Society for Pure English, Tract 5 by Society for Pure English
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V
_Encore_ and _mise-en-scene_ are only two of a dozen or a score of
French words not infrequently used in English and misused by being
charged with meanings not strictly in accord with French usage. 'Levee'
is one; the French say _lever_. _Nom de plume_ is another; the French
say _nom de guerre_. _Musicale_ also is rarely, if ever, to be found
in French, at least I believe it to be the custom in Paris to call
an 'evening with music' a _soiree musicale_. If _musicale_ is too
serviceable to demand banishment, why should it not drop the _e_ and
become _musical_? When Theodore Roosevelt, always as exact as he was
vigorous in his use of language, was President of the United States, the
cards of invitation which went out from the White House bore 'musical'
in one of their lower corners; so that the word, if not the King's
English, is the President's English.
To offset this I must record with regret that the late Clyde Fitch once
wrote a one-act play about a manicurist, and as this operator on the
finger-nails was a woman he entitled his playlet, the _Manicuriste_; and
he did this in spite of the fact that, as a writer fairly familiar with
French, he ought to have known the proper term--_manucure_.
Then there is _double-entendre_, implying a secondary meaning of
doubtful delicacy. Dryden used it in 1673, when it was apparently
good French, although it has latterly been superseded in France by
_double-entente_--which has not, however, the somewhat sinister
suggestion we attach to _double-entendre_. I noted it in Trench's
'Calderon' (in the 1880 reprint); and also in Thackeray; and both
Calderon and Thackeray were competent French scholars.
Perhaps this is as good a place as any to consider _nee_, put after the
name of a married woman and before the family name of her father. The
Germans have a corresponding usage, Frau Schmidt, _geboren_ Braun. There
is no doubt that _nee_ is convenient, and there is little doubt that
it would be difficult to persuade the men of culture to surrender it
or even to translate it. To the literate 'Mrs. Smith, born Brown',
might seem discourteously abrupt. But the French word is awkward,
nevertheless, since the illiterate often take it as meaning only
'formerly', writing 'Mrs. Smith, _nee_ Mary Brown', which implies that
this lady had been christened before she was born. And there is a tale
of a profiteer's wife who wrote herself down as 'Mrs. John Smith, New
York, _nee_ Chicago'.
Yet the French themselves are not always scrupulous to follow _nee_ with
only the family name of the lady. No less a scholar than Gaston Paris
dedicated his _Poetes et Penseurs_ to 'Madame James Darmesteter, _nee_
Mary Robinson'. Perhaps this is an instance of the modification of the
strict meaning of a word by convention because of its enlarged
usefulness when so modified.
Gaston Paris must be allowed all the rights and privileges of a master
of language; but his is a dangerous example for the unscholarly, who are
congenitally careless and who are responsible for _soubriquet_ instead
of _sobriquet_, for _a l'outrance_ instead of _a outrance_, and for _en
deshabille_ instead of _en deshabille_. The late Mrs. Oliphant in her
little book on Sheridan credited him with _gaiete du coeur_. It was
long an American habit to term a railway station a _depot_ (totally
anglicized in its pronunciation--_deep-oh)_; but _depot_ is in French
the name for a storehouse, and it is not--or not customarily--the name
of a railway station. It was also a custom in American theatres to give
the name of _parquette_-seats to the chairs which are known in England
as 'stalls'; and in village theatres _parquette_ was generally
pronounced 'par-kay'.
There are probably as many in Great Britain as in the United States
who speak the French which is not spoken by the French themselves.
Affectation and pretentiousness and the desire to show off are abundant
in all countries. They manifest themselves even in Paris, where I once
discovered on a bill of fare at the Grand Hotel _Irisch-stew a la
francaise_. This may be companioned by a bill of fare on a Cunard
steamer plying between Liverpool and New York, whereon I found myself
authorized to order _tartletes_ and _cutletes_. When I called the
attention of a neighbour to these outlandish vocables, the affable
steward bent forward to enlighten my ignorance. 'It's the French,
sir,' he explained; '_tartlete_ and _cutlete_ is French.'
