American Language

by H. L. Mencken

  The Slovaks are very thrifty folk, and whenever there is enough money in hand the immigrant proceeds to build a haus. If the contractor is also a Slovak, the negotiations will be carried on mainly in correct Slovakian terms, but nevertheless, says Mr. Istochin,

  there will be talk of flór (floor), štepse (tairs), šlejt or šingl rúf (slate or shingle roof), fens (fence), penta (paint), bilding permit (building permit), inšurens (insurance), dýd (deed), and morgič (mortgage). In the Summer there is always a piknik (picnic) or two. Sometimes it is some distance from home, necessitating the purchase of tikety (tickets) to ride on the trén (train). Of course, one may drive one’s automobil — my grandfather used to call it antonobil —, which requires a quantity gazolínu (gasoline). Most often the bojs (boy, son) is the chauffeur. Some of the seasonal outdoor sports are bejsbal (baseball), futbal (football), and skejtovanie (skating). The Slovaks have not been much attracted by golf and tennis.

  Once a month the Slovak-American attends a míting (meeting) of the local branch of the nationalistic society to which he always belongs. The largest of them are the First Catholic Slovak Union and the National Slovak Society, each of which prints a weekly organ. These papers, like the Czech journals, run to a somewhat florid vocabulary. Says Mr. Istochin:

  In a recent editorial in Jednota (Middletown, Pa.) published by the F. C. S. U., I find kooperácia (coöperation), konvencia (convention), direktne (directly), systém (system), and organizácia (organization). The same editorial contains čens (chance, opportunity), although the word is enclosed in quotation marks and is followed by a good Slovakian word in parentheses. Another loan-word is overcrowded. This is also set off by quotation marks, but is not followed by a Slovakian equivalent. In the same issue of Jednota a column of personal observations written in a lighter vein contains such borrowings as fulovat’ (to fool), okej (O.K.), and džungle (jungle), as well as the expletives well and šúr (sure).

  A search through the advertising columns of the Slovak papers reveals even more Americanisms than are to be found in the editorial columns. In a list of the body types of a certain make of automobile advertised in Národné Noviny (Pittsburgh), published by the N. S. S., are: športový roadster so zadným sediskom (sport roadster with back — i.e., rumble-seat), pät’-pasaži-orový coupe (five-passenger coupé), and zmenitel’ny cabriolet (convertible cabriolet). When used as a substantive the name of the car may appear as Chevroletka or Fordka. A comparison of the translations of an identical advertisement reveals that while Jednota uses produkty, originálny, and broadcasting for products, original, and broadcasting, Národné Noviny uses výrobky, pôvodný, and rozhlasovacíí.

  Many loan-words appear in the vocabularies and specimen sentences printed in the Rev. S. Morávek’s “Slovak Self-Taught,”100 e.g., mlyne (mill), majner (miner), strajke (strike), prémia (premium), policu (policy), titul (title), bond (bond), muf (muff) and sveder (sweater). Returning immigrants have taken loan-words back to Czechoslovakia, e.g., sex-appeal, henna, kontrast, kapún (capon) and kúrio, all of which, according to a comment in Furdek, the organ of the Catholic Slovak Students’ Fraternity of America, appeared in one story in Slovenské Pohl’ady, a literary magazine published in Slovakia. The Slovaks print about twenty-five publications in this country, including five daily newspapers.

  c. Russian

  The only study of American-Russian that I have been able to find in print is a paper by Mr. H. B. Wells.101 The barrier of a different alphabet, he says, discourages the free adoption of loan-words by the Russian periodicals published in this country, but nevertheless a great many seep in. Verbs of Latin derivation, so numerous in English, “are used with far greater frequency than in Russia, and sometimes practically displace the synonymous words of purely Slavic antecedents.”

  Thus, importirovat’ and eksportirovat’ contend with vvozit’ and vyvozit’ for the privilege of representing to import and to export; annonsirovat’ and objavljaf represent to announce, and registrirovat’ and zapissat’sja represent to sign up, to register one’s self. Such a combination as annulirovat’ naturaliza-tsionnye sertifikaty (to annul naturalization certificates) would be rare, to say the least, in Russia, though the writer has here obviously struggled for correctness; otherwise he would have written sertifikejty instead of sertifikaty.102

  In ordinary conversation the Russians in America use loan-words very freely. Says Mr. Wells:

