tute for isn't, say in "he ain't the man," and yet ain't is already tolerably respectable in the first person, where English countenances the even more clumsy aren't. Aren't has never got a foothold in the American first person; when it is used at all, which is very rarely, it is always as a conscious Briticism. Facing the alternative of employing the unwieldy "am I not in this?" the American turns boldly to "ain't I in this?" It still grates a bit, perhaps, but aren't grates even more. Here, as always, the popular speech is pulling the exacter speech along, and no one familiar with its successes in the past can have much doubt that it will succeed again, soon or late. In the same way it is breaking down the inflectional distinction between adverb and adjective, so that "I feel bad" begins to take on the dignity of a national idiom, and sure, to go big and run slow[1] become almost respectable. When, on the entrance of the United States into the war, the Marine Corps chose "treat 'em rough" as its motto, no one thought to raise a grammatical objection, and the clipped adverb was printed upon hundreds of thousands of posters and displayed in every town in the country, always with the imprimatur of the national government. So, again, American, in its spoken form, tends to obliterate the distinction between nearly related adjectives, e. g., healthful and healthy, tasteful and tasty. And to challenge the somewhat absurd textbook prohibition of terminal prepositions, so that "where are we at" loses its old raciness. And to dally with the double negative, as in "I have no doubt but that."[2]
But these tendencies, or at least the more extravagant of them, belong to the next chapter. How much influence they exert, even
- ↑ A common direction to motormen and locomotive engineers. The English form is "slow down." I note, however, that "drive slowly" is in the taxicab shed at the Pennsylvania Station, in New York.
- ↑ I quote from a speech made by Senator Sherman, of Illinois, in the United States Senate on June 20, 1918. Vide Congressional Record for that day, p. 8743. Two days later, "There is no question but that" appeared in a letter by John Lee Coulter, A.M., Ph.D., dean of West Virginia University. It was read into the Record of June 22 by Mr. Ashwell, one of the Louisiana representatives. Even the pedantic Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, oozing Harvard from every pore, uses but that. Vide the Record for May 14, 1918, p. 6996.
