American Language Read Free

of the thing, but
notify
the thing to the person.” But
to notify
, in the American sense, was simply an example of archaic English, preserved like so many other archaisms in America, and there was, and is, no plausible logical or grammatical objection to it. 7 Witherspoon’s third Americanism was
fellow countrymen
, which he denounced as “an evident tautology,” and his fourth was the omission of
to be
before the second verb in such constructions as “These things were ordered delivered to the army.” His next three were similar omissions, and his remaining five were the use of
or
instead of
nor
following
neither
, the use of
certain
in “A
certain
Thomas Benson” (he argued that “A
certain person called
Thomas Benson” was correct), the use of
incident
in “Such bodies are
incident
to these evils,” and the use of
clever
in the sense of worthy, and of
mad
in the sense of angry.
    It is rather surprising that Witherspoon found so few Americanisms for his list. Certainly there were many others, current in his day, that deserved a purist’s reprobation quite as much as those he singled out, and he must have been familiar with them. Among the verbs a large number of novelties had come into American usage since the middle of the century, some of them revivals of archaicEnglish verbs and others native inventions —
to belittle, to advocate, to progress, to notice, to table, to raise
(for to grow),
to deed, to locate, to ambition, to deputize, to compromit, to appreciate
(in the sense of increase in value),
to eventuate
, and so on. Benjamin Franklin, on his return to the United States in 1785, after nine years in France, was impressed so unpleasantly by
to advocate, to notice, to progress
and
to oppose
that on December 26, 1789 he wrote to Noah Webster to ask for help in putting them down, but they seem to have escaped Witherspoon. He also failed to note the changes of meaning in the American use of
creek, shoe, lumber, corn, barn, team, store, rock, cracker
and
partridge
. Nor did he have anything to say about American pronunciation, which had already begun to differ materially from that of Standard English.
    Witherspoon’s strictures, such as they were, fell upon deaf ears, at least in the new Republic. He was to get heavy support, in a little while, from the English reviews, which began to belabor everything American in the closing years of the century, but on this side of the ocean the tide was running the other way, and as the Revolution drew to its victorious close there was a widespread tendency to reject English precedent and authority altogether, in language no less than in government. In the case of the language, several logical considerations supported that disposition, though the chief force at the bottom of it, of course, was probably only national conceit. For one thing, it was apparent to the more astute politicians of the time that getting rid of English authority in speech, far from making for chaos, would encourage the emergence of home authority, and so help to establish national solidarity, then the great desideratum of desiderata. And for another thing, some of them were far-sighted enough to see that the United States, in the course of the years, would inevitably surpass the British Isles in population and wealth, and to realize that its cultural independence would grow at the same pace.
    Something of the sort was plainly in the mind of John Adams when he wrote to the president of Congress from Amsterdam on September 5, 1780, suggesting that Congress set up an academy for “correcting, improving and ascertaining the English language.” There were such academies, he said, in France, Spain and Italy, but the English had neglected to establish one, and the way was open for the United States. He went on:
    It will have a happy effect upon the union of States to have a public standard for all persons in every part of the continent to appeal to, both for the signification and pronunciation of the