American Language

by H. L. Mencken

  Following than and as the American uses the objective form of the pronoun, as in “He is taller than me” and “such as her” He also uses it following like, but not when, as often happens, he uses the word in place of as or as if. Thus he says “Do it like him” but “Do it like he does” and “She looks like she was sick.” What appears here is apparently an instinctive feeling that these words, followed by a pronoun only, are not adverbs, but prepositions, and that they should have the same power to put the pronoun into an oblique case that other prepositions have. Just as “the taller of we” would sound absurd to all of us, so “taller than he” to the unschooled American, sounds absurd. This feeling has a good deal of respectable support. “As her” was used by Swift, “than me” by Burke and “than whom” by Milton. The brothers Fowler show that, in some cases, “than him” is grammatically correct and logically necessary.125 For example, compare “I love you more than him” and “I love you more than he” The first means “I love you more than (I love) him”; the second, “I love you more than he (loves you).” In the first him does not refer to I, which is nominative, but to you, which is objective, and so it is properly objective also. But the American, of course, uses him even when the preceding noun is in the nominative, save only when another verb follows the pronoun. Thus he says “I love you better than him” but “I love you better than he does.”

  In the matter of the reflexive pronouns the American vulgate exhibits forms which plainly show that it is the spirit of the language to regard self, not as an adjective, which it is historically, but as a noun. This confusion goes back to Old English days; it originated at a time when both the adjectives and the nouns were losing their old inflections. Such forms as Petrussylf (Peter’s self), Cristsylf (Christ’s self) and Icsylf (I, self) then came into use, and along with them came combinations of self and the genitive, still surviving in vulgar American in hisself and theirselves (or theirself). Down to the Sixteenth Century these forms remained in perfectly good usage. “Each for hisself,” for example, was written by Sir Philip Sidney, and is to be found in the dramatists of the time, though modern editors always change it to himself. How the dative pronoun got itself fastened upon self in the third person masculine and neuter is one of the mysteries of language, but there it is, and so, against all logic, history and grammatical regularity, himself, themselves and itself (not its-self) are in favor today. But the American, as usual, inclines against these illogical exceptions to the rule set by myself. I constantly hear hisself and theirselves, as in “He done it hisself” and “They know theirselves” Also, the emphatic own is often inserted between the pronoun and the noun, as in “Let every man save their own self.” In general the American vulgate makes very extensive use of the reflexive. It is constantly thrown in for good measure, as in “I overeat myself” and it is as constantly used singly, as in “self and wife.”

  The American pronoun does not necessarily agree with its noun in number. I find “I can tell each one what they make,” “Each fellow put their foot on the line,” “Nobody can do what they like” and “She was one of these kind126 of people” in Charters, and “I am not the kind of man that is always thinking about their record” and “If he was to hit a man in the head … they would think their nose tickled” in Lardner. At the bottom of this error there is a real difficulty: the lack of a pronoun of the true common gender in English, corresponding to the French soi and son.127 His, after a noun or pronoun connoting both sexes, often sounds inept, and his-or-her is intolerably clumsy. Thus the inaccurate plural is often substituted. The brothers Fowler have discovered “Anybody else who have only themselves in view” in Richardson, and “Everybody is discontented with their lot” in Disraeli, and Ruskin once wrote “If a customer wishes you to injure their foot.” I find two examples in a single paragraph of an article by Associate Justice George B. Ethridge of the Supreme Court of Mississippi: “We should keep it possible for anyone to correct their errors” and “No person can be happy in life if they”;128 and another in a war speech by Woodrow Wilson: “No man or woman can hesitate to give what they have.”129 In the lower reaches of the language the plural is used with complete innocence, and such forms as “Everybody knows their way,” “Somebody has gotten theirs,” “Nobody could help themselves” and “A person ought never take what ain’t theirn” are common.

  In demotic American the pedantry which preserves such forms as someone’s else is always disregarded; someone else’s is invariably used. “I have heard “Who else’s wife was there?” and “If it ain’t his’n, it ain’t nobody here else’s.” I note, too, that he’s seems to be assimilating with his. In such sentences as “I hear he’s coming here to work,” the sound of he’s is already almost that of his. Finally, there is a curious substitution of the simple personal pronoun for the genitive among the Negroes of the South, noted by George O. Curme.130 Examples are in “He roll he eyeballs” and “Who dog is it?” But this substitution is not encountered in the general vulgate.

