they have got so far. The same thing is true of the pronouns of the common speech, and of all its other contents. The theory that it is somehow infra dig to investigate them is one that American scholarship can hardly entertain much longer.11

  Rather curiously, the sermo vulgus was for long as diligently neglected by the professional writers of the country as by the philologians. There are foreshadowings of it in “The Biglow Papers,” in “Huckleberry Finn” and in some of the frontier humor of the years before the Civil War, but the enormous dialect literature of the later Nineteenth Century left it almost untouched. Localisms in vocabulary and pronunciation were explored at length, but the general folk-speech went virtually unobserved. It is not to be found in “Chimmie Fadden”; it is not in “David Harum”; it is not even in the fables of George Ade. It began to appear in the stories of Helen Green during the first years of the century, but the business of reporting it with complete accuracy had to wait for Ring Lardner, a Chicago newspaper reporter, who began experimenting with it in 1908 or thereabout. In his grotesque but searching tales of baseball-players, pugilists, movie queens, song-writers and other such dismal persons he set down common American with the utmost precision, and yet with enough imagination to make his work a contribution of genuine and permanent value to the national literature. In any story of his taken at random it is possible to unearth almost every grammatical peculiarity of the vulgar speech, and he always resisted very stoutly the temptation to lay on its humors too thickly. Here, for example, are a few typical sentences from “The Busher’s Honeymoon”:12

  I and Florrie was married the day before yesterday just like I told you we was going to be.… You was to get married in Bedford, where not nothing is nearly half so dear.… The sum of what I have wrote down is $29.40…. Allen told me I should ought to give the priest $5…. I never seen him before.… I didn’t used to eat no lunch in the playing season except when I knowed I was not going to work.… I guess the meals has cost me all together about $1.50, and I have eat very little myself.… I was willing to tell her all about them two poor girls.… They must not be no mistake about who is the boss in my house. Some men lets their wife run all over them.… Allen has went to a college foot-ball game. One of the reporters give him a pass.… He called up and said he hadn’t only the one pass, but he was not hurting my feelings none.… The flat across the hall from this here one is for rent.… If we should of boughten furniture it would cost us in the neighborhood of $100, even without no piano.… I consider myself lucky to of found out about this before it was too late and somebody else had of gotten the tip.… It will always be ourn, even when we move away.… Maybe you could of did better if you had of went at it in a different way.… Both her and you is welcome at my house.… I never seen so much wine drank in my life.…

  Here are specimens to fit into most of Charters’s categories — verbs confused as to tense, pronouns confused as to case, double and even triple negatives, nouns and verbs disagreeing in number, have softened to of, n marking the possessive instead of s, like used in place of as, and so on. A study of the whole story would probably unearth all the remaining errors noted by Charters in Kansas City. Lardner’s baseball player, though he has pen in hand and is on his guard, and is thus very careful to write would not instead of wouldn’t and even am not instead of ain’t, provides us with a comprehensive and highly instructive panorama of popular linguistic habits. To him the forms of the subjunctive mood in the verb have no existence, so that shall has almost disappeared from his vocabulary, and adjectives and adverbs are indistinguishable, and the objective case in the pronoun is indicated only by word order. He uses the word that is simplest, the grammatical pattern that is handiest. And so he moves toward the philological millennium dreamed of by George T. Lanigan, when “the singular verb shall lie down with the plural noun, and a little conjunction shall lead them.”13 This vulgar American is a very fluent and even garrulous fellow, and he commonly pronounces his words distinctly, so that his grammatical felonies shine forth clearly. In the conversation of a London Cockney, a Yorkshire farm-laborer or a Scots hillman precisely similar attentats upon the canon are obscured by phonological muddiness, but the Americano gives his consonants their full values and is kind to his vowels. His vocabulary is much larger than his linguistic betters commonly assume. They labor under a tradition that the lowly manage to get through life with a few hundred or a few thousand words. That tradition, according to a recent writer on the subject,14 “originated with two English clergymen, one of whom stated that ‘some of the laborers in his parish had not three hundred words in their vocabulary,’ while the other, Archdeacon Farrar, said he ‘once listened for a long time together to the conversation of three peasants who were gathering apples among the boughs of an orchard, and as far as I could conjecture, the whole number of words they used did not exceed a hundred.’ ” The famous Max Müller gave imprudent support to this nonsense, and it was later propagated by Wilhelm Wundt, the psychologist, by Barrett Wendell, and by various other persons who should have known better. It has now been established by scientific inquiry that even children of five or six years have vocabularies of between 2000 and 3000 words, and that even the most stupid adults know at least 5000. The average American, indeed, probably knows nearly 5000 nouns. As for the educated, their vocabularies range from 30,000 words to maybe as many as 70,000.15

