The adjectives are inflected only for comparison, and the [Pg230] American commonly uses them correctly, with now and then a double comparative or superlative to ease his soul. More better is the commonest of these. It has a good deal of support in logic. A sick man is reported today to be better. Tomorrow he is further improved. Is he to be reported better again, or best? The standard language gets around the difficulty by using still better. The American vulgate boldly employs more better. In the case of worse, worser is used, as Charters shows. He also reports baddest, more queerer and beautifulest. Littler, which he notes, is still outlawed from standard English, but it has, with littlest, a respectable place in American. The late Richard Harding Davis wrote a play called "The Littlest Girl." The American freely compares adjectives that are incapable of the inflection logically. Charters reports most principal, and I myself have heard uniquer and even more uniquer, as in "I have never saw nothing more uniquer." I have also heard more ultra, more worse, idealer, liver (that is, more alive), and wellest, as in "he was the wellest man you ever seen." In general, the -er and -est terminations are used instead of the more and most prefixes, as in beautiful, beautifuller, beautifullest. The fact that the comparative relates to two and the superlative to more than two is almost always forgotten. I have never heard "the better of the two," but always "the best of the two." Charters also reports "the hardest of the two" and "my brother and I measured and he was the tallest." I have frequently heard "it ain't so worse," but here a humorous effect seems to have been intended.

Adjectives are made much less rapidly in American than either substantives or verbs. The only suffix that seems to be in general use for that purpose is -y, as in tony, classy, daffy, nutty, dinky, leery, etc. The use of the adjectival prefix super- is confined to the more sophisticated classes; the plain people seem to be unaware of it.[71] This relative paucity of adjectives appears to be common to the more primitive varieties of speech. E. J. [Pg231] Hills, in his elaborate study of the vocabulary of a child of two,[72] found that it contained but 23 descriptive adjectives, of which six were the names of colors, as against 59 verbs and 173 common nouns. Moreover, most of the 23 minus six were adjectives of all work, such as nasty, funny and nice. Colloquial American uses the same rubber-stamps of speech. Funny connotes the whole range of the unusual; hard indicates every shade of difficulty; nice is everything satisfactory; bully is a superlative of almost limitless scope.

The decay of one to a vague n-sound, as in this'n, is matched by a decay of than after comparatives. Earlier than is seldom if ever heard; composition reduces the two words to earlier'n. So with better'n, faster'n, hotter'n, deader'n, etc. Once I overheard the following dialogue: "I like a belt more looser'n what this one is." "Well, then, why don't you unloosen it more'n you got it unloosened?"

§ 7

Like most other examples of "bad grammar" encountered in American the compound negative is of great antiquity and was once quite respectable. The student of Anglo-Saxon encounters it constantly. In that language the negative of the verb was formed by prefixing a particle, ne. Thus, singan (=to sing) became ne singan (=not to sing). In case the verb began with a vowel the ne dropped its e and was combined with the verb, as in naefre (never), from ne-aefre (=not ever). In case the verb began with an h or a w followed by a vowel, the h or w of the verb and the e of ne were both dropped, as in naefth (=has not), from ne-haefth (=not has), and nolde (=would not), from ne-wolde. Finally, in case the vowel following a w was an i, it changed to y, as in nyste (=knew not), from ne-wiste. But inasmuch as Anglo-Saxon was a fully inflected language the inflections for the negative did not stop with the verbs; the indefinite article, the indefinite pronoun and even some of the nouns were also inflected, and survivors of those forms appear to this day in such words as none and nothing. Moreover, when an actual inflection was impossible it was the practise to insert this ne before a word, in the sense of our no or not. Still more, it came to be the practise to reinforce ne, before a vowel, with nā (=not) or naht (=nothing), which later degenerated to nat and not. As a result, there were fearful and wonderful combinations of negatives, some of them fully matching the best efforts of Lardner's baseball player. Sweet [Pg233] gives several curious examples.[73] "Nān ne dorste nān thing āscian," translated literally, becomes "no one dares not ask nothing." "Thaet hus nā ne feoll" becomes "the house did not fall not." As for the Middle English "he never nadde nothing," it has too modern and familiar a ring to need translating at all. Chaucer, at the beginning of the period of transition to Modern English, used the double negative with the utmost freedom. In "The Knight's Tale" is this:

