Can You Pick Bogus English?

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 190, 28 August 1937, Page 13

Can You Pick Bogus English?

Beforo you sid'e with or against ,Prof essor G. S. Browne, Dean of the Faculty of Education at MelbOurne, who declares that the Americans are not polluting the language with their' new words, apply this simple Jbesfc to detect American influence. Aro the following sentonces composed in standard or in Aniericanised English.? — ' 1. — As an artist, he was bogus, his banjo Tent the, air like q blizzard; they said his talk of a passion for musie was buukum. 2. — A business man, who found himself comfortable in the ■ boarding-house, sent a telegram to the Minister, protesting against the property being resumed for governmental " purposes. A Minister, he said, should not belittle the claims of law-abiding people to considerate treatment. In (1), . banjo, = bogus, blizzard and bunkum are so obviously American. that (2) seems by comparison soberly -British, Yet these words in (2) are of Ameriean ori-gin: Business man, board-i'ng-house, telegram, governmental, -belittle, lhw-abiding. The difference is that the- words in the latter group have been adopted into standard English, while those in'the f or-mer-are of less certain status. "Blizzard," however, now .bears hardly a trace of its lowly origin. , ■ Prof essor Browne . approves of " debunk," and asks - if there is any other word that expresses the same meaning equally well.' The honour of inventing 1 'debunk " is^ claimed for ,W._E. Woodward, American author, who, ineidentally,, published in 1923 a book called "Bunk," The latteV term is, of course, short ,for ' ' bunkum," which the "Americans have fqund an indispensable word for more than a century, while- the British have de-Lighted-in.it since the '50. 's. . When lexieopgraphers state that the word (also spelt "buncumbe") is .deriVed from Buncombe County, ■ North Oarolina, the natives answer, "Bunk!" ! America proposes many new words