American Language

by H. L. Mencken

  There were 138,834 Japanese in the Continental United States in 1930, of whom 68,357 had been born either in the United States or in its possessions. In addition, there were 139,631 in Hawaii. There are fourteen Japanese periodicals in the United States and eleven in Hawaii, including nine daily newspapers in the former and three in the latter.133

  9. MISCELLANEOUS

  a. Armenian

  Armenian is an independent Indo-European language lying between the Indo-Iranian group and Greek. In 1930 there were 51,741 persons in the United States who gave it as their mother-tongue. There are ten Armenian periodicals in the country, of which two are daily newspapers, both published in Boston. I can find no published study of the American dialect of the language. For the following brief note I am indebted to Mr. R. Darbinian, editor of Hairenik, the elder of the two Boston dailies:

  A conversation carried on in half English and half Armenian is very common. One frequently hears “Good time me ounetza” (I had a good time), and sentences like the following:

  Bossus z is fire erav (My boss fired me).

  Lawyer in katzi business hamar (I went to the lawyer on business).

  Aman, nervous gellam gor (Oh my, I am getting nervous).

  Ays pointé goozem tzouytz dal (I want to show this point, or, I want to point out this).

  Yete wholesale house me special oonena yerek chors item cost price games (If a wholesale house should have a special, you can get three or four items at cost price).

  Yes garachargem temporary board me gazmel, yev togh directornere investigate enen (I move that we organize a temporary board, and let the directors investigate the matter).

  Many words and phrases for which there is no equivalent in Armenian are often used, e.g., all right, O.K., good time, jazz. Others that have Armenian equivalents displace them, e.g., yes, no, show, movies, radio, phone, hello, uncle, aunt, nurse, chauffeur, lunch, butcher, grocer, laundry, drug-store.

  b. Hawaiian

  Hawaiian, which belongs to the Polynesian family of languages and is closely related to Samoan, Maori, Tahitian and Tongan, is the dying tongue of a dying people. The Census of 1930 discovered but 22,636 pure-blood Hawaiians in the archipelago, and even the addition of 28,224 persons of mixed blood left them greatly outnumbered by the Caucasians, the Filipinos and the Japanese. The Territorial Legislature, in 1923, passed an act providing for “the preparation and publication of a school text-book in the Hawaiian language,” and seven years later a slim volume prepared by Mrs. Mary H. Atcherley was brought out under the imprint of the Hawaiian Board of Missions,134 but English has been taught in the schools since 1853, and since 1896 it has been obligatory. Writing more than a generation ago, William M. Langdon said in an editorial in the Paradise of the Pacific:135

  By the end of this century the Hawaiian speech will have as little usage as Gaelic or Irish has now, and it will not be many years hence when there will be but small demand for Hawaiian-English interpreters. The native children in the public and private schools are getting a good knowledge of English speech. Hawaiians who speak only their native tongue find it difficult to obtain employment. Time was, thirty years or so ago, when it was necessary for every foreigner to learn Hawaiian; now it becomes necessary for the Hawaiian to learn English.

  Since the time of Kamehameha the Great the Hawaiian tongue has been almost revolutionized, so many idioms have crept in and so many English expressions with Hawaiian spelling and pronunciation have been adopted. The children now in school will retain, as long as they live, a comprehension of their mother-tongue and an affection for it too, but it is doubtful if the same can be said of their children.

  “When Mr. Langdon wrote this,” says Frederick B. Withington,136 “there was considerable Hawaiian spoken throughout the Islands. Most of the important firms had … signs with their names in the native tongue. For instance, the law firm of Castle and Withington was known to the Hawaiians as Kakela e Wilkinokona. An understanding of Hawaiian was often necessary in the law courts, and many documents were written or printed in both English and Hawaiian. Today little or none of this bilingual use is necessary.” The decay of Hawaiian Mr. Withington ascribes to eight causes, as follows:

  (a) Its inadequacy. Hawaiian was a primitive language and was unable to satisfy the needs of a modern world.

  (b) The influx of foreign terms. As the Hawaiian became conscious of the need of new terms he adopted them from the foreigner. Many of these came from uncultured traders and sailors and thus were crude.

  (c) The tendency to vulgarity. The better classes used English and left the Hawaiian to the less cultured. The result was that the language tended toward the vulgar.

  (d) The decrease of the Hawaiian population. If Captain Cook was correct in his estimate of the population, then the Hawaiian population has gone from over 400,000 to about 50,000 in three quarters of a century.

  (e) The desire for English-conducted schools by the Hawaiians themselves.

  (f) The paucity of a literature. There was no literature among the Hawaiians until the missionaries came and helped them to write it.

