Our Americanish Language
by Clyde N. Wilson
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It is sad to contemplate what the American Melted Pot and Deweyite education have done to the language of Shakespeare—which was also the language of the founders of America—the most beautiful and utilizable of all the tongues of man. In our country in our time it is stultifying, perhaps somewhat like what happened to Latin and Greek after the classical period.
More and more people speak English like it was a superficially understood foreign language. Here are a few samples I heard on the radio in the course of one week.
Nationally syndicated medical expert: “I am talking like a native New Yorker, which I once was.” There is no such thing as a former native. Once a native always a native.
Local radio reporter: “Since —— was arrested for child molestation, more and more victims are coming out of the woodwork.” The term “coming out of the woodwork” was meant to describe repulsive creepy/crawly things being unpleasantly revealed. In applying it to victims, this reporter (a Clear Channel carpetbagger reporting on a foreign-to-him community) is using empty verbiage without any consciousness of its meeting.
Financial reporter: “This week in the mutual fund industry . . . ” It used to be an industry was something that made things. It did not cover buying and selling pieces of paper.
News report: “An elementary school child was sent home for wearing a shirt with a pro-Christian message.” Why not just a “Christian message”?
News report: “Some 46 million Americans don’t have health insurance.” How many of these “Americans” are not really Americans? We are not told. Statistics become even more than usually vague and meaningless.
Abortion is routinely described in the media as a “procedure.”
The collapse of distinction between fact and opinion, information and entertainment, keeps company with the debasement of language. Nor is it confined to the media. I know people with Ph.D.’s from prestigious institutions to whom it has never even occurred that there might be a difference between facts and the opinions they were taught. For them their opinion predefines reality.
The sports metaphors that have taken over the reporting of political contests are another sign of debased public discourse. Recently I even heard this military metaphor: “Congress has passed a military appropriations bill that is sure to be shot down” by Bush’s veto.
The Bush was reported as saying at the same time that “politicians” were trying to dictate to military men. Is he not a politician? Does he not dictate action to military men, often against their military judgment? This type of statement is a sure indicator of a shallow intellect and a devious character. Say anything that sounds good at the moment, without regard for meaning. We all know people like this. Usually people trying to cheat us in a deal.
The Virginia Tech University massacre provided a bonanza of evidence on the debasement of our public language. On the third day it was reported that “Focus has now turned to the shooter.” News is supposed to report what happens. There is no “focus” and it did not “turn.”
This was followed by “The question now is why,” another imaginary event that exists only in the mindless verbiage of the speaker. More and more reporting resembles this. Its purveyors without thinking are adopting the tricks of advertising and entertainment to catch the saps. In fact, my “focus” was on the shooter the first day, but I was unable to learn much about him because the “news” was mostly about the intangible (if not imaginary) emotions of the survivors.
I think the collapse of English as a living language in this country has a number of causes.
English is not the inherited language of most people outside the South—the Midwest was swamped by Germans and their stolid mental processes in the 19th century and the East has been continually transformed by non-English speakers. Then there is the American thirst for middle-class respectability, which is accompanied by the heaviest prevalence of pseudo-intellectualism in the world with its stilted thought and artificial language. But that is my speculation.
I could go into the spread of timid, breathy, Valley Girl speech among young women and increasingly among young men. Goodbye Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster and hello Metrosexuals and National Review pundits.
Much more could be said along these lines. But right now I have to go find out why my invitation to the White House for the Haitian-American Heritage Celebration got lost in the mail again this year.
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1 Comment by George Ajjan on 13 May 2007:
Dr. Wilson,
Your best tidbit on this topic concerned last summer’s war in Lebanon – “soldiers are captured or taken prisoner, not kidnapped”. I’ve used that one several times – thanks for the rhetorical assist.
2 Comment by Alex Quinn on 13 May 2007:
I agree with Dr. Wilson’s thoughts; perhaps I may point further infelicities I have recently come across?
“…the most beautiful and utilizable of all the tongues of man.” Surely no educated man could use such a dreadful word as “utilizable.”
