77 Have took is in The Biglow Papers, and Menner finds it in other humorous works of the period. He reports hearing it from the lips of his “people with little education and little literary background,” but his “people trained in some special profession (usually with college degrees)” seem to have been guiltless of it. Tuck as the preterite is listed as in common use in 1848 by Bartlett in his Dictionary of Americanisms.
78 To teach, of course, is seldom heard. To learn is used in its place.
79 Bartlett, in his Dictionary of Americanisms, 1848, says that tell’d was then in common used as the preterite. It seems to have passed out.
80 Always used in place of attend. The preterite, it seems to me, sometimes takes a distinct t, as in “He tent to his business.”
81 Thunk is never used seriously; it always shows humorous intent.
82 Menner reports hearing thrung, which he describes as an Irishism. I have never encountered it. There was a time when trun was often heard, both as preterite and as perfect participle, but it seems to have gone out.
83 Lardner once told me that he believed win was supplanting both won and wan. Winned is also heard.
84 Usually converted into wisht, as in “I wisht he would go,” the present tense being understood.
85 “I have wrote” was in good usage until the middle of the Eighteenth Century.
86 English As We Speak It In Ireland, 2nd ed.; London, 1910, p. 77.
87 Introduction to the Science of Language; London, 1900, Vol. I, p. 166.
88 The last stand of the distinct -ed was made in Addison’s day. He was in favor of retaining it, and in the Spectator for Aug. 4, 1711, he protested against obliterating the syllable in the termination “of our præter perfect tense; as in these words, drown’d, walk’d, arriv’d, for drowned, walked, arrived, which has very much disfigured the tongue, and turned a tenth part of our smoothest words into so many clusters of consonants.”
89 A New English Grammar; Oxford, 1900, Part I, p. 380.
90 The noun is commonly made holt, as in, “I got a-holt of it.”
91 History of the English Language; revised ed.; New York, 1894, p. 398.
92 The effort of purists to establish broadcast as the preterite has had some success on higher levels, but very little on lower. “Ed Wynn broadcasted last night” is what one commonly hears. The effort to justify broadcast by analogy with cast fails, for the preterite of to cast, in the vulgar speech, is not cast but casted.
93 The Verbs of the Vulgate, American Speech, Jan., 1926, pp. 238–9.
94 This, of course, was not the case invariably. More often the singular triumphed over the plural. See A History of Modern Colloquial English, by H. C. Wyld; London, 1920, p. 343.
95 In the paper just cited, pp. 236–7.
96 Supplied by Mr. B. A. Bergman.
97 Remark of a policeman talking to another. What he actually said was “before the Elks was c’m ’ere” Come and here were one word, approximately cmear. The context showed that he meant to use the past perfect tense. Dr. Kemp Malone reminds me that was was once the auxiliary of come, and still is in German.
98 The following curious example, sent to me by Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, is from a letter received by a California physician: “If I had of waited a day longer before I wrote to you I would not of had to write that letter to you.” Wallace Rice, in The Vulgate in American Fiction, American Mercury, Dec., 1927, protests against rendering the degenerated have as of. Even in Standard English, he argues, it is sometimes pronounced uv, and so should keep its proper spelling. To support this he brings forward many authorities. But the fact remains, as Lardner was quick to notice, that the plain people, when they seize pen in hand, often turn have into of.
99 There are many examples in The English of the Comic Cartoons, by Helen Trace Tysell, American Speech, Feb., 1935, p. 47.
100 These examples are from Lardner’s story, A New Busher Breaks In, in You Know Me, Al, p. 122 ff.
101 Pronounced hafta, or, in the past tense, hatta. Sometimes the d is retained, and had to becomes hadda.
102 See American Use of the Subjunctive, by Thyra Jane Bevier, American Speech, Feb., 1931. Miss Bevier says that the late Walter Hines Page was the only American author of his time who used the subjunctive correctly. Says George Philip Krapp, in Modern English; New York, 1910, pp. 289–90: “Practically, the only construction in Modern English in which the subjunctive is in living, natural use, is in the condition contrary to fact: If I were you, I shouldn’t do it.”
