Page:The American language; an inquiry into the development of English in the United States (IA americanlanguage00menc 0).pdf/32

 English but American, and it cannot be judged by our standards. Some of the sentences are simply appalling, from our point of view—but they serve their purpose. This prompts the interesting speculation whether it is not time that we gave up the pretense of a 'common language' and accepted the American on its own merits."

The list of such quotations might be indefinitely prolonged. There is scarcely an English book upon the United States or an English review of an American book which does not offer some discussion, more or less profound, of American peculiarities of speech, both as they are revealed in spoken discourse (particularly pronunciation and intonation) and as they show themselves in literature and in the newspapers, and to this discussion protest is often added, as it very often is by the reviews and newspapers. "The Americans," says a typical critic, "have so far progressed with their self-appointed task of creating an American language that much of their conversation is now incomprehensible to English people." "This amazing lack of a sense of the beauty of words," says another, "comes from the manner in which the language of the United States is spoken—that monotonous drone, generally nasal, or that monotonous nasal whine." English reviews of American books frequently refer in this way to the growing differences between the two dialects—in fact, it is rare for an English reviewer to refrain from noting and sneering at Americanisms. Even translations from foreign languages made by Americans are constantly under fire.

But, now and then there appears a defender. One such is William Archer, already quoted, who lately protested eloquently against "pulling a wry face over American expressions, not because they are inherently bad, but simply because they are American." He continued:

The vague and unformulated idea behind all such petty cavillings is that the English language is in danger of being corrupted by the importation of Americanisms and that it behooves us to establish a sort of quarantine in order to keep out the detrimental germs. This notion is simply one of the milder