American Language
Page 88
Du foolar icke mej, sa jag.
Har du nå’n transferticket sa han?
Det är inte nå’n af din bissniss, sa jag.
Mr. John A. Stahlberg, of Plentywood, Mont., tells me that he once overheard the following dialogue between a farmer’s wife and her son:
Edvard, kom an,31 nu! (Edward, come on, now!)
Men, Mamma, ja må finischa de’ här; ja må stäph vajern på den här fensposten. (But, Mamma, I must finish this-here; I must staple the wire on this-here fence-post).
Edvard! Nu näver du majndar! Nu kommer du an! Mäka mej inte mäd, nu, Edvard! (Edward! Now never you mind! Now you come on! Don’t make me mad, now, Edward!)
There are phonetic changes in some of the loan-words taken into American-Swedish. J commonly becomes y, to accord with its pronunciation in Swedish, e.g., yust (just), and th often becomes d, e.g., dat (that). But these changes are common in the speech of many other kinds of immigrants. Perhaps more characteristic is the occasional change from y to g, e.g., funnig (funny) and kresig (crazy). The common American belief that all Swedes, in trying to speak Engish, use been in place of am, is, are, was, were, had been, etc., and pronounce it bane is hardly justified by the observed facts. It may be done but it is certainly not common, even on the lower levels. “I can confidently say,” says Robert Beckman, himself a Swedish-American, “that I have never heard one utter I bane in ordinary conversation.… Perhaps inaccurate linguistic observers — listeners, rather — thought they heard bane where a trained ear would have caught something entirely different, though what, I dare not venture to state.”32
The Swedes began to come to the United States before the Civil War, and there were many thousands of them in the upper Middle West by 1880. In 1930 there were 1,562,703 persons of Swedish stock in the country — 595,250 born in Sweden, 676,523 born here of Swedish parentage, and 290,930 born here of partly Swedish parentage. Of the whole number 615,465 gave their mother-tongue as Swedish. They were thus the seventh largest foreign bloc in the country, being surpassed only by the immigrants from England, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Poland and Russia. They have no daily papers, but they support twenty-seven weeklies (1935).33
d. Dano-Norwegian
The pioneer study of the Dano-Norwegian spoken by Norwegian immigrants to the United States was published by Dr. Nils Flaten, of Northfield, Minn., in 1900.34 Two years later Dr. George T. Flom, then of Iowa State University and now of the University of Illinois, followed with a study of the dialects spoken in the Koshkonong settlement in Southern Wisconsin,35 and since then he has continued his investigation of the subject.36 The immigration of Danes and Norwegians began more than a century ago, and has been heaviest into the farming areas of the upper Middle West, though there are also large settlements of both peoples in some of the big cities, especially Chicago and Brooklyn. In 1930 there were 347,852 natives of Norway in the country, 476, 663 persons of Norwegian parentage, and 275,583 of partly Norwegian parentage, or 1,100,098 in all. In the same year there were 179,474 natives of Denmark, 219,152 persons of Danish parentage and 130,516 of partly Danish parentage, or 529,142 in all. The Dano-Norwegian language, of course, shows considerable dialectical variations, but they are not important for the present purpose. About thirty-five periodicals in it are published in the United States, including one daily paper.