That way danger lies; and when we are speaking or writing to those who
have English as their mother-tongue there are obvious advantages in
speaking and writing English, with no vain effort to capture Gallic
graces. Readers of Mark Twain's _Tramp Abroad_ will recall the scathing
rebuke which the author administered to his agent, Harris, because a
report which Harris had submitted was peppered, not only with French and
German words, but also with savage plunder from Choctaw and Feejee and
Eskimo. Harris explained that he intruded these hostile verbs and nouns
to adorn his page, and justified himself by saying that 'they all do
it. Everybody that writes elegantly'. Whereupon Mark Twain, whose own
English was as pure as it was rich and flexible, promptly read Harris a
needed lesson: 'A man who writes a book for the general public to read
is not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated foreign
expressions. It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers,
for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying, "Get the translations
made yourselves if you want it--this book is not written for the
ignorant classes".... The writer would say that he uses the foreign
language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English.
Very well, then, he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he
ought to warn the other nine not to buy his book.'
The result of these straight-forward and out-spoken remarks is set
forth by Mark Twain himself: 'When the musing spider steps upon the
red-hot shovel, he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels
up. Similar was the effect of these blistering words upon the tranquil
and unsuspecting agent. I can be dreadfully rough on a person when the
mood takes me.'
VI
This sermon might have been made even broader in its application. It is
not always only the ignorant who are discommoded by a misguided reliance
on foreign words as bestowers of elegance; it is often the man of
culture, aware of the meaning of the alien vocable but none the less
jarred by its obtrusion on an English page. The man of culture may have
his attention disturbed even by a foreign word which has long been
acclimatized in English, if it still retains its unfriendly appearance.
I suppose that _savan_ has established its citizenship in our
vocabulary; it is, at least, domiciled in our dictionaries[2]; but when
I found it repeated by Frederic Myers, in _Science and a Future Life_,
to avoid the use of 'scientist', the French word forced itself on me,
and I found myself reviving a boyish memory of a passage in Abbott's
_Life of Napoleon_ dealing with Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt and
narrating the attacks of the Mamelukes, when the order was given to
form squares with '_savans_ and asses in the center'.
An otherwise fine passage of Ruskin's has always been spoilt for me by
the wilful incursion of two French words, which seem to me to break the
continuity of the sentence: 'A well-educated gentleman may not know many
languages; may not be able to speak any but his own; may have read very
few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever
word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in
the peerage of words; knows the words of true descent and ancient blood
at a glance from words of modern _canaille_; remembers all their
ancestry, their intermarriages, distantest relationships, and the extent
to which they were admitted, and offices they hold, among the national
_noblesse_ of words, at any time and in any country.' Are not _canaille_
and _noblesse_ distracting? Do they not interrupt the flow? Do they not
violate what Herbert Spencer aptly called the Principle of Economy of
Attention, which he found to be the basis of all the rules of rhetoric?
Since I have made one quotation from Ruskin, I am emboldened to make two
from Spencer, well known as his essay on 'Style' ought to be:--'A reader
or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power
available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him,
requires part of his power; to arrange and combine the images suggested
requires a further part; and only that part which remains can be used
for realizing the thought conveyed. Hence, the more time and attention
it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and
attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will
that idea be conceived.'--'Carrying out the metaphor that language is
the vehicle of thought, there seems reason to think that in all cases
the friction and inertia of the vehicle deduct from its efficiency; and
that in composition, the chief, if not the sole thing to be done, is to
reduce this friction and inertia to the smallest possible amount.'
_Savan_ and _canaille_ and _noblesse_ may be English words; but they
have not that appearance. They have not rooted themselves in English
earth as _war_ has, for instance, and _cab_ and _wig_. To me, for one,
they increase the friction and the inertia; and yet, of course, the
words themselves are not strange to me; they seem to me merely out of
place and in the way. I can easily understand why Myers and Ruskin
wanted them, even needed them. It was because they carried a meaning not
easily borne by more obvious and more hackneyed nouns. 'The words of our
mother tongue', said Lowell in his presidential address to the Modern
Language Association of America, 'have been worn smooth by so often
rubbing against our lips and our minds, while the alien word has all the
subtle emphasis and beauty of some new-minted coin of ancient Syracuse.
In our critical estimates we should be on our guard against its charm.'
Since I have summoned myself as a witness I take the stand once more to
confess that Alan Seeger's lofty lyric, 'I have a rendezvous with Death'
has a diminished appeal because of the foreign connotations of
'rendezvous'. The French noun was adopted into English more than three
centuries ago; and it was used as a verb nearly three centuries ago; it
does not interfere with the current of sympathy when I find it in the
prose of Scott and of Mark Twain. Nevertheless, it appears to me
unfortunate in Seeger's noble poem, where it forces me to taste its
foreign flavour.
