Dilatation

“ Dialect, as is proven by Burns, Lowell, Riley, Dunbar, often gets nearer the heart than the language of the schools is able to do, and for home-spun philosophy, for mother-wit, for folk-lore, and for racial humor, for whatever is quaint and peculiar and native in any people, it is the only proper medium. ”

“ There are, it is true, dialect stories which we must all admire and enjoy,—many of them in spite of their strange language rather than because of it,—but none the less is the multiplicity of tales in dialect a visitation not unlike the Egyptian plague of swarming flies or of sprawling frogs. ”

“ In talk it is not correctness of grammar nor elegance of enunciation that charms us; it is spirit, VERVE, the sudden turn of humour, the keen, pungent taste of life. For this reason a touch of dialect, a flavour of brogue, is delightful. Any dialect is classic that has conveyed beautiful thoughts. ”

“ Foreigners sometimes reproach us for the asperity and discordance of our speech, and in general, this reproach is just, for there are many persons who do scanty justice to the vowel-elements of our language. ”

“ And when you have experienced this warcry 'what? what?' oftener than you like, you will raise the standard of your pronunciation (just [pg 40] as you would raise your voice to a deaf listener) merely to save yourself trouble, even though you were insensible to the shame of the affront.
In asseveration.
And this more careful articulation obtains also in all asseveration. A speaker who wishes to provoke attention to any particular statement or sentiment will speak the words by which he would convey it more slowly and with more careful articulation than the rest of his utterance. ”

“ All the way along there has been a decided blank space between decision in the mind and embodiment in language.
Whether slang, profanity, or colloquialisms have cut into our ordinary speech to such an extent as to keep us at a loss for the apt word, or whether we have grown careless or slovenly in our habits of expression, is a matter with which we are not concerned here. We do know that we are continually hampered by our inability to state absolutely our meaning. ”

“ As soon as phonetic corruption shows itself in a language, that language has lost what we considered to be the most essential character of all human speech, namely, that every part of it should have a meaning. ”

“ POPULAR PHRASES AND SAYINGS To most people the details contained in the preceding chapter will seem but the dry bones of dialect speech; they would prefer the bones to be covered with sinews and flesh. Dialect speech as the embodiment of living, many-sided, human nature is perhaps nowhere so closely seen as in a collection of the figurative terms and phrases applied to people and things. ”

“ There is something more at fault than the language when we turn from or flinch at it; and, as has been intimated, the wretched fault may be skulkingly hidden away in the ambush of ostensible dialect—that type of dialect so copiously produced by its sole manufacturers, who, utterly stark and bare of the vaguest idea of country life or country people, at once assume that all their "gifted pens" have to do is to stupidly misspell every word ”

“ V. Dialectal and Popular Words.
Whether words may, by conscious effort, be preserved in colloquial usage is an unsolved question, though perhaps our Society may help to solve it; there is, however, another and more certain benefit which its members, or at any rate such of them as are writers, may confer upon the language. There are many excellent words spoken in uneducated speech and dialect all about us, which would be valuable additions to our standard vocabulary if they could be given currency in it. ”

“ I highly disapprove of the absurd practice, so common with young men of the present day, of expressing their ideas in that low and incomprehensible dialect, termed 'slang,' which, in my opinion, has neither wit nor refinement to redeem its vulgarity, and which effectually prevents their acquiring that easy yet dignified mode of expression which should characterise the conversation of the true gentleman. ”

“ Now, the view taught at the present time seems to me to want greatness; and the dialect in which alone it can be intelligibly uttered is not the dialect of my soul. It is a sort of postponement of life; nothing quite is, but something different is to be; we are to keep our eyes upon the indirect from the cradle to the grave. ”

“ For the necessities of this struggle, misery has invented a fighting language, which is called slang. To hold up on the surface and keep from forgetfulness, from the gulf, only a fragment of any language which man has spoken, and which would be lost,—that is to say, one of the elements, good or bad, of which civilization is composed and complicated,—is to extend the data of social observation and serve civilization itself. ”

