English as She Is Spoke

— I have been pleased to observe that, as a general thing, Americans are as indulgent and courteous as Frenchmen have the reputation of being towards foreigners helplessly floundering amid the difficulties of English as she is spoke. But then, truly, by every law of politeness as well as Christian charity, we ought to be ! For we who have been brought up in it and with it, who have had it in daily use from infancy, until we have grown familiar with its every twist of feature, wrinkle, and mark, hardly ever stop to think what a very singular language it really is,—that it wears a face quite as grotesque as that of the most fantastic gargoyle ever fashioned. An acquaintance of mine calls it the “ maddest yet the greatest language in the world,” and I am not indisposed to agree with him. For even a very superficial glance will reveal that, composed of many heterogeneous elements and borrowing from many other languages, apparently altogether arbitrary, acknowledging no rhyme or reason, subject to no rules or regulations, it seems to have grown up and unfolded with much of the rich variety, the rank luxuriance, and the wild lawlessness of Nature herself, who forms no two things in all her wide domain exactly alike. And the words of our language might indeed be compared to the countless leaves on the millions of trees in the world, each one of which is to a certain extent a law unto itself and develops individual peculiarities. I believe it never happens with any other tongue spoken on this globe that people of culture, and even learning, are in doubt as to the proper pronunciation of any word, and go to the dictionary to settle the matter, finding often enough that doctors disagree! I have given some time in my life to the study of foreign languages, and know that in all of them certain inflexible rides govern certain combinations of consonants and vowels, so rarely, if ever, departed from that it is possible at least to approach, from books alone, a correct pronunciation. But in English who ever knows from its spelling how a word will “get itself ” pronounced ? And woe to the misguided foreigner who should attempt to learn to speak our idiom from the printed page only ! I know of one such case, attended, as might be supposed, with most disastrous consequences. It was that of a German, who came here during the war, and, having no means, enlisted in a German regiment ; in the leisure of camp life he undertook to learn English by himself by reading Dickens. But, ye gods and little fishes ! to this day, this man, who, it must be admitted, has exceptionally little ear, and equally little ambition, speaks of the “ wonly thing ” he can do, and of the “ pewblic good,” and uses a jargon in general which it is simply wonderful any American mind should grasp the meaning of ! But then, for the matter of that, why really should it not be “ wonly ” and “ pewblic ” ? Can we give the slightest reason why vowels sometimes have one sound and sometimes another ; why, for instance, we have a faded father, and a mother who is the first among women ; why the vowel sounds are sometimes long and sometimes short, with the very same consonants ; we take a pill, but enter a hall, poll a vote, but pull a bell ? Can we offer the poor struggling foreigner even the smallest spar that might serve as a guide and stay amid these whirlpools and quicksands ? Alas, no ! We can only tell him, You must learn, help yourself, and Heaven will help you — perhaps ! Only consider for a moment the vast task before him ! Even after he has come to know all the strange mute consonants in such words as debt, indict, sign, honor, know, would, hymn, demesne, mortgage, clothes, etc., and has mastered — if he ever does — the peculiar sound of our w, and (here Heaven help him, indeed !) the th’s, both soft and hard, as in “ This thin gruel,” and “ Those thundering waves,” there are still left for him to apprehend a great variety of subtle shadings of sound, as I should like to call them, which have always seemed to me like delicate neutral tints amid other colors, such as are shown in the difference between dog and dug, awe and own, rag and peg, etc. Our language is specially rich in such, and indeed I have found that the foreign ear or tongue, perhaps both, often seem particularly incapable of grasping them. Even were these difficulties surmounted, there is still a simply countless multitude of words, each one of which the foreigner must learn to pronounce separately by itself, because each one appears to have an independent life of its own, without the slightest regard to its nearest blood relation. At this juncture a friend brings me a nonsensical little sketch, which is far from complete, and yet so well illustrates some of the wild freaks and vagaries and wonderful changes and magical transformations of both consonants and vowels in the language that I will insert it here : —“ That day, having some chores to do, and no choice about it, I went into the garden, but stopped to listen to the chorus or choir of birds, although I had an ache in my stomach from eating too much spinach, and a pain in my head from the heat. My ear was not affected, however, and, it being still early, I cut down a pear, and found in it a pearl. Otherwise it proved a disappointment, which I loved not. It was somewhat tough and gave me a cough, and, as I had not bought the fruit, I let the bough slip back. There was no use, though, in having a sour soul, so I set off on a little journey, making a tour of the garden. My wife had not been able to sew, yet I had intended to sow some corn, but a sow with her litter had eaten it, while the owl came forth to drink from her bowl. It being near noon, I took out my book to read, and, having read some time, marked with a bit of lead such passages as had the lead. Some were about a daughter who always sought to be neat, and had a bonnet so beautiful that she knew it had impressed the handsomest bean in town, though he would not own it. And she wore a bow that was worse, yet had once brought her from a friend a how, as good as anything from Cupid himself, with his bow and arrows, only the bow of his boat demanded attention. Just then I glanced through the door, and across my book and a row of cabbages saw a boor pass, and was attracted by a row in the broad road beyond. I saw men and women there, many people, and a leopard. I thought, There is jealousy between them ; they are foes ; and all had poor shoes that looked worn, while a worm crawled in the dust. Surely he is a surly fellow, whom even sugar could not surfeit. It might all end badly, only how easily slaughter might be turned into laughter by the simple dropping of the first letter ! But although it was an old tome that might have been consigned to the tomb, I was still busy with my book, and proceeded to bury myself in it again, — it was a primer about prime beef. Yet I put it away when I discovered there was a hut near, and I heard the sound of a bugle. Having leisure now, I looked down from a height on some freight cars. There were but a few, yet I had a good view, but true I had nothing else to do. The sun had shone hot, something to shun, and I had done nothing, save won the approval of one heart. But the gist of the matter was, that I had nothing to give, and, though germs were in the ground, there was no harvest to get. So I went in search of a birch-tree, which gave a lurch forward as I came. After that, I said not a word, but heard a bird that stirred in the branches, and a cat that purred, and then I preferred to go home. On the way there, I thought, how strange it is that we rhyme such words as eyes, sighs, skies, size, guise, buys ! And I wondered why we consider the devil as the father of all evil, but doubted whether we shall ever make it even with him !”

This sort of thing might be almost indefinitely extended, but I think that the foreigner who could pass safely through even all these snares, without once stumbling or coming to fall, might be considered in a fair way to become a naturalized citizen — of the language ! But truly, my friend is not wholly wrong in calling it the maddest language in the world. And yet the greatest, too, because it lends itself so easily to the expression of every thought and every emotion, and from the shout of command on the battlefield to the lovers’ whisper, from the grandest oration in the forum or outburst of passion on the stage to the prattle of the child in the nursery, is adequate to every human need. With all its lawless vagaries, possibly because of them, it is wonderful how easily children acquire its correct use ; and, for my own part, I am persuaded that we already possess the only “ Volapük,” world-language, there will ever be in English as she is spoke.