Page:The American Language.djvu/244

228 order, even in the most careful English, called it, in his "Epea Ptercenta, " "the common sink and repository of all hetero- geneous and unknown corruptions."

Where an obvious logical or lexical distinction has grown up between an adverb and its primary adjective the unschooled American is very careful to give it its terminal -ly. For exam- ple, he seldom confuses hard and hardly, scarce and scarcely, real and really. These words convey different ideas. Hard means unyielding; hardly means barely. Scarce means present only in small numbers; scarcely is substantially synonymous with hardly. Real means genuine; really is an assurance of veracity. So, again, with late and lately. Thus, an American says "I don't know, scarcely," not "I don't know, scarce"; "he died lately, "not "he died late." But in nearly all such cases syntax is the preservative, not grammar. These adverbs seem to keep their tails largely because they are commonly put before and not after verbs, as in, for example, "I hardly (or scarcely) know, ' ' and ' ' I really mean it. ' ' Many other adverbs that take that position habitually are saved as well, for example, gener- ally, usually, surely, certainly. But when they follow verbs they often succumb, as in "I'll do it sure" and "I seen him recent." And when they modif}*- adjectives they sometimes suc- cumb, too, as In "it was sure hot." Practically all the adverbs made of adjectives in -y lose the terminal -ly and thus become identical with their adjectives. I have never heard mightily used ; it is always mighty, as in " he hit him mighty hard. ' ' So with filthy, dirty, nasty, lowly, naughty and their cognates. One hears "he acted dirty," "he spoke nasty," "the child be- haved naughty," and so on. Here even standard English has had to make concessions to euphony. Cleanlily is seldom used; cleanly nearly always takes its place. And the use of illy is confined to pedants.

Vulgar American, like all the higher forms of American and all save the most precise form of written English, has aban- doned the old inflections of here, there and where, to wit, hither and hence, thither and thence, whither and whence. These fossil remains of dead cases are fast disappearing from the language.