  The Russian-American New Yorker lives v optaune (in the uptown)…. His apartment is in a desjatifamil’nyi dom (ten-family house) at 67 Vest 123 strit, ist of Brodvej. There is an élevator in the building. The apartment is very ap tu dejt (up to date); it is furnished with rejdiejtory (radiators) and a refridzherejtor (refrigerator). Several of the rooms have okna na front (windows on the front); these he calls frontovye komnaty (front-rooms). In the living-room there is a vik or viktrola, and in the kitchen a garbich kén.… [His] wife is also quite ap tu dejt. When she wants to imet’ ljonch or ljonche-vat’ (have lunch), she calls up another lédi (lady) and they go to the drogstor and consume séndvichi (sandwiches), kejk (cake), and ajskrim (ice-cream), smoking sigarety furiously the while and discussing the cost of potejta (potatoes), and whether to mufovat’ in view of the unsuitability of the neighborhood. She boasts of her boj (boy) in khaj-skul (high-school), who plays football and made a tochdaun (touchdown) last Thanksgiving Day, but who is nevertheless distraught because he had a fajt (fight) with his gjorla (girl). The gjorla is ku-ku (cuckoo) anyway, and the mother thinks of advising her son not to mix himself up in any monki bisnes (monkey business)…. In the evening the Russian comes home to his flét (flat)…. He has a kara (car) and the way it eats up gazolin and ojl is frightful.… A dark interlude in his life was the time he had a run-in with a kop; he was driving through a uan-vej strit (one-way street), and was exceeding the spidlimit. Moreover, he had left his lajsens at home on the piano, and the kop gave him a tiket.

  The plurals of loan-nouns are formed either by adding the regular Russian suffixes, or by inserting the English s before the most frequent of them, -y. Thus one hears both chil’dreny and chil’drensy. The h in loan-words often becomes kh or g. All right has been taken in as o right. Never mind has become one word, nevermine. Such words as teacher, which have been adopted bodily, take a final -ka in the feminine, and the same particle is sometimes used to indicate the diminutive, as in matchka (little match).103 The number of Russians in the United States is hard to determine. In 1930, 315,721 persons reported that Russian was their mother-tongue, but many of them were probably Jews. There are seventeen Russian publications in the country, including four daily newspapers.

  d. Ukrainian

  Ukrainian, or Little Russian, differs enough from Great Russian for a speaker of the one to find the other very difficult. In 1930 but 58,685 persons reported to the Census enumerators that Ukrainian was their mother-tongue; to the number should be added 9800 who gave Ruthenian, the name commonly applied to Ukrainian in the former Austrian Empire. Both figures suggest incomplete returns. In Canada the Ukrainians “form the fourth largest racial constituent in the polyglot population,”104 and in the prairie provinces of the West they number about 250,000. They publish eight periodicals at Winnipeg and two more at Edmonton, but in the whole United States they have but twelve, seven of which are published in Pennsylvania. There is a Ukrainian daily in Jersey City, the Svoboda, and another in New York, the Ukrainian Daily News. To the editor of the former, Mr. Emil Revyuk, I am indebted for the following:

  The Ukrainian in America makes a copious use of English loan-words. Some of them are the names of things with which he was unfamiliar at home, and others are words that he must use in his daily traffic with Americans. Usually, he tries to bring these loans into harmony with the Ukrainian inflectional system. Thus, he forces most loan-nouns to take on grammatical gender. Those that he feels to be feminine he outfits with the Ukrainian feminine ending, -a, e.g., dreska (dress), vinda (window), hala (hall), grocernya (grocery store), bucherny
a (butcher’s store), strita (street), pikcha (picture). Mechka is the match which makes a fire but match in the meaning of contest of skill is a masculine noun mech. Some nouns are felt to be plural and are outfitted with plural endings. Thus furniture becomes fornichi, which is equivalent to “pieces of furniture,” pinatsy is a Ukrainian adaptation of peanuts, and shusy of shoes, and Shkrenty is the plural form of the name of the city of Scranton. Kendi (candy), is declined like a plural noun because its ending is the typical plural ending of Ukrainian nouns, and it reminds the Ukrainian of his name for candy, the plural tsukorky. Blubery (blueberries), is also plural.