  (g) The growing relations with the outside world. As the natives increased their trade they made more and more use of one of the great modern languages.

  (h) The Islands become part of the United States. As Hawaii became an integral part of the United States, English became the official language.

  Hawaiian has the shortest alphabet ever heard of — the five vowels and h, k, l, m, n, p and w, or twelve letters in all. It is thus constrained to make radical changes in many loan-words, e.g., kapiki (cabbage), kala (dollar), keleponi (telephone), loke (rose) and Kelemania (Germany). All the vowels are used as words, and all have multiple meanings, e.g., a is a verb in the perfect meaning lit, a noun meaning a small rock, an adjective meaning rocky, an adverb meaning to or until, and a preposition meaning to or of. Other words are formed by combining two vowels, e.g., aa (dwarf), ia (he, she or it), ua (rain), or a consonant and vowel, e.g., ko (sugar), nu (roar), wa (time), hi (cholera). Not only must every word end with a vowel, but also every syllable. Two consonants may never come together. The effect on loan-words is shown in aila (oil), alemanaka (almanac), amene (amen), baka (tobacco), bele (bell), berena (bread), bipi (beef cattle), buke (book), eka (acre), galani (gallon), kanapi (centipede), kapena (captain), keneta (cent), paona (pound), pena (paint), peni (pen), penikala (pencil), pepa (paper), Sabati (Sabbath), sekona (second), silika (silk), talena (talent). Here are some specimen sentences showing the use of loan-words:

  Ke kamailio nei oia ma ka olelo Beretania (He speaks in British, i.e., English).

  Ua kuai lilo mai la au i elima mau galani (I bought five gallons).

  Eia wau ke hoouna aku nei ia oe i umi mau keneta (I am sending you ten cents).

  Ke kani nei ke kanaka i ka bele (The man is ringing the bell).137

  The surviving Hawaiian periodical literature seems to consist only of a weekly published at Hilo and a Sunday-school monthly, in Hawaiian and English, at Honolulu.

  c. Gipsy

  The language of the Gypsies is a dialect related to those of the northwestern frontier of India, and their Indian ancestors seem to have wandered through Kabulistan into Persia and Syria in the Thirteenth Century. One section then struck southward into Egypt, and the other proceeded into Europe. They are now scattered over all of Europe, and most of northern Africa and North America. In every country where they have settled they have picked up many loan-words from the local language, but Romany or Romanes is still a distinct tongue, with a grammatical system of its own and a vocabulary understood by the Gypsies of widely separated countries.138 Most Gypsies speak this Romanes more or less, but in the United States they commonly use English in their everyday business, with a copious admixture of Romanes words. An example: “Once apré a chairus a Romany chal chored a rāni chillico, and then jāiled atút a prastraméngro ’pré the drum” (Once upon a time a Gypsy stole a turkey, and then met a policeman on the road).139 There is a masculine de
finite article, o, in Romanes, and a feminine article, i, but the American Gypsies always use the English the. The indefinite article is also borrowed, but sometimes it is omitted altogether, as in “Dikóva gáiro” (I see a man). Many of the nouns have suffixes indicating gender, to wit, -o for the masculine, and -i for the feminine. There are some traces of grammatical gender, but in the main these suffixes are used logically. Thus, chávo is boy and chavi or chai is girl, gáiro is man and gáiri is woman. The plural is formed by adding -e, -aw or -yaw, e.g., peéro (foot), peere (feet); grei (horse), gréiaw (horses). But in many, and perhaps most cases the English -s is used. In Pennsylvania there are a few small groups of German Gypsies, known locally as Shekener or Chikener (Ger. Zigeuner). They immigrated from the Rhineland during the Eighteenth Century. Their dialect shows a great many loans from Pennsylvania-German, e.g., kotz (cat), haws (rabbit), hausleira (peddler), bawm (tree), goul (horse), schlong (snake).140 The number of Gypsies surviving in the United States is unknown, for the Census Bureau is unaware of them. The tribes that once roved the country have been much depleted by disease, intermarriage and the hustling of the police. Most of them are now located in large cities, where the women practise fortune-telling and the men work at ordinary trades.

  1 A Dictionary of the Non-English Words of the Pennsylvania-German Dialect, by M. B. Lambert; Lancaster, Pa., 1924, p. viii.

  2 Lambert, just cited.

  3 The Early Literature of the Pennsylvania-Germans, by Samuel W. Pennypacker, Proceedings of the Pennsylvania-German Society, Vol. II, 1893; reprinted 1907, p. 41.

