THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA THE MOTHER TONGUE Long experience in one's native speech causes it to seem so obvious and natural, like elemental things, wind and rain and sun, like breathing and walking, that it makes no urgent demands for explanation. "It needes not," said Sir Philip Sidney, "that a man should be put to schoole to learne his mother tongue." Perhaps not-at least in Sidney's day. In later times, and especially in America, speech has not been taken for granted quite so easily. On closer examination this familiar activity of speech is seen to be extraordinarily complicated and subtle, in the end often inexplicable. A complete account of the American idiom, if one could give it, would go far towards explaining the whole spiritual history of the American people. But this chapter does not pretend to give any such complete account. It attempts the more possible task of setting down some of the most significant features of that background of experience, hidden or open, against which thoughtful Americans project their speech when it becomes for them a matter of conscious reflection. It is true that speech in the main rests upon a foundation of feeling, not of reflection, and these less conscious attitudes cannot be disregarded. That their feeling for a mother tongue and their opinions concerning it have been the same among all Americans at any given moment, it would be folly to suppose. They have been sufficiently present, however, and sufficiently unified for at least two hundred years to permit one to speak of an American mother tongue, of a general and standard American speech. The American people realize themselves as a nation in part through the possession of a distinctive speech. This distinctive speech, this mother tongue, the general background of which it is proposed here to examine, is obviously English, but it is, first of all, the English of America. Immediately the questions arise, however, whether Americans have generally viewed their mother tongue in some relation to older British English, and if they have not, what they have substituted for this pious tradition. But the mere asking of these questions shows that language is not a thing apart. It is an inseparable element in the whole of a people's life and has intimate connections with politics and other activities. Before the United States came into being, it would scarcely have occurred to anyone, either on this side the water or on the other, to think of the English language in America as anything but an extension of British English, different in its local habitation from the speech of the home country, but not different either in present character or future prospects. Does not a son remain a son, wherever he may dwell? A son, however, may become a man, hungry for personal rights and privileges, and when the colonies began to claim the dignity of manhood, even the gentlest prick served to burst the bubble of this assumption of homogeneity which hitherto had been so comfortably accepted on both sides of the water. Instead of fixing attention upon similarities, both British and Americans now began to notice the differences that separated them from each other. Both were surprised to find these differences so great, and naturally this same discovery of fact, or supposed fact, led to opposite interpretations in theory. The Americans were inclined to see in these differences a mark of their peculiar virtue and claims to consideration, while the Britisher was often moved to look upon them as indications of an unsuspected deterioration and degradation which circumstances had suddenly brought into clear light. So far as the language itself is concerned, both of these extreme views were wrong. Colonial English had developed no remarkable gifts or powers, nor had it degenerated from a purer and more perfect type of speech which was only carefully preserved in England. After the Declaration of Independence, American English remained as it always has been, a closely related but differentiated branch of the English language, connected by the most intimate bonds of tradition with the parent speech. The narrow partisanships which were drawn into the consideration of speech arose not from that activity itself, but from entirely different occasions for an indulgence in emotions of loyal pride or prejudice. Though the English language in America did not experience a new birth with the separation of the colonies from Great Britain, that event nevertheless provides a reasonable starting place for the consideration of what we must from that time call American English. Deep rooted though it was in the past, this English of eighteenth century America came then to be regarded from a new angle, and though the language in itself may not greatly have changed from what it was before, as in all other human social institutions the changing opinions which man held with respect to it must be counted as a part of its essential character. The special history of American English as something consciously separate and distinguishable began, therefore, with the realization of the existence of an American nation. In the third quarter of the eighteenth century Americans began to feel that their mother tongue was something near and intimate, the speech which gave to them a unity upon their own American soil. National or standard languages have seldom developed under the control of conscious intention, and to this rule the English language in America is no exception. In its present state, apart from what it has inherited from older traditions, which is obviously a great deal, American English is the result of a variety of impulses and tendencies, often crossing each other in a bewildering fashion and never for long uniting into a large and clearly defined purpose which the American people have held before them as an ideal towards which in their language they should aspire. It would have been surprising had it been otherwise. Languages grow and change only as they accompany the daily activities of men and women in the communication of their thoughts to each other. They are, more-over, the least conscious of the social possessions of peoples. Political and ethical ideals may be formulated, even in the earlier stages of their development, with a certain degree of definiteness and clearness. But a nation as a whole rarely gives thought to the trend of development of its speech, is rarely conscious that there is a trend of development. Its language may be deeply affected by the general tone of its life and thought, but the language itself is a resultant by-product of these general influences, and only in slight measure ✔does it determine their character or weight. Language in the main is an echo of life, not a motive power in it. At times, however. theorists and reformers arise who attempt and in some degree are able to give language a more active significance. When the American colonies at the end of the eighteenth century finally detached themselves from their older political associations, the occasion seemed unusually propitious for the formation of a native American speech which should not only be distinctive for American life but should also help the new nation to a realization of those inner purposes and aspirations which were still engaged in the struggle for existence. The beginnings are seen in an article by an unknown author (see Albert Matthews, Transactions of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XIV, 263-264), addressed to the Literati of America and published in the Royal American Magazine for January, 1774. In this article the writer proposes a society to be called Fellows of the American Society of Language, "for perfecting the English language in America." The author expresses the conviction that America will soon be "the seat of science." Perhaps the writer of this address to the literati of America was John Adams, for a few years later, after several very significant events had happened, in a letter to the "President of Congress," dated September 5, 1780, John Adams proposed an academy for "fixing and improv ing" American English, Works, Boston, 1851, Vol. VII, p. 249. He remarks that the British have occasionally tried a similar project, but have failed: "so that to this day there is no grammar nor dictionary extant of the English language which has the least public authority." "The honor of forming the first public institution for refining, correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English language," he continues, "I hope is reserved for congress; they have |