103 In the negative, ought not has degenerated to oughtna or oughten, as in “You oughtna (or oughten) do that.”
104 Not in American English, American Speech, Sept., 1927.
105 Oct. 21, 1931. Mark Twain, whose speechways were Southern, often used don’t in the singular. For example, in Innocents Abroad, 1869, p. 84: “Sometimes the patient gets well, but as a general thing he don’t.” Otto Jespersen, in A Modern English Grammar; Heidelberg, 1922, Vol. I, p. 228, says that the use of don’t for doesn’t “cannot be explained as a simple morphological substitution of one personal form of the verb for another, as do is not similarly substituted for does when not follows.” He finds analogues for it in ent (ain’t) for isn’t and wan’t for wasn’t.
106 This substitution of use for used is listed by Henry Harap among The Most Common Grammatical Errors, English Journal, June, 1930, p. 441.
107 Henry Bradley, in The Making of English; New York, 1904, pp. 54–5: “In the parts of England which were largely inhabited by Danes the native pronouns (i.e., heo, hie, heom and heora) were supplanted by the Scandinavian pronouns which are represented by the modern she, they, them and their.” This substitution, at first dialectical, gradually spread to the whole language.
108 See A New English Grammar, by Henry Sweet; Oxford, 1900, Pt. I, p. 344.
109 There is also a triple, you-three, but beyond that the device begins to fade.
110 It is commonly believed in the North that Southerners use you-all in the singular, but this is true, if it is ever true at all, of only the most ignorant of them. The word may be addressed to individuals, but only when they are thought of as representatives of a group. “Have you-all any eggs?” spoken to a storekeeper, means have you and your associates, the store as a group entity, any eggs. This distinction was elucidated at length by the late C. Alphonso Smith in You-All As Used in the South, Uncle Remus’s Magazine (Atlanta) July, 1907, reprinted in Kit-Kat (Columbus, O.), Jan., 1920. The literature of the subject is extensive and full of bitterness. See especially You-All and We-All, by Estelle Rees Morrison, American Speech, Dec., 1926; You-All and We-All Again, by Lowry Axley, the same, May, 1927; You-All, by G. B., the same, Aug., 1927; You-All, by W. Fischer, the same, Sept., 1927; You-All Again, by Estelle Rees Morrison, the same, Oct., 1928; Y’All, by Lowry Axley, the same, Dec., 1928; an anonymous note in the same, Dec., 1928, p. 158; One More Word on You-All, by Lowry Axley, the same, June, 1929; Mr. Axley and You-All, by Herbert B. Bernstein, the same, Dec., 1929; The Truth About You-All, by Bertram H. Brown, American Mercury, May, 1933, p. 116; You-All Again, by W. E. Nesom, American Mercury, June, 1933, p. 248; You-All Once Again, by Alba W. Duke, American Mercury, July, 1933, p. 377. The newspaper literature of the subject is enormous; I content myself with citing three articles: You-All Again (editorial) Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 24, 1925; Just a Moment, by Loudon Kelly, Denver Rocky Mountain News, Jan. 23, 1933; You-All, by H. L. Mencken, New York American, July 16, 1934. You-All has been traced by various fanciful writers to the French vous tout and to a somewhat analogous Pennsylvania German form. But Dr. Smith showed that it has deep roots in English. Mark Antony’s “You all did see upon the Lupercal” will be recalled. According to R. C. Goffin (S.P.E. Tracts, No. XLI, p. 26) you-all is also used by native speakers of English in India. He says that it is there a translation of a Hindustani idiom. In the South who-all and what-all are also common, and in the more remote mountain
regions you-uns and w-uns dispute for place with you-all and w-all. See The Plural Forms of You, by E. C. Hills, American Speech, Dec., 1926, p. 133. In the Ozarks, says Vance Randolph in The Grammar of the Ozark Dialect, American Speech, Oct., 1927, p. 6, even us-uns is occasionally encountered.
111 Thou was adopted by the Quakers, c. 1650, precisely because it had a connotation of humility. “This thou and thee,” said George Fox in his Journal, 1661, “was a sore cut to proud flesh, and them that sought self-honor; who, though they would say it to God and Christ, would not endure to have it said to themselves. So that we were often beaten and abused and sometimes in danger of our lives for using those words to some proud men, who would say, ’ What, you ill-bred clown, do you thou me?” How and when the Quakers came to substitute thee for thou in the nominative has not been established. In all probability the change was effected by the same process that has changed you to y’ in y’ought and y’all. The more careful Quakers still use thou in written discourse. But both thou and thee are passing out; save in the Philadelphia area, the younger members of the Society of Friends commonly use you. See The Speech of Plain Friends, by Kate W. Tibbals, American Speech, Jan., 1926; Quaker Thee and Its History, by E. K. Maxfield, the same, Sept., 1926; Quaker Thee and Thou, by E. K. Maxfield, the same, June, 1929.