  4. THE NOUN

  The only inflections of the noun remaining in English are those for number and for the genitive, and so it is in these two regions that the few variations to be noted in vulgar American occur. The rule that, in forming the plurals of compound nouns or noun-phrases, the -s shall be attached to the principal noun is commonly disregarded, and it goes at the end. Thus, “I have two sons-in-law” is never heard among the plain people; one always hears “I have two son-in-laws.” So with the genitive. I once overheard this: “That umbrella is the young lady I go with’s.”131 Often a false singular is formed from a singular ending in s, the latter being mistaken for a plural. Chinee, Portugee and Japanee are familiar: I have also encountered trapee, specie,132 tactic133 and summon (from trapeze, species, tactics and summons). A correspondent of American Speech once reported hearing calv and hoov as singulars in Nebraska,134 and Dr. Louise Pound has encountered corp and appendic in the same great State.135 In the mountains along the Tennessee-North Carolina border chee is the singular of cheese,136 and in the Ozarks likewise cheese is treated as a plural, though it apparently has no singular. Molasses, too, according to Vance Randolph, is considered a plural in the Ozarks, and both there and in North Carolina license is its own plural.137 Throughout the South the Primitive Baptists use Baptist (pronounced Baptiz) as both singular and plural.138 On at least one occasion a Texas Congressman referred to a fellow member of the House as “a Knights of Columbus,”139 and I believe that this usage is not uncommon among the Catholic proletariat. I have also encountered intelligentsia in the singular,140 but here, of course, we go beyond the bounds of the vulgate. Dr. Pound has called attention to the facility with which plural nouns are treated as singulars, e.g., woods, grounds, stairs, stockyards, as in “The party reached a picnic grounds” and “We passed a stockyards.” Incidence, in my observation, is commonly misused for incident, as in “He told an incidence.” Here incidence (or incident) seems to be regarded as a synonym, not for happening, but for story. The general disregard of number often shows itself when the noun is used as object. I have already quoted Lardner’s “Some of the men has brung their wife along”; in a popular magazine I lately encountered “Those book ethnologists … can’t see what is before their nose.” The common indicators of quantity seldom add s for the plural in the vulgate. Especially when preceded by a numeral, such words as mile, bushel, dozen, pound, pair, foot, inch, gallon and peck retain their singular form.

  5. THE ADJECTIVE

  The adjectives in English are inflected only for comparison, and the American commonly uses them correctly, with now and then a double comparative or superlative to ease his soul. More better is the commonest of these. It has a good deal of support in logic. A sick man is reported today to be better. Tomorrow he is further improved. Is he to be reported better again, or best? The standard language gets around the difficulty by using still better. The American vulgate boldly employs more better. In the case of worse, worser is used, as Charters shows. He also repo
rts baddest, more queerer and beautifullest, and from the Ozarks Vance Randolph reports most Almighty God.141 The American of the folk freely compares adjectives that are incapable of the inflection logically. Charters reports most principal, and I myself have heard uniquer and even more uniquer, as in “I have never saw nothing more uniquer.” I have also heard more ultra, more worse, idealer, liver (that is, more energetic, more alive), perfectest, and wellest, as in “He was the wellest man you ever seen.”142 In general, the -er and -est terminations are used instead of the more and most prefixes, as in beautiful, beauti-fuller, beautifullest. The fact that the comparative relates to two and the superlative to more than two is almost always forgotten. I have never heard “the better of the two,” in the popular speech, but always “the best of the two.” Charters also reports “the hardest of the two” and “My brother and I measured and he was the tallest.” “It ain’t so worse” is in common use. Superlatives are sometimes made from present participles, e.g., fightingest. Vance Randolph reports shootingest and dancingest from the Ozarks, and Dr. Louise Pound has dredged kissingest, leakingest, goingest, laughingest and high-steppingest from the general speech.143 She adds onliest, orphanest, womanishest, lunatickest, spindliest, unjustest, outlandishest and allrightest, and the comparative pathetiker.

  Adjectives are made much less rapidly in American than either substantives or verbs. The only suffix that seems to be in general use for that purpose is -y, as in tony, classy, hefty, daffy, nutty, ritzy, dinky, snappy,144 leery, etc. The use of the adjectival prefix super-tends to be confined to the more sophisticated classes; the plain people seldom use it.145 This relative paucity of adjectives appears to be common to the more primitive varieties of speech. E. C. Hills, in his elaborate study of the vocabulary of a child of two,146 found that it contained but 23 descriptive adjectives, of which six were the names of colors, as against 59 verbs and 173 common nouns. Moreover, most of the 23 minus six were adjectives of all work, such as nasty, funny and nice. Colloquial American uses the same rubber-stamps of speech. Funny connotes the whole range of the unusual; hard indicates every shade of difficulty; nice is everything satisfactory; wonderful is a superlative of almost limitless scope. The decay of one to a vague n-sound, as in this’n, is matched by a decay of than after comparatives. Earlier than is seldom if ever heard; composition reduces the two words to earlier’n. So with better’n, faster’n, hotter’n, deader’n, etc. Once I overheard the following dialogue: “I like a belt more looser’n what this one is.” “Well, then, why don’t you unloosen it more’n you got it unloosened?” That decay of the -ed termination which has substituted damn for damned has also clipped many other adjectives, e.g., high-toned. I never hear “a high-toned man”; it is always high-tone.

