THE GREAT AMERICAN LANGUAGE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 7, Issue 420, 22 October 1918, Page 4

THE GREAT AMERICAN LANGUAGE.

(Written specially for the Times)

Now that England's eldest daughter has rejoined the family circle and is fighting valiantly beside her mother and her younger sisters to end for ever the hateful thirst for world-domination of the odious Hun, any information about her enterprising and clever inhabitants is of interest. And there are few things about them more interesting than the language they have evolved during the two centuries and a-half that have elapsed since the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the coast of New England. Home of my readers may have cherished the illusion that the inhabitants of the United States speak English and I am willing to admit that an Englishman has no difficulty in making himself understood in America any more than a Yankee has in London. And the best American literature is very excellent English indeed. But the speech of the people is a new tongue, which, for want of a better name I have chosen to call the " Great American language." Breezy, vivid, idiomatic, redolent of the most fervent realism, and, alas, not a little slangy, it is a peculiarly apt vehicle for the expression of the rapidly acting minds and the lively imaginations of the most go-ahead people upon " God's footstool" as they designate the planet a very considerable quarter of which they own. A great many of the words which were in everyday use in Elizabethan and Stuart periods, but which have long become obsolete with us, they still retain in active service. " Chores" for ordinary house-work, and " stamps "—the old English term for a half-penny—as a synonym for money, may be heard daily in the States in company with many similar terms, which only a reader of English plays three centuries old would recognise as belonging to our language. But it is not to these old terms that the American language owes its lurid picturesqueness but to a number of freshly invented words, and to certain ingenious wrestings of ordinary expressions from their commonly accepted meanings. A cheerful habit of exaggeration is the inalienable heritage of the " Amurkan," as he calls himself. To him every cottage is a "villa," every house a " mansion" and every -dwelling of any pretensions " a palatial residence." Any office, however humble, is a " bureau," a railway station a " depot," a shop an " emporium," and the shopkeeper, in however small a way, a " merchant."

When the American soldier gets to England he goes in for a " bully" time. He wants to see London, which he has heard is "some" town though a long way behind " N.' Yoik," and being of a sociable nature offers to '• carry " some young lady to luncheon. As soon as she has " fixed " herself and had a final " prink " in the glass they set out for what he terms " a crawl on the side-walk " or " a trot on the pave." At the meal, when he asks for " sauce" she must give him gravy, a roll when he asks for a " biscuit " and a biscuit when he asks for a " cracker." Probably he will tell her she is " clever," but this must not give her too exalted an idea of her brain-power, for it simply means amiable. If he meant what we mean by clever he would say " cute " or " smart." And if he thinks her pretty he will say Hhe is "cunning." To take her home he would at one time have "hired a team" (taken a cab) but now they have a "joy-ride" in an "automachine."

Perhaps some hospitable English landowner will invite him for a day's partridge shooting, and he will tote (carry) his " two-pipe scatter gun " and follow the "spike-tailed smelldogs'' over the stubbles, bringing down his birds in good style for, as a rule, he "aint no slouch at drawing a bead." And in saying good bye to his host—"Say, Mister, let me tell you right here I guess I aint had just no ornery days 'sport." And with light heart, but tired "limbs" (to speak of legs is an indelicacy in "Amurka," where even a table has 'limbs") he goes back to town and tells his friends how he has been "cavortin' round in the back lots." And perhaps he takes back with him a bunch of our sweet English flowers, which he loves for "smellige." And when ho gets to the front he will just "spread" himself and make the enemy ''feel mean." If there are any Huns "foolin' around" he will 'waltz in' 'well heeled'(armed) and 'lay-out' the ' low down bodysnatchers' or compel them to 'make tracks' for the Fatheiland; for when ihey have once 'raised his Ebenezer' they will iind him no 'scally-wag' but an all-fired, high-toned' fighting man, out to shoot free on the high lonesome." And if he gets wounded he will perhaps say in response to enquiries is to how he is feeling, 'Wal, Doc, I'm powerful weak, but cruel easy." We have scarcely got away from "Down East" yet and it would be pleasant to take the reader across the continent and give him a few specimens of the varied vocabulary of the Westerner, redolent of the boundless prairie, picturesque with the exuberant hyperboles of tb« cowboy, and iustiuct with the wild metaphor of the lumber-man, but one has to deal with a "tough" in the shapo of an Editor who has notions of his own as to the value of space and a cruel blue pencil always ready to score off the tail of an article ho considers too long.