Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (80 page)
I
don’t
believe it would do
but
little harm if he does.
1
I
don’t
kinda think it
ain’t
.
Please
don’t
buy
but
one.
2
I will
not
be responsible for any debts
only
by myself after January 5, 1938.
3
You
ain’t
seen
nothing
yet.
They
didn’t none
of them go.
I
haven’t never
gotten able to work any yet.
4
I
ain’t
seen
nobody
roun’ here at no time.
He
didn’t
say
nothing
to
nobody neither
.
5
Once a child gets burnt once it
won’t never
stick its hand in
no
fire
no
more.
There may
not
be
no nothing
.
Ain’t you learned to
not never
argue with
no
woman
no
more?
6
If it don’t rain they
ain’t no
use for ’em to come up
nohow
.
He
oughtn
’ to
never
done it.
7
I
ain’t
got
nary none
.
That boy
ain’t never
done
nothin’ nohow
.
I
ain’t never
seen
no
men-folks of
no
kind do
no
washin’.
8
Hardly nobody don’t
chew
no
tobacco
no
more
nowheres
.
This government last year
could not
raise
but
$3,000,000,000.
9
Ain’t nobody
hit
nothing
, has they?
Ain’t nothing
you
can’t
do.
You can’t get
nobody
out
nowhere
around
no
base without
no
ball.
10
He
don’t know from nothing
.
11
You could
not
be
but
one person.
1
There
didn’t nobody
see him, did they?
Hardly
nobody don’t
.
Don’t everybody
know how.
2
Both good schemes, but
neither don’t
put anybody to work.
3
Don’t nobody
touch that.
Didn’t
I
never
tell, you
ain’t
got
no
right to go out and chase after
no
ball when
nobody
ain’t watching you?
4
Nobody ain’t never
said
nothin
’ about sendin’
no
flowers to
nobody
.
5
I
never
set
no
hens,
nor nothing
of the kind.
Nobody’s never
wanted me.
You
can’t
get
nowhere neither
.
The last three are from the Linguistic Atlas of New England,
6
which presents massive evidence of the prevalence of double and triple negatives in the area it covers. It distinguishes six main divisions, as follows:
1. The subject and the verb are negated, as in “
Nobody hadn’t
ought to.”
2. The verb and the predicate noun or adjective are negated, as in “That
ain’t nothin
’.”
3. The verb and the object are negated, as in “I
ain’t
done
nothin
’.”
4. The verb and the adverb are negated, as in “I
couldn’t
get
nowheres
near him.”
5. The object and the adverb are negated, as in “She
never
done
no
hard work.”
6. Triple negation, as in “
Tain’t no
place for
nobody
.”
The
not-neither
combination, as in “I did
not
do it,
neither
,” was in good usage until the end of the Eighteenth Century, and examples are to be found in Steele, Richardson, Burke and Cowper,
7
but for the past century it has been receding into the common speech, wherein it is still very much alive all over the United States. So with the
nor-not
combination, as in Shakespeare’s “
Nor
do
not
saw the air.”
8
The following note upon the double negative comes from an intelligent foreign observer:
It seems to me that the double negative is due, in great measure, to the ease with which
not
may be joined to the auxiliaries without increasing the number of syllables. Even
haven’t, hasn’t
, etc., are pronounced as monosyllables.
If, in place of
no
and
not
, there were longer, or less simple, negating adverbs the double negative would not be possible because of the extra speech-effort required. The construction of the Scandinavian languages simply will not permit it; and so with German. I doubt that you have ever heard a German say anything comparable to: “Ich habe ihm
nicht nichts
abgenommen” or “Er gebraucht
niemals nicht keine
Seife.” It can’t be done.
1
1
This sentence is given in AL4, p. 470.
2
Ignorance Builds a Language,
American Scholar
, Autumn, 1938, p. 477.
3
The Grammar of the Ozark Dialect,
American Speech
, Oct., 1927, p. 8.
4
p. 203. I add one from English English, found in the London
Times Literary Supplement
, Jan. 1, 1944, p. 8: “There can be no doubt
but that
it works.”