“In our country in our time it is stultifying, perhaps somewhat like what happened to Latin and Greek after the classical period.”
I am not quite sure what to make of this sentence. What is now stultifying: what has happened to English, or English itself? In the former case the sentence is ugly, and in the latter it is grammatically incorrect.
“It used to be an industry was something that made things. It did not cover buying and selling pieces of paper.” Dr. Wilson is confusing the signifier and signified.
‘Abortion is routinely described in the media as a “procedure.”’ Abortion is a procedure (a particularly gruesome one). So is bypass sugery.
“For them their opinion predefines reality.” Try saying “their arm is broken” and maybe you’ll understand.
Perhaps Dr. Wilson should spend less time seeking out examples of the debasement of English and more time improving his grasp of it.
3 Comment by jack bailey on 14 May 2007:
Really Mr Quinn, signifier and signified, my arm is broken. Dr Wison did not attach himself to the pedantic. I managed to get all his tropes and I suspect so did you. So why take him to task? Unless it is some personal thing or if you are a liberal, which is also a possibility. Obviously you enjoy frolicking in your own linguistic superiority. For the obvious one: one may be able to reduce a bypass to a procedure, but it does not qualify for a moral issue. But perhaps I am wrong, you might be aware of some bypass-for-choice movement lurking somewhere within the signified.
4 Comment by Christopher Kelleher on 14 May 2007:
Two additional examples from a weekend commencement speech here in New Hampshire by that loathsome embarrassment to the South, John Edwards:
1. Encouraging “transformational change” and
2. Asserting that the young graduates can “literally move mountains.” As far as I could tell, not one of those graduates had a bulldozer or front-end loader.
5 Comment by David Rolfe on 14 May 2007:
H W Fowler has given examples of mistakes in the published work of authors who are regarded as masters of their craft, so Dr Wilson is in good company. Grammatical mistakes are made by all of us, except perhaps by Alex Quinn. There’s is no point in getting upset about them They matter far less than the insidious changes identified by George Orwell more than fifty years ago, in his “Politics and the English Language”. That essay is a great help to those who want to keep their won language from being corrupted.
6 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 14 May 2007:
Mr. Quinn, I am not concerned about fine points of grammar. I am concerned about speech that lacks both substance and creativity because it has been cut free of its roots. Pedantry is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
7 Comment by David Rolfe on 14 May 2007:
The promiscuous use of the prefix ‘pre-’ can be annoying. ‘Pre-warned’ and ‘pre-ordered’ are examples I have come across recently , ‘pre-owned’ is another – (no second-hand stuff for us).
8 Comment by Robert Reavis on 14 May 2007:
“Goodbye Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster and hello Metrosexuals and National Review pundits.”
“I am concerned about speech that lacks both substance and creativity because it has been cut free of its roots. Pedantry is part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
Dr. Wilson,
Your writing is full of roots –southern, agrarian, manners, music, and humor . I once asked my classics professor the name of the most modern author he had ever read. “Evelyn Waugh, he said, but I would not recommend him. There is much better English to read, beginning with Beowulf !!” Thanks rr
9 Comment by Dan Smith on 14 May 2007:
As Richard Mitchell pointed out, corrupt thought is contagious, and nothing could be more corrupting than television, where discourse has degenerated to repartee and taking the high ground assured by smart-ass irreverance. The pace requires answering without thought, resulting in catenations of cliches and jargon, which become nearly hypnotic when practiced by the experts of obfuscation. It is, of course, the language of power and sneering at it betrays exclusion, not superiority. Cleverness is Power, as they say, and the average Joe shows he has none as he gets tongue tied trying to regurgitate the appropriate cliche peppered with in-the-know jargon.
10 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 14 May 2007:
If the speech and thought processes of Southerners are the gauge to measure proper English usage then give me the Midwest!