  4 Lambert’s dictionary has been mentioned. It includes an account of Pennsylvania-German phonology. The best treatise on the dialect is The Pennsylvania-German Dialect, by M. D. Learned, American Journal of Philology, Vol. IX, 1888, and Vol. X, 1889, a series of four papers. Other informative works are Pennsylvania-Dutch, by S. S. Haldeman; Philadelphia, 1872; Pennsylvania-German Manual, by A. R. Home, 3rd ed.; Allentown, Pa., 1905; Common Sense Pennsylvania-German Dictionary, by James C. Lins; Reading, Pa., 1895; Pennsylvania-German, by Daniel Miller, 2 vols.; Reading, 1903–11; Pennsylvania-Dutch Handbook, by E. Rauch; Mauch Chunk, Pa., 1879. There are many papers on various aspects of the dialect in the Proceedings of the Pennsylvania-German Society, 1891 —, and in the Pennsylvania-German, 1900 —. Unfortunately, there is no agreement among the writers on the dialect about its representation in English print.

  5 Harbaugh’s Harfe, rev. ed.; Philadelphia, 1002, p. 112.

  6 Mauch Chunk, Pa., 1879.

  7 Other strains from Harbaugh’s harp are given in Pennsylvania-Dutch, by Maynard D. Follin, American Speech, 1929.

  8 On the German Dialect Spoken in the Valley of Virginia, Dialect Notes, Vol. III, Pt. IV, 1908.

  9 I am informed by Mr. August Blum of Pasadena, Calif., who was born in the Western Palatinate near Otterberg, that this specimen of Valley German is virtually identical with the dialect still spoken in his native village. “A few unimportant changes,” he says, “would complete the identity, e.g., emol for eimol, aa for au, kumme for komme, genwmne for gnomme.”

  10 There were more before 1914. But the German press, as a whole, had been declining since 1894. See The Immigrant Press and Its Control, by Robert E. Park; New York, 1922, p. 318ff., and especially the chart lacing p. 318. The New York Staats-Zeitung and the St. Louis Westliche Post, the two leading dailies, go back to 1834, and the Volksblatt of Cincinnati, now merged in the Freie Presse, was founded in 1836.

  11 March 28, 1935. I am indebted for this to Mr. George Weiss, Jr., of Richmond Hills, N. Y. Stiefel-beiner, perhaps, would have been better. The author of “Der Charlie” is Mr. Heinrich Reinhold Hirsch, editor of the Staats-Zeitung.

  12 Mr. Stein has printed the following collections of his lays: Die schönste Lengvitch; Chicago, 1925; Gemixte Pickles; Chicago, 1927; and Lim-burger Lyrics; New York, 1932.

  13 The Gender of English Loan-Words in Colloquial American German, Language Monographs, No. VII, Dec., 1930.

  14 Save for the Pennsylvania-German form, American German, like American English, has been very little studied by philologians. It offers rich opportunities to industrious young Dozenten.

  15 The Jersey Dutch Dialect, Dialect Notes, Vol. III, Pt. VI, 1910.

  16 The Dutch settled in South Africa in 1652, but it was not until about 1860 that Afrikaans began to produce a literature. It is so far from Standard Dutch that it has been described as a dialect of Hottentot, but this is an exaggeration. See Grammar of Afrikaans, by M. C. Botha and J. F. Burger; Cape Town, 1921, pref.; Afrikaans for English-Speaking Students, by D. J. Potgieter and A. Geldenhuys; Cape Town, n.d.; and Oor die Onstaan van Afrikaans, by D. B. Bosman; Amsterdam, 1928. The last is a valuable historical survey.

  17 Private communication, April 13, 1921.

  18 I am indebted here to the Rev. B. D. Dykstra of Orange City, Iowa.

  19 I am indebted here to Mr. Frank Hanson of Redlands, Calif.

  20 Nederlanders in Amerika, by J. van Hinte; Amsterdam, 1928, Vol. II, p. 554.

  21 Grand Rapids, Mich., 1919.

  22 Grand Rapids, 1929.

  23 I am indebted for information and suggestions to Prof. B. K. Kuiper, Dr. Paul de Kruif, Mr. Dirk Nieland, Mr. M. J. Francken, Mr. J. L. Van Lancker, Mr. W. A. Nyland, Mme. Hortense Leplae, Dr. John J. Hiemenga, Mr. H. H. D. Langereis and Mr. D. J. Van Riemsdyck, in addition to those already mentioned.

