AMERICAN ENGLISH. 



By Gilbert M. Tucker. 



[Read before the Albany Institute, June 6, ISSSi.] 



And you may have a pretty considerable good sort of a feeble notion that it don't fit 

 nohow; and that it ain't calculated to make you smart overmuch; and that you don't 

 feel 'special bright, and by no means first-rate, and not at all tonguey ; and that, how- 

 ever rowdy you may be by natur', it does use you up com-plete, and that's a fact; and 

 makes you quake considerable, and disposed toe damn the engine ! — All of which phrases, 

 I beg to add, are pure Americanisms of the first water." — Charles Dickens, Letter to John 

 Forster, February, 1842. 



The time-honored jokes about the " American language," if not 

 entirely antiquated, have at least for the most part changed their lon- 

 gitude to a meridian considerably east of that of Greenvvich. A 

 recent attempt dates from the land of the Pharaohs. Kiaz Pacha, 

 late President of the Egyptian Council, is said to have retorted, on 

 being rallied by an American for supporting so patiently the British 

 yoke, that in one respect at least the English were making greater 

 progress in the United States than in the East, inasmuch as he was 

 credibly informed that their language was now almost universally 

 spoken among the Americans! This is perhaps endurable ; but it 

 would subject one's politeness to a pretty severe strain, now-a-days, 

 to be expected to appear greatly amused at a story about compliments 

 paid in Great Britain to the good English spoken by some exceptional 

 traveler from New York or Boston. Serious references, moreover, 

 like that of Dean x\lford, to ^' the process of deterioration which our 

 Queen's English has undergone at the hands of the Americans,"* are 

 not often found in British publications of very recent date, except 

 when accompanied (as was the dean's) by some display of insular 

 prejudice or crass ignorance in regard to the history, geography or 

 politics of the United States, such a& would naturally disqualify the 

 writer, in the mind of an impartial judge, as a critic of anything per- 

 taining to this country. The testimony of well-informed British 

 writers of the present day is, in fact, more generally in accord with 

 that of Sir Georgje Campbell: " Of the body of the [American] people 

 it may be said that their language is a little better than that used in 

 any county of England, "f 



Yet the pages of so important a periodical as the London Nineteenth 



*The Queen's English, 11th thousand, fS. 

 f'White and Black." 



