Authors: H.L. Mencken
The New England variety of American is anything but a homogeneous
whole. In its coastal form, centering in Boston, it is very like the Standard English of Southern England, but as one moves westward it gradually loses itself in General American. The New England dialect that has been put to such heavy use in American literature since the close of the Eighteenth Century is the lingo of untutored yokels, and has many points in common with ordinary vulgar American. In other ways it suggests the dialect of the Appalachian hillmen. It made its first appearance in print, according to Krapp, in Royall Tyler’s play, “The Contrast” (1787), and it probably reached its apogee in Lowell’s “Biglow Papers” (1848, 1866). In an address “To the Indulgent Reader” prefixed to the First Series of the latter Lowell printed “general rules” for its compounding, as follows:
1. The genuine Yankee never gives the rough sound to the
r
when he can help it, and often displays considerable ingenuity in avoiding it even before a vowel.
2. He seldom sounds the final
g
, a piece of self-denial, if we consider his partiality for nasals. The same of the final
d
, as
han
’ and
stan
’ for
hand
and
stand
.
3. The
h
in such words as
while, when, where
, he omits altogether.
4. In regard to
a
, he shows some inconsistency, sometimes giving a close and obscure sound, as
hev
for
have, hendy
for
handy, ez
for
as, thet
for
that
, and again giving it the broad sound it has in
father
, as
hânsome
for
handsome
.
5. To
ou
he prefixes an
e
(hard to exemplify otherwise than orally).
6.
Au
, in such words as
daughter
and
slaughter
, he pronounces
ah
.
7. To the dish thus seasoned add a drawl
ad libitum
.
Krapp argues that, of these rules, only the fourth and sixth show any genuine differentiation from ordinary vulgar American.
123
Other experts have wrestled with the peculiarities of this somewhat formalized Yankee more successfully than Lowell; it is best described, perhaps,
by Grandgent in “New England Pronunciation.”
124
An extensive literature deals with its local forms, and especially with differences in the vocabulary.
125
The appearance of the Linguistic Atlas, the first sheets of which deal with New England, will make most of this literature useless. On the history of the coastal dialect the most useful work is “Early New England Pronunciation,” by Anders Orbeck, which is based upon an examination of the town records of Plymouth, Watertown, Dedham and Groton, Mass., for the period 1636–1707.
126
Dr. Orbeck discusses at length the probable sources of this coastal dialect. He finds that 73% of the early settlers of the region where it is used came from the Eastern counties of England, including London. He reviews at length the previous speculations of G. F. Hoar, T. W. Higginson, Joseph L. Chester, H. T. Nöel-Armfield and Edward Gepp, and exposes their errors.
127
Various authorities have sought to include New York City and Long Island in the New England speech area, but this is hardly justified by the facts. In a study made forty years ago B. S. Monroe found that there was some dropping of the terminal
r
in New York City and Kings, Queens, Suffolk, Westchester and Rensselaer counties, but that it was by no means general and was not accompanied by any significant use of the broad
a
in
grass, path
and
laugh
.
128
The
broad
a
actually heard in the metropolitan region is confined to a very small class of persons, chiefly of social pretensions, and among them it is not the Boston
a
that is used but the English one. In the rest of the State the flat
a
of General or Western American prevails, and the
r
is not elided.
129
The common people of New York City have a dialect of their own, first described scientifically by Dr. E. H. Babbitt of Columbia in 1896.
130
Its most notable peculiarity lies in the pronunciation of the
e
-sound before
r
, as in
bird, third, first, nerve, work, earnest, curve, girl, perfect
and
pearl
, which become something that is usually represented as
boid, thoid, foist, noive, woik, oinest, coive, goil, poifect
and
poil.
Contrariwise, the true
oi
-sound, as in
oyster, noise
and
Boyd
, gets a touch of the
r
, and in print these words are often given as
erster, nerz
and
Byrd
. Dr. Henry Alexander says that the true sound is the same in both cases, and lies between
oi
and
er
. To a person unfamiliar with it, it sounds like
oi
in the
er-
words and like
er
in the
oi
-words. Dr. Alexander thus explains the process:
Given two familiar sounds,
a
and
b
, and one unfamiliar sound,
x
, which, acoustically and phonetically, is intermediate between
a
and
b
. If a speaker is in the habit of substituting
x
for both
a
and
b
, then an untrained hearer will interpret
x
as
b
in words in which he expects to hear
a
, and
x
as
a
in words in which he expects to hear
b.
131
At the time the New York vulgar dialect first appeared in literature, in the early 90’s,
132
this confusion between
oi
and
er
was not stressed; instead, the salient mark of the dialect was thought to be substitution of
t
and
d
for the unvoiced and voiced forms of
th
, respectively, as in
wit
and
dat
for
with
and
that
. This substitution, said Dr. Babbitt in 1896, “does not take place in all words, nor in the speech of all persons, even of the lower classes; but the tendency exists beyond doubt.” It is my observation that it has declined in late
years, probably through the labors of the schoolmarm. But she has not been able to stamp out
foist
and
thoid
, if, indeed, she has been sufficiently conscious of them to make the attempt. Their use by Alfred E. Smith during his campaign for the Presidency in 1928 made the whole country conscious of the New York
oi.
