January
13, 2006
American English
I have often wondered how W.
D. Fowler, the famous lexicographer, composer of
“Oxford English Dictionary” and author
of “Modern English Usage”, would have
reacted to the way the English language is spoken
in the United States, particularly in California.
Almost half of the people living in California are
first or second generation non-white immigrants
or speak as mother tongue a language other than
English. Such liberties are thus taken with the
puritan Fowler that he must be turning in his grave
outraged at the violence done to the language he
cherished and to its niceties and catholic use he
preached.
Sir Winston Churchill, a hybrid of an English father
and an American mother, had once commented that
Britain and America were two nations divided by
a common language. Another British writer and wit
had observed after a visit to the US: “We
have many things in common with the Americans except
the language.”
When President Ronald Reagon visited London, the
then British PM, Margaret Thatcher, had mocked,
of course in a lighter vein, “You ain’t
seen nothing yet”.
The famous Urdu poet, Mir Taqi Mir, according to
Azad’s Aab-e-Hayat, had once to share a bullock-cart
with some village rustics on a lengthy journey.
Throughout the travel, he would not talk to his
companions lest he contaminated his chaste Urdu.
Since America has already emerged as the supreme
power of the world, the leader in science and technology,
and the seat of the biggest world economy, the intellectual
or cultural arrogance of the type manifested by
Mirs and Thatchers is simply ignored here by the
people more concerned with the production of goods
and services and inventing conveniences for the
entire humanity.
Noah Webster, the man who gave America its first
homegrown dictionary, argued that in order to win
true independence from England, Americans needed
to invent their own language, related to English
but distinct from it. His contribution to this has
no doubt been monumental. But the process had started
much earlier and quite naturally.
American English, like Urdu, is the product of the
inter-mixture and cross-fertilization of various
ethnic groups inhabiting this vast and varied country.
The inflexibility of the puritans had thus to yield
to the need for quick and easy communication. Waves
after waves of immigrants from all parts of the
world came to this land seeking freedom of action
and pursuing their dreams of achieving something
or another. Quick expression with a minimum vocabulary
became the norm, not the exception. Yet, it takes
time for the ears of people like us, who speak English
as a second language, to get used to the nasal drawl,
the twang, and sentences like these:
“I ain’t gonna take no chances”.
“That car there is no good for nothing”.
English is by no means an easy language. But, the
extremely fast tempo of life in this country and
the need to adopt and communicate in the language
of the majority, have smoothed out many angularities
of the language and produced a basic vocabulary
serving purposes far beyond what Fowler would have
permitted.
Similarly, the spellings of many words have been
simplified by cutting out unnecessary vowels and
other letters; for instance honour becomes honor,
favour becomes favor, programme becomes program.
One wonders why the decorative ‘P’ in
the word ‘psychology’ has been allowed
to hang on like a parasite to the expression the
way it is pronounced. A plausible explanation is
that it portrays the pompous nature of the subject.
More often than not, one comes out of a psychiatrist’s
coach considerably disoriented but hanging on to
the decorative ‘P’!!
The spoken language revolves around the major activities
of the common people. First, there is the ‘need’
for some thing, then you ‘make’ something
to meet that need, and then ‘sell’ it
to the person, the guy, who needs it. Therefore,
the words ‘need’, ‘make’,
‘sell’, and ‘guy’ are repeatedly
used in senses beyond Fowler’s comprehension
or acceptance. Here are some examples.
I need to know the address of ….
I need giving him some money.
I need to say goodbye now
Expressions such as ‘I should’, ‘I
have to’, or ‘I ought to’ have
all yielded place to ‘I need to’. Next
in frequency of use comes the word ‘make’.
If you go to a grocery store and buy say tomatoes,
this is how you can describe it:
“I made to the grocery store in the afternoon,
made my way to the vegetable counter, placing some
tomatoes in the bag, made quickly to the cash register,
made payment, rushed home making it in fifteen minutes,
my watch was making ten to six leaving me ten minutes
to make to my next job, to make a little extra money
to make my budget balance and make both ends meet.”
Same is the case with the word sell and its derivatives.
The beauty of salesmanship lies in convincing the
potential customers that they are saving while they
are spending. Sale and savings have become almost
twins in the commercial jargon.
How much businesses care for their customers may
be gauged from the way the word ‘economy’
is used. A large box of cereal or of toothpaste
is called the ‘economy size’, while
this very expression applied to a car means a small
car. The customer is led to believe that he stands
to save something either way. It is another matter
that after saving this way for decades, he finds
himself in debt up to his neck -a sardonic culmination
of all the savings and economies.
The word guy used to stand for a man and that too
in a pejorative sense, as it had probably originated
from the name Guy Fox who wanted to set the British
Parliament on fire and whose grotesque effigies
are paraded in streets on Guy Fox’s day in
England. The word is now used as an innocuous alternative
for a human being, both male and female. Not only
that, it can also be used for inanimate objects.
Pointing to some fishing rods, the sales girl said
to me: “Those guys there make a great buy.”
The expression “You are welcome” in
response to “Thank you” has its origin
in business too. You thank the sales person who
in response says “You are welcome” meaning
you are welcome to this store.
Slangs have further enriched the language and made
communication much easier. So many slang words are
freely used by even American men of letters that
often it becomes difficult to differentiate between
a literary or slang expression. Example:-
On a visit to America, an old British lady, wary
of slang words, asked her American-born grand daughter:
“Promise me that you will not use two words
while I am around. One is swell and the other is
lousy”.
“Why sure, grandma”, replied the girl
“what are the words.”
As a slang word, “hip” stands for sophistication
and for fashion, hipper and hippest being its superlative
forms. If a lady is referred to as being the hippest
in her group, don't think that someone is referring
to her substantial behind but to her sophistication,
her excellence in fashion.
“Waste’em” means kill them in
military slang. After thousands upon thousands have
been so wasted, one may refer to the event as “no
big deal”. Good examples of “no big
deals” are the massacres in Mai Lai and in
Kosovo.
Even the most finicky about the use of slang would
run the hardest to grab someone else’s loose
“buck”. One elected leader in Islamabad
stole it while the other robbed it. You may, if
you like, put it the other way round. Both are abroad,
having “hell of a time”.
If you want to praise some thing, you may use either
of the words ‘hot’ or ‘cool’.
You may call a deep-freezer as hot and a room heater
as cool –both words stand in slang for good
and attractive. If you are really much impressed,
add the word ‘way’ to either. You may
say: “That is cool, way cool, man”.
Or, you may call it “groovy –real groovy”.
Isn’t that expressive and convenient?
You may similarly place the word “pretty”
before an adjective to emphasize it. It is all right
to call something “pretty ugly”. On
the East coast , particularly in New York, you hear
the word “awesome” used similarly for
emphasis in so many ways and so very often that
the “awe” in it wears off within no
time and you start mixing it up with “handsome”.
But, I am still unable to use the word guy for a
human being or even for a fishing rod; nor, do I
relish the use of double negatives.
Ain’t that strange, particularly as I ain’t
no puritan like Mir or Margaret or finicky like
Fowler.