Dr. Flom’s admirable studies deal mainly with the spoken language, and his examples of loan-words are given in a phonetic alphabet which often differs considerably from the alphabet used in Norwegian-American publications. When a word beginning with an unstressed initial vowel is borrowed, he says, the vowel is often lost. Thus, account becomes kaunt, election becomes leckshen, and assessor becomes sessar. “The dissyllabic noun efekt (effect) is an exception, as is also the word aper ashen (operation).” The word edzukashen (education) likewise keeps its initial vowel, for the consonantal sound dz would be hardly admissible in Norwegian at the beginning of a word. The vowel in an unstressed initial syllable is commonly suppressed, even when it is not the first letter, as in spraisparti (surprise-party) and stiffiket (certificate). In the latter case a transition form, settifiket, has been lost. There is also some loss of vowels in medial syllables, as in bufflo (buffalo), fektri (factory), lakris (licorice) and probishen (prohibition). Consonants are lost less often, but there are examples in paler (parlor), korna (corner), potret (portrait) and blaekbor (blackboard). In the last case the final -bor is not the English board but the Norwegian bord, having the same meaning and pronounced bor. In insurance the last syllable is changed to ings. The sound of h often disappears in compounds, as in brikkus (brick-house), fremus (frame-house) and purus (poor-house). In cases where consonants are duplicated they may be reduced to a single consonant, as in fretren (freight-train), or separated by a vowel, as in fensestrefcher (fence-stretcher). Sometimes an inorganic consonant appears, as in hikril (hickory), gofert (gopher) and brand (bran). The sound of th commonly becomes t, as in latt (lath) and timoti (timothy); rs becomes ss, as in hosspaur (horsepower); and final dz becomes s, as in launs (lounge) and in the proper name Kemris (Cambridge).37 Miss Anne Simley, in a report on Norwegian phonology in Minnesota,38 says that the common impression that y is always substituted for j and dj is not well founded. “The error is most often made,” she says, “by Norwegians who have learned to read English after learning to read Norwegian, in which language the letter j has the sound usually expressed in [English] writing by y.” For the same reason v is substituted for w.
Dr. Flaten supplies the following examples of American-Norwegian, gathered near Northfield, Minn.:39
Mrs. Olsen va aafel bisi idag; hun maatte beke kek. (Mrs. Olsen was awfully busy today; she had to bake cake.)
Reilraaden ha muva schappa sine. (The railroad has moved its shops.)
Je kunde ikke faa reset saa mye kaes at je fik betalt morgesen i farmen min. (I couldn’t raise enough cash to pay the mortgage on my farm.)
Det meka ingen difrens. (That makes no difference.)
Hos’n fila du? Puddi gud. (How do you feel? Pretty good.)
This dialect, says Dr. Flaten, is “utterly unintelligible to a Norseman recently from the old country. In the case of many words the younger generation cannot tell whether they are English or Norse. I was ten years old before I found that such words as paatikkel (particular), staebel (stable), fens (fence) were not Norse, but mutilated English. I had often wondered that poleit, trubble, söp-peréter were so much like the English words polite, trouble, separator. So common is this practice of borrowing that no English word is refused admittance into this vocabulary provided it can stand the treatment it is apt to get. Some words, indeed, are used without any appreciable difference in pronunciation, but more generally the root, or stem, is taken and Norse inflections are added as required by the rules of the language.” Sometimes the English loan-word and a corresponding Norwegian word exist side by side, but in such cases, according to Dr. Flom,40 “there is a prevalent and growing tendency” to drop the latter, save in the event that it acquires a special meaning. “Very often in such cases,” he continues, “the English word is shorter and easier to pronounce or the Norse equivalent is a purely literary word — that is, does not actually exist in the dialect of the settlers.… In the considerable number of cases where the loan-word has an exact equivalent in Norse dialect it is often very difficult to determine the reason for the loan, though it would be safe to say that it is frequently due simply to a desire on the part of the speaker to use English words, a thing that becomes very pronounced in the jargon that is sometimes heard.”
