article the invasion of England by Americanisms was just beginning in earnest, and many words and phrases that have since become commonplaces there were still strange and disquieting. Writing in the London
Daily Mail
a year or so later W. G. Faulkner thought it necessary to explain the meanings of
hobo, hoodlum, bunco-steerer, dead-beat, flume, dub, rubberneck, drummer, sucker, dive
(in the sense of a thieves’ resort),
clean up, graft
and
to feature
, and another interpreter, closely following him, added definitions of
hold-up, quitter, rube, shack, bandwagon, road-agent, cinch, live-wire
and
scab
. 52 This was in the early days of the American-made movie, and Faulkner denounced its terminology as “generating and encouraging mental indiscipline.” As Hollywood gradually conquered the English cinema palaces, 53 such warnings became more frequent and more angry, and in 1920 the London
Daily News
began a formal agitation of the subject, with the usual pious editorials and irate letters from old subscribers. I quote a characteristic passage from one of the latter:
I visited two picture theaters today for the express purpose of collecting slang phrases and of noticing the effect of the new language on the child as well as on the adult. What the villain said to the hero when the latter started to argue with him was, “
Cut out
that
dope
” and a hundred piping voices repeated the injunction. The comic man announced his marriage to the Bell of Lumbertown by saying, “I’m
hitched.
”
On January 22, 1920 the London bureau of the Associated Press made this report:
England is apprehensive lest the vocabularies of her youth become corrupted through incursions of American slang. Trans-Atlantic tourists in England note with interest the frequency with which resort is made to “Yankee talk” by British song and play writers seeking to enliven their productions. Bands and orchestras throughout the country when playing popular music play American selections almost exclusively. American songs monopolize the English music hall and musical comedy stage. But it is the subtitle of the American moving picture film which, it is feared, constitutes the most menacing threat to the vaunted English purity of speech.
When the American talkie began to reinforce the movie, in 1929 54 there was fresh outburst of indignation, but this time it had a despairist undertone. Reinforced by the spoken word, Americanisms were now coming in much faster than they could be challenged and disposed of. “Within the past few years,” said Thomas Anderson in the Manchester
Sunday Chronicle
for January 12, 1930, “we havegradually been adopting American habits of speech, American business methods, and the American outlook.” To which Jameson Thomas added in the London
Daily Express
for January 21:
One must admit that we write and speak Americanisms. So long as Yankeeisms came to us insiduously we absorbed them carelessly. They have been a valuable addition to the language, as nimble coppers are a valuable addition to purer currency. But the talkies have presented the American language in one giant meal, and we are revolted.
But this revolt, in so far as it was real at all, was apparently confined to the aged: the young of the British species continued to gobble down the neologisms of Hollywood and to imitate the Hollywood intonation. “Seldom do I hear a child speak,” wrote a correspondent of the London
News Chronicle
on June 15, 1931, “who has not attached several Americanisms to his vocabulary, which are brought out with deliberation at every opportunity.” During the next few years the English papers printed countless protests against this corruption of the speech of British youth, but apparently to no avail. Nor was there any halt when Col. F. W. D. Bendall, C.M.G., M.A., an inspector of the Board of Education, began stumping the country in an effort to further the dying cause of linguistic purity. 55 Nor when the chief constable —
i.e.
,
Daily Mail
a year or so later W. G. Faulkner thought it necessary to explain the meanings of
hobo, hoodlum, bunco-steerer, dead-beat, flume, dub, rubberneck, drummer, sucker, dive
(in the sense of a thieves’ resort),
clean up, graft
and
to feature
, and another interpreter, closely following him, added definitions of
hold-up, quitter, rube, shack, bandwagon, road-agent, cinch, live-wire
and
scab
. 52 This was in the early days of the American-made movie, and Faulkner denounced its terminology as “generating and encouraging mental indiscipline.” As Hollywood gradually conquered the English cinema palaces, 53 such warnings became more frequent and more angry, and in 1920 the London
Daily News
began a formal agitation of the subject, with the usual pious editorials and irate letters from old subscribers. I quote a characteristic passage from one of the latter:
I visited two picture theaters today for the express purpose of collecting slang phrases and of noticing the effect of the new language on the child as well as on the adult. What the villain said to the hero when the latter started to argue with him was, “
Cut out
that
dope
” and a hundred piping voices repeated the injunction. The comic man announced his marriage to the Bell of Lumbertown by saying, “I’m
hitched.
”
On January 22, 1920 the London bureau of the Associated Press made this report:
England is apprehensive lest the vocabularies of her youth become corrupted through incursions of American slang. Trans-Atlantic tourists in England note with interest the frequency with which resort is made to “Yankee talk” by British song and play writers seeking to enliven their productions. Bands and orchestras throughout the country when playing popular music play American selections almost exclusively. American songs monopolize the English music hall and musical comedy stage. But it is the subtitle of the American moving picture film which, it is feared, constitutes the most menacing threat to the vaunted English purity of speech.
When the American talkie began to reinforce the movie, in 1929 54 there was fresh outburst of indignation, but this time it had a despairist undertone. Reinforced by the spoken word, Americanisms were now coming in much faster than they could be challenged and disposed of. “Within the past few years,” said Thomas Anderson in the Manchester
Sunday Chronicle
for January 12, 1930, “we havegradually been adopting American habits of speech, American business methods, and the American outlook.” To which Jameson Thomas added in the London
Daily Express
for January 21:
One must admit that we write and speak Americanisms. So long as Yankeeisms came to us insiduously we absorbed them carelessly. They have been a valuable addition to the language, as nimble coppers are a valuable addition to purer currency. But the talkies have presented the American language in one giant meal, and we are revolted.
But this revolt, in so far as it was real at all, was apparently confined to the aged: the young of the British species continued to gobble down the neologisms of Hollywood and to imitate the Hollywood intonation. “Seldom do I hear a child speak,” wrote a correspondent of the London
News Chronicle
on June 15, 1931, “who has not attached several Americanisms to his vocabulary, which are brought out with deliberation at every opportunity.” During the next few years the English papers printed countless protests against this corruption of the speech of British youth, but apparently to no avail. Nor was there any halt when Col. F. W. D. Bendall, C.M.G., M.A., an inspector of the Board of Education, began stumping the country in an effort to further the dying cause of linguistic purity. 55 Nor when the chief constable —
i.e.
,
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