11 Comment by Caper on 14 May 2007:
I am thankful for having read this blog. The experience has disabused me of certain pro-Southern notions which I once adopted. At last, the truth comes out. Slightly more than one-half of my ancestors came to this country as speakers of German, Swiss-German, and Norwegian. Therefore English is not truly my “inherited” language. According to Dr. Wilson, it is not sufficient to learn standard English at home and in school. No, native tongue is determined by a grandfather clause going back several generations! Ergo, I probably should be deprived of the right to vote. Additionally, those of my ancestors who were here at the time of the Revolution should be posthumously pilloried for having miscegenated with the newcomers. Now I understand how bigoted WASPs once denied that Germans and Irishmen were white.
Forget the fact that many English words come from Old Norse via the Danelaw. Forget that a great part of our lexicon arrived with the Norman aristocracy, i.e. with folks who did not know English. Never mind the fact that one reason why English is so “utilizable” (yes, I must concur with Mr. Quinn that this is an ugly word) is the fact that it absorbs words from foreign languages so easily, usually without bothering to change the spelling. English apparently belongs only to those who have inherited it, and most non-Southern American dialects be damned.
I myself am a grammarian by trade, and I routinely correct split infinitives, dangling participles, and meaningless gibberish in the term papers of my college students. I agree with Dr. Wilson that poor English is highly “utilizable” to those who wish to corrupt discourse in our country (well, “countries” — I am not a Southerner). However, Dr. Wilson’s analysis is distorted, as is virtually everything he writes, by his own anachronisms. One is the persistent belief (or intimations of such a belief) that people whose ancestors came here generations ago somehow are still unassimilated, unassimilable foreigners (e.g. the Germans of the Midwest, and, so it would seem, the Italians and Slavs of the Northeast).
Another problem is his apparent belief that the meanings of metaphors are not supposed to change over time. What is so strange about a bill being “shot down”? What is “debased” about the use of a sports metaphor in political discourse? Are not political campaigns (“campaign” in this sense is a dead metaphor from the military, I believe) also called “races”? (Perhaps Dr. Wilson is simply venting his hatred against professional sports?) As with Dr. Wilson’s own grammatical errors, do we not understand what is being said?
Why am I still thankful for having read this blog? Hearing these Southerners and Southern “wannabes” (many from my own Midwest) pine about Dixie — and occasionally indulge in poor thinking while doing so — has made me appreciate my own homeland even more. I have heard that in Chesterton’s “The Napoleon of Notting Hill” one person who is proud of his locality provokes his opponents to do likewise. In my yearning for local pride, I once looked southward. Perhaps the South was not made up of the one-dimensional bigots I had heard about (yes, that last word is a preposition). Well, I found that the South had much more than bigots, but it still had bigotry in the mix (*just as the North did and does*!). I think that the stereotype of the “Yankee” is one of the weaknesses of the South. I did not grow up a “Yankee” in the “North” — I grew up a Midwesterner in the Midwest. I did not grow up caring all that much about the South, certainly not enough to define myself in opposition to it as the stereotypical Yankee of Southern thought seems to do. I am too confused about my identity as one born in Illinois of (carpetbagging?) Wisconsinite parents to care what a bunch of Southerners intent on repeating the Civil War think. Those Yankees who hate the South and those Southerners who hate the North really do deserve each other. Thank you for teaching me this. Had I simply stuck to admiring the South from afar instead of actually reading Southerners’ writings, I might never have come to appreciate the heritage of my own homeland — the heartland of America. Thank you and God bless.
12 Comment by Caper on 14 May 2007:
P.S. I agree with Mr. Van Oosbree. There is a reason why “American broadcast English” is based on the dialect of that part of the Midwest where I grew up (well, the part immediately to the south of where I grew up). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American#Regional_home_of_
General_American
13 Comment by Robert Reavis on 14 May 2007:
Good heavens !! One would think after reading Capers , that respect for elders is something odd. I am an Okie which is more akin to teaching kids how to ride, shoot and speak the truth, than any secret, southern curtsy or damn yankee pedantry. I hate all this bombastic arm chair chivalry in defense of chimeras and fantoms of the mind. If I thought Capers and Wilson were anything but gentlemen and thoughtful citizens, I would quit reading. As it is, we have turned one into a bigot and the other into a calumniator when in fact most readers would feel right at home in eithers company. Cheers, I am out of here. rr
14 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 14 May 2007:
Midwesterners have many admirabnle virtues. Creativity in language is not one of them. This is why native Midwesterners like “country” (Southern) music.