By the time of Shakespeare this license was already much restricted, but a good many double negatives are nevertheless to be found in his plays, and he was particularly shaky in the use of nor. In "Richard III" one finds "I never was nor never will be"; in "Measure for Measure," "harp not on that nor do not banish treason," and in "Romeo and Juliet," "thou expectedst not, nor I looked not for." This misuse of nor is still very frequent. In other directions, too, the older forms show a tendency to survive all the assaults of grammarians. "No it doesn't," heard every day and by no means from the ignorant only, is a sort of double negative. The insertion of but before that, as in "I doubt but that" and "there is no question but that," makes a double negative that is probably full-blown. Nevertheless, as we have seen, it is heard on the floor of Congress every day, and the Fowlers show that it is also common in England.[74] Even worse forms get into the Congressional Record. Not long ago, for example, I encountered "without hardly an exception" in a public paper of the utmost importance.[75] There are, indeed, situations in which the double negative leaps to the lips or from the pen almost irresistibly; even such careful writers as Huxley, Robert Louis Stevenson and Leslie Stephen have [Pg234] occasionally dallied with it.[76] It is perfectly allowable in the Romance languages, and, as we have seen, is almost the rule in the American vulgate. Now and then some anarchistic student of the language boldly defends and even advocates it. "The double negative," said a writer in the London Review a long time ago,[77] "has been abandoned to the great injury of strength of expression." Surely "I won't take nothing" is stronger than either "I will take nothing" or "I won't take anything."

"Language begins," says Sayce, "with sentences, not with single words." In a speech in process of rapid development, unrestrained by critical analysis, the tendency to sacrifice the integrity of words to the needs of the complete sentence is especially marked. One finds it clearly in American. Already we have examined various assimilation and composition forms: that'n, use' to, would'a, them 'ere and so on. Many others are observable. Off'n is a good example; it comes from off of and shows a preposition decaying to the form of a mere inflectional particle. One constantly hears "I bought it off'n John." Sort'a, kind'a and their like follow in the footsteps of would'a. Usen't follows the analogy of don't and wouldn't. Would 've and should 've are widely used; Lardner commonly hears them as would of and should of. The neutral a-particle also appears in other situations, especially before way, as in that'a way and this'a way. It is found again in a tall, a liaison form of at all.[78]

§ 8

At the start two streams of influence upon American pronunciation may be noted, the one an inheritance from the English of the colonists and the other arising spontaneously within the country, and apparently much colored by immigration. The first influence, it goes without saying, is gradually dying out. Consider, for example, the pronunciation of the diphthong oi. In Middle English it was as in boy, but during the early Modern English period it was assimilated with that of the i in wine, and this usage prevailed at the time of the settlement of America. The colonists thus brought it with them, and at the same time it lodged in Ireland, where it still prevails. But in England, during the pedantic eighteenth century, this i-sound was displaced by the original oi-sound, not by historical research but by mere deduction from the spelling, and the new pronunciation soon extended to the polite speech of America. In the common speech, however, the i-sound persisted, and down to the time of [Pg236] the Civil War it was constantly heard in such words as boil, hoist, oil, join, poison and roil, which thus became bile, hist, ile, jine, pisen and rile. Since then the school-marm has combatted it with such vigor that it has begun to disappear, and such forms as pisen, jine, bile and ile are now very seldom heard, save as dialectic variations. But in certain other words, perhaps supported by Irish influence, the i-sound still persists. Chief among them are hoist and roil. An unlearned American, wishing to say that he was enraged, never says that he was roiled, but always that he was riled. Desiring to examine the hoof of his horse, he never orders the animal to hoist but always to hist. In the form of booze-hister, the latter is almost in good usage. I have seen booze-hister thus spelled and obviously to be thus pronounced, in an editorial article in the American Issue, organ of the Anti-Saloon League of America.[81]

