Language and the American genius

Often one can learn a lot about a culture from its language. Linguists and sociologists have spilled oceans of ink over reams of paper describing the interplay between the language and culture of peoples from aborigines to Europeans. One group largely ignored, however, is Americans. And unjustly so _ American language says more about the American character than any volume of essays on Puritanism or frontier mentality could.

From the time American English started diverging from British English, the British never tired of labeling American English as "vulgar" or "barbaric." In fact these descriptions are entirely apt, but perhaps not in the sense intended.

The world "vulgar" comes from the Latin word vulgus, meaning the masses, the people _ the "hoi polloi," as the Greeks would say ("hoi polloi" means "the many" in Greek, but has found its way into English to mean "the common folk"). American English was always indeed a language of the masses. Whereas in Europe the ruling class and the rest of the population frequently spoke entirely different languages, everyone in America spoke essentially the same language, regardless of class.

Of course, there was a difference between formal and informal speech _ what you might say to a professor and what you might say to your friend _ but your professor used informal speech roughly similar to yours when he spoke with his friend. Even Woodrow Wilson, who was president of Princeton University before becoming governor of New Jersey and then President of the United States, used phrases such as "we must get a move on," and "that is going some" with frequency, phrases which no Englishman even today would consider using in Parliament. More recently, President Bush has used phrases such as "smoke 'em out." Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign platform was "it's the economy, stupid."

Two summers ago, I had a chance to visit the House of Representatives and hear some Congressmen speak. One thing that amazed me was the variety of accents _ a representative from Virginia spoke with a southern drawl, the one from New Jersey sounded like Joe Pesci, and the one from Minnesota sounded like he was auditioning for Fargo. But that is no problem _ in America, the language of the vulgus is the language of the political system.

The language is not only uniform over classes, but perhaps even more amazing, uniform over the whole country _ and a very large country at that. Any student of European languages, as well as other widely spoken languages like Arabic, Japanese, or the various dialects of Chinese knows that within each language there is huge variation in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation.

In America, it is not so. Or at least, it is less so. Of course, as I indicated above, each region has its own accent or peculiar slang, but nothing someone from another part of the country could not understand immediately, and pick up after a few weeks. This facilitates flexibility in the job market and communication between political leaders (the European Union has huge problems with the first and spends about a third of its budget on translators to create the second). Being from North Carolina, the Bostonian use of the word "wicked" threw me off at first, but before too long I could use it myself.

The word "barbarian" is a Greek word describing anyone or thing foreign, supposedly because foreign languages sound like the syllable "bar" repeated over and over again. American English has distinguished itself in its ability to incorporate foreign words. This comes partly through necessity, as America is an immigrant country. Early Americans used Native American words for things they didn't recognize, like "maize" (a Native American word which, oddly, is now used in Europe but has been supplanted in America by "corn"), and "succotash." As more immigrants came from Northern Europe, words like "sauerkraut" began to creep in, as well as countless wonderful Yiddish words which by now are extending past just the Northeast (like "schlepp").

Americans have also shown their creativeness, expressiveness, and humor in creating new words and phrases. Some new words were created to describe new wildlife _ thus "johnny-jump-up," "bullfrog," and "Jimson weed" (originally "Jamestown weed"). Other words, such as "caucus," arise out of the American political system. But the real creative spirit shines through in the idioms of America. When a country invents a phrase like "barking up the wrong tree," "fork it over," or "crapshoot," it is destined for greatness.

In the last 100 years, other languages have started to assimilate American words, partly because of American political strength, but also because of the amazing capacity for invention in the American language. The word "movie" is infinitely more descriptive and useful than "cinema." The word "motherboard" is a linguistic masterpiece. Any language should be proud to include "rubbernecking."

Flexibility and innovation, in its language, its culture, its politics, and its economy, is the core of the American genius. American society has an amazing capacity to adjust to any exigency without missing too many beats. And that, as the Americans would say, is nothing to shake a stick at.