Another French word, _bouquet_, is indisputably English; and yet when I
find it in Walt Whitman's heartfelt lament for Lincoln, 'O Captain, my
Captain', I cannot but feel it to be a blemish:--
'For you _bouquets_ and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shore's a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.'
It may be hypercriticism on my part, but _bouquet_ strikes me as sadly
infelicitous; and a large part of its infelicity is due to its having
kept its French spelling and its French pronunciation. It is not in
keeping; it diverts the flow of feeling; it is almost indecorous--much
as a quotation from Voltaire in the original might be indecorous in a
funeral address delivered by an Anglican bishop in a cathedral.
[Footnote 2: _Savan_ is quite obsolete in British use, and is not in the
_Century Dictionary_ or in Webster, 1911. _Savant_ is common, and often
written without italics, but the pronunciation is never
anglicized.--H.B.]
VII
There are several questions which writers and speakers who give thought
to their expressions will do well to ask themselves when they are
tempted to employ a French word or indeed a word from any alien tongue.
The first is the simplest: Is the foreign word really needed? For
example, there is no benefit in borrowing _impasse_ when there exists
already in English its exact equivalent, 'blind-alley', which carries
the meaning more effectively even to the small percentage of readers or
listeners who are familiar with French. Nor is there any gain in
_resume_ when 'summary' and 'synopsis' and 'abstract' are all available.
The second question is perhaps not quite so simple: Is the French word
one which English has already accepted and made its own? We do not
really need _questionnaire_, since we have 'interrogatory', but if we
want it we can make shift with 'questionary'; and for _concessionnaire_
we can put 'concessionary'. To balance 'employer' there is 'employee',
better by far than _employe_, which insists on a French pronunciation.
Matthew Arnold and Lowell, always apt and exact in their use of their
own tongue, were careful to prefer the English 'technic' to the French
_technique_, which is not in harmony with the adjectives 'technical' and
_polytechnic_. So 'clinic' seems at last to have vanquished its French
father _clinique_, as 'fillet' has superseded _filet_; and now that
'valet' has become a verb it has taken on an English pronunciation.
Then there is _litterateur_. If a synonym for 'man of letters' is
demanded why not find it in 'literator', which Lockhart did not
hesitate to employ in the _Life of Scott_. It is pleasant to believe
that _communard_, which was prevalent fifty years ago after the burning
of the Tuileries, has been succeeded by 'communist' and that its
twin-brother _dynamitard_ is now rarely seen and even more rarely heard.
Perhaps some of the credit may be due to Stevenson, who entitled his
tale the _Dynamiter_ and appended a foot-note declaring that 'any
writard who writes _dynamitard_ shall find in me a never-resting
fightard'.
The third question may call for a little more consideration: Has the
foreign word been employed so often that it has ceased to be foreign
even though it has not been satisfactorily anglicized in spelling and
pronunciation? In the _Jungle Book_ Mr. Kipling introduces an official
who is in charge of the 'reboisement' of India; and in view of the
author's scrupulosity in dealing with professional vocabularies we may
assume that this word is a recognized technical term, equivalent to the
older word 'afforestation'. What is at once noteworthy and praiseworthy
is that in Mr. Kipling's page it does not appear in italics. And in
Mr. Pearsall Smith's book on the English language one admiring reader
was pleased to find 'debris' also without italics, although with the
retention of the French accent. Perhaps the time is not far distant
when the best writers will cease to stigmatize a captured word with
the italics which are a badge of servitude and which proclaim that it
has not yet been enfranchised into our language.
The fourth question is the most perplexing: If the formerly foreign
word has been taken over and if it can therefore be utilized without
hesitancy, can it be made to form its plural in accord with the customs
of English. Here those who seek to make the English language truly
English and to keep it truly pure, will meet with sturdy resistance.
It will not be easy to persuade the literate, the men of culture, to
renounce the _x_ at the end of _beaux_ and _bureaux_ and to spell these
plurals 'beaus' and 'bureaus'. And yet no one doubts that 'beau' and
'bureau' have both won the right to be regarded as having attained an
honourable standing in our language.
VIII
'De Quincey once said that authors are a dangerous class for any
language'--so Professor Krapp has reminded us in his book on _Modern
English_, and he has explained that De Quincey meant 'that the literary
habit of mind is likely to prove dangerous for a language ... because it
so often leads a speaker or writer to distrust natural and unconscious
habit, even when it is right, and to put in its stead some conscious
theory of literary propriety. Such a tendency, however, is directly
opposed to the true feeling for idiomatic English. It destroys the sense
of security, the assurance of perfect congruity between thought and
expression, which the unliterary and unacademic speaker and writer often
has, and which, with both literary and unliterary, is the basis for all
expressive use of language'.
