CANADIAN ENGLISH. 353 



vernacular which, to the home-hred ear, would stand nearly as much 

 in need of translation, as an oration of one of the Huron or Chippe- 

 way Chiefs whom we have supplanted from their ancient hunting 

 grounds on the shores of the great lakes. Let us take a brief 

 example. A Canadian who has enjoyed the advantages of the Ameri- 

 can vocabulary will thus describe a very simple transaction : — " I 

 traded my last yorker for a plug of honey dew, and got plaguy chisel- 

 ed by a loafer whose boss had dickered his lot and betterments for 

 notions to his store ;" some of the words introduced here are genuine 

 Americanisms, such as betterments, i.e. improvements on new lands ; 

 lot, or division of land ; town lots, sites within the area designed for 

 a village or town; boss (Dutch) the euphemism for the unpalatable word 

 master ; and store, the invariably term for a shop. Others again, such 

 as yorker: a shilling york currency, or sixpence sterling, are no less 

 genuinely Canadian ; and the whole, will become intelligible for the 

 first time to the inexperienced English ear when thus translated : — 

 " I exchanged my last sixpence for a packet of tobacco, and got 

 thoroughly cheated by a disreputable fellow whose employer had 

 bartered a piece of improved land to obtain small wares for his 

 shop." 



These and a thousand other examples which might be produced 

 fully j ustify the use of the term " Canadian English," as expressive 

 of a corrupt dialect growing up amongst our population, and 

 gradually finding access to our periodical literature, until it threatens 

 to produce a language as unlike our noble mother tongue as the negro 

 patua, or the Chinese pidgeon English. That the English language 

 is still open to additions no one can doubt, or that it assimilates to 

 itself, when needful, even the racy vernacular of to-day, to enrich 

 itself, where synonymes are wanting. Hence, whenever a single 

 word supplies the place of what could only be formerly expressed by 

 a sentence, — unless the word be singularily uneuphoneous, — the 

 language gains by its adoption. But if chiseling only means cheating ; 

 and log-rolling, — -jobbing ; and clearing out, or making tracks, — run- 

 ning aivay ; then most men of taste will have little hesitation in their 

 choice between the oldfashioned English of Shakespeare, Milton 

 Swift, and Addison, and such modern enrichments of the old a well 

 of English undefiled." Such words -of-all- work, again, as some, and 

 quite, and fix, and guess, having already a precise and recognized 

 acceptance in classical English, it is probable that good writers and 

 educated speakers will still recognize them in such sense, and when 

 they fix a wheel immovably, they will say they have fixed it ; but 



VOL. II. — Y 