  24 The Religious Aspects of Swedish Immigration; Minneapolis, 1932, p. 407.

  25 Stephenson, just cited, p. 429.

  26 Mr. Berger’s first report on it, Vårt Språk, was published by the Augustana Book Concern at Rock Island in 1912. In 1934 he brought out an enlarged edition under the title of Svensk-amerikanska Språket. Dr. Andreen’s Det Svenska Språket i Amerika appeared as No. 87 of the series called Studentföreningen Småskrifter; Stockholm, 1900. It contains a map marking the Swedish areas in the United States.

  27 For example, Engelskans Inflytande på Svenska Språket i America, by E. A. Zetterstrand, Ungdomsvän-nen (Stockholm), June, July and Aug., 1904, and Svenskan in Amerika, by Ruben G:son Berg; Stockholm, 1904.

  28 Notes on Swedish-American, by Robert Beckman, American Speech, Aug., 1928, p. 448.

  29 In Standard Swedish luff a means to jog, to scamper, to trot.

  30 Chicago, 1908.

  31 Kom, of course, is good Swedish, but kom an is a loan.

  32 Swedish-American I Bane, American Speech, Aug., 1928.

  33 I am indebted for aid to Prof. Walter Gustafson, of Upsala College, East Orange, N. J., and to Messrs. John A. Stahlberg, V. Berger, A. H. Anderson, John Goldstrom, Robert Beckman and Valdemar Viking.

  34 Notes on American-Norwegian, With a Vocabulary, Dialect Notes, Vol. II, Pt. II, 1900.

  35 English Elements in the Norse Dialects of Utica, Wis., Dialect Notes, Vol. II, Pt. IV, 1902.

  36 His principal publications are A Grammar of the Sogn Dialect of Norwegian, Dialect Notes, Vol. III, Pt. I, 1905; English Loan-Words in American-Norwegian, American Speech, July, 1926; On the Phonology of Loan-Words in the Norwegian Dialects of Koshkonong in Wisconsin, in Studier tilägnade Axel Kock; Lund (Sweden), 1926; Um det norske målet i Amerika, Saerprent (Bergen), 1931; and The Gender of English Loan-Nouns in Norse Dialects in America, Journal of Germanic Philology, Vol. V, 1903. The first-named article deals with the noun, pronoun, adjective and numerals in the Americanized form of the Sogn dialect. “The verb,” says Dr. Flom, “will form the subject of a later paper.” That later paper was completed during 1935, but it has not yet appeared.

  37 English Loan-Words in American Norwegian, above cited.

  38 A Study of Norwegian Dialect in Minnesota, Dialect Notes, Aug., 1930.

  39 Notes on American-Norwegian, above cited.

  40 English Elements in the Norse Dialects of Utica, Wis., above cited.

  41 Mr. Valdemar Viking tells me that the täi here is not a corruption of the English tie, but a good Dano-Norwegian word. Halstäi means anything that
is draped around the neck, such as ties, collars, mufflers, etc.

  42 In addition to the gentlemen already mentioned, I am indebted for aid to Messrs. A. H. Anderson and Wallace Lomoe.

  43 English Loan-Nouns Used in the Icelandic Colony of North Dakota, Dialect Notes, Vol. II, Pt. V, 1903.

  44 In order to avoid two Icelandic characters that are unknown in modern English and might be confusing, I have adopted the equivalents approved by the Royal Geographical Society of England.

  45 These are mainly from Frá Ameríka, a lecture by Jón Ólafsson, delivered at Reykjavik in 1897 and printed in Sunnanfari, Vol. VII, 1898, p. 1 ff. For the reference and the translations I am indebted to the great courtesy of Dr. Einarsson.

  46 Bess-bréf, Heimskringla, 1893–4.

  47 Kvidhlingar; Winnipeg, 1920.

  48 Isaac A. Millner, in What is Yiddish?, East and West, April 20, 1923, says that 20% of the Yiddish vocabulary is Hebrew. This part includes some very important elements, classified by Mr. Millner as follows: (a) words that refer to the Jewish religion, e.g., kosher; (b) words that stand in some relation to it, e.g., chedar; (c) words that have to do with elementary education, e.g., cheshbon (arithmetic); (d) generic words, e.g., chaye (living being); (e) words signifying phenomena that “are clothed by the popular consciousness with a superstitious glamour,” e.g., ka-doches (fever); (f) words referring to birth, marriage and death, e.g., levaya (funeral); and (g) terms of opprobrium or approbation, e.g., bal-zedoko (charitable person).

  49 Quoted by George Wolfe in Notes on American Yiddish, American Mercury, Aug., 1933, p. 478.

  50 I am indebted throughout this section to Mr. Abraham Cahan, editor of the leading Yiddish daily in New York, and a distinguished writer in both Yiddish and English.