AMERICAN ENGLISH BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 185, 8 January 1943, Page 6

AMERICAN ENGLISH BELONGS

TO THE PEOPLE

-says Professor

A .J. A.

WALDOCK

in this talk for the ABC

ENGLISH, as spoken by Americans, does not belong to grammarians and the makers of dictionaries, says the Professor, but to the American people themselves, whose slang has made it one of the most vigorous languages that has ever existed.

T the University of Chicago at the present moment a very important undertaking is in progress. A new American dictionary is being made. It is to be a dictionary of all the new words that Americans brought into the English language up to the end of the nineteenth century. Rather strangely, the director of the works is a Scotsman, Sir William Craigie. He was chosen because of his great experience in the making of dictionaries. The making of a really big, first-class dictionary these days is a tremendous affair. Sir William Craigie has literally hundreds of helpers. Immediately under: him are five or six associate editors; under those are experts of various kinds; under those is a big staff of clerks; but that is not all.

Scattered through the country are dozens of people busy reading American literature; they divide it up amongst themselves in small sections, and they send in the words they find on cards, or specially designed slips of paper. These readers do not, as a rule, ask for any pay; they do their reading for

pleasure, and like the thought of helping in such an important undertaking. Words for New Things Work on this new dictionary began in 1925: it is now up to the letter G. It is being published gradually in instalments, And after the letters A and B had been completed Sir William Craigie issued a report on what he was finding. It is a very interesting report. What impressed him most was the creativeness of American English. The early settlers of America naturally found that in their new country they needed words that they had not required before-words for new things in their experience. Here is an example. We all know the phrase "blazing the trail." Now blaze was one of those new words that the Americans found they needed. What they did (and this happened with dozens and dozens of other words) was to take an already existing word and give it a new meaning. Perhaps you know what blaze meant originally; it referred to the white mark on the face of a horse (and of course it can still mean that). When you blaze a trail you cut pieces of bark from the trees to mark the way you have come: those white marks are blazes, Right from the beginning the English language in America proved wonderfully adaptable in this way: it went on coining new usages for old words by the dozen. Many of the earlier words, of course, had to do with the countryrivers, woods, and so on. But then when the cities grew large, more new words were required for them. American cities, as we know, are built in rectangular sections, and very soon it was found that a new word was needed -a word that would hardly have had much point in old English towns: the word is block-city block. Plenty of Surprises Another interesting thing, that the makers of this new dictionary have found out, is that amongst all these hundreds and hundreds of words that have acquired new senses in American Eng-lish-words like blaze and block and bluff and boom and break-every now and again you come on one that, instead of having taken on a new sense, actually preserves an old one that we have lost. One such word is citizen. Once upon a time in England citizen stood for something like our present word civilian. You get surprises in turning over the pages of this new dictionary. You look for a word in one form and you find it in another. You have certainly heard for yourselves an American-either in real life or on the films-pronounce the word that we call aluminium; he will have called it (as you.know) aluminum. Which is right? (Continued on next page)

"Language Is Fun"

(Continued trom previous page) The answer is, aluminum is right for an American, aluminium is right for us. Then you come on a word that you know, but it doesn’t seem the same as it does with us. You have to be very careful in America asking for pies or biscuits-you might get a surprise; as there is not the slightest doubt that the American soldiers who are with us now are getting a few surprises themselves at the things we give them when they use familiar words like those. "Billion" And "Bushfire" There is another word that means to an American not at all what it means to us: the word billion. A billion with us is a million millions, but in America it is only a thousand millions. (Someone has said that this

is the only example of a thing that is bigger in England than it is in America!) I think the greatest surprise I ‘received in turning over the pages of the dictionary was when I came on the word bushfire. I thought, here at least is a word I know all about, but I didn’t, Bushfire turned out to be an old American word-perhaps it isn’t used much now. Americans speak of forest fires when they mean what we mean by bushfires, But in the old days of fighting Indians, the soldiers often had to take cover in scrub and thickets and snipe from there, and that is what bushfire meant. "The Indians", we read, "were beaten back by the bushfire of Lieutenant Stark and his party," Slang Means Life The English of America abounds in life, it is one of the most vigorous languages that has ever existed. We argue a lot about slang; but slang is one of the best indications of the liveliness that is in a language-it is a kind of barometer, telling us how much zest a language possesses. | I was reading an article the other day, in a fairly popular American magazine; but it was a serious article-all about that machine called a lie-detector. The writer’s colloquialisms were extremely effective. He says the law courts would have approved the machine long ago if it could have "delivered"; he says, ’ find out how you stand legally before you allow yourself to be subjected to this -~ ahi ~. i |

sort of test — "don’t let ignorance put you on the spot"; if you do certain things, he says, the experts are "sunk"; relax, and it’s a "push-over" for you, Those words-push-over, sunk, on the spot, deliver-all call up pictures to our minds, you will notice again. And you will notice that many American colloquialisms have to do with business or industry or machinery, for these are matters that come very much into American experience, as indeed into the experience of all of us, So President Roosevelt will speak of the United States as being "geared" to the war-effort; geared is a good word, because we all know what gears are and do. ; A Word About Hamlet You can find similarly expressive colloquialisms in very serious American writing. I was amused, a little while ago, in reading an article in a very learned periodical by an American scholar, on Hamlet. Perhaps you remember the opening situation in Hamlet. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is worried; his father has died and his uncle has succeeded to the throne; but Hamlet suspects foul play; — and presently the ghost of his father returns to tell him that he was, in fact, murdered by his brother, Hamlet’s uncle, and yet Hamlet doesn’t know quite whether to believe the ghost or notthe ghost may be a devil in disguise, So he hesitates to take action on the ghost’s-now what word would an English scholar have used next? On the ghost’s recommendation? No, that would not be very good-on the ghost’s information, declaration? They are not very satisfactory words. But this American scholar didn’t hesitate; he had a word of his own up his. sleeve that was exactly what he wanted-so he wrote: "Hamlet would not take action on the ghost’s say-so"! What, then, can we learn from American English? What does it show us? I would say, two things especially. It shows us that language belongs to the people-not to grammarians, not to

makers of dictionaries. Dictionaries and grammars are very important; but they come after; language is the people’s, to do what they like with. And, secondly, I think American English undoubtedly shows us that language is fun.