Page:America Today, Observations and Reflections.djvu/208

 is the total omission of the "had" or "have" in such phrases as "you'd better," "we've got to." Mr. Howells's Willis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in The Albany Depôt, "I guess we better get out of here"; Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "I have got": the locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me" for "so help me." It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to face the infinitesimal difficulty of pronouncing "d" and "b" together. As a colloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm, for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget the logical and grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to its last letter, a word still asserts its existence; but when even the last letter has vanished its state is parlous indeed.

An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is "different to." As a Scotchman I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little or no guide to us; and that within the same language the conventions are always changing. You may easily nonplus even a good grammarian by asking him suddenly, "What preposition should you use in