15 Comment by Caper on 14 May 2007:
Thank you, Mr. Reavis, for my blood often needs to be cooled. I truly wish my confessor would forbid me to read blogs altogether. However, Dr. Wilson — and he is older than I am — seems to insult *my elders.* Namely, he casts aspersions on persons whose ancestors immigrated here . . . in the 19th century! Nor is this the first time. Frequently Dr. Wilson’s writings leave the impression that anyone who cannot identify an ancestor who was here at the time of the Revolution is somehow a lesser American for it. Today he seems ready to attribute the decline of English (outside of the South, of course) to the fact that folks like my elders moved here. Dr. Wilson was similarly displeased when a certain author ascribed the awful Black “dialect” to the influence of white “rednecks’” speech.
Now, were my grandfather or father alive, I would ask them to come here to defend their honor, and then the two combatants would be of similar age. Alas, they have gone to their eternal reward, and I alone remain. Additionally, were they alive, then I would have someone ready to hand who could tell me if I was indulging youthful passions, even to the point of calumny. If that is so, I apologize. Nevertheless, I have come to imitate Southerners: I tenaciously defend my heritage, lineage, and, yes, language when it comes under unjust assault. Good day.
16 Comment by Robert Reavis on 14 May 2007:
Mr. Capers,
Oh, don’t worry about it. This is my favorite blog. and fellows like you and Clyde Wilson are the reason. Compared to the rest of what is “out there”, it is like small rain falling on parched earth.
In matters of language never forget the story about Nathan Bedford Forrest, who responded in his own hand to a third request from one of his troops for a furlough —- ” I tote you twict, godam it , no!! rr
17 Comment by Caper on 14 May 2007:
Dr. Wilson, you never fail to astound me with your calm, pithy replies that obliterate long tirades. I am a fan of bluegrass, and often have lamented the fact that there is nothing comparable outside the South. I still have much to learn from at least one Southern gentleman . . .
18 Comment by Caper on 14 May 2007:
Mr. Reavis: “I am an Okie which is more akin to teaching kids how to ride, shoot and speak the truth . . .”
Do you think that people casually allude to Herodotus on the NRO blog?
19 Comment by Robert Reavis on 14 May 2007:
“Do you think that people casually allude to Herodotus on the NRO blog? ”
My classics professor told me a few months before his death, quoting a english poet, “T’is all in pieces” and then in his own words: ” the conservative movement in America has been taken over by kids.” As a young man I didn’t want to hear this truth, but as a middle age man I find it sad but fun because they are so silly that even a man of my mediocre talents can resist their phony, assinine, allurements crossdressed as conservative , fabians . Cheers rr
20 Comment by chris on 14 May 2007:
>It is sad to contemplate what the American Melted Pot and
>Deweyite education have done to the language of
>Shakespeare—which was also the language of the founders of
>America—the most beautiful and utilizable of all the tongues of
>man.
And how many languages do you speak that you can say this?
21 Comment by Frank B Lee on 14 May 2007:
The bending over backwards for gender neutrality can be amusing. I’m awaiting the replacement of “it” with “he” as the generic singular pronoun.
It would be especially amusing if we had developed separate pronouns (and perhaps tenses etc) for foreigners (which would have included slaves I suppose). As things are, I’m content with the scurrying about over our dreadfully sexist heritage. If there’s a gender neutral language, I’m glad it isn’t the foundation for the current global medium.
“Abortion is routinely described in the media as a “procedure.”” Murder is the appropriate term; no sophistry can justify such a thing. I’m just chiming in with the condemnation.
—
Caper, Amerindians certainly don’t view you as American. Also, have you ever met an FFV?
