Words Across the Sea
Ir has been a long fight to get recognition of the fact that •
.,lard American usage, not merely slang and illiterate ch, is different from standard English usage, and among victorious pioneers among the crusaders for this truth, the name of Mr. Horwill leads all the rest or is bracketed with the two or three others at the top. This little book is as masterly in its own way as was "A Dictionary of Modern American Usage " and can be most confidently recommended. Classified vocabularies give the English word and the American equivalent. Every aspect of life is covered and the whole work makes an excellent half-crown's worth. It not merely enlightens the student, but will serve as the basis for several kinds of guessing games.
It is only apparent ungraciousness to devote most of the space of this review to criticism; it is criticism evoked by the merits of a book which sets such a high standard that it cannot always make its own grade. One weakness is inherent in the character of the phrase-book ; it consists mainly of lists of nouns and thus one of the most interesting and useful of American linguistic peculiarities, the verb-making facility accorded by usage, is hardly illustrated at all. Another is, perhaps, equally unavoidable. There are various geological
layers of language represented here. There are English usages that are almost obsolete and American usages that are more than obsolete. Other words given as American are, in fact, equally Scots or Irish, although they are unknown or archaic in Southern England. In this connexion, it should be noted that the last enchantment of the Victorian age, the Glasgow Underground, is known as the Subway, like its more modern New York rival.
An inevitable cause of difficulty arises from the fact that there are American and English institutions that have no
real equivalent in the other country. Where are our " seersucker suits " ? A District-Attorney is not our Public Prosecutor and an " office-holder " is not just a " civil servant." An American postman is an office-holder and a civil servant, but Mr. James Aloysius Farley, the Postmaster-General, like the President of the United States, is an office-holder but not a civil servant. (It might be suggested that, in any case, an American postman is usually called a " letter-carrier " and not a " mailman," even in Philadelphia, where he is tradition- ally in danger of being shot in mistake for a Confederate soldier.) Our workhouse is, in most places in America, not represented by an " almshouse " but by a " poor farm," and a " full dinner pail " was not as a political slogan the exact equivalent of " the big loaf." In America the Republicans promis.ed more and more ; in Britain the worker was warned against having to accept less and less.
Then it may be suggested that Mr. Horwill has, naturally enough, looked for English equivalents for American words which are fully acclimatised here. It is, however, useful to be reminded of the days when there were English words for many things now known under their American names, useful as long as it does not lead to any attempt to " purify the language such as has afflicted Italian, German, modern Greek and (on the authority of Professor Toynbee) Turkish. In this connexion Mr. Horwill "leans over backward," as they say in New England. He implicitly denies rights of American denizen to "filling station," and while it is true that the equivalent of our first-class carriages on American railways are called " chair cars " by the railroads, they are called Pullmans by the passengers. " Day coach " and "Pullman" are the alternatives whatever the public relations counsellors may say. As Mr. Elliot Nugent put it, " mor- ticians are people who bury realtors " and the difference between the spoken and the -written word must be borne in mind.
There remain some words in which I think Mr. Horwill is definitely misleading. Is it enough to give " quits " as the Rnglish for "an even break "? If it is, how are we to translate the maxim of Mr. W. C. Fields, " Never give a sucker an even break "? Then does not " brash " carry the implication of an excessive self-confidence and self- esteem, an absence of a decent regard for the opinion of man- kind rather than that of simply " hasty temper "? "Chock- full " is surely as American as " chock-a-block "? (Was there
not a chain of Chockful-o-Nuts shops?) " Z " may sometimes be pronounced " izz.ard " (p. 65), but the pronunciation given by Mr. Cole Porter, "from Alpha to Omega, from A to Zee," is more common and is that given on p. 91.
In general, it may be said that the only doubts aroused about Mr. Horwill's use of sources is raised by his apparent neglect of the advice of Fletcher of Saltoun's friend. The song-writers of America both make and record the con- temporary idiom very faithfully ; a little of the sociological and linguistic interest of Dr. Sigmund Spaeth in the lyrics of the song-hits would have been fruitful. But, as was to be expected, Mr. Horwill has displayed a mastery of the subject that no one could rival. His learning in both tongues is prodigious and the most devoted and learned student of American civilisation will learn a great deal from this book, even if it is only the renewed knowledge that we all of us speak an Americanised tongue and that despite the protests of snobs and pedants, of stuffed-shirts and highbrows, the course of linguistic empire has taken its course westward.
D. W. BROGAN.
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