5. AMERICAN ENGLISH.

225. The English language was brought to this country by the first colonists from England, in the sixteenth century. But the determining period of colonization was the seventeenth, although the number of colonists was largely increased in the eighteenth. Until the War of Independence this country was a group of colonies, and its language and its literature were distinctively colonial. With the establishment of the United States, however, the colonial period ended and a distinctively American period began.

At the present day there is a perceptible difference, not only of pronunciation, but of diction, between the English of the educated classes in America and the English of the corresponding classes in England.

The difference in pronunciation is described with sufficient accuracy by phoneticians. Only a few general points can be mentioned here. In general, the Englishman speaks more rapidly than the American, and is much given to ending sentences with the rising instead of the falling inflection. He suppresses the r freely, also the h sound in the wh- compound, confounding Wales and whales. This is quite distinct from the vulgar Cockney 'ouse (for house) or h'ice (for ice). He pronounces the a broadly, especially in such words as half, dance, and ends many long vowels with an audible "glide." Thus the English pronunciation of pound suggests to an American ear something like pow-und. Even many of the short vowels have this glide. To sum up, the pronunciation of England offers a greater variety of vowel-sound. On the other hand, the vowels are freer from the nasal twang which is apt to disfigure American utterance.

The difference of diction is less easily summed up. A few specimens of parallel words are given in § 98. But a mere word-list, even were it exhaustive, would not state the case adequately. The idiomatic and rhetorical employment of words must also be taken into account. Here is

the weak side of American English. We do not, as a nation, speak and write with due observance of grammatical propriety. We are too tolerant of vulgarisms and poor grammar.

The

Yet even here it is necessary to discriminate. uneducated speak badly in every land. The uneducated Englishman is fully as crude as his American cousin. The opposite extreme, the highly educated, speak and write about equally well everywhere. The problem for America lies rather with the half-educated, with those persons who have had some education, but not of the highest order. In America such persons play a more active part in public life than they do in England and other old countries. They write and print more, and are quite heedless of form. They are satisfied with any collocation of words that expresses the meaning approximately.

226. The faults of this kind of writing are justly condemned as "Americanisms." To remedy them is the problem of the present and the future. The solution of the problem lies in the establishment of a thorough, carefully graded course of reading and composition for all scholars between the ages of ten and eighteen. Reverting to §§ 142, 143, we may hold that it is the prime duty of the American school-system to impart to every boy and girl both a taste for good reading and the gift of correct, easy, and refined expression.

But it is not our duty to attempt to conform our expression in every feature to London English of the present day. Such an attempt would be impossible. Through the operation of social and political forces which cannot now be undone, correct London English and correct American English have so far diverged as to run parallel courses. The language established here in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has retained words, or shades of meaning, and idioms which are no longer in vogue in England. These words and idioms are sanctioned by the usage of

our best poets and prose-writers. Our literature, in fact, is like our law. Each was transplanted from the mother country, but each enjoys now an independent growth. Within the past century we have acquired a reputable literary tradition of our own. To tamper with this tradition would be worse than useless. Although the great writers of England, past and future, will always be the object of our most earnest study, we are not constrained to follow them blindly.

6. GENERAL REMARKS.

227. The total number of words to be found in English literature (non-dialectic) of all grades since the year 1100 has been computed at over 200,000. Of this vast number, however, many are obsolete or obsolescent, and many more are technical terms used only in certain trades or professions. The number of words which a diligent reader would meet with in a very promiscuous course of reading cannot be computed, but we might guess it to be 40,000, possibly 50,000. Whether a reader of not more than ordinary training would really understand 40,000 words is doubtful. One's understanding and appreciation of words depends in great part upon one's general training and home-surroundings. In this respect the children of cultured reading families have decidedly the advantage.

The vocabulary which one uses in one's own writing is much smaller than the vocabulary needed for reading. Few, among the great writers, have used 10,000 words. An ordinary professional writer may content himself with from 5000 to 6000. The ordinary writer will find 3000 to 4000 a sufficient allowance.

228. Some suggestions for acquiring a working vocabulary are offered in §§ 79, 80. To them may be added the following.

1. Try, systematically and persistently, to enrich your vocabulary. When, in your reading, you meet with a word or a

phrase which strikes you as at once novel and serviceable, note it down. Make sure of its exact meaning, and then try to introduce it in your own writing. This effort to use the diction of a good author is helpful in two ways. It augments your resources of expression, it also develops your mental faculties, it trains you to think in sympathy with one maturer than yourself. Consider that words are not mere algebraic symbols of thought; they are living organisms, to be studied only in their natural surroundings.

2. Do not let yourself be misled into favoring one set or kind of words more than another. Sixty years and more ago, Lord Brougham, addressing the students of the University of Glasgow, laid down the rule that the native (Anglo-Saxon) part of our vocabulary was to be favored at the expense of that other part which has come from the Latin and Greek. The rule was an impossible one, and Lord Brougham himself never tried seriously to observe it; nor, in truth, has any great writer made the attempt. Not only is our language highly composite, but the component words have, in De Quincey's phrase, "happily coalesced." It is easy to jest at words in -osity. and -ation, at " dictionary" words, and the like. But even Lord Brougham would have found it difficult to dispense with pomposity and imagination.*

Our criterion for selecting a word should not be its origin. but its function. Words of native origin are usually terms for familiar objects and qualities and for direct, strong action. Our longer Anglo-French and Greek-Latin words are usually terms for expressing delicate discriminations and abstract thinking. Both sets are indispensable, and therefore both are used freely by all truly skilful writers. Thus Shakespeare makes the headstrong Cassius speak in the purest native monosyllables:

*See De Quincey (Autobiography), ii. 65-70; also Matthew Arnold, On Translating Homer, 288, 289.

I had as lief not be as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

-Julius Caesar, i. 2. 95.

Yet the same Shakespeare intuitively puts into the mouth of a more imaginative character such diction as:

This my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine.

-Macbeth, ii. 2. 62.

Attention is called in § 6 to the two classes of words in the extract from De Quincey's Confessions. The longer extract from the Mail Coach, § 31, also illustrates the dif ference aptly.

3. Consider that a rich and pure vocabulary is a badge of culture. Our words do not suggest at once their meanings, as German words usually do, by the mere formation. They demand more study and comparison, a wider range of reading, a keener insight into idiom. This is the difficult side of our language. Unlike our grammar, which is the simplest of all grammars, our vocabulary is puzzling, even to the native. The mastery of it is the test of culture. While the German may take the fine distinction between dative and accusative for his test, or the Frenchman may take the subjunctive mood for his, the Anglo-American will judge his fellows by their words and phrases.

* Awe happens to be a Danish word, see ? 216; but Shakespeare was certainly unaware of its origin, and we, too, should be, but for our philology.