And of course a descendant of German speakers is going to be less likely than a man of English descent to identify with and continue the tradition of the English language. Btw, it’s not right to be “offended” when another comments on the stolid nature of the Germans, because it’s true =p
– proud redneck (who is not likely your elder so fire away)
22 Comment by Bowdler on 14 May 2007:
Which, of course, is why we refer to the highest standard of the English language as “the Queen’s English,” since the Queen, clearly, is not the descendant of German speakers.
Oh, wait…
23 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 14 May 2007:
The little petty German princess with her jugged-ear heir that is now the Queen is not the Queen referred to in “the Queen’s English.”
24 Comment by Bowdler on 14 May 2007:
Of course, Dr. Wilson—though the phrase has grown beyond Shakespeare, and the fact that, when Prince Charles becomes king, it will be known once again as “the King’s English” simply proves the point.
The broader question signified by my little jab is that raised by Caper above. How long, exactly, does one’s family have to have spoken English in order to be able to identify with, and continue the tradition of, the English language? Presumably, even Dr. Wilson and Frank B. Lee have ancestors who did not speak English.
25 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 14 May 2007:
“The little petty German princess with her jugged-ear heir that is now the Queen is not the Queen referred to in “the Queen’s English.””
As much as I disagree with parts of your column, I am grateful that there is at least one other Jacobite here.
26 Comment by Michael Ezzo on 14 May 2007:
Hey, here in Japan you can even get cancer insurance. (And perhaps insurance for one’s dog as well). Nicholas, you can add a third (me) Jacobite to the list. But as for language corruption, might not creativity be one of the causes, rather than the solution? I would guess that in schools people are being told to replace perfectly clear and precise English vocabulary with new ways to express the same thing, under the mistaken assumption that the old ways are dull and worn out. One of the results of this creativity occurs when formerly rare words (of limited context) suddenly become fahionable to use, broadly, as if we’re very comfortable with them. “Paradigm” was one of those (about ten years ago). Then there is the phenomenon whereby people suddenly change the meaning of a word for no reason. “Agenda” and “issue” come to mind. And there are surely more to come……
27 Comment by Mike Morris on 15 May 2007:
“Midwesterners have many admirable virtues. Creativity in language is not one of them. This is why native Midwesterners like “country” (Southern) music.”
Dr. Wilson, how exactly do you draw the line between South and Midwest? The richest vein of American traditional music, and the source of country music, is the upper South which more or less bleeds right into the lower Midwest in Missouri, Indiana and southern Illinois. Further north, WLS out of Chicago was a crucial medium in the spread of this music across the nation. I have a record of Ohio bluegrass, played by transplanted Southerners . . . I could go on and on. I just don’t see why pride in your own regional heritage has to involve knocking someone else’s . . . .
28 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 16 May 2007:
Mr. Morris, you establish my point. The music in the Midwest is made by transplanted folks from the upper South. True, Southerners settled the Midwest. Then later, after it was safe, the Yankees and Germans came and took over and have been the dominant group ever since, despising the Southern-derived “Hoosiers.” Indiana literature was founded by Edward Eggleston from Virginia; Illinois’ best writer, James Jones, came from “Little Egypt”; Nebraska’s best writer, Willa Cather, was of Virginia family. etc. etc. etc.
29 Comment by Mike Morris on 16 May 2007:
There is no clear divide between the two, that was my point. In fact, it may be more useful to look at a trans-regional backcountry culture that spanned parts of Pennsylvania, down into the southern highlands, across to the Ozarks and out to the southern plains. You may want to extend this culture region all the way to California and you’ll find yourself in Kern County or the Sacramento Valley. You can define this as Southern culture, but it certainly wasn’t Tidewater society. It is neither Yankee nor Southern aristocrat, and the primary population sources were Scotch-Irish, German and English, with influences coming in from a number of other sources.
30 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 16 May 2007:
It was a culture made in the Piedmont South in the mingling of Tidewater and Scots-Irish.