112 It occurs, too, of course, in other dialects of English, though by no means in all. The Irish influence probably had something to do with its prosperity in vulgar American. At all events, the Irish use it in the American manner. Joyce, in English As We Speak It in Ireland, pp. 34–5, argues that this usage was suggested by Gaelic. In Gaelic the accusative pronouns, e, i and iad (him, her and them) are often used in place of the nominatives, se, si and siad (he, she and they), as in “Is iad sin na buachaillidhe” (Them are the boys). This is “good grammar” in Gaelic, and the Irish, when they began to learn English, translated the locution literally. The familiar Irish “John is dead and him always so hearty” shows the same influence.
113 The Rev. John Witherspoon, in The Druid, No. VI, May 16, 1781, denounced “This-here report of that-there committee.” He said: “Some merchants, whom I could name, in the English Parliament, whose wealth and not merit raised them to that dignity, use this vulgarism very freely, and expose themselves to abundance of ridicule by so doing.”
114 S. A. Leonard, in Current English Usage, says that “Who are you looking for?” is “established.” “The linguists,” he says, “rated it higher than did any of the other groups of judges [appointed by the National Council of Teachers of English]; the other groups placed the expression among disputed usages. All the groups save the business men and authors gave majorities for approval.” J. Y. T. Greig, in Breaking Priscian’s Head; London, 1929, denounces whom in this situation as “pedantry” and “schoolmarmery.” “Every sensible English-speaker on both sides of the Atlantic,” he declares, “says ‘Who were you talking to?’ and the sooner we begin to write it the better. Whom is a relic of the bad old days when inflections were cherished for their own sake.”
115 Modern English; New York, 1910, p. 300.
116 Troublesome Relatives, American Speech, June, 1931.
117 A New English Grammar, Pt. I, P. 339.
118 History of the English Language, revised ed.; New York, 1894, P. 274–5. There is an elaborate historical account of the process in Case-Shiftings in the Pronouns, in Chapters on English, by Otto Jespersen; London, 1918.
119 Modern English, before cited, pp. 288–9.
120 These authorities include Sayce, Sweet, Ellis, Jespersen and the Fowlers, and in America, Whitney, Barrett Wendell, Lounsbury and Oliver F. Emerson. Their remarks on the subject are summarized by Wallace Rice in Who’s There? — Me, American Speech, Oct., 1933. George H. McKnight, in Modern English in the Making; New York, 1928, pp. 532–33, cites many examples of it’s me from modern English writers, including Laurence Housman, May Sinclair, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Joseph Conrad and St. John Ervine. He also cites examples of it’s her from J. Middleton Murry and A. A. Milne, of it’s him from J. W. Croker, James Stephens and A. S. M. Hutchinson, and of it’s us from Hutchinson. The committee of judges appointed in 1926 by the National Council of Teachers of English approved it’s me by a vote of 130 to 91. Rather significantly, the business men on the committee turned out to be far more conservative than the authors, editors, linguists and teachers. They voted against it 18 to 5. In 1921 it was formally approved by the late Edward J. Tobin, then superintendent of schools of Cook county, Ill. (i.e., of Chicago), and in 1926 it got the imprimatur of the College Entrance Examination Board. See American Speech, Dec., 1926, p. 163. The Tobin pronunciamento was discussed all over the country for weeks. The analogous French form, c’est moi, was denounced by Petrus Ramus in his French grammar, 1562. But in a later edition, 1572, he admitted it, saying, “To rob our language of such expressions would be like drawing a sword against all France.” See McKnight, cited above, p. 222.
121 A New English Grammar, Pt. I, p. 341.
122 It may be worth noting that the archaic misuse of me for my, as in “I lit me pipe,” is almost unknown in American, either standard or vulgar, though a correspondent in Philadelphia tells me that it is a localism in that city, and is sometimes used by elderly persons of Irish birth. Even “me own” is seldom heard. This survival of the Middle English pronunciation of mi (my) is very common in England.
