U. S. English

U. S. classroom English is a kind of dead language, derived chiefly from British literary traditions. Outside the classroom door students have lapsed naturally into their native American, which has a vocabulary as broad as the country, as exact and complex as U. S. technology, from which it draws many terms. To close the breach between classroom English and spoken American, two works had appeared last week in time for inclusion among next year's textbooks.

Four high-school teachers (Mabel Goddard, Louise Schafer Camp, Eva Hanks Lycan and Helen Louise Cohen Stockwell) published four graduated textbooks called American English.* Main thesis of Mesdames Goddard, Camp, Lycan and Stockwell is that there are three kinds of American English, each acceptable in its place. They illustrated this concept by the following variations on the theme, "Mother is not feeling well today": 1) dignified American English for great occasions: "Mother is ill and has retired"; 2) sack-suit American English: "Mother is sick and has gone to bed"; 3) football-field American English: "Mother is on the blink and has hit the hay."

Mesdames Goddard, Camp, Lycan and Stockwell then turn about and caution their students against slang, thereby making it pretty clear that they do not know 1939 slang from third base. American English gives students some good instruction on how to write different types of prose, address letters and judge a radio program, but even the nice little boys & girls for whom it was written are likely to wonder how Schoolmarms Goddard, Camp, Lycan and Stockwell got so chummy with that old goat, the English language. Sample passage:

"Words are like people, interesting and individual; the better you know them, the more friendly you feel toward them. They are always at home in their hospitable, well-equipped house--the dictionary."

Colgate University's Professor Porter G. Perrin also found a discrepancy between classroom English and the way most people talk, also tried to do something about it last week. His An Index to English* intended "to answer some common questions about English usage and style," makes no bones about being colloquial, passes as good usage in spoken English such a word as enthuse, such an expression as it's me, such pronunciations as ree'-search and ex-qui'-site. Professor Perrin thinks Americans had better stick to American words and not fool around with such tony Gallicisms as chic, enceinte and demimonde. Some foreign terms are handy: "Hors d'oeuvre is a useful word and not difficult to say, but it looks conspicuously un-English. If menu makers would spell it orderve, we could all be happy with it."

Professor Perrin is witty, authoritative, not too cocksure. Though mostly avoiding dicta, he lays down a few:

>"So far as the language used furthers the writer's intended effect, it is good; so far as it fails to further that effect, it is bad, no matter how 'correct' it may be."

>"English is not just good, it is good in a particular place."

>"If slang expressions are appropriate, they should be used without apology (that is, without quotation marks), and if they are not appropriate, they should not be used." Professor Perrin knows slang when he sees it: to park a car is general English; to park your hat is slang.

*Lippincott ($1.04, $1.08). *Scott, Foresman & Co. ($1.50).

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