I have frequently noted it in the speech of educated New Yorkers, and it is very common in that of the high-school graduates who make up the corps of New York stenographers. It extends into New Jersey and up Long Island Sound into Connecticut. The origin of the New York dialect has not yet been accounted for with any plausibility. Its current peculiarities seem to have been unobserved until toward the end of the last century. Perhaps it owes something to the influence of Yiddish-speaking immigrants. Its
oi
-sound is certainly heard in Yiddish, and since 1900 the Jews have constituted the largest racial
bloc
in the boroughs of Brooklyn and the Bronx, and probably also in that of Manhattan. At least one observer sees its genesis in a revolt of the submerged masses against their oppressors. He says:
This New York dialect, like its prototype in London [
i.e.
, Cockney], represents a class-protest, largely unconscious, against a life of terrible sounds, sights, smells and contacts. These exploitees would be as their masters, but they can not. Resisting all instruction, they take on this speech, which is the precise opposite of the speech of their masters. “Look what you made us,” they all seem to say, “but since you will not let us have what we want, we will pretend to glory in what we have, and will make ourselves as objectionable as possible to you in a way which you can not effectively penalize.”
133
This theory sounds so dubious to me that I marvel that it has not been embraced by the proletarian Aristotles of the
New Republic
and
New Masses
. Among those New Yorkers to whom Yiddish is native there are forms reported in use that have not got into the general vulgate of the town,
e.g.
, the interchange of
e
and flat
a
, as in
baker
for
beggar
and
kettle
for
cattle
; the interchange of
k
and
g
, as in
glass
for
class
and
locker
for
lager
; the interchange of
b
and p, as in
bowl
for
pole
and
mop
for
mob
; the interchange of long
e
and short
i
, as in
dip
for
deep
and
beeg
for
big
; the interchange of
t
and
d
, as in
lid
for
lit
and
lift
for
lived
. But these interchanges may be more apparent than real: perhaps what occurs in each case is a median sound, resembling that described by Dr. Alexander as lying between
oi
and
er.
134
In the other Middle Atlantic States, General or Western American prevails, save only for a small part of New Jersey adjacent to New York City, where the New York vulgate has some footing, and the lower part of the Delmarva Peninsula, where, as I have noted, something resembling Tidewater Southern is used. Most of the early observers of American speech-ways thought that the pronunciation of the Western Shore of Maryland was especially euphonious and correct. “When you get as far South as Maryland,” said J. Fenimore Cooper in 1828,
135
“the softest, and perhaps as pure an English is spoken as is anywhere heard.” Two years earlier Mrs. Anne Royall said that “the dialect of Washington, exclusive of the foreigners, is the most correct and pure of any part of the United States I have ever yet been in.”
136
Noah Webster also liked the pronunciation of this region, though he added that a
t
was added to
once
and
twice
by “a class of very well educated people, particularly in Philadelphia and Baltimore.”
137
In parts of Pennsylvania, as we have seen in
Chapter IV
, Section 3, the German influence has not only introduced a number of words that are not commonly heard elsewhere, but has also established some peculiar speech-tunes. The Pennsylvania voice, indeed, is recognized instantly in the adjacent States. In the sentence “Are you going now,” for example, there is a sharp rise on
go
and a fall on
now
. For the rest, Pennsylvania speaks General or Western American. “The true Western Pennsylvanian,” says E. K. Maxfield, “pronounces a decidedly flat
a
… and his
r
gives him especial
pride and a sense of superiority over both East and South.”
138
This flat
a
and conspicuous
r
are also sounded in Philadelphia, save perhaps by a small faction of the élite.
139
The speech of New Jersey, save in the New York suburbs, is likewise General American, but the vocabulary of the State is rich in locall terms.
140
General American itself hardly needs any description here; it is the speech with which the present volume mainly deals. It has, of course, many minor variations, but they have to do principally with its vocabulary. In regions where there are ponderable minorities speaking non-English languages many loan-words are taken in — Spanish in the Southwest, German in parts of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and Scandinavian in Minnesota and the adjacent States. Some of these local borrowings have been noted in
Chapter IV
, Section 3, and
Chapter V
, Section 5. They are of small importance, for in pronunciation and intonation, as in the major part of its vocabulary, General American is singularly uniform.
141
In Canada it prevails everywhere west of Montreal, and even to the eastward, as we have seen in Section 2, the flat
a
is dominant along the American border. The so-called Bluenose dialect of “the whole of New Brunswick and the greater part of Nova Scotia outside Halifax”
142
has affinities with the common speech of rural New England, but the early settlers of Ontario came mainly from New York and Pennsylvania, and those of the western regions have been principally American Middle Westerners, with admixtures of Germans, Scandinavians, Finns and Russians. In Ontario, the broad
a
“is never heard in
aunt
and
rather
,” but the flat
a
is occasionally heard even in
father
.
143
Throughout Canada, of course, the American vocabulary is dominant. Its neologisms are frequently denounced by patriotic Canadians with an eye on London, but even the statesmen of the Dominion now employ it in their deliberations. Said the Ottawa
Journal
in a recent editorial on the subject:
With the disappearance of Gladstonian haberdashery and frock coats, ponderosity of language could no longer be properly sustained, and now antiquarians can trace but the faintest vestiges in the Senate chamber. The stimulus of Burke’s orations and classical English speech has given place to the stimulus of Hollywood and the air waves.
144
In Bermuda, rather curiously, the General American flat
a
is used by the upper classes, and is a sign of social consequence, whereas the Negroes employ the broad English
a
and are looked down upon for doing so. Says Dr. Harry Morgan Ayres: