Tokyo. The last edition of the present work brought me into pleasant contact with the two last-named, and I have received valuable suggestions from both. Says Dr. Ichikawa:
It is a great question with us teachers of English in Japan whether we should teach American English or British English. We have more opportunities for coming into contact with Americans than for meeting Englishmen, but on the other hand books on phonetics are mostly done by English scholars. As to vocabulary, we are teaching English and American indiscriminately—many of us, perhaps, without knowing which is which.
Apparently, the same difficulty has appeared in France. In 1921 the University of Paris sought to meet it by appointing two new lecturers—M. de Selencourt as lecteur d'anglais and M. Roy P. Bowey as lecteur d'americain.
That, even to the lay Continental, American and English now differ considerably, is demonstrated by the fact that many of the popular German Sprachführer appear in separate editions, Amerikanisch and Englisch. This is true, for example, of the "Metoula-Sprachführer"[1] and of the "Polyglott Kuntze" books.[2] The American edition of the latter starts off with the doctrine that "Jeder, der nach Nord-Amerika oder Australien will, muss Englisch können," but a great many of the words and phrases that appear in its examples would be unintelligible to most Englishmen—e. g., free-lunch, real-estate agent, buckwheat, corn (for maize), conductor and popcorn—and a number of others would suggest false meanings or otherwise puzzle—e. g., saloon, wash-stand, water-pitcher and apple-pie.[3] In the "Neokosmos Sprachführer durch England-Amerika"[4] there are many notes calling attention to differences between American and English usage, e. g., baggage-luggage, car-carriage, conduc-
- ↑ Metoula-Sprachführer…Englisch von Karl Blattner; Ausgabe für Amerika; Berlin-Schoneberg, 1912.
- ↑ Polyglott Kuntze; Schnellste Erlernung jeder Sprache ohne Lehrer; Amerikanisch; Bonn a. Rh., n. d.
- ↑ Like the English expositors of American slang this German falls into several errors. For example, he gives cock for rooster, boots for shoes, braces for suspenders and postman for letter-carrier, and lists ironmonger, joiner and linen-draper as American terms. He also spells wagon in the English manner, with two g's, and translates schweinefüsse as pork-feet. But he spells such words as color in the American manner and gives the pronunciation of clerk as the American klörk, not as the English klark.
- ↑ By Carlo di Domizio and Charles M. Smith; Munich, n. d.
