be altogether uncalled for. During the period which has elapsed 

 since the separation took place, various colloquial changes have 

 taken place in both countries — the Americans are quite as much 

 entitled to make them as we are ; and, indeed, certain of what we 

 call Americanisms are simply words or phrases originally common 

 to both, which have been retained by them, but which with us 

 have died out. On the other hand, the claim has been advanced 

 by some of their writers on behalf of the Americans, that they 

 speak better English all round than we do. In a certain narrow 

 sense this may be the case That is to say that we have a number 

 of provincial dialects that do not exist with them, and which are 

 more or less different from standard English. But these are for ' 

 the most part ancient forms of speech, in most cases equally 

 correct with, and in certain cases more correct than the standard 

 speech. Let me give an illustration which may be interesting to 

 Cumbrians. Is there any single word which may be taken to be 

 the shibboleth of the Northerner ? That is to say, any expression 

 by which a man educated so as not generally to be distinguished 

 from another man, betrays his Northern origin ? I have heard my 

 late brother-in-law, Dr. Guest — than whom there is no higher 

 authority on the subject — say that that shibboleth is the way in 

 which he renders the past tense of the verb to beat. The ordinary 

 Englishman makes no difference between the present and the past ; 

 the Northerner, as he says 7neet, met, says also beat, bet. While then 

 the ordinary Englishman would say, " He thought he could beat 

 me, but I beat him," the Northerner would say, " He thought he 

 could beat me, but I bet him." This is as old as (no doubt older 

 than) the time of Chaucer, for Chaucer was, it is supposed, a 

 Northern man : — 



"And still upon his breast he betj'^ 

 I adduce this as a casual instance of a provincialism in reality 

 more regularly formed than the equivalent word of standard 

 English. 



It is difficult for us to form a just comparison between English 

 and American speech, for the error which is new to us, naturally 

 strikes us more than that with which we have been all our lives 