Various similar misplaced vowels were brought from England by the colonists and have persisted in America, while dying out of good England usage. There is, for example, short i in place of long e, as in critter for creature. Critter is common to almost all the dialects of English, but American has embedded the vowel in a word that is met with nowhere else and has thus become characteristic, to wit, crick for creek. Nor does any other dialect make such extensive use of slick for sleek. Again, there is the substitution of the flat a for the broad a in sauce. England has gone back to the broad a, but in America the flat a persists, and many Americans who use sassy every day would scarcely recognize saucy if they heard it. Yet again, there is quoit. Originally, the English pronounced it quate, but now they pronounce the diphthong as in doily. In the United States the quate pronunciation remains. Finally, there is deaf. Its proper pronunciation, in the England that the colonists left, was deef, but it now rhymes with Jeff. That new pronunciation has been adopted by polite American, despite the protests of Noah Webster, but in the common speech the word is still always deef.

However, a good many of the vowels of the early days have [Pg237] succumbed to pedagogy. The American proletarian may still use skeer for scare, but in most of the other words of that class he now uses the vowel approved by correct English usage. Thus he seldom permits himself such old forms as dreen for drain, keer for care, skeerce for scarce or even cheer for chair. The Irish influence supported them for a while, but now they are fast going out. So, too, are kivver for cover, crap for crop, and chist for chest. But kittle for kettle still shows a certain vitality, rench is still used in place of rinse, and squinch in place of squint, and a flat a continues to displace various e-sounds in such words as rare for rear (e. g., as a horse) and wrassle for wrestle. Contrariwise, e displaces a in catch and radish, which are commonly pronounced ketch and reddish. This e-sound was once accepted in standard English; when it got into spoken American it was perfectly sound; one still hears it from the most pedantic lips in any.[82] There are also certain other ancients that show equally unbroken vitality among us, for example, stomp for stamp,[83] snoot for snout, guardeen for guardian, and champeen for champion.

But all these vowels, whether approved or disapproved, have been under the pressure, for the past century, of a movement toward a general vowel neutralization, and in the long run it promises to dispose of many of them. The same movement also affects standard English, as appears by Robert Bridges' "Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation," but I believe that it is stronger in America, and will go farther, at least with the common speech, if only because of our unparalleled immigration. Standard English has 19 separate vowel sounds. No other living tongue of Europe, save Portuguese, has so many; most of the others have a good many less; Modern Greek has but five. The immigrant, facing all these vowels, finds some of them quite impossible; the Russian Jew, as we have seen, cannot manage ur. As a result, he tends to employ a neutralized [Pg238] vowel in all the situations which present difficulties, and this neutralized vowel, supported by the slip-shod speech-habits of the native proletariat, makes steady progress. It appears in many of the forms that we have been examining—in the final a of would'a, vaguely before the n in this'n and off'n, in place of the original d in use' to, and in the common pronunciation of such words as been, come and have, particularly when they are sacrificed to sentence exigencies, as in "I b'n thinking," "c'm 'ere," and "he would 've saw you."

Here we are upon a wearing down process that shows many other symptoms. One finds, not only vowels disorganized, but also consonants. Some are displaced by other consonants, measurably more facile; others are dropped altogether. D becomes t, as in holt, or is dropped, as in tole, han'kerchief, bran-new and fine (for find). In ast (for ask) t replaces k: when the same word is used in place of asked, as often happens, e. g., in "I ast him his name," it shoulders out ked. It is itself lopped off in bankrup, quan'ity, crep, slep, wep, kep, gris'-mill and les (=let's = let us), and is replaced by d in kindergarden and pardner. L disappears, as in a'ready and gent'man. S becomes tsh, as in pincers. The same tsh replaces c, as in pitcher for picture, and t, as in amachoor. G disappears from the ends of words, and sometimes, too, in the middle, as in stren'th and reco'nize. R, though it is better preserved in American than in English, is also under pressure, as appears by bust, stuck on (for struck on), cuss (for curse), yestiddy, sa's'parella, pa'tridge, ca'tridge, they is (for there is) and Sadd'y (for Saturday). An excrescent t survives in a number of words, e. g., onc't, twic't, clos't, wisht (for wish) and chanc't; it is an heirloom from the English of two centuries ago. So is the final h in heighth. An excrescent b, as in chimbley and fambly, seems to be native. Whole syllables are dropped out of words, paralleling the English butchery of extraordinary; for example, in bound'ry, hist'ry, lib'ry and prob'ly. Ordinary, like extraordinary, is commonly enunciated clearly, but it has bred a degenerated form, onry or onery, differentiated in meaning. Consonants are misplaced by metathesis, as in prespiration, hunderd, [Pg239] brethern, childern, interduce, apern, calvary, govrenment, modren and wosterd (for worsted). Ow is changed to er, as in feller, swaller, yeller, beller, umbreller and holler; ice is changed to ers in jaunders. Words are given new syllables, as in ellum, mischievious and municipial.