  The adjective must be recast also to denote by its ending the number and gender. For this reason the Ukrainian does not use many English adjectives, for they do not lend themselves easily to such changes. He has adopted, however, the following: faytersky (of fighting character), bomersky (of the character of a bum), gengstersky (like a gangster), sylkovy (made of silk), volna-tovy (made of walnut), bosuyuchy or bosivsky (bossing, domineering). Adopted verbs, too, require a great deal of dressing up to fit them for use in the Ukrainian language, e.g., bosuvaty (to boss), klinuvaty (to clean), pon-chuvaty (to punch), laykuvaty (to like), trubluvaty (to trouble), baderuvaty (to bother), bostuvaty (to bust), shapuvaty (to shop), stykuvaty (to stick), faytuvatysya (to fight with), ringuvaty (to ring), swimuvaty (to swim), peyntuvaty (to paint), bonduvaty (to bond), bayluvaty (to bail) and djompaty (to jump). Parkuvaty karu is the common American Ukrainian for to park the car.

  Diminutives are formed by adding -chyk or -syk, e.g., boysyk (a little boy), and augmentatives by adding -ysche, e.g., boysysche (a big boy). The Ukrainian prefers to make his own logical feminines. He does not use waitress but has concocted veyterka from veyter (waiter). In the same way he uses tenerka, bucherka, janitorka, borderka, hauskiperka, svindlerka, ticherka, bomerka (a female tenant, butcher, janitor, boarder, housekeeper, swindler, teacher, bum). He makes abstract nouns by adding -stvo, e.g., farmerstvo (farming), pedlerstvo and plomberstvo (plumbing). He also makes infinitives denoting finish or iterative action, e.g., zbostuvaty (to have busted), pofiksuvaty (to fix completely), popeyntuvaty (to paint all over) and jompuvaty (to be jumping). Says Mr. Revyuk:

  Sometimes a Ukrainian word is changed under the influence of an American word, e.g., lezhukh (loafer), from lezhaty (to lie resting) becomes leyzukh, to emphasize its kinship with lazy. Some loan-words, in spite of all efforts, refuse to be changed. This is true of those that have endings strange to the Ukrainian, e.g., those ending in -y: city, lobby, party, lady, country, etc., which by their ending suggest to a Ukrainian either a masculine adjective or a plural noun, but evidently are neither one nor the other. Hence the Ukrainian feels reluctant to inflect Chicago, cemetery and Yankee. He experiences still greater uneasiness with composite words: jitney-boss, city-hall, Kansas City, Jersey City, Niagara Falls, cream-cheese (pot-cheese, which he knows, he will call by the Ukrainian word, syr), piece-work, Tammany Hall, hold-up, card-party, bridge-party, rocking-chair, bathing-suit, ice-cream, high-school, Sing Sing, lolly-pop, knickerbockers, ginger-ale, saleslady. Some adjectives, too, balk at inflection, e.g., jealous (vin tak jeles, vona taka jeles), easy, crazy. Some words lead a double life. Engine, for instance, now passes as a male, assuming the form injay, and now as a female, injaya.

  Not infrequently the American cuckoo accepted into the Ukrainian nest ejects some other cuckoo, hatched out of an egg deposited by the German, French, or Italian. Thus, in American-Ukrainian, parasola is replaced by am-brela, kelner by veyter (waiter), buchhalter by bookkeeper, fryzier by barber, bilet by tyket (ticket), umbra by sheyd (shade, especially lamp-shade), and velotsyped (velocipede) by bysykel, bitsykel, or even bike. Under the influence of American many Ukrainian words of foreign origin acquire additional meanings. Thus kontrola, which in the Old Country meant auditing, examination of accounts, assumes in America also the meaning of directing, regulating, and still later that of checking, as in the phrase kontrola budyakiv (weed control). Konventsya, which in Ukrainian means an agreement between nations, in American acquires the meaning of a gathering of a party, etc. Mashy-nist loses the Ukrainian meaning of locomotive engineer, and operator the meaning of surgeon. Each of them acquires the meanings of those words in America. Kompania in the Old Country means associates, a company of soldiers; in America the word comes to mean also a corporation. Likewise, the adjective seriozny, under the influence of American, comes to be used not only in reference to people, meaning serious, but also of conditions, meaning grave. Even original Ukrainian words become affected by this process, e.g., the old Ukrainian word vartuvaty (to be worth), acquires the American idiomatic meaning of to have property of value.

