Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/155

American Traditions 5^7 suppose that there is any very determined effort to make Scottish boys and girls acquire what Arnold Bennett calls a Kensingtonian accent. There is a distinct and well recognized standard of North British, as well as South British. American English has a history that entitles it to consideration. It has certain peculiarities of vocabulary. Let them be kept; half of them will be adopted by the rest of the English-speaking world, the other half will be liked by them if the American who uses them is otherwise likable, and above all if he uses them as if they were authentically his. The well of English has never mistaken increase for defilement. The American is tradition- ally supposed to have a "nasal twang," If any allow air to leak through the nasal passage when it should be closed (a characteristic of unrefined English outside of America) ; if any speak with a certain constriction of the muscles of the nose and upperdip, with a certain shrillness and thinness of voice (and many do) , let them be taught not to do it. That is some- thing worth making a fight for. But let them not give up the cool, deliberate, level tone, with half a laugh in it, which shall be the mark of the American in whatever part of the world his destiny calls himC Let his restrained speech keep to the unemphatic forms of the verb to be which it has instinctively preferred. Were ("wear") and been ("bean") are emphatic forms that sort well with the highly energized speech of South Britain, with its sudden changes of speed and pitch, its great expenditure of breath. American English is not uniform. But neither is British English uniform. Only a dead language, or the language of a highly centralized country, or a more or less artificial literary language, can approach uniformity. But American English falls into clearly recognizable groups that are not too many to handlein the sensible way in which the British regard the several types of English of their own islands. By all means recognize an English of New England, an EngHsh of the Middle States, of the South, and of the West. To attempt to harmonize them in an impossible unity is only to confirm them in their several pecuUarities. It would be wiser to direct the attack against those peculiarities which are a little too peculiar. If the New Englander shortens his long o's, if the New Yorker confuses voice and verse in an absurd diphthong that both misleads and