Dr. Flom’s vocabulary of loan-words includes 735 nouns, 235 verbs, 43 adjectives and 7 verbs, or 1025 words in all — a very substantial part of the total vocabulary of the Norwegian-Americans of rural Wisconsin. Dr. Flaten’s earlier vocabulary runs to almost 550 words. The Dano-Norwegian øl is abandoned for the English beer, which becomes bir. Tønde succumbs to baerel, barel or baril (barrel), frokost to brekkfaest (breakfast), skat to taex (tax),
and so on. The verbs yield in the same way: vaeljuéte (valuate), titsche (teach), katte (cut), klém (claim), savére (survey), refjuse (refuse). And the adjectives: plén (plain), jelös (jealous), kjokfuldt (chock-full), krésé (crazy), aebel (able), klir (clear), pjur (pure), pur (poor). And the adverbs and adverbial phrases: isé (easy), reit evé (right away), aept to (apt to), allreit (all right). Dr. Flaten lists some grotesque compound words, e.g., nekk-töi (necktie),41 kjaens-bogg (chinch-bug), gitte long (get along), staets-praessen (state’s prison), traevling-maen (traveling-man), uxe-jogg (yoke of oxen). Pure Americanisms are not infrequent, e.g., bösta (busted), bés-baal (baseball), dipo (depot), jukre (to euchre), kaemp-mid’n (camp-meeting), kjors (chores), magis (moccasin), malasi (molasses), munke-rins (monkey-wrench), raad-bas (road-boss), sjante (shanty), strit-kar (street-car), tru trin (through train). The decayed American adverb is boldly absorbed, as in han file baed (he feels bad). “That this lingo,” says Dr. Flaten, “will ever become a dialect of like importance with the Pennsylvania-Dutch is hardly possible.… The Norwegians are among those of our foreign-born citizens most willing to part with their mother tongue.” But meanwhile it is spoken by many thousands of them, and it will probably linger in isolated farming regions of the upper Middle West for years.42
e. Icelandic
The only study of American Icelandic in English that I have been able to unearth is a paper on its loan-nouns, published more than thirty years ago by Vilhjálmar Stefánsson, the Arctic explorer, who was born in the Icelandic colony at Árnes, Manitoba, on Lake Winnipeg.43 But there is considerable interest in the subject among the Icelanders, both at home and in this country, and Dr. Stefan Einars-son of the Johns Hopkins University, a native of Iceland, has been, for some years past, collecting materials relating to it, and has in contemplation a treatise on it. The dialect is called Vestur-íslenska, and shows many of the characters that we have found in American-Swedish and American-Dano-Norwegian. But, since it is a much more ancient language than the tongues of the Scandinavian mainland, it is more highly inflected, and its inflections are almost invariably fastened upon its borrowings from American English. “No word,” says Mr. Stefánsson, “can be used in Icelandic without being assigned a gender-form distinguished by the post-positive article.” Thus river becomes rifurinn (masculine), road becomes rótin (feminine) and depot becomes dípóidh44 (neuter). In general, either formal or semantical similarities to Icelandic words determine the gender of the loan-words. The effect is sometimes curious. Thus the American candy, ice-cream, saloon, sidewalk, township and cornstarch are all neuter, but beer, boss, cowboy and populist are masculine, and tie (railroad), prohibition and siding are feminine. In the case of some words usage varies. Thus caucus has no fixed gender; different speakers make it masculine, feminine or neuter. Cracker, automobile, field, telephone and turkey are other such words. Banjo may be either feminine or neuter, bicycle may be either masculine or neuter, and bronco may be either masculine or feminine. The gender of loan-words tends to be logical, but it is not always so. Farmer is always masculine and so is engineer, and nurse is always feminine, but dressmaker is given the masculine post-positive article, becoming dressmakerinn. However, when the pronoun is substituted, in speaking of a dressmaker, hún, which is feminine, is commonly used. Words ending in l or ll are usually considered neuter, e.g., baseball, corral, hotel, hall. “A striking example,” says Mr. Stefánsson, “is the term constable. The natural gender is evidently masculine and the Icelandic equivalent, lögreglumathur, is masculine; yet constable is usually employed as a neuter, though occasionally as a masculine.” Words in -er fall under the influence of the Icelandic masculine nouns in -art, denoting agency, and so usually become masculine, e.g., director, ginger, mower, parlor, peddler, reaper, separator. Republican and socialist are masculine, but democrat is neuter. Cash-book, clique, contract, election and grape are feminine for the reasons stated onthis page. Of the 467 loan-nouns listed by Mr. Stefánsson, 176 are neuters and 137 are masculines. There are but 44 clear feminines, though 80 others are sometimes feminine. Here are some specimens of Vestur-íslenska in action:
Eg baudh honum inn á salún og atladhi adh tríta hann a einum bír, en harm vildi bae nó míns adh eg trítadhi: heldur vildi hann adh vidh skyldum rafflá fyrir drykk. (I invited him to a saloon and intended to treat him to a beer, but he would by no means let me treat him; he preferred that we should raffle [throw dice?] for a drink.)
Hvernig fílardhu? (How do you feel?)
Rétt eftir adh vidh höfdhum krossadh rifurinn komum vidh á dípóidh og fórum út úr karinu. (Right after we had crossed the river we came to the depot and left the car.)
Bae djísos, thú ert rangur. (By Jesus, you are wrong.)
