THE TALKIES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5481, 30 September 1929, Page 3

THE TALKIES.

QUESTION OF PURE LANGUAGE.

SOME ENGLISH AMERICANISMS.

H. M. Pauli, while not supporting the more awful and vulgar Americanisms used in the Talkies, has some interesting things to say in “John o’ London’s Weekly” on many of the words at which English purists have taken exception. Mr Pauli writes : — “Many purists would say that The Talkies is—or are—not English. ‘One of those detestable Americanisms,’ would be then* definition, and the Movies would come under the same condemnation. The English listener to an American ‘Talkie’ objects not only to the accent, but to the use of words to which he is unaccustomed. “It is but rarely that one sees an allusion to Americanisms without their being made the occasion for a more or less covert sneer. Yet on the face of it, a young and vigorous country must inevitably invent new forms of expression,' new words to fit its novel needs and experiences. Why should we. be so reluctant to incorporate into our tongue words and phrases which our cousins have found useful ? Our Heterogeneous Tongue. “Our English language has become what it is because it has borrowed words so freely from all sources; using them tentatively at first (as when Jeremy Taylor wrote ‘ iota ” and ‘apotheosis’ in Greek characters), then more boldly adopting them as if native to the soil. There is scarcely a civilised tongue to which we are not indebted. To Latin we owe an immense number of words : French, Italian, and Spanish have all largely contributed to our vocabulary ; whilst we have not hesitated to annex useful words from more remote sources. Thus Hebrew has given us Sabbath, cherub, and many more ; from Arabia come talisman, elixir, alcohol, and dozens of others ; Persian, Turkish, and other Eastern tongues have been laid under conrtibution. It is this willingness to appropriate for our own use whatever seems to supply a want which makes our language probably unequalled in copiousness and flexibility. Why, then, should we object to assimilating words from America, and indulge in a sneer when we come across any which have the sole drawback of being new to us ? “Take half-a-dozen of such words at random : Gink, graft, stunt, fall for, cinch, hunch, salted. Not many years ago these would have been considered pure American, and even now none can be found in the first modern dictionary I open. Yet several have already been adopted in our general conversation, such as .stunt and graft; a 'salted mine is familiar to us ; cinch is gradually edging its way into use. Old English Words. “ ‘So much the worse for us !’ sighs the purist. But he need not be so unhappy. : The history of English philology is full of premature attempts to assimilate new words without success. He may also console himself with another fact. It is too often forgotten that many of the words which we think American are really English. When the Pilgrim Fathers left our shores in the seventeenth century thy took with them the vocabulary of the day, and it so happened that many words then in use dropped out of circulation in England but were retained in America. To rile, for example, is an old English word; so is chore, which Ben Jonson uses. ‘I guess’ is found in various authors ; ‘let it slide,’ which sounds very American, is in Beaumont and Fletcher, and even in Chaucer. Such cases are much more common than would be anticipated. “It has often occurred that a word objected to on its first use has made its ,way in spite of purists. Fuller strongly opposed ‘fanatic’; Phillips (1671) objected to ‘suicide.’ Such cases are numerous. It is only after the new-comer has proved its convenience that it is admitted into use ; possibly after a time to be discarded for some inexplicable reason, and relegated to that limbo of obsolete words the loss of which is a cause for regret.