31 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 16 May 2007:
The notion that one’s ancestry past a generation or two affects one’s speech or writing, or one’s devotion to good diction and clear expression, displays a charming and provocative political incorrectness, but for all that I doubt it’s true.
I’d attribute the degeneration of expression to other things, among them the following:
* People read less great literature than they used to. Even most practicing Christians are ignorant of the Bible and are likely to read graceless modern translations. Instead of the classics, insipid politically correct literature proliferates in our schools.
* Children no longer are expected to memorize poetry and great oratory. Instead they watch Japanese cartoons.
* Mass media deliberately vulgarize the language to appeal to the greatest number, “like a cigarette should.”
* The professoriat rewards obscurity rather than clarity and grace in writing, and set their turgid example for the slackers we parents entrust to them.
If one were to conduct a blind test of college student writing, I doubt Mr. Wilson could separate 10 Sons of the Confederacy from 10 third-generation formerly hyphenated Americans.
Just ask that Polish interloper, Joseph Conrad.
32 Comment by TJF on 17 May 2007:
Actually, Conrad never mastered English and his best prose, though it received help and correction from people like Ford Maddox Ford, is hardly a model.
Living half my life in the Midwest and half in the South, I have observed the difference between simple country people in the South who, despite grammatical lapses, use English as a native language, and third or fourth generation Scandinavians who simply have not mastered the language because they nevery grew up in a family where it was spoken competently. This has nothing to do with any innate superiority or inferiority of the two groups but is the effect of a Melting Pot that dissolved the culture the immigrants brought with them but never fully caused them to assimilate. Hence the continued rancor, even among the Irish, against the old WASP establisment and its folkways. Mass immigration simply does not work. One of the Midwest’s finest writers, Ole Rolvaag, knew this and urged his fellow Norwegians not to abandon their culture and language.
Speaking of Rolvaag, my good friend and comrade-in-arms Dr. Wilson has somewhat overstated his case against Midwestern culture.
Edward Eggleston is pretty small beer when Midwestern literature is concerned and by his own account something of a namby-pamby. Booth Tarkington is the best writer from Indiana, and though he had Southern roots on one side, his mother’s family were Yankees. His father supported the Union, and Tarkington all his life was drawn to the Northeast. Of the best Midwestern writers, e..g., Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Ole Rolvaag, Glenway Westcott, none has shown much in the way of Southern roots.
Ours was a mixed country, too mixed to draw any definite lines. What can we say of the South’s best ante-bellum poet, Timrod, the grandson of–gasp–a German immigrant. Naturally, immigrants living in ethnic enclaves rarely mastered English effectively and they often passed their incapacity down to their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, yea down to our own generation. Many Midwesterners, as a result, continue to speak a clumsy English that is really like a second language, although they have no first language. Of course, there are–though a smaller number–Midwesterners who speak a clear and effective English, certainly better than most contemporary Southerners.
There is nothing inherently defective about Germans or Italians or people who have the misfortune to be born north of the Ohio River. In fact, the cultural frontier ran through the middle of the Middle West. When the great Southern state of Kentucky went Republican in 1862, Illinois and Indiana, dominated by down state and mid-state voters, repudiated the War Party. After the War, the Midwest gave every indication of being the next cultural center of the US. It failed, but that, I believe, was the result of the political and cultural consolidation that took place nationally between 1865 and 1940. Southern culture goes back to Jamestown–settled 400 years ago, while the Midwest barely got going until the 19th century. Making fun of this poor cultureless people is blaming the victim.
I am second to none in my preference for the South above all regions, but I cannot help pointing out that the South has given us, in addition to Faulkner and Percy, such politicians as Clinton, Gore, Edwards, Jimmie Carter and, though he is not himself Southern, Newt Gingrich. It is the South that has made a religious cult out of football, and the South that spawned vermin like Pat Robertson. And yes, it is the South that has given us the treacly filth they miscall country music today. Nashville has become Tinpan Alley with steel guitars (and few enough of them). If we are to blame Midwesterners for what they have allowed themselves to turn into, Southerners also have a good deal of explaining to do. And, after 140 years, we cannot blame our failings on the War lest we fall into the same pattern as blacks who blame everything on slavery.
