Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/339

Rh in the constitution of our English speech, and only traces here and there are seen of non-Saxon elements surviving in a word or an idiom as an enduring monument to the influence of other tongues upon our own on American soil. Some of these foreign loans, it is true, are confined to certain localities, and consequently are to be viewed in the light of solecisms, or at best provincialisms. They circulate freely in a limited area, but are not recognized as legal tender throughout the length and breadth of the country. Such expressions are confined chiefly to the western portion of the United States and very rarely find their way east. It is questionable whether they are entitled to be termed Americanisms except in the most liberal interpretation of that phrase, because they are not everywhere current and are not readily intelligible, not 'understanded of the people.'

It seems appropriate at this juncture to say a word concerning dialects in America. The assertion is sometimes made that there are no dialects in America, that the railroad and printing press, the two potent and indispensable agencies in our modern civilization, have leveled out all eccentricities and peculiarities of speech and reduced our language to a uniform standard throughout our entire country. This statement is, in the main, true. Yet it requires only a little reflection to see that the assertion is not absolutely accurate and in accord with the facts. Certainly a brief residence in the several principal sections of the United States would bring convincing refutation. There is the western dialect, as implied in the comments in the preceding paragraph. There is also the Yankee dialect of New England, the salient features of which Lowell described very fully in his famous 'Biglow Papers.' There is no less truly the southern dialect with its definite peculiarities of idiom and utterance. These dialects are quite sharply defined by their respective characteristics of colloquial speech. Each dialect has its own phrases and locutions familiar enough within its own geographical divisions, but not readily understood, perhaps unknown, elsewhere. For instance, the native southerner 'reckons' and 'don't guess,' whereas the Yankee to the manner born does not 'reckon,' but 'guesses' à tort et à travers. As for the western dialect, it is said that three elements enter into its constitution, viz., the mining, the gambling and the cowboy element, a rich vein of billingsgate running through each. An effort has been made by our writers of fiction to register and record the salient features of these respective dialects incidentally in their stories, but the shades and gradations of speech are not easy to reflect and preserve on the printed page with the corresponding local color. Hence the work has been but partially done, and nowhere with complete success.

We Americans are far less trammeled by dialectal inconveniences and perplexities, however, than are the English people. For in Great