From Alex Baumans:<\/p>\n
Miss Cayley's Adventures<\/em><\/a>, a delightful novel by Grant Allen from 1899, is about Lois Cayley, who is left penniless after her stepfather dies (actually, she gets tuppence) and sets out to make her way in the world trusting to her wits and luck. She meets an American inventor-entrepeneur who wants her to demonstrate his bicycle in the German military trials.<\/span><\/p>\n Why I am sending you this, is the treatment of American English. Grant Allen takes care to give his characters a recognisable voice, with lots of local colour (stereotyping them at the same time, but this is a popular nineteenth-century novel). I am no native speaker nor a specialist in historical dialects of the US, but I can't for the life of me imagine what this is supposed to have sounded like. The hyphens and italics would seem to point towards some peculiar intonation or word-stress. There are 'phonetic' spellings such as 'ketch' or 'jest', and probably some Americanisms, that I no longer recognise as such. It doesn't sound like any variety of American English I'm familiar with.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, I thought it might interest you to see what an American sounded like to the British a hundred years ago. Perhaps you have a better idea what this is all about.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Partly yes, but mostly not. In particular, Allen's use of hyphens and italics is puzzling to me, as in this fragment of dialogue:<\/p>\n 'This ma-chine,' he said, in an impressive voice, 'is<\/i>\u00a0pro-pelled\u00a0by<\/i>\u00a0an eccentric.' <\/span><\/p>\n So I'll turn the question over to our readers, after a bit of narrative background.<\/p>\n The relevant dialogue starts in chapter three, \"The Adventure of the Inquisitive American<\/a>\". Having turned her inherited tuppence into two pounds in the first two chapters, Miss Cayley decides to go to Frankfurt to study art.<\/p>\n In the afternoon I consoled myself for my herculean efforts in the direction of culture by going out for a bicycle ride on a hired machine, to which end I decided to devote my pocket-money. […]<\/span><\/p>\n As I scurried across the plain, with the wind in my face, not unpleasantly, I had some dim consciousness of somebody unknown flying after me headlong. […] [G]azing back, I saw my pursuer was a tall and ungainly man, with a straw-coloured moustache, apparently American, and that he was following me on his machine, closely watching my action. He had such a cunning expression on his face, and seemed so strangely inquisitive, with eyes riveted on my treadles, that I didn't quite like the look of him. I put on the pace, to see if I could outstrip him, for I am a swift cyclist. But his long legs were too much for me. He did not gain on me, it is true; but neither did I outpace him. Pedalling my very hardest\u2014and I can make good time when necessary\u2014I still kept pretty much at the same distance in front of him all the way to Fraunheim.<\/span><\/p>\n She is then stopped by a policeman, who demands to see her license.<\/p>\n I had no idea, till he spoke, that any license was required; though to be sure I might have guessed it; for modern Germany is studded with notices at all the street corners, to inform you in minute detail that everything is forbidden.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I stammered out that I did not know. The mounted policeman drew near and inspected me rudely. 'It is strongly undersaid,' he began, but just at that moment my pursuer came up, and, with American quickness, took in the situation. He accosted the policeman in choice bad German. 'I have two licenses,' he said, producing a handful. 'The Fr\u00e4ulein rides with me.'<\/span><\/p>\n I was too much taken aback at so providential an interposition to contradict this highly imaginative statement. My highwayman had turned into a protecting knight-errant of injured innocence.<\/span><\/p>\n The depiction of Americanisms begins immediately:<\/p>\n 'Good morning, miss,' he began–he called me 'Miss' every time he addressed me, as though he took me for a barmaid.\u00a0'Ex-cuse\u00a0me<\/i>, but why did you want to speed her?'<\/span><\/p>\n The idea that \"miss\" as a term of address evokes a certain kind of social distance is familiar, but why does Miss Cayley find it inappropriate in this context? Is the usage somehow stereotypically American? And the hyphen and the italics are meant to evoke some prosodic stereotype — but what?<\/p>\n 'And if I was,' he went on, 'you might have con-jectured, miss, it was for our mutual advantage. A business man don't go out of his way unless he expects to turn an honest dollar; and he don't reckon on other folks going out of theirs, unless he knows he can put them in the way of turning an honest dollar with him.'<\/span><\/p>\n Besides the mysterious prosodic hyphen, the other dialect features of this paragraph are general non-standard morphosyntax — \"was\" for \"were\", \"don't\" for \"doesn't\" — that could have come from a non-U British speaker then or now.<\/p>\n 'That's reasonable,' I answered: for I am a political economist. 'The benefit should be mutual.' But I wondered if he was going to propose at sight to me.