Summary
Chapter 1: The Diverging Streams of English
With the arrival of early settlers on American shores came a pressing need to craft a new vocabulary that captured the essence of their untamed surroundings. As English evolved, voices divided into two factions: those championing the creation of Americanisms, and those fiercely defending the purity of British English. The American Revolution sparked a fervent "national conceit," inspiring Americans to cast off all things British and fervently embrace their own distinctive identity. As the nation expanded, fresh words sprouted, and novel pronunciations of familiar terms took root. British critics eyed these changes with suspicion and hostility, igniting a spirited rivalry.
Americanisms first wove their way into the tapestry of literature through the wit of humorists like Benjamin Franklin and Washington Irving. Subsequently, authors like Mark Twain painted vibrant portraits of regional humor through their dialects.
Chapter 2: Exploring the Linguistic Landscape
In this section, Mencken delves into the scholarly endeavors to define and chronicle American English. He highlights its nationwide uniformity, its bold disregard for convention, and its ability to absorb and create expressions from varied influences.
Mencken dedicates a segment to examining the pioneering efforts to catalog Americanisms through dictionaries, glossaries, and scholarly articles.
Chapter 3: The Dawn of American English
Here, Mencken sets the stage with a historical backdrop, exploring the "loanwords" borrowed from Native American tongues and the linguistic contributions of settlers from diverse lands. Americans, too, coined terms for indigenous foods and innovations in architecture, agriculture, and hunting.
Some words found new meanings, while others, long forgotten, resurfaced. Deprived of contemporary literature, colonists turned to archaic expressions from the Bible and its commentaries, breathing life into them once more.
Chapter 4: A Burst of Linguistic Flourishing
In this chapter, Mencken chronicles the linguistic shift as America settled into its identity. Post-Revolution, the nation's resolve to shape itself independently was unwavering. American literature began to blossom, often influenced by European countries like Spain and Germany, avoiding British roots due to lingering resentment.
Mencken meticulously dissects the emergence of new vocabulary. He examines the evolution of verbs, adjectives, and nouns, highlighting the distinctions between British English and its American counterpart. Politics, drinking, and religion emerge as spheres where vocabulary often diverges.
Regions across the nation felt the impact of non-English influences to varying degrees. The influx of immigrants introduced Irish, Jewish, Slavic, and Chinese lexicon into the American vernacular.
Chapter 5: The Language's Modern Pulse
Despite attempts to steer its course, American English forges its own dynamic path. It morphs through the use of suffixes and prefixes, and through back-formation, such as the verb "to resurrect" derived from "resurrection." According to Mencken, journalists, in their quest for brevity, often create words through these methods, as seen with "ad" and "gas." Nouns transform into verbs by adding -ize or -en, as in "hospitalize" or "mistaken."
Chapter 6: A Transatlantic Exchange
Chapter six delves into the mutual influence of British and American English. Post-Civil War, the charm of American humorists like Mark Twain captivated England, easing the acceptance of Americanisms. As World War I loomed, American films gained popularity in Britain, further embedding American English. The media, from radio to newspapers, played a pivotal role in this linguistic exchange.
To highlight the contrast between these English varieties, Mencken presents a detailed chart comparing British and American usages in everyday contexts. He then explores significant vocabulary differences across fields like education, business, sports, and music.
Americans' preference for euphemisms is particularly evident in professional and daily settings; "mortician" is favored over "undertaker," and "help" over "servant." Yet, the terminology for ethnic groups often lacks...
(This entire section contains 1323 words.)
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this sensitivity, as Mencken illustrates with a list of disparaging terms. Attitudes towards taboo words vary by time and place, with differences in what’s considered vulgar in England versus America. Mencken provides examples of such linguistic divides.
Chapter 7: The Melody of American PronunciationMencken's subsequent chapters brim with detailed studies and factual insights. Pronunciation, elusive and nuanced, varies with regional idiosyncrasies. Mencken references phonetic scholars and their investigative techniques.
He notes the differences in stress patterns (as in "advertisement"), the American drawl and nasal timbre, and the variations in vowel and consonant sounds, like the British inclination to drop an "r."
Remarkably, American English retains a surprising consistency. Researchers suggest that dialects may eventually align with the prevailing American speech patterns. Still, Mencken identifies three fundamental dialects: Western, New England, and Southern American.
Chapter 8: The Evolution of Spelling
In America's infancy, a definitive spelling guide was absent until Noah Webster's contributions filled the void. English purists resisted these American spellings, but Mencken boldly asserts that "American spelling is plainly better than British spelling," citing "jail" as superior to "gaol."
American spellers exhibit a liberal attitude toward loanwords, often eschewing accent marks and italicization for commonly used foreign terms. They also tend to forgo gender distinctions, such as "blond" versus "blonde," and capitalize less frequently than their British counterparts.
Chapter 9: The Language of the People
Everyday American speech is peppered with certain common missteps. Among these are the infamous double negatives, where phrases like "don't do nothing" muddy the waters of clarity. Then there's the occasional confusion between adjectives and adverbs, as in "Look up quick!" where adverbs should reign. Even more perplexing are mismatched pronoun cases and verb tenses such as "she have been." According to Mencken, verbs and pronouns are often at the heart of such grammatical gaffes.
Errors also creep in when pronouns and adverbs are awkwardly combined, leading to peculiar constructions like "that there." Nouns, too, face their own challenges, particularly in crafting the plural forms of compound nouns and noun phrases, resulting in curiosities like "son-in-laws" instead of the correct "sons-in-law." Genitive cases can also puzzle, with constructions like "That umbrella is the young lady I go with's." Adjectives, though generally straightforward, sometimes see their comparatives or superlatives doubled, as in "more better." Mencken notes the rapid expansion of American English has birthed certain oddities, including whimsical compounds such as "that'n" and "woulda," turning "would've" into the misconstructed "would of," and adding unnecessary "a" in phrases like "that-a-way."
Chapter 10: Proper Names in America
American surnames weave a tapestry of diverse origins, yet they also tell stories of adaptation. Immigrants, striving to blend into their new homeland, often altered their names to echo American pronunciations. American names frequently graced the birth certificates of those born on this soil. As Native Americans stepped into broader society, they often traded their ancestral names for those more common.
Across the United States, the choice of first names varies, with Americans known for bestowing unique monikers upon their children. Initially, colonists named locations after familiar English places or notable landscape features. Today, place-names fall into eight distinct categories: people's names, names of other places, Native-American names, European names, biblical or mythological names, descriptors of the location, flora and fauna names, and purely imaginative creations.
Chapter 11: American Slang
In this chapter, Mencken delves into the nuances between slang and argot. Slang is viewed as the colorful, colloquial language that sits below the formal standards, while argot refers to specialized vocabulary used within specific groups or professions, often incorporating slang. Mencken examines notable contributors to the rich tapestry of American slang, emphasizing that Americans, second only to the French, are prolific slang creators. During Mencken's time, the academic exploration of slang in American English was just beginning.
Mencken dedicates a substantial section to the intriguing argot of the criminal underworld, highlighting its international nature. He clarifies the subtle distinctions among the vocabularies of criminals, prostitutes, and vagabonds.
Chapter 12: The Future of the Language
In the grand finale, Mencken posits that English, and particularly its American variant, is destined to maintain its status as the world's most spoken language. It's the dominant tongue in the globe's most influential nations and serves as a second language in numerous others. The relentless spread of English underscores its future significance. Mencken argues that English's straightforward structure makes it an accessible language for foreigners to learn.