Mig vantar ekki ad láta fúla mig sona. (I don’t want to be fooled like that.)45
The Icelanders sometimes borrow the sense of English loan-words which resemble Icelandic words of quite different meaning. For example, in the phrase “adh ganga brotinn á gemlingshús” (to go broke in a gambling-house), brotinn is an Icelandic word which always means broken, not broke, and gemlings is the genitive of the Icelandic noun gemlingur, meaning a yearling sheep. Similarly, the English verb to beat, which has been generally taken in, collides with the Icelandic verb bíta (to bite). Dr. Einarsson tells me that there have been a number of discussions of Vestur-íslenska in Heimskringla and Lögberg, the Icelandic weeklies published at Winnipeg. It has also been put to literary use by the Icelandic American novelist, J. M. Bjarnason,46 and by Kristján N. Júlíus, “the Icelandic Bobby Burns.”47 The first Icelanders to come to the United States settled in Utah in 1855. The Census of 1930 showed 7413 persons of Icelandic stock in the country — 2768 born in Iceland, 3177 born here of Icelandic parentage, and the rest born here of partly Icelandic parentage. There are many more across the Canadian border, especially in Manitoba. The American Icelanders print no periodicals, but at Winnipeg, in addition to the two weeklies that I have mentioned, there are various other publications.
f. Yiddish
Yiddish, though it is spoken by Jews, and shows a high admixture of Hebrew,48 and is written in Hebrew characters, is basically a Middle High German dialect, greatly corrupted, not only by Hebrew, but also by Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, and, in the United States, English. At the Census of 1930, 1,222,658 Jews gave Yiddish as their mother-tongue; in all probability another million could then speak it, or, at all events, understand it. Since the cutting off of immigration from Eastern Europe it has been declining, and there are many Jews who view it hostilely as a barbaric jargon, and hope to see it extirpated altogether; nevertheless, there are still thirty-seven Yiddish periodicals in the country, including twelve daily newspapers, and one of the latter, the Jewish Daily Forward of New York, had a circulation of nearly 125,000 in 1935.
The impact of American-English upon Yiddish has been tremendous; in fact, it has been sufficient to create two Yiddishes. “The one,” says Dr. Ch. Zhitlowsky, “is the wild-growing Yiddish-English jargon, the potato-chicken-kitchen language; the other is the cultivated language of Yiddish culture all over the world.”49 But though Dr. Zhitlowsky and his fellow Yiddishists may rail against that potato-chicken-kitchen language, it is the Yiddish of the overwhelming majority of American Jews. In it such typical Americanisms as sky-scraper, loan-shark, graft, bluffer, faker, bood-ler, gangster, crook, guy, kike, piker, squealer, bum, cadet, boom, bunch, pants, vest, loafer, jumper, stoop, saleslady, ice-box and raise are quite as good Yiddish as they are American. For all the objects and acts of everyday life the Jews commonly use English terms, e.g., boy, chair, window, carpet, floor, dress, hat, watch, ceiling, consumption, property, trouble, bother, match, change, party, birthday, picture, paper (only in the sense of newspaper), gambler, show, hall, kitchen, store, bedroom, key, mantelpiece, closet, lounge, broom, table-cloth, paint, landlord, fellow, tenant, bargain, sale, haircut, razor, basket, school, scholar, teacher, baby, mustache, butcher, grocery, dinner, street and walk. In the fa
ctories there is the same universal use of shop, wages, foreman, boss, sleeve, collar, cuff, button, cotton, thimble, needle, machine, pocket, remnant, piece-work, sample, etc. Many of these words have quite crowded out the corresponding Yiddish terms, so that the latter are seldom heard. For example, ingle, meaning boy (Ger. jungel, a diminutive of junge, a boy), has been wholly obliterated by the English word. A Yiddish-speaking Jew almost invariably refers to his son as his boy, though strangely enough he calls his daughter his meidel. “Die boys mit die meidlach haben a good time” is excellent American Yiddish. In the same way fenster has been completely displaced by window, though tür (door) has been left intact. Tisch (table) also remains, but chair is always used, probably because few of the Jews had chairs in the Old Country. There the beinkel, a bench without a back, was in use; chairs were only for the well-to-do. Floor has apparently prevailed because no invariable corresponding word was employed at home: in various parts of Russia and Poland a floor is a dill, a pod-logé, or a bricke. So with ceiling. There were six different words for it.