  2. THE VERB

  The chief grammatical peculiarities of vulgar American lie, as Charters shows, among the verbs and pronouns. The nouns in common use, in the main, are quite sound in form. Very often, of course, they do not belong to the vocabulary of English, but they at least belong to the vocabulary of American: the proletariat, setting aside transient slang, calls things by their proper names, and pronounces those names more or less correctly. The adjectives, too, are treated rather politely, and the adverbs, though commonly transformed into the forms of their corresponding adjectives, are not further mutilated. But the verbs and pronouns undergo changes which set off the common speech very sharply from both correct English and correct American. This process, of course, is only natural, for it is among the verbs and pronouns that nearly all the remaining inflections in English are to be found, and so they must bear the chief pressure of the influences that have been warring upon every sort of inflection since the earliest days. The hypothetical Indo-European language is assumed to have had eight cases of the noun; in Old English they fell to four, with a moribund
instrumental, identical in form with the dative, hanging in the air; in Middle English the dative and accusative began to decay; in Modern English they have disappeared altogether, save as ghosts to haunt grammarians. But we still have two plainly defined conjugations of the verb, and we still inflect it, in part at least, for number and person. And we yet retain an objective case of the pronoun, and inflect it for person, number and gender.

  Following are paradigms showing the conjugation of some of the more interesting verbs of the vulgate, with notes on variants:

