H. L. Mencken

Name: The American Language — English or American?
Author: H. L. Mencken

The American Language — English or American… (1919)

Summary

“The American Language — English or American?”, published in 1919, is a work by H. L. Mencken. It explores elements such as dialect, American and wowser.

Quotes from The American Language — English or American… (H. L. Mencken)

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — English or American… (1919)

“ The attempt to make American uniform with English has failed ingloriously; the neglect of its investigation is an evidence of snobbishness that is a folly of the same sort. It is useless to dismiss the growing peculiarities of the American vocabulary and of grammar and syntax in the common speech as vulgarisms beneath serious notice. Such vulgarisms have a way of intrenching themselves, and gathering dignity as they grow familiar. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — English or American… (1919)

“ Because of the fact that the American form of English is now spoken by three times as many persons as all the British forms taken together, and by at least twenty times as many as the standard Southern English, and because, no less, of the greater resilience it shows, and the greater capacity for grammatical and lexical growth, and the far greater tendency to accommodate itself to the linguistic needs and limitations of foreigners—because of all this it seems to me very likely that it will determine the final form of the language. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — English or American… (1919)

“ Each language, in such matters, is a law unto itself, and each vigorous dialect, particularly if it be spoken by millions, is a law no less. It would be as wrong, says Sayce, to use thou for the nominative thee in the Somersetshire dialect as it is to say thee art instead of you are in the Queens English. American has suffered severely from the effort to impose an impossible artificiality upon it, but it has survived the process, and soon or late there must be a formal abandonment of the pedagogical effort to bring it into agreement with Southern English. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — English or American… (1919)

“ In all human beings, if only understanding be brought to the business, dignity will be found, and that dignity cannot fail to reveal itself, soon or late, in the words and phrases with which they make known their high hopes and aspirations and cry out against the intolerable meaninglessness of life. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — English or American… (1919)

“ The Americanisms that flood the English of Canada are not borrowed from the dialects of New England Loyalists and fashionable New Yorkers, but from the common speech that has its sources in the native and immigrant proletariat and that displays its gaudiest freightage in the newspapers. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — English or American… (1919)

“ The English of Australia, though it is Cockney in pronunciation and intonation, [4] becomes increasingly American in vocabulary. In a glossary of Australianisms compiled by the Australian author, C. J. Dennis, [5] I find the familiar verbs and verb-phrases, to beef, to biff, to bluff, to boss, to break away, to chase one’s self, to chew the rag, to chip in, to fade away, to get it in the neck, to back and fill, to plug along, to get sore, to turn down and to get wise ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — English or American… (1919)

“ Says a writer in the Manchester Guardian: “Wowser, whether used as an adjective or a substantive, covers everyone and everything that is out of sympathy with what some people consider la joie de vivre. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — English or American… (1919)

“ A wowser, as a person, is one who desires to close public-houses, prevent shouting (Australese for treating) , and so on—in short, one who intends to limit the opportunities ‘of all professions that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.’ ” In the United States fully 99 per cent of all the world’s wowsers rage and roar, and yet we have no simple word to designate them.↑ English, Sept., 1919, p. 167.↑ The American Language, by J. F. Healy; Pittsburgh, 1910, p. 6.↑ History of the English Language, p. 476.↑ Cambridge History of American Literature, vol. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — English or American… (1919)

“ The impact of this flood is naturally most apparent in Canada, whose geographical proximity and common interests completely obliterate the effects of English political and social dominance. The American flat a has swept the whole country, and American slang is everywhere used ”

H. L. Mencken

Summary

Quotes from The American Language — English or American… (H. L. Mencken)

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