And since I have borrowed the quotation from Professor Krapp I shall
bring this rambling paper to an end by borrowing another, from the
_Toxophilus_ of Roger Ascham (1545).
'He that will wryte well in any tongue must folowe this council of
Aristotle, to speake as the common people do, to think as wise men do.
Many English writers have not done so, but using straunge wordes as
latin, french, and Italian, do make all things darke and harde. Once I
communed with a man whiche reasoned the englyshe tongue to be enryched
and encreased thereby, sayinge--Who wyll not prayse that feaste where a
man shall drinke at a diner bothe wyne, ale and beere? Truly, quod I
they all be good, every one taken by hym selfe alone, but if you put
Malmesye and sacke, read wine and whyte, ale and beere, and al in one
pot, you shall make a drynke neyther easie to be knowen nor yet holsom
for the body.'
BRANDER MATTHEWS.
NOTES
The word #laches#, which is not noticed in the above paper, is one
of a list of words sent to us by a correspondent who suggests that
it is the business of our society to direct the public as to their
pronunciation. Like other examples given by Mr. Matthews, _laches_ seems
to be at present in an uncertain condition; and as it is used only by
lawyers they will be able to decide its future. What seems clear about
it is that the two contending pronunciations are homophones, one with
_latches_ the other with _lashes_. The A having been Englished its
closing T seems natural; and _latches_ (from _lachesse_) is thus an
exact parallel with _riches_ (from _richesse_). But there seems no
propriety in the SS being changed to Z. The pronunciation _latchess_
would save it from its awkward and absurd homophone _latches_, and would
be in order with _prowess, largess, noblesse_, &c. Moreover, since
_laches_ is used only as the name of a quality (= negligence) and never
(like _riches_), as a plural, to connote special acts of negligence, the
pronunciation _latchess_ would be correct as well as convenient; and the
word would be better spelt with double S: _lachess_.
Of the word #levee# the _O.E.D._ says, 'All our verse quotations
place the stress on the first syllable. In England this is the court
pronunciation, and prevails in educated use. The pronunciation' with the
accent on the second syllable 'which is given by Walker, is occasionally
heard in Great Britain, and appears to be generally preferred in the
U.S.', but the dictionary does not quote Burns
'Guid-mornin' to your Majesty!
May Heav'n augment your blisses,
On ev'ry new birthday ye see,
A humble poet wishes!
My bardship here, at your levee,
On sic a day as this is,
Is sure an uncouth sight to see,
Amang thae birthday dresses
Sae fine this day.'
So that it would seem that the Scotch and American pronunciation of this
word is more thoroughly Englished than our own: and the prejudice which
opposes straightforward common-sense solutions, however desirable they
may be, is brought home to us by the fact that almost all Englishmen
would be equally shocked by the notion either of spelling this word as
they pronounce it, _levay_, or of pronouncing it, like Burns, as they
spell it, _levee_.
ENGLISH WORDS IN FRENCH
It would be instructive if we could give a parallel account of what the
French do when they adopt an English word into their language. _Le
Dictionnaire des Anglicismes_, lately published by Delagrave, has two
hundred pages, and is much praised by a reviewer in the _Mercure de
France_, Feb. 15, p. 246: but it does not give the current French
pronunciations of the English words. The reviewer writes: 'Ce qui me
gene bien davantage, c'est que M. Bonnaffe supprime, partout, avec
rigueur, la facon francaise de prononcer le mot anglais. Etait-il
superflu de dire comment nous articulons _shampooing_? Nous n'avons, je
crois, qu'une forme orale pour _boy_, petit domestique, parce qu'il est
du a l'oreille; mais nous sommes partages quant a _boy-scout_, qui est
arrive par tracts et par journaux. L'anglais donne un mot _high-life_,
le francais en fait cinq: _haylayf, ailaif, ichlif, ijlif, iglif_.'