In the complete sentence, assimilation makes this disorganization much more obvious. Mearns, in a brief article[84] gives many examples of the extent to which it is carried. He hears "wah zee say?" for "what does he say?" "ware zee?" for "where is he?" "ast 'er in" for "ask her in," "itt'm owd" for "hit them out," "sry" for "that is right," and "c'meer" for "come here." He believes that t is gradually succumbing to d, and cites "ass bedder" (for "that's better"), "wen juh ged din?" (for "when did you get in?"), and "siddup" (for "sit up"). One hears countless other such decayed forms on the street every day. Have to is almost invariably made hafta, with the neutral vowel where I have put the second a. Let's, already noticed, is le' 's. The neutral vowel replaces the oo of good in g'by. "What did you say" reduces itself to "wuz ay?" Maybe is mebby, perhaps is p'raps, so long is s'long, excuse me is skus me; the common salutation, "How are you?" is so dismembered that it finally emerges as a word almost indistinguishable from high. Here there is room for inquiry, and that inquiry deserves the best effort of American phonologists, for the language is undergoing rapid changes under their very eyes, or, perhaps more accurately, under their very ears, and a study of those changes should yield a great deal of interesting matter. How did the word stint, on American lips, first convert itself into stent and then into stunt? By what process was baulk changed into buck? Both stunt and buck are among the commonest words in the everyday American vocabulary, and yet no one, so far, has investigated them scientifically.

A by-way that is yet to be so much as entered is that of naturalized loan-words in the common speech. A very characteristic word of that sort is sashay. Its relationship to the French chassé seems to be plain, and yet it has acquired meanings in [Pg240] American that differ very widely from the meaning of chassé. How widely it is dispersed may be seen by the fact that it is reported in popular use, as a verb signifying to prance or to walk consciously, in Southeastern Missouri, Nebraska, Northwestern Arkansas, Eastern Alabama and Western Indiana, and, with slightly different meaning, on Cape Cod. The travels of café in America would repay investigation; particularly its variations in pronunciation. I believe that it is fast becoming kaif. Plaza, boulevard, vaudeville, menu and rathskeller have entered into the common speech of the land, and are pronounced as American words. Such words, when they come in verbally, by actual contact with immigrants, commonly retain some measure of their correct native pronunciation. Spiel, kosher, ganof and matzoh are examples; their vowels remain un-American. But words that come in visually, say through street-signs and the newspapers, are immediately overhauled and have thoroughly Americanized vowels and consonants thereafter. School-teachers have been trying to establish various pseudo-French pronunciations of vase for fifty years past, but it still rhymes with face in the vulgate. Vaudeville is vawd-vill; boulevard has a hard d at the end; plaza has two flat a's; the first syllable of menu rhymes with bee; the first of rathskeller with cats; fiancée is fy-ancé-y; née rhymes with see; décolleté is de-coll-ty; hofbräu is huffbrow; the German w has lost its v-sound and becomes an American w. I have, in my day, heard proteege for protégé, habichoo for habitué, connisoor for connisseur, shirtso for scherzo, premeer for première, eetood for étude and prelood for prelude. Divorcée is divorcey, and has all the rakishness of the adjectives in -y. The first syllable of mayonnaise rhymes with hay. Crème de menthe is cream de mint. Schweizer is swite-ser. Rochefort is roke-fort. I have heard début with the last syllable rhyming with nut. I have heard minoot for minuet. I have heard tchef doover for chef d'œuvre. And who doesn't remember

and [Pg241]