Page:The American Language.djvu/34

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
18
THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

clubhouse in the Avenue Montaigue, "where American is spoken." Earlier in the war the Illinoiser Staats Zeitung, no doubt seeking to keep the sense of difference alive, advertised that it would "publish articles daily in the American language."

§4

Foreign Observers—What English and American laymen have thus observed has not escaped the notice of continental philologists. The first edition of Bartlett, published in 1848, brought forth a long and critical review in the Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen by Prof. Felix Flügel,[1] and in the successive volumes of the Archiv, down to our own day, there have been many valuable essays upon Americanisms, by such men as Herrig, Koehler and Koeppel. Various Dutch philologists, among them Barentz, Keijzer and Van der Voort, have also discussed the subject, and a work in French has been published by G. A. Barringer.[2] That, even to the lay Continental, American and English now differ considerably, is demonstrated by the fact that many of the popular German Sprachführer appear in separate editions, Amerikanisch and Englisch. This is true of the "Metoula Sprachführer" published by Prof. F. Lanenscheidt[3] and of the "Polyglott Kuntz" books. [4] The American edition of the latter starts off with the doctrine that "Jeder, der nach Nord-Amerika oder Australien will, muss Englisch können," but a great many of the words and phrases that appear in its examples would be unintelligible to many Englishmen—e. g., free–lunch, real–estate agent, buckwheat, corn (for maize), conductor, pop–corn and drug–store and a number of others would suggest false meanings or otherwise puzzle e. g., napkin, saloon, wash–stand, water–pitcher and apple–pie.[5] To

  1. Die englische Sprache in Nordamerika, band iv, heft i; Braunschweig, 1848.
  2. Étude sur 1'Anglais Parle" aux Etats Unis (la Langue Américaine), Actes de la Société Philologique de Paris, March, 1874.
  3. Metoula-Sprachf ührer. …Englisch von Karl Blattner; Ausgabe für Amerika; Berlin–Schöneberg, 1912
  4. Polyglott Kuntze ; Schnellste Erlernung jeder Sprache ohne Lehrer; Amerikanisch; Bonn a. Rh., n. d.
  5. Like the English expositors of American slang, this German falls into