<\/span><\/p>\n He looked me all up and down. 'You're a lady of con-siderable personal attractions,' he said, musingly, as if he were criticising a horse; 'and I want one that sort. That's jest why I trailed you, see? Besides which, there's some style about you.'<\/span><\/p>\n There's another of those prosodic hyphens. And it's not clear whether the missing of<\/em> in \"one that sort\" is a typo or a puzzling attempt at dialect description.<\/p>\n As for the eye-dialect spelling \"jest\", that seems to be a common way of representing vowel-reduction in the pronunciation of \"just\"<\/a>, in depictions of non-standard English from many parts of the world, not only America. For example, here's bit of dialogue attributed to a British speaker in Sheridan Le Fanu's X novel Checkmate<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n \u201c'Tain't me that 'ill be looking slippy, as you and me well knows; and it's jest because you knows it well you're here. I suppose it ain't for love of me quite?\u201d sneered Paul Davies.<\/span><\/p>\n When Miss Cayley tries to go on her way, the American reacts<\/p>\n \u00a0'You ain't going!' he cried, horrified. 'You ain't going without hearing me! I mean business, say! Don't chuck away good money like that. I tell you, there's dollars in it.'<\/span><\/p>\n The use of \"say\" as a phrase-final emphatic tag seems odd.<\/p>\n She agrees to meet him the next day to discuss his proposition, and encounters more eye-dialect and a bit of lexical innovation:<\/p>\n When I arrived at Fraunheim, I found my alert American punctually there before me. He raised his crush hat with awkward politeness. I could see he was little accustomed to ladies' society. Then he pointed to a close cab in which he had reached the village.<\/span><\/p>\n 'I've got it inside,' he whispered, in a confidential tone. 'I couldn't let 'em ketch sight of it. You see, there's dollars in it.'<\/span><\/p>\n 'What have you got inside?' I asked, suspiciously, drawing back. I don't know why, but the word 'it' somehow suggested a corpse. I began to grow frightened.<\/span><\/p>\n 'Why, the wheel, of course,' he answered. 'Ain't you come here to ride it?'<\/span><\/p>\n 'Oh, the wheel?' I echoed, vaguely, pretending to look wise; but unaware, as yet, that that word was the accepted Americanism for a cycle. 'And I have come to ride it?'<\/span><\/p>\n But then we get an explicit comment on the prosodic hyphens and italics, referring to the example I gave at the start of this post:<\/p>\n It was clumsy to look at. It differed immensely, in many particulars, from any machine I had yet seen or ridden.<\/span><\/p>\n The strenuous American fondled it for a moment with his hand, as if it were a pet child. Then he mounted nimbly. Pride shone in his eye. I saw in a second he was a fond inventor.<\/span><\/p>\n He rode a few yards on. Next he turned to me eagerly. 'This ma-chine,' he said, in an impressive voice, 'is<\/i>\u00a0pro-pelled\u00a0by<\/i>\u00a0an eccentric.' Like all his countrymen, he laid most stress on unaccented syllables.<\/span><\/p>\n This is unexpected — if anything, I would have expected the opposite impression. The display of allegedly Americanistic prosodic hyphens and italics continues:<\/p>\n 'Perhaps you wonder,' he put in, 'that with money on it like this, I should intrust the job\u00a0into<\/i>\u00a0the hands of a female.' I winced, but was silent. 'Well, it's like this, don't you see; ef a female wins, it makes success all the more striking and con-spicuous. The world to-day\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0ruled\u00a0by<\/i>\u00a0advertize<\/i>ment.'<\/span><\/p>\n She wins the race, in which \"the German Imperial and Prussian Royal Governments had offered a Kaiserly and Kingly prize for the best military bicycle\". Her connection with the American inventor continues in subsequent chapters; and so do the hyphens and italics:<\/p>\n Next morning, he came round to call on me at the Abode of Unclaimed Domestic Angels. He was explicit and generous. 'Look here, miss,' he began; 'I didn't do fair by you when you interviewed me about your agency last evening. I took advantage,\u00a0at<\/i>\u00a0the time,\u00a0of<\/i>\u00a0your youth and inexperience. You suggested 10 per cent\u00a0as<\/i>\u00a0the amount of your commission on sales you might effect; and I jumped at it. That was conduct unworthy\u00a0of<\/i>\u00a0a gentleman. Now, I will not deceive you. The ordinary commission on transactions in wheels is 25 per cent. I am going to sell the Manitou retail at twenty English pounds apiece. You shall hev your 25 per cent on all orders.'<\/span><\/p>\n I continue to be mystified about what aspect of stereotypical American English prosody, in 1899 or any other time, those hyphens and italicized words really represent. Ideas? Or better, facts?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Alex Baumans: Miss Cayley's Adventures, a delightful novel by Grant Allen from 1899, is about Lois Cayley, who is left penniless after her stepfather dies (actually, she gets tuppence) and sets out to make her way in the world trusting to her wits and luck. 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