  6. THE ADVERB

  All the adverbial endings in English, save -ly, have gradually fallen into decay; it is the only one that is ever used to form new adverbs. At earlier stages of the language various other endings were used, and some of them survive in a few old words, though they are no longer employed in making new ones. The Old English endings were -e and -lice. The latter was, at first, merely an -e-ending to adjectives in -lic, but after a time it attained to independence and was attached to adjectives not ending in -lic. In Middle English this -lice changed to -li and -ly. Meanwhile, the -e-ending, following the -e-endings of the nouns, adjectives and verbs, ceased to be pronounced, and so it gradually fell away. Thus a good many adverbs came to be indistinguishable from their ancestral adjectives, for example, hard in to pull hard, loud in to speak loud, and deep in to bury deep (Old English, deop-e). Worse, not a few adverbs actually became adjectives, for example, wide, which was originally the Old English adjective wid (wide) with the adverbial -e-ending, and late, which was originally the Old English adjective læt (slow) with the same ending.

  The result of this movement toward identity in form was a confusion between the two classes of words, and from the time of Chaucer down to the Eighteenth Century one finds innumerable instances of the use of the simple adjective as an adverb. “He will answer trewe” is in Sir Thomas More; “and soft unto himself he sayd” in Chaucer; “the singers sang loud” in the Authorized Version of the Bible (Nehemiah XII, 42), and “indifferent well” in Shakespeare. Even after the purists of the Eighteenth Century began their corrective work this confusion continued. Thus one finds “The people are miserable poor” in Hume, “How unworthy you treated mankind” in the Spectator, and “wonderful silly” in Joseph Butler. To this day the grammarians battle against the amalgamation, still without complete success; every new volume of rules and regulations for those who would speak by the book is full of warnings against it. Among the great masses of the plain people, it goes without saying, it flourishes unimpeded. The cautions of the school-marm, in a matter so subtle and so plainly lacking in logic or necessary, are forgotten as quickly as her prohibition of the double negative, and thereafter the adjective and the adverb tend more and more to coalesce in a part of speech which serves the purposes of both, and is simple and intelligible and satisfying.

  Charters gives a number of characteristic examples of its use: “wounded very bad,” “I sure was stiff,” “drank out of a cup easy,” “He looked up quick.” Many more are in Lardner: “a chance to see me work regular.” “I am glad I was lucky enough to marry happy.” “I beat them easy.” and so on. And others fall upon the ear every day: “He done it proper.” “He done himself proud.” “They landed safe,” “She drove careless,” “They didn’t know no different” “She was dressed neat” “She was awful ugly,” “The horse ran O.K.,” “It near finished him,” “It sells quick,” “I like it fine,” “He et hoggish,” “Everyone will be treated fair,” “She acted mean,” “He loved her something fierce,” “They keep company steady,” not to forget “Don’t take it serious,” which appeared some years ago in a song crooned by the once celebrated Rudy Vallée. The bob-tailed adverb, indeed, enters into a large number of the commonest coins of speech, and in many situations is perfectly “correct,” though pedants may denounce it.147 On the level of the vulgate there is an almost incomplete incapacity to distinguish any useful difference between adverb and adjective, and beneath it, perhaps, lies the similar incapacity to distinguish between the grammatical effects and relations of the common verb of being and those of any other verb. If “It is bad” is correct, then why should “It leaks bad” be incorrect? It is just this disdain of purely grammatical reasons that is at the bottom of most of the phenomena visible in vulgar American, and the same impulse is observable in all other languages during periods of inflectional decay. During the highly inflected stage of a language the parts of speech are sharply distinct, but when inflections fall off they tend to disappear. The adverb, being at best the step-child of grammar — as the old Latin grammarians used to say, Omnis pars orationis migrat in adverbium — is one of the chief victims of this anarchy. John Home Tooke, despairing of bringing it to any order, even in the most careful English, called it, in his “Diversions of Purley,” “the common sink and repository of all heterogeneous and unknown corruptions.”

  Where an obvious logical or lexical distinction has grown up between an adverb and its primary adjective the unschooled American is very careful to give it its terminal -ly. For example, he seldom confuses hard and hardly, scarce and scarcely, real and really. These words convey different ideas. Hard means unyielding; hardly means barely. Scarce means present only in small numbers; scarcely is substantially synonymous with hardly. Real means genuine; really is an assurance of veracity. So, again, with late and lately. Thus, an American says “I don’t know, scarcely,” not “I don’t know, scarce”; “He died lately,” not “He died late.”148 But in nearly all such cases syntax is the preservative, not grammar. These adverbs seem to keep their tails largely because they are commonly put before and not after verbs, as in, for example, “I hardly (or scarcely) know,” and “I really mean it.” Many other adverbs that take that position habitually are saved as well, fo
r example, generally, usually, surely, certainly. But when they follow verbs they often succumb, as in “I’ll do it sure,” and when they appear in front of adjectives they usually succumb, too, as in “It was sure hot” and “I will write real soon.”149 Practically all the adverbs made of verbs in -y lose the terminal -ly and thus become identical with their adjectives. I have never heard mightily used; it is always mighty, as in “He hit him mighty hard.” So with filthy, dirty, nasty, lowly, naughty and their cognates. One hears “He acted dirty,” “He spoke nasty,” “The child behaved naughty,” and so on. Here even Standard English has had to make concessions to euphony. Cleanlily is seldom used; cleanly nearly always takes its place. And the use of illy and thusly is confined to the half educated.150