To me it makes more sense to encourage the foolish local pride that inspires people to accomplish more than they think themselves capable of. B.L. Gildersleeve, a great scholar and Confederate veteran, disliked Yankees and despised Vermont, but Vermont’s local patriotism charmed him. Midwesterners, for 140 years, have invited Southern hatred. You cannot mention the South up here without being called a bigot, and while other ethnic jokes are forbidden, the onair “personalities” love to ridicule the Rockford suburbs known as Parkinsaw with one incest joke after another. I’d also like to remind my Midwestern friends that their noble ancestors raped and looted their way across the South–Northeastern regiments were much better behaved.
Still, there is much to praise in the Middle West. Some of the good qualities are, indeed, shared with the South but not all. Let each region restore itself and keep to itself. I only wish Clyde Wilson would not let the cat out of the bag. If he keeps this style up, the Midwest will be sending an even bigger invasion of locusts, I mean snowbirds.
33 Comment by James Kabala on 17 May 2007:
Do the Irish count as true English speakers in Dr. Wilson’s book? To be sure, their remote ancestors did not speak English, but in many parts of Ireland English has been the dominant language for several centuries now. The Highland Scots whose descendants make up much of the population of the South also spoke Gaelic in pre-modern times, and if we go back far enough in time that is true of the Lowland Scots as well, yet I suspect not Dr. Wilson would not hesitate to count them as natural English speakers. We might also mention the Welsh, the national ancestry of Thomas Jefferson’s paternal line, but also non-English speakers until the late medieval/early modern period and in many areas not until much later.
I admit to a personal interest in Dr. Wilson’s answer to this question, although half my ancestors were not Irish but Polish, and even my Irish ancestors came mainly from County Kerry, which was a Gaelic-speaking area well into the Nineteenth Century, so I may be a lost cause no matter what.
“If one were to conduct a blind test of college student writing, I doubt Mr. Wilson could separate 10 Sons of the Confederacy from 10 third-generation formerly hyphenated Americans.”
This is almost surely true, even if TJF is right that Grumpy Old Man’s specific example of Conrad is wrong. (I have not read enough Conrad to make a judgment either way.)
34 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 17 May 2007:
I thank Dr. Fleming for clarifying a great many matters. I am as guilty as anyone, but I have to say that this whole discussion is an example of our penchant for the tangential. My piece was about the degradation of American speech, which hardly anybody has discussed. The bit about Yankees was an aside, and, as I clearly stated, merely speculation. Have a nice day and remember to press 1 for English.
35 Comment by Allen Wilson on 17 May 2007:
A whole book could be written about the valleygirlesque, conformist, dull, colourless pan-American speech of modern American pop-’culture’. Younger people increasingly conform to this characterless speech, with it’s dull accent and empty dialect, thinking that they are ridding themselves of an unpleasant accent and sounding better, when in fact they cant see that they are just trading their native accent and dialect for an artificial one, every bit as thick and heavy as those of the Southern backwoods, Northern Michigan, or Boston. Of course the South is the biggest victim of this evil, but the every part of the empire is under attack from it. I have heard that the native dialect and accent of New England is caving in under the assualt, and this is as regrettable as the decline of Southern speech.
Personally, I prefer thick local accents to dull conformity. I remember two girls I used to know when I was younger, who originally were from – of all places, yes, it’s true – Rockford Illinois. They had lived in Arkansas most of their lives. They were both attractive, but the younger one was particularly beautiful. She also had the thickest accent, virtually unchanged since she had left Rockford as a child. Listening to her speak was almost erotic.
Likewise, setting aside that irritating valley girl speech which was never anything but an artificial construct even in the valley, a real Southern California accent, one of the softest of Yankee accents, which also has similarities to Southern accents, is quite pleasing in a girl. The modern pan-American, valleygirlesque accent of conformity is not, because it’s too dull and lacks real character.