1
From a letter signed Loyal Democrat in the Indianapolis
Times
, June 24, 1939.
2
Store advertisement in Baltimore, 1936.
3
Advertisement in the Toledo
Blade
, reprinted in the
New Yorker
, Sept. 24, 1938.
4
Tonics and Sedatives,
Journal of the American Medical Association
, May 18, 1940, p. 28.
5
The last two were reported from the Clinch Valley, Virginia, by L. R. Dingus in
Dialect Notes
, Vol. IV, Part III, 1915, p. 179.
6
Contributed to the
William Feather Magazine
, Feb., 1941, by Frank Richey. Mr. Richey amused himself by contriving a sentence containing ten negatives and a split infinitive; “I
ain’t never
got
no
time for to
no
longer argue with
no
woman of
no
kind,
not never, no
more,
no
how.”
7
The last two are from The Speech of East Texas, by Oma Stanley, before cited, p. 103.
8
The last three are from Our Southern Highlanders, by Horace Kephart; New York, 1921, p. 287.
9
Letter of the Hon. Thomas L. Blanton, of Texas,
Congressional Record
, Jan. 25, 1935, p. 1037, col. 2.
10
Remark of a rustic baseball coach, contributed by Mr. E. W. Delcamp, of Lexington, Ky.
11
Julius G. Rothenburg, in Some American Idioms From the Yiddish,
American Speech
, Feb., 1943, p. 48, reports this from New York City. He says that it comes from the Yiddish
nisht zu wissen fin gornisht
.
1
Letter in the
Baptist Record
of Jackson, Miss., Oct. 22, 1925.
2
i.e
., “Everybody doesn’t know how.”
3
Will Rogers, 1934.
4
Reported from Germantown, Pa., by Jack Edelson,
Word Study
, Feb., 1946, p. 2.
5
I am indebted for this to Mr. K. L. Rankin.
6
Map 718.
7
For the first three see the NED under
neither
A3. For Cowper see his letter to William Unwin, Feb. 24, 1782.
8
Hamlet, III,
c
. 1601.
1
Mr. Valdemar Viking, of Red Bank, N. J.; private communication, Sept. 1, 1938.
The long-awaited grammarian of vulgar American, when he spits on his hands at last, will have a gaudy time anatomizing such forms as “He is the girl I go
with’s
brother,”
2
“I’d
like
to froze to death,” “Where are we
at?
,” “Who are you taking music lessons
offen
(or
offa
)?” “I
sorta, kinda
like it,” “He
done
like I
done
,” “Try
and
stop me,” “He
gone and done
it,” “I hit him good
and
hard,” “Us
he’s
would like to know,” “What do you think of
this here, now
, Henry Wallace?,” “
How old of a
mule have you ever
saw?
,” “I ain’t sure, the way things happen,” “I used
to could do
it,” “I’ll call you up,
without
I can’t,” “I’d like
for
to go there,” “It ain’t hot
to what
we had yesterday,” “You
want
to take this medicine every hour,”
3
“It ain’t so
worse
,” “I seen the
bothen
of ’m,” “Them dogs are
us’n’s
,” “If I
hadda
been there,” “A girl
which
I know,” “They must
not
be
no
mistake,” “Some men
lets their wife
run
them
,” “He hadn’t
only
one hat,” “We
boughten
some
furniture
,” “Both
her
and
you is
welcome,” “
She’s
a fine car,” “It’s O.K.
by me
,” “
Once
you try it
once
it goes easy,” “
Iffen
I had the money,” “I
wisht
I was there,” “It must be
some-wheres
,” “It was some place
else
,” “I
been
there,” “
Who
are you laughing at?,” “
So what?
,” and “He had
the
malaria.”
Some of these forms,
e.g., good and
as an adverb and such verb compounds as
try and
and
come and
, have gradually worked their way into polite usage;
4
others, e.g.,
like for
, are accepted in limited
regions, but not generally;
1
yet others,
e.g., boughten
, are still definitely and apparently hopelessly vulgar. But there is no telling what will happen in language, and it is perfectly possible that most of the last class will one day gain acceptance, just as “It is
me,” like
as a conjunction,
to loan
for
to lend
, the use of the plural pronoun with
anyone, everyone
, etc.,
somebody else’s, gotten
as a past participle, the
one-he
combination, the split infinitive, the terminal preposition, and a hundred other forms, all of them once damned from hell to high water by the grammarians, have gained acceptance. In such matters there is simply no telling, for language is a great deal more an art than a science. Once, exploring the upper Middle West, I mislaid my shaving-brush in a hotel-room, and called in a chambermaid of unknown nationality to help me hunt for it. When I found it hidden behind the Gideon Bible and let go with a cry of triumph she asked politely, “
Did
you
got
it?” This, by prevailing rules, was “bad” English. But why? And how long will it continue “bad”? I’d not like to answer too positively, for
did
is undoubtedly a sound preterite and
got
is equally a sound perfect participle.
2
See Group Genitives, by Josephine Burnham,
American Speech
, Nov., 1926, pp. 84–85. A swell example is in Idea Man, by Claude Binyon,
Variety
, Jan. 8, 1947, p. 7: “You mean that fellow who took over when Hays left’s office?”
3
For
should
. See
You Want To
, by Louise Pound,
American Speech
, Aug., 1932, pp. 450–51.
4
Good and
, by Steven T. Byington,
American Speech
, Oct., 1944, p. 229.
1
Like for
, by A. R. Dunlap,
American Speech
, Feb., 1945, pp. 18–19.
PROPER NAMES IN AMERICA
477. [
Smith
remains the predominant surname in the United States, followed by
Johnson, Brown, Williams, Jones, Miller, Davis, Anderson, Wilson
and
Moore
in order.] On May 2, 1939 the Social Security Board issued an analysis of the 43,900,000 names then on its roll, showing that ten per cent of the persons listed shared but fifty names, beginning with 471,190 Smiths, 350,530 Johnsons, 254,750 Browns, 250,312 Williamses, 240,180 Millers and 235,540 Joneses. The rest ran as follows:
| Standing | Name | Approximate Number |
| 26 | Adams | 70,000 |
| 19 | Allen | 81,000 |
| 8 | Anderson | 144,000 |
| 34 | Bailey | 45,000 |
| 23 | Baker | 71,000 |
| 33 | Bell | 47,000 |
| 36 | Bennett | 43,000 |
| 49 | Black | 27,000 |
| 46 | Brooks | 30,000 |
| 45 | Burke | 30,000 |
| 37 | Butler | 40,000 |
| 41 | Cohen | 33,000 |
| 7 | Davis | 177,000 |
| 32 | Edwards | 52,000 |
| 47 | Elliott | 26,000 |
| 43 | Ellis | 31,000 |
| 29 | Evans | 60,000 |
| 35 | Fisher | 43,000 |
| 38 | Foster | 39,000 |
| 21 | Green | 78,000 |
| 20 | Hall | 80,000 |
| 17 | Harris | 96,000 |
| 16 | Jackson | 105,000 |
| 40 | James | 33,000 |
| 42 | Jenkins | 33,000 |
| 47 | Johnston | 28,000 |
| 44 | Jordan | 30,000 |
| 24 | King | 70,000 |
| 18 | Lewis | 85,000 |
| 14 | Martin | 112,000 |
| 12 | Moore | 117,000 |
| 25 | Nelson | 70,000 |
| 50 | Nichols | 26,000 |
| 51 | Owens | 26,000 |
| 28 | Phillips | 61,000 |
| 27 | Roberts | 66,000 |
| 22 | Robinson | 77,000 |
| 31 | Rogers | 52,000 |
| 10 | Taylor | 118,000 |
| 11 | Thomas | 118,000 |
| 15 | Thompson | 108,000 |
| 30 | Turner | 56,000 |
| 39 | Walker | 38,000 |
| 13 | White | 113,000 |
| 9 | Wilson | 133,000 1 |