Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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[566] For English is the authentic speech of free peoples and it is endowed with an innate energy for getting along, going into strange places on strange errands, but never quite losing its sense of identity. It breeds surprisingly true, in the main, even amid the most unpromising conditions. Franklin, the cosmopolitan, said ‘air’ for are; ‘hev’ and ‘hez’; sounded the l in would and calm, and in the latter used the vowel of hat; uttered new with the vowel of too, and bosom as who should write ‘buzzum.’ Noah Webster, father of American lexicography, advocated the pronunciations ‘creatur,’ ‘natur,’ ‘raptur’; angel with the vowel of hat, chamber with that of father; fierce and pierce were to rhyme with verse, beard with third, and deaf with thief; the present pronunciation of heard and wound he regarded as new and objectionable. With such a start what might not American English have become? Without any external compulsion, without any very clearly expressed ideals, however, American English has kept pace step by step in these particulars with the development of British English.

The problem of American English resides, then, not in its differences from British English, nor yet in its own infinite variety—here history is both enlightening and consoling—but in the attitude which it adopts toward itself. It is not as good as it might be—no language is so in its entirety, because people are not so wise and well-bred, so sensitively in touch with the best of literature and of life as they might be—but to make itself better it has no reasonable standards to look to. It has held up to it silly ideals, impossible ideals, ignorant dogmatisms, and for the most part it wisely repudiates them all. But in so doing it is left with a diminished self-respect. Excellence is not for it. Why bother about the impossible? We shall get along. Not thus, however, is bred that subtle atmosphere of linguistic authenticity, the inevitableness of the thing rightly said, which is the peasant's by inheritance and to which the man of letters attains by giving his toilsome nights to much else beside Addison. The great mass of men lies between, the many who write and are not great writers, the many who talk not so well as they might; where in irritation and bewilderment may they look?

‘All this is very different in English English.’ Here, quite possibly, is a hint of some value. One can hardly