H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.
Page 382
| And it grows—it grows unceasingly. At the beginning of last century English was the native speech of little more than twenty million people. At the end of the century it was spoken by 130 millions. Before the year 2000 it will probably be spoken by 250 to 500 millions. |
| In the most high and palmy state of Rome, the population of the Empire was less than 100 millions. To-day 350 millions own the sway of rulers who speak English. |
2. English or American? |
| Because of the fact that the American form of English is now spoken by three times as many persons as all the British forms taken together, and by at least twenty times as many as the standard Southern English, and because, no less, of the greater resilience it shows, and the greater capacity for grammatical and lexical growth, and the far greater tendency to accommodate itself to the linguistic needs and limitations of foreigners—because of all this it seems to me very likely that it will determine the final form of the language. For the old control of English over American to be reasserted is now quite unthinkable; if the two dialects are not to drift apart entirely English must follow in American’s tracks. This yielding seems to have begun; the exchanges from American into English, as we have seen, grow steadily larger and more important than the exchanges from English into American. John Richard Green, the historian, discerning the inevitable half a century ago, expressed the opinion, amazing and unpalatable then, that the Americans were already “the main branch of the English people.” It is not yet wholly true; a cultural timorousness yet shows itself; there is still a class, chiefly of pedagogues and of social aspirants, which looks to England as the Romans long looked to Greece. But it is not the class that is shaping the national language, and it is not the class that is carrying it beyond the national borders. The Americanisms that flood the English of Canada are not borrowed from the dialects of New England Loyalists and fashionable New |