123 The writers of popular songs supply many examples. Sigmund Spaeth, in Stabilizing the Language Through Popular Songs, New Yorker, July 7, 1934, cites “Remember I was once a girl like she,” “A sweet slice of Heaven for just you and I,” and “ ’Twas foolish for we two to fight.” In 1924 one Gehring, running for Congress in New York City, circulated a card reading “He thinks like you and I.” On June 25, 1925, the Los Angeles Examiner printed on its first page a head reading “Silva Says Killing Prompted By Insults at He and Buddy.” Sometimes there is a double exchange in case-forms, as in a speech heard by a correspondent in Wyoming: “Between I and you, him and her drinks too much.”
124 A New English Grammar, Pt. I, p. 341.
125 The King’s English, 2nd ed.; Oxford, 1908, p. 63.
126 Here, of course, kind is probably-felt to be plural. Those is used in the same way, as in “Those are the kind.”
127 In 1858 Charles Crozat Converse of Erie, Pa., proposed thon for he-or-she and thon’s for his-or-her, but though both are listed in Webster’s New International Dictionary, 1934, they have made no progress. See English, Jan., 1920, p. 262. Thon is an old Northern English word signifying yonder, now sunk into dialect. The late Ella Flagg Young, the first woman president of the National Education Association, favored hiser and himer, and tried to induce the association to approve them, c. 1910. Mr. James F. Morton of Paterson, N. J., has proposed hesh for he-and-she, and some one else has proposed heer for him-and-her. Mr. Lincoln King of Primghar, Iowa, advocates ha, hez and hem in the nominative, genitive and objective respectively. Another reformer, this time anonymous (The Post Impressionist, Washington Post, Aug. 20, 1935) proposes hes, hir and hem. In Thought and Language; London, 1934, p. 7, P. B. Ballard tells of a female revolutionist in England who complained that “while the masculine personal pronoun had three distinct forms, he, his and him, for the separate cases of the singular, the feminine pronoun had only two, she and her,” and “suggested as a remedy for this gross piece of injustice that the feminine pronoun should be declined she, shis and shim” English, of course, also suffers from the lack of a word corresponding to the German geschwister, meaning brothers and/or sisters. The biologists use siblings, but it has not come into general use.
128 Congressional Record, Feb. 27, 1935, p. 2784.
129 The speech was made in New York City, Sept. 27, 1918.
130 Parts of Speech and Accidence; Boston, 1935, p. 47.
131 The history of such forms is recounted in The English Group Genitive, by Otto Jespersen, printed in his Chapters On English; London, 1918.
132 This occa
sionally gets into print. See South American Travels, by Henry Stephens; New York, 1915, p. 114. It is also used by Ezra Pound in his translation of Remy de Gour-mont’s The Natural Philosophy of Love; New York, 1922.
133 “The tactic in Japan has always been,” etc. Law and Order in Japan, by Harry F. Ward, New York Nation, Sept. 9, 1925, p. 289.
134 Folk-Etymological Singulars, by Wilbur Gaffney, Dec., 1927, p. 130.
135 Some Singular-Plural Forms, Dialect Notes, Vol. IV, Pt. I, 1913, p. 48.
136 Dialect Notes, Vol. I, Pt. VIII, 1895, p. 376.
137 For this headline from the Oxford Public Ledger, Jan. 15, 1934, I am indebted to Mrs. B. K. Hays of Oxford: “Hunting License Bring in $85,000.” License appeared as a plural in a syndicated cartoon by J. N. Darling (Ding), Feb. 4, 1936.
138 The following admonition is from the Baptist and Commoner (Little Rock, Ark.), Jan. 2, 1928: “Will the brethren never learn that when more than one Baptist is meant they should say Baptists, not Bap- tist. Over and over again they write like this: ‘The Baptist believe,’ or ‘The Baptist in these parts,’ etc. Which one of the Baptists do you mean, brother, when you say the Baptist? You never hear any one saying the Methodist believe and the Methodist in these parts. When they mean more than one Methodist they say Methodists. Why, then, say Baptist when you mean Baptists, that is, more than one?”
139 Mr. Blanton, Congressional Record, April 3, 1935, p. 5103.
140 Her World, by Lucile, San Francisco News, April 1, 1924.
141 The Grammar of the Ozark Dialect, American Speech, Oct., 1927, p. 8.
142 To which, perhaps, may be added furtherest, which appeared in a Chicago dispatch on the first page of the San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 2, 1922.
American Language Page 66