  Once the Ukrainian adopts an American word and then uses that word in a phrase which reminds him of some standard American phrase, the whole phrase rushes into his speech. Thus, having adopted train, he cannot refuse the phrases, to get a train, to catch a train, and so he translates them: braty tren, zlovyty tren, which to a person versed in Ukrainian can mean only to get hold of a train, and to overtake the train, respectively. Having borrowed picture and dressed it in Ukrainian costume as pikcha, he cannot shut the door in the face of the phrase to take a picture, and so he has braty pikchu, and also braty dobru pikchu (to take a good picture). Thus he has admitted such phrases as sluzhyty na jury (to serve on a jury), distaty herkot (to get a hair-cut), pity na relief (to go on relief), dopustyty do bary (to admit to the bar).

  Many American phrases are translated bodily into Ukrainian, often against the well-established rules of the language. The Ukrainian who knows English is likely to say kozdy odyn, when kozdy is sufficient and correct, evidently translating the English every one. He replaces rozsmishyty koho with robyty koho smiaty, which is a word-for-word translation of the phrase to make one laugh, but a horror in Ukrainian. He contracts the sentence “Ya bachyv jak vin ishov” into “Ya bachyv yeho ity,” which is an apish imitation of the English phrase, “I saw him go.” He translates the phrase, “I cannot help it” into “Ya ne mozhu pomohty,” as if the word help here meant to render assistance. He says, “Ya ne mozhlyvy preyty,” which is a literal translation of “I am unable to come.” “My maly dobry chas” follows word by word “We had a good time,” and would be unintelligible in the Old Country. “Ya rad vas bachyty nazad” follows word for word the greeting, “I am glad to see you back.” “Bery svey chas!” is a similar translation of “Take your time!” and “Trymayte drit!” of “Hold the wire.”

  The American-Ukrainian changes many Ukrainian idioms. Under the American influence he forgets the phrase, robyty oko do koho and uses robyty ochy do koho (to make eyes to one). The Ukrainian phrase is to make an eye to one. The Ukrainian phrase, ne spuskaty ochey z koho (not to close one’s eyes to) becomes derzhaty oko na kim (to keep one’s eye on). The idiomatic expression spushcheny nis (the drooping nose) is displaced by the American long face (dovhe lytse). Speaking of his son’s age, the American-Ukrainian translates the American idiomatic sentence, “He is six years old,” by “Vin ye shist lit stary,” though no Ukrainian at home would refer to a child of six as old. His idiomatic phrase speaks of having … years.

  The American-Ukrainian begins to add possessive pronouns in phrases which do not require them in Standard Ukrainian, often with a humorous effect for those who are still not initiated into the mysteries of the American-Ukrainian language. To use, for instance, the possessive svoyu in the sentence “Vin kuryt svoyu lulku” (He is smoking his pipe), may suggest a question, “Whose pipe do you expect him to smoke if not his own?” The Ukrainian in the Old Country would not use the possessive pronoun in the phrase zatyraty svoyi ruky (to rub one’s hands); could you rub anybody else’s hands but your own? Again, the possessive pronouns in the sentence, “Win derzhyt svoi ruky v svoiy kysheni” (He is holding his hands in his pocket), may suggest the suspicion that habitually he is holding in his pocket somebody’s else’s hands or has his hands in somebody else’s pockets.

 
There is noticeable in American-Ukrainian a certain decay of synonyms. Fine distinctions between them are obliterated. Divka, which corresponds more or less to maid, is used also for girl, daughter and sweetheart. “Ya lublu vashu divku” (I love your maid), is rather a rude way of saying, “I love your daughter.” Further degeneration of the language is noticeable in the loss of distinction between the verbs of duration, iteration, and conclusion, e.g., ity, pity and khodyty (to be going, to be gone, to go); zhynuty and zahynuty (to die and to disappear). Decay is also promoted by the fact that English loan-adjectives cannot be inflected. After a certain time even the Ukrainian-born American will fail to inflect the adjective made of a proper noun but will follow the simple English device of placing it before another noun and letting it serve thus as adjective; in Standard Ukrainian na rozi Napoleon ulytsi, do Notr Deym shpytalu, z Dubyuk universytetu, Richelieu vyshyvky would all have to change the first noun into an adjective form or place it after the other noun in the genitive case.

  The influence of English is also felt in the acquisition by the American- Ukrainian of the feeling of the need of the article. He begins to punctuate his language with toy, ta, to, ti in all those passages where in English he would use the definite article. Also, he begins to roll his r’s after the American fashion even when speaking Ukrainian. Those who were born here find it difficult to enunciate certain typically Ukrainian sounds, such as guttural kh. Thus mukha (the fly), degenerates into muha, khochu into hochu, tykho into tyho, and even khata into hata, though hata in Ukrainian means a dam and khata a hut.105