“ I have always remarked that they who have used a dialect different from the common forms of speech in their youth, and come afterwards to correct it, by intercourse with the world, usually fall back into their early infirmities in moments of trial, perplexity, or anger. ”

“ Poetic Words in Dialect Use Another feature of the dialect vocabulary which is worth a passing notice, is the existence therein of words which we are wont to regard as too poetical, or too literary for everyday use. We should fear to be considered affected, and given to a habit of interlarding our conversation with quotations from books, if we called a song-thrush a mavis, or a throstle, and spoke of a merle or an ousel instead of saying blackbird, yet all these four are extremely common dialect terms. ”

“ For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly sufficient. ”

“ It must be remembered, that unlettered races are subject to far greater and more rapid changes of dialect [85] than those who preserve in sacred books or popular poetry fixed standards of correct speech; add to this, the chances of error when a traveller, communicating with a native through an interpreter, and contending with sounds unusual to his ear, attempts to form a vocabulary. These causes, acting together, tend to increase the difficulty of recognizing linguistic affinities that really exist. ”

“ So, then, we are asking what is the condition of a man who has learned the dictionary standard?
(1) In common talk if we speak so indistinctly as not to be understood, we repeat our sentence with a more careful articulation. As Sweet used to say, the only security against the decay of language through careless articulation into absolute unintelligibility is the personal inconvenience of having to repeat your words when you are indistinctly heard. 'What' leaps out from the dictionary with a shout to the rescue of all his fellows. ”

“ I have often noticed while abroad how prone are the masters of many tongues, when striving to keep silent in one, to break out in some less euphoneous speech, and thus give themselves away, or at least arouse a contagious smile of good-natured disapproval. ”

“ For, setting aside the fact that all are not agreed as to whose usage forms the unexceptionable standard, nothing can be more certain than that few, on either side of the ocean, know and follow it accurately. Not many of us can escape acquiring in our youth some tinge of local dialect, of slang characteristic of grade or occupation, of personal peculiarities, even, belonging to our initiators into the mysteries of speech. ”

“ INTRODUCTION Among common errors still persisting in the minds of educated people, one error which dies very hard is the theory that a dialect is an arbitrary distortion of the mother tongue, a wilful mispronunciation of the sounds, and disregard of the syntax of a standard language. ”

“ It is a fact, that while these poor creatures cannot articulate a word of any thing else in English, the most awfully profane expressions will drop from their lips in English, as fluently as if it had been their vernacular tongue. ”

“ In this way we may explain the adventitious dental that has attached itself to the end of a word like sound, Latin sonus, French son, or the aspirate which is inserted in the wrong place by persons who are conscious of a difficulty in pronouncing it in the right place. So, again, in talking to a foreigner we instinctively raise the voice and repeat our remarks in a louder tone should he fail to comprehend them. The more readily our thoughts are understood, the less need there is of our dwelling upon the sounds which express them. ”

“ It is the shine of the bait at which the fish bite, as at a spinner, but probably the fresh lask leaves behind it in the water an odour or flavour of mackerel oil which keeps the shoal together and makes them follow the boat.
11 The flexibility and expressiveness of dialect lies largely in its ability to change its verbal form and pronunciation from a speech very broad indeed to something approaching standard English. For example, "You'm a fool," is playful; "You'm a fule," less so. "You're a fool," asserts the fact without blame; while "Thee't a fule," or "Thee a't a fule!" ”

“ Every slang-word is related to some fact vividly held in mind; some of these facts are more difficult to reflect than are others; and that is one cause of the death of many slang-words before reaching the state of dialect. Also slang very often is the product of fugitive sensations, emotions, impulses; and at such times its parts are not properly words, hence their high mortality.
Dialect is as natural as grass. It springs from the people as readily as grass from the sod. It is a kind of wild grass that persists in repeating earlier forms. ”