  Present Preterite Perfect Participle

  am16 was17 been18

  attackt attackted19 attackted

  beat beaten,20 or beat beat

  become21 become became

  begin begun22 began

  bend bent bent

  bet bet bet

  bind bound bound

  Present Preterite Perfect Participle

  bite bitten23 bit

  bleed bled bled

  blow blowed, or blew, or blown24 blowed, or blown

  break broke, or broken25 broken, or broke

  bring brought, brung or brang26 brought, or brung

  build built built

  burn burnt27 burnt

  bust28 busted, or bust29 busted

  buy bought, or boughten bought, or boughten30

  cast casted casted

  catch caught, or catched31 caught, or catched

  choose chose, or chosen chosen, or chose32

  Present Preterite Perfect Participle

  climb uclumb33 clumb

  cling (to hold fast) clung, or clang clung

  cling (to ring) clang clung, or clang

  come come34 come, or came

  creep crep, or crope

  crow crope crowed

  cuss35 crew cussed

  cut cussed cut

  dare cut dared

  deal dared, or dast36 dealt

  dig dole dug

  dive dug dove37 dived

  do done38 done, or did

  drag drug drug

  draw drawed drawed, or drew

  dream drempt, or dremp39 drempt, or dremp

  drink drunk, or drank40 drank

  Present Preterite Perfect Participle

  drive drove41 drove

  drown drownded42 drownded

  eat et, or eat43 eat, ate, or et44

  fall fell, or fallen fell

  feed fed fed

  feel felt felt

  fetch45 fetched fetched

  fight fought46 fought

  find found found

  fine found47 found

  fling flung, or flang flung

  Present Preterite Perfect Participle

  flow flew flowed

  fly flew flew

  forbid forbid forbid

  forget forgot, or forgotten forgotten

  forsake forsaken forsook

  freeze frozen, or froze48 froze

  get49 got, or gotten gotten,50 or got

  give give, or given51 give, or gave

  glide glode52 glode

  go went went, or gone

  grope grope53 grope

  grow growed growed

  hang hung54 hung

  have had had, or hadden

  hear heerd, or hern heerd, or hern

  heat55 het, or heaten het, or heaten

  heave hove hove

  Present Preterite Perfect Participle

  help helped, or help helped, or help

  hide hidden56 hid

  hist57 histed histed

  hit hit hit

  hold helt helt, or held

  holler hollered hollered

  hurt hurt hurt

  keep kep kep, or kept

  kneel kneeled kneeled, or knelt

  know knowed knew, or knowed58

  lay laid, or lain lain, or laid

  lead led led

  lean lent lent

  leap lep lep

  learn lernt lernt

  lend59 loaned loaned

  let left60 left

  lie (to falsify) lied lied

  lie (to recline)61 laid, or lain lain, or laid

  light lit lit

  loosen62 loosened loosened

  lose lost lost

  make made made

  mean ment ment

  meet met met

  mow mown mowed

  pay paid paid

  plead pled pled

  prove proven, or proved proven63

  quit quit quit

  Present Preterite Perfect Participle

  raise raised64 raised

  recognize65 recognize recognize

  rench66 renched renched

  ride ridden67 rode68

  rile69 riled riled

  ring rung rang

  rise rose, or riz70 rose, or riz

  run run ran

  sass71 sassed, or sass sassed, or sass

  say sez, said, or say said

  see seen, see, or seed saw, or see72

  set73 set sat

  shake shaken, or shuck shook

  shine (to polish) shined shined

  shoe shoed shoed

  show shown shown

  shut74 shut shut

  sing sung sang

  sink sunk sank

  skin skun, or skan skun

  sleep slep slep, or slept

  slide slid slid

  sling slung, or slang slang, or slang

  Present Preterite Perfect Participle

  smell smelt smelt

  sneak snuck snuck

  speak spoke, or spoken spoke75

  speed speeded speeded

  spell spelt spelt

  spill spilt spilt

  spin span span, or spun

  spit spit spit

  spoil spoilt spoilt

  spring sprung sprang

  steal stole stole

  sting stang stung

  stink stank stunk, or stank

  strike struck struck

  sweat sweat76 sweat

  sweep swep swep

  swell swole swollen

  swim swum swam

  swing swang swung

  take taken, or tuck took,77 or tuck

  teach78 taught taught

  tear torn tore

  tell tole79 tole

  tend80 tended, tend, or tent tended

  think thought81 thought

  throw throwed, or thrown throwed, or threw82

  wake woke woken

  Present Preterite Perfect Participle

  wear wore wore

  weep wep wep

  wet wet wet

  win won, wan, or win83 won, or wan

  wish84 wished wished

  wring wrung, or wrang wrang, or wrung

  write written wrote85

  A glance at these paradigms is enough to show several general tendencies, the most obvious of which is the transfer of verbs from the strong conjugation with vowel change to the weak without it, and vice versa. The former began before the Norman Conquest, and was marked during the Middle English period. Chaucer used growed for grew in the prologue to “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” and rised for rose and smited for smote are in John Purvey’s edition of the Bible, c. 1385. Many of these transformations were afterward abandoned, but a large number survived, for example, climbed for clomb as the preterite of to climb, and melted for molt as the preterite of to melt. Others showed themselves during the early part of the Modern English period. Comed as the perfect participle of to come, and digged as the preterite of to dig are both in Shakespeare, and the latter is also in Milton and in the Authorized Version of the Bible. This tendency went furthest, of course, in the vulgar speech, and it has been embalmed in the English dialects. I seen and I knowed, for example, are common to all of them. But during the Seventeenth Century, for some reason to me unknown, there arose a contrary tendency — that is, toward strong conjugations. The vulgar speech of Ireland, which preserves many Seventeenth Century forms, shows it plainly. Ped for paid, gother for gathered, and ruz for raised are still heard there, and
P. W. Joyce says flatly that the Irish, “retaining the old English custom [i.e., the custom of the period of Cromwell’s invasion, c. 1650], have a leaning toward the strong inflection.”86 Certain forms of the early American national period, now reduced to the estate of localisms, were also survivors of the Seventeenth Century.

  “The three great causes of change in language,” says A. H. Sayce, “may be briefly described as (1) imitation or analogy, (2) a wish to be clear and emphatic, and (3) laziness. Indeed, if we choose to go deep enough we might reduce all three causes to the general one of laziness, since it is easier to imitate than to say something new.”87 This tendency to take well-worn paths, paradoxically enough, seems to be responsible both for the transfer of verbs from the strong to the weak declension, and for the transfer of certain others from the weak to the strong. A verb in everyday use tends almost inevitably to pull less familiar verbs with it, whether it be strong or weak. Thus, fed as the preterite of to feed and led as the preterite of to lead eased the way in the American vulgate for pled as the preterite of to plead; and rung as plainly performed the same office for brung, and drove for dove and hove, and stole for dole, and won for skun. Contrariwise, the same combination of laziness and imitativeness worked toward the regularization of certain verbs that were historically irregular. One sees the antagonistic pull of the two influences in the case of verbs ending in -ow. The analogy of knew and grew suggests snew as the preterite of to snow, and it is sometimes encountered in the American vulgate. But meanwhile knew and grew have been themselves succumbing to the greater regularity of knowed and growed. So snew, losing support, grows rare and is in palpable decay, but knowed and growed show great vigor, as do many of their analogues. The substitution of heerd for heard also presents a case of logic and convenience supporting analogy. The form is suggested by feared, cheered, cleared, etc., but its main advantage lies in the fact that it gets rid of a vowel change, always an impediment to easy speech.