Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/338

334 adopted different terms for the same object. This proves, in the first place, the independence of the two great English-speaking nations even in the matter of language, and, in the second place, the wide-reaching influence of French as the recognized official and diplomatic language during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

In addition to these two distinct classes of Americanisms there is a third class composed of phrases and expressions which have not yet attained to the dignity of universal currency throughout the entire country. These are rather provincialisms which are peculiar to certain localities. This class, therefore, does not command the importance which the first two classes already considered do. In a heterogeneous population like ours, made up of people from every nationality under heaven, it is quite natural that in certain localities there should exist some eccentricities of speech, some departures from the received standard—in a word, some provincialisms. It need hardly be recalled that parts of our vast country were settled by other nations than the English, as, for instance, New York by the Dutch and Louisiana by the French, to mention two specific cases bearing on the point in question. The people of these respective states, when they were incorporated into the union, of course, did not immediately forsake their native modes of speech and inherited vocabulary for pure, unadulterated Saxon. When the vast southwest territory was made a part of the United States, the people in that quarter of the land spoke a lingo which had a decided foreign complexion. What more natural, then, than that in the speech of that portion of our land there should exist traces of this old foreign element? Assuredly it would have been the height of artificiality and an unprecedented proceeding for the French element of New Orleans, when they became citizens of the United States, to have renounced their native French names for such natural objects as 'bayou,' 'levee' and the like, in order to adopt pure Saxon terms. Likewise, it was not to be expected that the Spanish settlers in the western section of our country, specifically California, should abandon such native terms as 'cañon' and 'ranch' and so on, for the corresponding names of genuine English origin. Thus it happens that there is a pronounced foreign flavor, or at least a slight tang, in the eccentricities of speech heard in certain localities of the United States. But these are mere provincialisms and do not impair the quality of our standard speech, which is English to the very core.

However, it was inevitable that the English language in America should have received an influx of foreign words on American soil. But our speech possesses a marvelous capacity for assimilating non-Saxon elements from whatever source. Hence the various foreign elements, such as Indian, Dutch, French and Spanish, to mention only the chief importations, have all been absorbed without any appreciable