“ Perhaps, unless a poet has a dialect ringing in his ears, so as to shape his metre and rhymes according to it at one jet, it is better to be content with a few suggestive touches; and, I fear, that the stupid public is not half grateful for studies in dialect beyond such suggestions. ”

“ The tongue will trip and cause one word to be used for another, even by the discreetest and most excellent speakers. But when you men talk viciously, not from ignorance, but by reason of your own wickedness, I know of no virtuous woman who does not feel a loathing for such speakers, and who would not merely refuse to hearken to them, but even to remain in their company. ”

“ I have no room to argue the pro's of dialect here, but it always seems strange that those lazy critics who are unwilling to take the trouble to translate the occasional hard words in a dialect form of their own tongue, should be so inconsistent as ever to study a foreign language. ”

“ Dī′alling, the art of constructing dials: the science which explains the measuring of time by the sun-dial: surveying by help of a compass with sights, such as is called a 'miner's dial;' Dīal-plate. [M. E. dial—Low L. dialis, daily—L. dies, a day.]
Dialect, dī′a-lekt, n. a variety or form of a language peculiar to a district: a non-literary vernacular: a peculiar manner of speaking.—adj. Dialect′al.—adv. Dialect′ally.—ns. Dialect′icism; Dialectol′ogist; Dialectol′ogy. [Through Fr. and L. from Gr. dialektos, speech, manner of speech, peculiarity of speech—dia, between, legein, to speak.] ”

“ It is well enough to record a dialect, nor will any one grudge him credit for his observation and diligence, but to reduce a dialect to theoretic laws and then impose those laws upon the speakers of it is surely a monstrous step. ”

“ How our English vernacular has changed ever since the days of the famous virgin queen, not to mention the more radical changes of the far-remote days of the ill-starred Richard II! A spoken language is constantly changing. It grows and develops, or languishes and decays, upon the lips of those who employ it as their mother-tongue, now incorporating into itself new expressions and idioms and now casting off such as are old and worn out. ”

“ The difficulty is that the great and inglorious company of imitators have written dialect for its own sake,—or perhaps for their own sake!—and thereby not only have produced things dreadful to contemplate, but have so wearied the soul of readers that it has become dangerous to use it legitimately. ”

“ My aim in dealing with the linguistic side of my subject has been to show that rules for pronunciation and syntax are not the monopoly of educated people who have been taught to preach as well as practise them. Dialect-speaking people obey sound-laws and grammatical rules even more faithfully than we do, because theirs is a natural and unconscious obedience. ”

“ Meanwhile, we of the standard speech have perhaps re-borrowed the word in a more modern shape, or re-modelled it after the pattern of its Latin cognate, or, where in older times the standard vocabulary included two forms side by side, we have since discarded one of [Pg 92] them, and left it to drop into obscurity. Regarded thus, the dialect form can take its legitimate place as the second half of a doublet, with as good a title to name and fame as the half that remained in the ranks of the literary vocabulary. ”

“ Another peculiarity is that of joining the letter y at the end of some verbs in the infinitive mood, as well as to parts of different conjugations, thus, "I can't sewy, nursy, reapy, to sawy, to sewy, to nursy, &c. A further peculiarity is the love of vowel sound, and opening out monosyllables of our polished dialect into two or more syllables, thus:
ay-er, for air; boo-äth, for both; fay-er, for fair; vi-ër for fire; stay-ers for stairs; show-er for sure ”

“ CORRUPTIONS AND POPULAR ETYMOLOGIES If we are to avoid on the one hand the danger of regarding a dialect as nothing better than a wilful perversion of standard English, we yet must not allow ourselves to be beguiled by the smooth-running course of true sound-laws, or the rural charm of quaint words, into the opposite error of supposing that irregularities and distortions do not exist. ”