The American Language: A Preliminary Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Chesterton, G. K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 145100463X ISBN 13: 9781451004632

Verlag: Forgotten Books, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from The American Language: A Preliminary Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States

The aim of this book is best exhibited by describing its origin, I am, and have been since early manhood, an editor of newspapers and books, and a critic of the last named. These occupations have forced me into a pretty wide familiarity with current literature, both periodical and within covers, and in particular into familiarity with the current literature of England and America. It was part of my daily work, for a number of years, to read the principal English newspapers and reviews; it has been part of my work, all the time, to read the more important English novels, essays, poetry and criticism. An American born and bred, I early noted, as everyone else in like case must note, certain salient differences between the English of England and the English of America as practically spoken and written - differences in vocabulary, in syntax, in the shade and habits of idiom, and even, coming to the common speech, in grammar. And I noted too, of course, partly during visits to England but more largely by a somewhat wide and intimate intercourse with English people in the United States, the obvious differences between English and American pronunciation and intonation.

Greatly interested in these differences - some of them so great that they led me to seek exchanges of light with Englishmen - I looked for some work that would describe and account for them with a show of completeness, and perhaps depict the process of their origin. I soon found that no such work existed, in either England or America - that the whole literature of the subject was astonishingly meagre and unsatisfactory. There were several dictionaries of Americanisms, true enough, but only one of them made any pretension to scientific method, and even that one was incomplete. The solitary general treatise on the American dialect, the work of a man foreign to both England and America…

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Reseña del editor

Excerpt from The American Language: A Preliminary Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States

I am thus neither teacher, nor prophet, nor reformer, but merely inquirer. The exigencies of my vocation make me almost com pletely bilingual; moreover, I have a hand for a compromise dialect which embodies the common materials of both languages, and is thus free from offense on both sides of the water - as befits the editor of a magazine published in both countries. But that compromise dialect is the living speech of neither. What I have tried to do here is to make a first sketch of the living speech of these States. The work is confessedly incomplete, and in places very painfully so, but in such enterprises a man must put an arbitrary term to his labors, lest some mischance, after years of diligence, take him from them too suddenly for them to be closed, and his laborious accumula tions, as Ernest Weekly says in his book on English surnames, be doomed to the waste-basket by harassed executors.

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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Reseña del editor

The aim of this book is best exhibited by describing its origin. I am, and have been since early manhood, an editor of newspapers, magazines and books, and a critic of the last named. These occupations have forced me into a pretty wide familiarity with current literature, both periodical and within covers, and in particular into a familiarity with the current literature of England and A merica, It was part of my daily work, for a good many years, to read the principal English newspapers and reviews; it has been part of my work, all the time, to read the more important English novels, essays, poetry and criticism. An American born and bred, I early noted, as everyone else in like case must note, certain salient differences between theE nglish of England and theE nglish of America as practically spoken and written differences in vocabulary, in syntax, in the shades and habits of idiom, and even, coming to the common speech, in grammar. And I noted too, of course, partly during visits toE ngland but more largely by a somewhat wide and intimate intercourse withE nglish people in the United States, the obvious differences between English and American pronunciation and intonation. Greatly interested in these differences some of them so great that they led me to seek exchanges of light withE nglishmen I looked for some work that would describe and account for them with a show of completeness, and perhaps depict the process of their origin. I soon found that no such work existed, either in England or in America that the whole literature of the subject was astonishingly meagre and unsatisfactory. There were several dictionaries of A mericanisms, true enough, but only one of them made any pretension to scientific method, and even that one was woefully narrow and incomplete.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Forgotten Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 145100463X
• ISBN 13: 9781451004632
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 388
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