American Language (29 page)

Another example of debased German is offered by the American
Kriss Kringle
. It is from
Christkindlein
, or
Christkind’l
, and properly designates, of course, not the patron saint of Christmas, but the child in the manger. A German friend tells me that the form
Kriss Kringle
, which is that given in “Webster’s New International Dictionary,” and the form
Krisking’l
, which is that most commonly used in the United States, are both unknown in Germany. Here,
obviously, we have an example of a loan-word undergoing phonetic change. Whole phrases have gone through the same process, for example,
nix come erous
⁴⁴
(from
nichts kommt heraus
⁴⁵
and
’rous mit ’im
(from
heraus mit ihm
). These phrases, like
wie geht’s
and
ganz gut
, are familiar to practically all Americans, no matter how complete their ignorance of correct German. Most of them know, too, the meaning of
gesundheit, kümmel, seidel, spitzbub, gemütlich, männerchor, scültzenfest, sängerfest, turnverein, hoch, yodel
and
zwei
(as in
zwei bier
). I once found
snitz
(Ger.
schnitz
) in the elegant pages of
Town Topics
⁴⁶
Prosit
is in all American dictionaries.
⁴⁷
Bower
, as used in cards, is an Americanism derived from the German
bauer
(peasant), meaning the jack.
Poker
, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is probably derived from
pochspiel
, “a similar bluffing card-game of considerable age, from
pochen
, to boast, brag, literally to knock, rap.” From a correspondent I have a somewhat different account of this game. “Its name,” he says, “is derived from the fact that at one stage of the play the players in turn declare the state of
their hands by either passing or opening. Those who pass, signify it by saying ‘Ich
poche
’ or ’ Ich
poch?
This is sometimes indicated by knocking on the table with one’s knuckles.” But
poker
remains an enigma, and many other theories to account for the origin of the name have been advanced. In the Fourteenth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1929) R. F. Foster, author of several well-known card manuals, says that the game is of Persian origin, and reached the United States by way of New Orleans. Its Persian name is
as nas
, “but owing to its resemblance to the French game of
poque
and the German game of
pochen
, the French colonists called it
poque
, and this spelling was mispronounced by the English-speaking players as
po-que
, easily converted into
po-ker.
” Scheie de Vere, in his “Americanisms” (1872) derived
poker
from the French
poche
, a pocket, but apparently on very shaky grounds.

The exclamation
ouch
is classed as an Americanism by Thornton, and he gives an example dated 1837. The Oxford Dictionary refers it to the German
autsch
, and Thornton says that “it may have come across with the Dunkers or the Mennonites.” All of the Oxford’s examples are American, for
ouch
is seldom used in English, save in the sense of a clasp or buckle set with precious stones (from the Old French
nouche
), and even in that sense it is archaic.
Shyster
may be German also; Thornton has traced it back to the 50’s.
⁴⁸
Rum-dumb
is grounded upon the meaning of
dumb
borrowed from the Germans; it is not listed in the English slang dictionaries. Bristed says that the American meaning of
wagon
, which indicates almost any four-wheeled, horse-drawn vehicle in this country but only the very heaviest in England, was probably influenced by the German
wagen
. He also suggests that the American use of
hold on
for
stop
was influenced by the German
halt an
, and White says that the substitution of
standpoint
for
point of view
, long opposed by purists, was first made by an American professor who sought “an Anglicized form” of the German
standpunkt
. Other etymologists, professional and amateur, have discerned German influences in the peculiarly American use of
fresh
in the sense of saucy or impudent (Ger.
frech
); in
gee-whiz
(Ger.
gewiss —
but this is hardly convincing); in the American preference for
shoe
as against the English
boot
(Ger.
schuh
); in the common use of
Bladder
as a derisory title for a small and bad newspaper (Ger.
k.äseblatt
); in
stunt
(Ger.
stunde
, hour — another one hard to believe); in the American
bub
, once commonly used in addressing a boy (Ger.
bube
); in the American use of
check
instead of the English
bill
to designate a restaurant reckoning (Ger.
zeche
); and in such phrases as
it is to laugh
, and
five minutes of three
(instead of the English
to three
). German influence may also have something to do with the extraordinary facility with which American forms compound nouns. In most other modern languages the process is rare, and English itself lags far behind American. But in German it is almost unrestricted. “It is,” says Logan Pearsall Smith, “a great step in advance toward that ideal language in which meaning is expressed, not by terminations, but by the simple method of word-position.”

German, like Dutch, Spanish and French, has naturally left its most salient traces in those areas with the largest population of German-speaking immigrants. In the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch regions of Pennsylvania and in some of the Western States a great many Germanisms are in circulation. In the former, says W. H. Allen,
⁴⁹
“many words and constructions are obviously of German origin.
That
equals
so that
, as in ‘We like our mince-pie piping hot
that
it steams inside.’ A
tut
or a
paper tut
is a paper bag.
Verdrübt
means sad. The
freinschaft
is the relationship.
All
is
all gone
, as in ‘The butter is
all.’ Look
means
be fitting
, as in ’ It doesn’t
look
for two girls to go there alone.’ ” Mr. Allen lists many other localisms, among them,
glick
, to come out right (Ger.
glück
)-,
siffer
, a heavy drinker (Ger.
säufer
); and
ritschi
, a frozen pond used for sliding (Ger.
rutschen
, to slide). Santa Claus, in such areas, is usually
Belsnickel
, as indeed he was among the Germans of Baltimore when I was a boy.
⁵⁰
A. W. Meyer has assembled some curious examples from the Middle West,
⁵¹
for example,
brickstein
for
brick
(Ger.
backsteirin
),
heurack
for
hayrack
(Ger.
heu
, hay), and
büchershelf
for
bookshelf
(Ger.
bücher
, books).
Plunder
is still often used in
that part of the country to designate baggage, a usage probably suggested by the identical German word, and going back to the first years of the Nineteenth Century. A peculiar intonation is remarked by visitors to the Pennsylvania German towns. “The voice,” says Mr. Allen, “is raised at the beginning of a question and lowered at the end.” Whether this is due to German influence I do not know, but it is also noticeable when the native speaker is using what passes locally for German. Mr. Allen goes on:

The immigrants from the South of Ireland, during the period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, exerted an influence upon the language that was vastly greater than that of the Germans, both directly and indirectly, but their contributions to the actual vocabulary were probably less. They gave American, indeed, very few new words; perhaps
speakeasy, shillelah
and
smithereens
exhaust the list.
Lallapalooza
may also be an Irish loan-word, though it is not Gælic, nor even English. It apparently comes from
allay-foozee
, a Mayo provincialism, signifying a sturdy fellow.
Allay-foozee
, in its turn, comes from the French
allez-fusil
, meaning “Forward the muskets!” — a memory, according to P. W. Joyce,
⁵²
of the French landing at Killala in 1798. Such phrases as
Erin go bragh
and such expletives as
begob
and
begorry
may perhaps be added: they have got into American understanding, though they are surely not distinctive Americanisms. But of far more importance, in the days of the great immigrations, than these few contributions to the vocabulary were certain speech habits that the Irish brought with them — habits of pronunciation, of syntax, and even of grammar. These habits were, in part, the fruit of efforts to translate the idioms of Gælic into English, and in part survivals from the English of the
age of James I. The latter, preserved by Irish conservatism in speech, came into contact in America with habits surviving, with more or less change, from the same time, and so gave those American habits an unmistakable reinforcement. The Yankees have lived down such Jacobean pronunciations as
tay
for
tea
and
desave
for
deceive
, and these forms, on Irish lips, strike them as uncouth and absurd, but they still cling, in their common speech, to such forms as
h’ist
for
hoist, bile
for
boil, chaw
for
chew, jine
for
join, sass
for
sauce, heighth
for
height, rench
for
rinse
and
lep
for
leaped
, and the employment of precisely the same forms by the thousands of Irish immigrants who spread through the country undoubtedly gave them support, and so protected them, in a measure, from the assault of the purists. And the same support was give to
drownded
for
drowned, oncet
for
once, ketch
for
catch, ag’in
for
against
and
onery
for
ordinary
. C. H. Grandgent shows in “Old and New” (1920) that the so-called Irish
oi-
sound in
jine
and
bile
was still regarded as correct in the United States so late as 1822, though certain New England grammarians, eager to establish the more recent English usage, had protested against it before the end of the Eighteenth Century. The Irish who came in in the 30’s joined the populace in the war upon the reform, and to this day some of the old forms survive on the lower levels of the national speech.

Certain usages of Gælic, carried over into the English of Ireland, fell upon fertile soil in America. One was the employment of the definite article before nouns, as in French and German. An Irishman does not say “I am good at Latin,” but “I am good at
the
Latin.” In the same way an American does not say “I had measles,” but “I had
the
measles.” There is, again, the use of the prefix
a
before various continuing verbs, as in
a-going
and
a-riding
. This usage, of course, is native to English, but it is much more common in the Irish dialect, on account of the influence of the parallel Gælic form, and it is also much more common in American. There is, yet again, a use of intensifying prefixes and suffixes, often set down as characteristically American, which may have been borrowed from the Irish. Examples of such stretch-forms are
no-siree, yes-indeedy, teetotal
. The Irishman is almost incapable of saying plain
yes
or
no
; he must always add some extra and gratuitous asseveration.
⁵³
The American
is in like case. His speech bristles with intensives, so the Irish extravagance of speech struck a responsive chord in the American heart, and American borrowed, not only occasional words, but whole phrases, and some of them have become thoroughly naturalized. Joyce shows the Irish origin of many locutions that are now often mistaken for native inventions, for example,
dead
as an intensive, not to mention many familiar similes and proverbs. Certain Irish pronunciations, Gælic rather than archaic English, got into American during the early Nineteenth Century, often with humorous effect. Among them, one recalls
bhoy
, which entered our political slang in the middle 40’s but has since passed out.

From other languages the borrowings during the period of growth were naturally less. Down to the last decades of the Nineteenth Century, the overwhelming majority of immigrants were either Germans or Irish; the Jews, Italians, Scandinavians and Slavs were yet to come. But the first Chinese appeared in 1848, and soon their speech began to contribute its inevitable loan-words. These words were first adopted by the argonauts of the Pacific Coast, and a great many of them have remained Western localisms. A number of others have got into the common speech of the whole country. Of such sort are the verbs
to yen
(meaning to desire strongly, as a Chinaman is supposed to desire opium),
to flop
(meaning to sleep or lie down), and
to kowtow
, and the nouns
joss, chow, yok-a-mi, fantan, chop-suey, chow-mein
⁵⁴
and
tong. Josshouse, flophouse, tong-war
, and
chopsuey-joint
are familiar derivatives. Contrary to what seems to be a popular opinion,
hop
is not Chinese. It is simply the common name of the
Humulus lupulus
, which, in English folklore, has long been held to have a soporific effect.
Hop-pillows
were brought to American by the first English colonists. Neither is
high-binder
a
translation from a Chinese term, as seems to be commonly believed. So long ago as 1840 Edgar Allan Poe wrote in his Marginalia: