Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 16, 1995 TAG: 9504180005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TED ANTHONY ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
And what variety: Through cultural experiences and liberal borrowing, Americans have amassed such linguistic morsels as ``gerrymander,'' ``varmint,'' ``kitchenette'' and the sadly obsolete ``slobberchops.''
Author Bill Bryson puts it all together in ``Made in America'' (Morrow, $23), an engaging account of how the American experience helped American English part from its British elder brother and spread its influence across the globe.
It's hard to imagine someone better suited for this than Bryson, an Iowa sports writer's son who fled to Britain two decades ago and spends his time cantankerously eyeing American culture from afar; a sort of trans-Atlantic H.L. Mencken.
Equal parts dilettante and detective, Bryson follows the routes of revolution, immigration, advertising, sex, dining, transportation and war to exhume origins of words Americans take for granted.
Bryson, who skewered and cheered small-town America in his travelogue, ``The Lost Continent,'' and tackled Europe in ``Neither Here Nor There,'' is not new to popular linguistics. His book, ``The Mother Tongue,'' traced British English in a similarly anecdotal way.
``Made in America'' (or ``Freedonia,'' as some wanted to call the country) is great fun but also an impressively broad piece of research. He found everything from the origin of ``tycoon'' (Japanese, from ``taikun,'' or military leader) to ``how come?'' (a phonetic translation of the Dutch word ``hoekom'').
``Doing this book was so indulgent,'' Bryson said in a telephone interview from his home in Yorkshire, England. His words come out in an odd mix of British accent and Midwestern twang.
``I could look up anything I wanted - any subject that was appealing,'' he says. ``But it seemed at times that the research was infinite.''
Two themes emerge: No language is safe from Americans' linguistic pillages. And no matter how much second-grade teachers and curmudgeons push for standards, usage always takes precedence.
``If enough people want to use the word incorrectly, then there's nothing you can do about it,'' Bryson says. Eventually, it ceases to be incorrect.
Americans early started looting words from the British, Dutch (``how come'') and Indian tribes (``succotash''). They moved on to plunder the tongues of each successive immigrant group that arrived.
By the 19th century, Bryson says, a ``positive torrent'' of words and expressions were entering U.S. English - some borrowed, some uniquely American.
A sampling: ``to whitewash'' (1808), ``no two ways about it'' (1818), ``conniption fit'' (1833), ``hold your horses'' (1844), ``underdog'' (1887), ``to be out on a limb'' (1897).
Many consonant-rich gems have been abandoned. Gone are ``dunderment'' (bewilderment), ``fribble'' (a light dusting of snow), ``puckerstoppled'' (to be embarrassed) and ``slobberchops'' (a messy eater).
``It's a total mystery, really, how words come and go,'' Bryson says. ``Some words hang on, and others disappear for centuries. And some hang out on the periphery and then become popular.''
He cites ``nerd,'' coined by Dr. Seuss in 1953. It lurked aimlessly until the 1980s, then emerged in America's high schools as a popular insult.
Western frontierlands, predictably, provided linguistic inspiration. Explorers Lewis and Clark coined the term ``Great Plains'' in 1804. ``Paydirt'' and ``pan out'' came from the 1848 Gold Rush, and other terms - ``holdup,'' for example - entered the language from the West.
``Cowboy,'' oddly, has an earlier origin - a derogatory term for loyalists in the Revolutionary War. ``Gunslinger'' is pure Hollywood, while genuine Western terms have vanished, such as ``dying with throat trouble,'' vernacular for hanging.
With the commercial age came suffix crazes. The coining of ``cafeteria'' was followed by such lesser comers as ``washeteria,'' ``drugeteria'' and even ``casketeria.'' The 1920s and early 1930s brought Pyrex, Cutex, Kleenex and Windex. Then came Mixmasters and Toastmasters, Shop-O-Ramas and Food-O-Ramas.
Cars (once called ``locomotors''), movies, television, suburbia and fast food begat thousands of more words.
Today's American English adds 20,000 words each year. Some show staying power (``gridlock,'' ``user-friendly''), while others, mercifully, perish (``Coolsville, Daddy-O'').
As Bryson sees it, cyberspace, global culture and instantaneous information distribution all position American English to become the language of the world.
``I think America is in the driver's seat as far as the English language is concerned,'' he says. ``Not simply because it's more dynamic or more vibrant, though that may be part of it. It's just that America dominates the world's culture.''
Of one thing he is sure.
``English will continue to change,'' he says. ``If you went into a time machine and came out 500 years from now, you probably would understand very little.''
by CNB