The American Language: Supplement 2

by H.L. Mencken

The DEFINITIVE EDITION OF The American Language was published in 1936.  Since then it has been recognized as a classic.  It is that rarest of literary accomplishments—a book that is authoritative and scientific and is at the same time very diverting reading.  But after 1936 HLM continued to gather new materials diligently.  In 1945 those which related to the first six chapters of The American Language were published as Supplement I ; the present volume contains those new materials which relate to the other chapters.

The ground thus covered in Supplement II is as
1.    American Pronunciation.   Its history.  Its divergence from English usage.  The regional and racial dialects.
2.    American Spelling.   The influence of Noah Webster upon it.  Its characters today.  The simplified spelling movement.  The treatment of loan words.  Punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviation.
3.    The Common Speech.   Outlines of its grammar.  Its verbs, pronouns, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs.  The double negative.  Other peculiarities.
4.    Proper Names in America.   Surnames.  Given-names.  Place-names.  Other names.
5.    American Slang.  Its origin and history.  The argot of various racial and occupational groups.

Although the text of Supplement II is related to that of The American Language , it is an independent work that may be read profitably by persons who do not know either The American Language or Supplement I .

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Language

889 pages, Hardcover

First published April 5, 1948

About the author

Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken became one of the most influential and prolific journalists in America in the 1920s and '30s, writing about all the shams and con artists in the world. He attacked chiropractors and the Ku Klux Klan, politicians and other journalists. Most of all, he attacked Puritan morality. He called Puritanism, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

At the height of his career, he edited and wrote for The American Mercury magazine and the Baltimore Sun newspaper, wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column for the Chicago Tribune, and published two or three books every year. His masterpiece was one of the few books he wrote about something he loved, a book called The American Language (1919), a history and collection of American vernacular speech. It included a translation of the Declaration of Independence into American English that began, "When things get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody."

When asked what he would like for an epitaph, Mencken wrote, "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."

(from American Public Media)

Reviews

[Michael Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a review of the first half of the second supplement to the fourth edition of H. L. Mencken's "The American Language".

The project was an enjoyable obsession for Mencken. He published the first edition in 1919, the second in 1921, the third in 1923 and the fourth "corrected, enlarged and rewritten" edition in 1936. The fourth edition was 769 pages. He published the 739 page "Supplement I" in 1945 and this 890 page "Supplement II" in 1948. And just to be clear, these are large pages and most of them include multiple footnotes with citations and further commentary.

His goal in this project was to document the evolution and practice of the American language. He was fascinated by the split between the language spoken in England and the different language spoken in America. He documents the slow process of differentiation. He burrowed down into the way English is pronounced and spelt in America. He studied "the common speech" of America, as opposed to what the schoolteachers taught. He was fascinated in the common names of American paces. He loved slang. He studied 37 non=English dialects in America.

The incredible thing is that this was a side project. Mencken was one of the most famous literary critics in America in the 1920s. He edited "The American Mercury" magazine during most of the 1930s. He wrote three volumes of memoirs in the 1940s. This language think was pretty much a hobby.

He cites hundreds of academics, but he does not write like one. These books read as if they were written by a brilliant stylist. He discusses Boston where "the common speech has been described as one-third Harvard, one-third hick and one-third mick". He has a long section on the various schemes for simplifying spelling. He makes it clear he considers the proponents to be cranks. In a footnote, he notes about one of them "like all other reformers, he was unsatisfied by one arcanum and also embrace vegetarianism and teetotalism" ("arcanum"= specialized knowledge known only to a few initiates.)

Mencken read every academic article on these issues. He met and correspondence with many of the experts and writers on language issues. He frequently footnotes to "private conversation with ***" of "private letter from ***".

These three volumes are an amazing tribute to the strength of Mencken's obsession about American language and to his stamina. I will confess that I found myself skipping a bit. He goes very deeply into some topics. I didn't read his detailed analysis of the particular language habits in each of the fifty states and US territories. I decided to take a beak halfway through. I hope I come back in a while to finish it.

By the 1940s Mencken was passe. He was not respected as a critic, and his anti-Roosevelt and anti-English views were not popular. He seems to have poured his energy into these supplements. He left an impressive monument.

[Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have the 1948 first edition