As go the local dialects of the English language, so goes the entire English language. The decline of regionalism is the decline of language itself, just as it is also the decline of culture and civilisation. How could it not be?
36 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 18 May 2007:
Guilty as charged. As a “self-appointed” American, educated in Europe (mainly UK – thank God they do speak English there without having to press 1 for English). However, I continue to struggle with American English which (in words of Bernards Shaw) is the common language dividing the two people (the English and the Americans). I tend to produce run-on sentences, I make poor use of “that” as opposed to “which”, etc. etc. My hearing (and reading) of English is an entirely different story. After having completed NYU – Drama Shakespeare is my daily bible to this day, but I fail to absorb the consistent good usage of it (the proper English language). Yes, my most serious impediment is the media, unrestrained coinage of non-existent words and nebulous dual meanings – (pre-owned, preventative, etc.) – so by all accounts, I am doing far less damage to this noble language than I could if I were more glued to any TV program (TV is banished in my home). Thank you for the wonderful, insightful summary.
No, I don’t want a blindfold, just a cigarette.
Shoot straight – don’t make a mess of me.
37 Comment by James Kabala on 23 May 2007:
I know this thread, since it is no longer on the front page, is probably not being read any more, but I thought my original remarks were too flippant and snarky and I wanted to provide a more thoughtful response to Dr. Wilson and Dr. Fleming’s intriguing and thought-provoking but, in my opinion, flawed thesis.
I just don’t think the common grammatical horrors of the present day – e.g., “between you and I,” “irregardless,” dangling participles, and the various examples corrected by Dr. Wilson – can be attributed to the non-English roots of most modern-day Americans, in part because the parallels in other languages – using “ich” or “io” or “yo” in an object position, for example – would also be incorrect. (An exception is the double negative, which is correct in many Continental languages, but of course it was once correct in English as well.) Furthermore, even the dumbest and most error-prone native American English speaker, regardless of his ethnic background, is generally able to grasp a lot of complex points of English grammar, including most irregular forms; I’ve never known any native English speaker over the age of reason who committed extreme solecisms like “goed” or “doed” or “sheeps” or “mouses.”
I understand the argument that parents who learned English as a second language will be unable to truly pass the language along to their children, and then those children won’t be able to pass the language along to their children, and so on ad infinitum, but I think the people in the communities where they live (especially teachers, who I hope people here recognize are not always bad) are also important. These people clearly have an impact on accent (hence, for example, Irish-Americans in Boston and Charleston speak with New England and Southern accents, respectively, not brogues), so I think they must have an effect on grammar and syntax as well.
That is just my two cents.
38 Comment by PcH on 30 May 2007:
Does anyone really know enough about the ancestry of Midwesterners to insist they are mostly German?
A simple look at a Midwestern phone book, gives many German names it is true, but like the South, the overwhelming majority are English.
There is a current fad to split whites into a multitude of warring ethnicities. This has led to numerous unfounded superstitions, such as that the Midwest is German and the South is Kelticke (and you may not say “Celtic” as it is spelled).
The current superstition about the Midwest being exclusively German seems to come from the belief that millions upon millions of 48′ers came over for Lincoln’s war and that all 48′ers were socialist in the Marxist sense. This belief seems to be a holdover from World War propaganda that said that all Germans were evil mass-murdering Huns.
The belief of the massive invasion of 48′ers seems to come from Southerners (such as Busbice) who are anxious to prove to the world that Southerners are not wicked naziswhowanttokillsixmillionjews.
Most folk are unaware of their own ancestry beyond grandma, which is why so many with last names like Hill, Kibler, Smith, Franklin are readily convinced that they are Kelticke. Or that Midwesterners with the same last names are Huns.
In reality, the ethnicity of North America outside the Northeast was firmly established before 1776. And Englishmen and Germans are both Germanic; and Englishmen, Germans, and Keltickes are all of the nordic subtype.
39 Comment by PcH on 30 May 2007:
By the way, if the Midwest is the land of the German Hun, are the Shenandoah, Walhalla, Dutch Corners, asf, not truly Southern?