XIX. Read the following extract. What is a citizen of the usa called? Analyse the suggested variants of names from the point of view of word-building.

It is embarrassing that the citizens of the United States do not have a satisfactory name. In the Declara­tion of Independence the British colonists called their country the United States of America, thus creating a difficulty. What should the inhabitant of a country with such a long name be called?

For more than 150 years those living in the country have searched in vain for a suitable name for them­selves. In 1803, a prominent American physician, Dr. Samuel Mitchill, suggested that the entire country should be called Fredonia or Fredon. He had taken the English word freedom and the Latin colonia and from them coined Fredonia or Fredon. Dr. Mitchill thought that with this word as the name for the country as a

whole, the derivative Fredish would follow naturally, corresponding to British, etc. In the same way, he thought, Frede, would be a good name for the inhabit­ant of Fredonia. But his fellow-citizens laughed at the doctor's names.

Such citizen names as United Statesian, shortened to Unisian and United Statian were proposed but quickly forgotten. No better success has greeted Usona (United States of North America) as a name for the country and Usonian — for a citizen.

Usage overwhelmingly favours American, as a name for an inhabitant of the USA, though all Americans re­alize it covers far too much territory.

(From American Words by M. Mathews)

Supplementary Material

To Chapters 3, 4

From "GROWTH AND STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE"

by Otto Jespersen

Ch. IV. The Scandinavians

(Extract)

It is true that the Scandinavians were, for a short time at least, the rulers of England, and we have found in the juridical loan-words linguistic corroboration of this fact; but the great majority of the settlers did not belong to the ruling class. Their social standing must have been, on the whole, slightly superior to the aver­age of the English, but the difference cannot have been great, for the bulk of Scandinavian words are of a purely democratic character. This is clearly brought out by a comparison with the French words introduced in the following centuries, for here language confirms what history tells us, that the French represent the rich, the ruling, the refined, the aristocratic element in the English nation. How different is the impression made by the Scandinavian loan-words. They are home­ly expressions for things and actions of everyday im­portance; their character is utterly democratic. The difference is also shown by so many of the French words having never penetrated into the speech of the people, so that they have been known and used only by the 'upper ten*, while the Scandinavian ones are used by high and low alike; their shortness too agrees with the monosyllabic character of the native stock of words, consequently they are far less felt as foreign el­ements than many French words; in fact, in many sta­tistical calculations of the proportion of native to im­ported words in English, Scandinavian words have been more or less inadvertently included in the native elements. Just as it is impossible to speak or write in English about higher intellectual or emotional subjects or about fashionable mundane matters without draw­ing largely upon the French (and Latin) elements, in the same manner Scandinavian words will crop up to­gether with the Anglo-Saxon ones in any conversation on the thousand nothings of daily life or on the five or six things of paramount importance to high and low alike. An Englishman cannot thrive or be ill or die without Scandinavian words; they are to the language what bread and eggs are to the daily fare.

Ch. V. The French

( Extract)

Many of the French words, such as cry, claim, state, poor, change, and, one might say, nearly all the words taken over before 1350 and not a few of those of later importation, have become part and parcel of the En­glish language, so that they appear to us all just as En­glish as the pre-Conquest stock of native words. But a great many others have never become so popular. There are a great many gradations between words of everyday use and such as are not at all understood by the common people, and to the latter class may some­times belong words which literary people would think familiar to everybody.

From what precedes we are now in a position to un­derstand some at least of the differences that have de­veloped in course of time between two synonyms when both have survived, one of them native, the other

French. The former is always nearer the nation's heart than the latter, it has the strongest associations with everything primitive, fundamental, popular, while the French word is often more formal, more polite, more refined and has a less strong hold on the emotional side of life. A cottage is finer than a hut, and fine people of­ten live in a cottage, at any rate in summer.

The difference between help and aid is thus indicat­ed in the Funk-Wagnalls Dictionary: 'Help expresses greater dependence and deeper need than aid. In ex­tremity we say "God help me!" rather than "God aid me!" In time of danger we cry "help! help!" rather than "aid! aid!" To aid is to second another's own exertions. We can speak of helping the helpless, but not of aiding them. Help includes aid, but aid may fall short of the meaning of help.' All this amounts to the same thing as saying that help is the natural expression, belonging to the indispensable stock of words, and therefore pos­sessing more copious and profounder associations than the more literary and accordingly colder word aid, cf. also assist. Folk has to a great extent been superseded by people, chiefly on account of the political and social employment of the word; Shakespeare rarely uses folk (four times) and folks (ten times), and the word is evi­dently a low-class word with him; it is rare in the Au­thorized Version, and Milton never uses it; but in re­cent usage folk has been gaining ground, partly, per­haps, from antiquarian and dialectal causes. Hearty and cordial made their appearance in the language at the same time (the oldest quotations 1380 and 1386, NED.), but their force is not the same, for *a hearty welcome' is warmer than 'a cordial welcome', and hearty has many applications that cordial has not (heartfelt, sincere; vigorous: a hearty slap on the back; abundant: a hearty meal), etc.

To Chapter 8

From "ENGLISH WORDS AND THEIR BACKGROUND"

by George McKnight

Tropes

(Extract)