p. 247. It would seem from _high-life_ that English words in French
sometimes look as strange as French words do when represented in
make-shift English phonetics. On p. 228 of the same _Mercure_ there is
notice of 'un petit manuel de conversation' in which 'Toutes les nuances
de la "phonetic pronunciation" sont notees, a l'usage des Americains
desireux de se faire comprendre en francais. Cette notation (says the
reviewer) m'a tellement amuse que je ne puis resister au plaisir
d'en citer quelques exemples: Av-nue' day Shawn Zay-lee-zay',
Plass de la Kown-kord' to Plass der lay-twal. Fown-ten day
Zeen-noh-sawn,--Oh-pay-ra Kum-meek,--Foh-lee Bair-zhair,--Bool-var
day Ka-pu-seen,--Beeb-lee-oh-tech Sant Zhun-vee-ayv',--Lay
Zan-va-leed,--May-zown' der Veck-tor' U-goh',--Hub-bay-leesk',--Rue
San Tawn-twan, &c., &c....' There would seem to be errors in this
'citation'. Vecktor should be Veektor? and H looks like a misprint
for L in Hub-bay-leesk. -tech was probably -teck. Bonnaffe's book
is noticed in _The Modern Language Review_ of last January.
ON THE DIALECTAL WORDS IN EDMUND BLUNDEN'S POEMS[3]
[Footnote 3: _The Waggoner and other Poems_, by Edmund Blunden, pp. 70.
Sidgwick and Jackson. London, 1920.]
In the original prospectus of the S.P.E., reprinted in Tract I, and
again in III, p. 9, one of the objects of the Society is stated to be
the 'enrichment and what is called regeneration of the language from the
picturesque vocabularies of local vernaculars'. Since a young poet, Mr.
Edmund Blunden, has lately published a volume in which this particular
element of dialectal and obsolescent words is very prominent, it will be
suitable to our general purpose to consider it as a practical experiment
and examine the results. The poetic diction and high standard of his
best work give sufficient importance to this procedure; and though he
may seem to be somewhat extravagant in his predilection for unusual
terms, yet his poetry cannot be imagined without them, and the strength
and beauty of the effects must be estimated in his successes and not in
his failures.
In the following remarks no appreciation of the poetry will be
attempted: our undertaking is merely to tabulate the 'new' words,
and examine their fitness for their employment. The bracketed numbers
following the quotations give the page of the book where they occur.
The initials _O.E.D._ and _E.D.D._ stand for the _Oxford English
Dictionary_ and the _English Dialect Dictionary_ (Wright).
1. 'And churning owls and goistering daws'. (1)
Here _churning_ is a mistake; we are sorry to begin with an
animadversion, but the word should be _churring_. #Churr# is an
echo-word, and though there may be examples of echo-words which have
been bettered by losing all trace of their simple spontaneous origin,
this is not one. It is like _burr, purr,_ and _whirr_; and these words
are best spelt with double R and the R should be trilled. The absurdity
of not trilling this final R is seen very plainly in _burr_, because
that word's definition is 'a rough sounding of the letter R.' This is
not represented by the pronunciation b[schwa]:. What that 'southern
English' pronunciation does indicate is the vulgarity and inconvenience
of its degradations. _Burr_ occurs in these poems:
'There the live dimness burrs with droning glees'. (23)
#Burr# is, moreover, a bad homophone and cannot neglect possible
distinctions: the Oxford Dictionary has eight entries of substantives
under _burr._
Our author also uses _whirr_:
'And the bleak garrets' crevices
Like whirring distaffs utter dread', (26)
and again of the noise of wind in ivy, on p. 54, and
'The damp gust makes the ivy whir', (48)
_whir_ rhyming here with _executioner_.
Since _churring_ (in the first quotation) would automatically preserve
its essential trill, the intruder _churning_ is the more obnoxious; and
unless the R can be trilled it would seem better for poets to use only
the inflected forms of these words, and prefer _churreth_ to _churrs_.
If _churn_ is anywhere dialectal for _churr_, it must have come from the
common mistake of substituting a familiar for an unknown word: and this
is the worst way of making homophones.
2. 'goistering daws'.
#Goister# or #gauster# is a common dialect verb; the latter
form seems the more common and is recognized in the Oxford Dictionary,
where it is defined 'to behave in a noisy boisterous fashion ... in some
localities to laugh noisily'. If jackdaws are to appropriate a word to
describe their behaviour, no word could be better than _goistering_, and
we prefer _goister_ to _gauster_. Its likeness to _boisterous_ will
assist it, and we guess that it will be accepted. In the little glossary
at the end of the book _goistering_ is explained as _guffawing_. That
word is not so descriptive of the jackdaw, since it suggests 'coarse
bursts of laughter', and the coarseness is absent from the fussy
vulgarity and mere needless jabber of the daw.