H. L. Mencken

Name: The American Language — The Language in the Making
Author: H. L. Mencken

The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

Summary

“The American Language — The Language in the Making”, published in 1919, is a work by H. L. Mencken. It explores elements such as Whitman, American and racy.

Quotes from The American Language — The Language in the Making (H. L. Mencken)

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

“ When the rest of literary America was still indulging in the polite language of pulpits and the lifeless rhetoric of its libraries, Whitman not only sensed the richness and vigor of the casual word, the colloquial phrase—he championed the vitality of slang, the freshness of our quickly assimilated jargons, the indigenous beauty of vulgarisms. He even predicted that no future native literature could exist that neglected this racy speech, that the vernacular of people as opposed to the language of literati would form the living accents of the best poets to come. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

“ Ten thousand native idiomatic words are growing, or are already grown, out of which vast numbers could be used by American writers, with meaning and effect—words that would give that taste of identity and locality which is so dear in literature—words that would be welcomed by the nation, being of the national blood. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

“ The American is no longer a vain, egotistical, insolent, rodomontade sort of fellow; America is no longer the brigand confederation of the Foreign Quarterly or the loathsome creature, maimed and lame, full of sores and ulcers of Dickens; but the Americanism is yet regarded with a bilious eye, and pounced upon viciously when found. Even the friendliest English critics seem to be daunted by the gargantuan copiousness of American inventions in speech. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

“ The Real Dictionary will give all words that exist in use, the bad words as well as any. The Real Grammar will be that which declares itself a nucleus of the spirit of the laws, with liberty to all to carry out the spirit of the laws ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

“ True enough, an English attack upon a definite American locution always brought out certain critical minute-men, but in the main they were anything but hospitable to the racy neologisms that kept crowding up from below, and most of them were eager to be accepted as masters of orthodox English and very sensitive to the charge that their writing was bestrewn with Americanisms. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

“ A glance through the native criticism of the time will show how ardently even the most uncompromising patriots imitated the Johnsonian jargon then fashionable in England. Fowler and Griswold followed pantingly in the footsteps of Macaulay; their prose is extraordinarily self-conscious, and one searches it in vain for any concession to colloquialism. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

“ Lowell did so in his preface to the second series of The Biglow Papers. Whitman made his declaration in An American Primer. In discussing Leaves of Grass, he said: I sometimes think that the entire book is only a language experiment—that it is an attempt to give the spirit, the body and the man, new words, new potentialities of speech—an American, a cosmopolitan (for the best of America is the best cosmopolitanism) range of self-expression. And then: The Americans are going to be the most fluent and melodious-voiced people in the world—and the most perfect users of words. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

“ Many of the slang words are our best; slang words among fighting men, gamblers, thieves, are powerful words.... Much of America is shown in these and in newspaper names, and in names of characteristic amusements and games.... Our tongue is full of strong words, native or adopted, to express the blood-born passion of the race for rudeness and resistance, as against mere polish.... ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

“ Words, especially the neglected words regarded as too crude and literal for literature, fascinated Whitman. The idea of an enriched language was scarcely ever out of his mind.... This interest ... grew to great proportions; it became almost an obsession. Whitman himself spoke of An American Primer as an attempt to describe the growth of an American English enjoying a distinct identity. He proposed an American dictionary containing the actual everyday vocabulary of the people. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — The Language in the Making (1919)

“ The typical American, in Pauldings satirical phrase, became a bundling, gouging, impious fellow, without either morals, literature, religion or refinement. Next to the savage struggle for land and dollars, party politics was the chief concern of the people, and with the disappearance of the old leaders and the entrance of pushing upstarts from the backwoods, political controversy sank to an incredibly low level. ”

H. L. Mencken

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Quotes from The American Language — The Language in the Making (H. L. Mencken)

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