Sir William Craigie, in one of the papers I was lately quoting,4 speaks of “the universal prejudice against accents in English,” and says that “even if printers did not rebel against them they are yet distasteful and deterrent to readers out of all proportion to their complexity.” This prejudice, I believe, is even more marked in the United States than it is in England, and as a result very few American newspapers make any effort to use the correct accents on foreign words. Said the editor of the Editor & Publisher, the chief journal of the newspaper trade, in 1939:
Names like führer, Göring, Brüning become fuehrer, Goering, Bruening and so forth, while less famous names like Dürer usually become simply Durer. Cañon has been Americanized as canyon, but mañana becomes manana, not manyana, and Azaña gets into most American print as Azana, not Azanya. To Spaniards and Latin Americans, French and Germans and Scandinavians the diacritical marks are integral parts of the words, and their omission is as offensive as a gross misspelling is to an educated American. Not many newspaper offices, however, have these marks in their matrix fonts, and not many more have the time to spot them in from the pi channel, except in extraordinary circumstances.5
The Editor & Publisher apparently follows the procession, for on dipping into it at random I find blaetter in half a minute.6 I turn to the Saturday Review of Literature and find smorgasbord for the Swedish smörgåsbord.1 I turn to Variety and find it spelling the French original of its own name variete, not variété.2 I turn to – but no more examples are needed, for they are flung at the American reader in endless number. At least one American newspaper, indeed, has declared categorically that accents, like italics, are unnecessary. There was a time, it says,
when they were widely used. In the days when all type was set by hand, perhaps no great delay was occasioned by this practice, but when the type-setting machines came into general use, not to mention typewriters, both italics and accents were for the most part placed on the shelf. It would seem no possible benefit can be derived from reviving or expanding the use of accents. Few American readers will know the significance, whether it is attached to a place name or some common word in French, Spanish or whatever.3
I should add that this iconoclasm, while general, is by no means universal. The Baltimore Sunpapers, at least in theory, use the proper diacritical marks on all accented foreign words that have not been naturalized,4 and the New York Herald Tribune uses them in “art, dramatic, editorial, literary and musical copy, and the Sunday fashion page.”5 Even the Chicago Tribune, despite its long-continued attempts to inflict simplified spelling on its readers, is orthodox when it comes to foreign words, and instructs its copy-readers (with what success I do not know) to put accents on fête, façade, confrère, cortège, entrée, männerchor, portière, garçon, Maréchal Niel, Théâtre Français, Honoré and Götterdämmerung.6 The Government Printing Office favors naturalizing loans as soon as possible, and thus ordains blase, boutonniere, brassiere, cafe, crepe, debut, decollete, entree, facade, fete, melee, naive, nee, role and roue, but it still uses accents on abbé, attaché, canapé, chargé d’affaires, communiqué, déjeuner, étude, fiancée, mañana, métier, pâté, précis, résumé, risqué, señor and vis-à-vis.1 The State Department, having a great deal of correspondence with foreigners, puts accents on all of these and also on naïve.2 It uses visa instead of visé, which lingers on in England, but the French themselves have made the same change.3 In England, as I have indicated, accents are used more frequently than in the United States, but even there a movement against them is visible. So long ago as November, 1923, the Society for Pure English prepared a list of foreign words that seemed ripe for complete naturalization, and it was adopted by the London Times, the London Mercury and other high-toned publications. It included confrere, depot, levee, role and seance.4 Of these levee appeared without accents in Noah Webster’s first dictionary in 1806, and depot and seance in his American Dictionary of 1828.
412. [Dr. Louise Pound notes that a number of Latin plurals tend to become singular nouns in colloquial American.] They are to be found plentifully, in fact, upon higher levels. I have encountered data in the singular in the Congressional Record,5 in the Saturday Review of Literature,6 and in a headline in the New York Herald Tribune.7 In the Editor & Publisher I have found media used to designate one newspaper;8 in the Étude, the Bible of all small-town music teachers, I have found tympani used for one drum;9 and in Life I once found Americana used as a singular by the late William Allen White.10 Dr. Pound long ago reported that dicta, insignia, strata, criteria, curricula and phenomena were coming into use as singulars among Americans of some education,1 and since then she has added emporia, memoranda, ganglia, stimuli, literati and alumni,2 and other pathologists of speech have added propaganda,3, agenda, arcana, nebulœ, meninges, bacilli, bacteria, automata, candelabra and sanitaria. As for data it is so widespread that even Webster 1934 recognizes it, saying “although plural in form it is not infrequently used as a singular, as, This data has been furnished for study and decision.” In compensation for these barbarities there is an occasional resort to a pseudo-Latin plural, as in prospecti and octopi.4
The tendency to replace all non-English plurals with indigenous forms is not recent, but goes back many years. When halo came in during the Sixteenth Century the Latin plural halones was used, but by 1603 it had become haloes and by 1646 halos. Many respectable authorities argue that most of the surviving Latin plurals had better be dropped. In 1925, for example, Robert Bridges declared for nebulas in place of nebulœ, vortexes for vortices, gymnasiums for gynmasia and dillettantes for dilettanti, though allowing that automata and memoranda had better be retained, and forci, formulœ and indices “in their scientific sense.”5 In 1938 Carleton R. Ball6 proposed a sweep of all the surviving Latin plurals, both in scientific terminology and everyday speech, on the ground that
Learning is unlimited. Time and talent are limited. Whatever uses time and ability unnecessarily is wasteful and should be avoided. Avoidable irregularity and diversity in the construction of a language make demands on time and talent that might be employed more profitably.
Some of the plurals he advocated were abscissas, antennas, lacunas, nebulas, mammas (for mammœ), diplomas (for the technical diplomata), sarcomas, traumas, lumens (for lumina), analysises, axises, parenthesises, thesises, apexes, matrixes, testatrixes, vortexes, crisises, bacteriums, honorariums, criterions, agendums, erratums,1 stratums, bacilluses, funguses, polypuses, genuses, femurs, coccuses, focuses and colossuses.2 He was unable to find plausible English plurals for caput, os, vas and corpus, and some of his inventions, e.g., synthesises and nympbeums, were somewhat clumsy, but he was confident that he was on the right track. “Let us take these logical steps,” he concluded, “in simplifying our English construction of plural nouns, and encourage others to take them. The gain will be great.” The editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association, two years later, hinted that something of the sort was afoot in their art and mystery. “The most unpopular plural for a medical writer to accept at the hands of a manuscript editor,” they said, “is the plural of epididymis, which is not epididymes but epididymides. Authors are so grudging, so reluctant, to accept this form that it betrays a bias in favor of the shorter spelling.”3 But the editors held out for epididymides, and in the same note declared that the true plural of appendicitis is appendicitides, and of bronchitis bronchitides. In their style book4 they permit appendixes, enemas, fibromas, gummas, spirochetes, serums and traumas, but insist on bronchi, criteria, foci, protozoa, sequele, stigmata and uertebre. Every now and then someone starts a crusade against loan-words that seem to be unnecessary, e.g., questionnaire, per instead of a in per year, etc.,5 but it seldom comes to anything. The changes undergone in the process of naturalization are often curious. The case of smearcase (Ger. schmierkiise) is familiar. In a travel article published in 1876 the Japanese jinricksha appears as djinricbia, geisha is guecba and samurai is samourai.6
4 On English Homophones, p. 43.
5 Shop Talk at Thirty, April 22, 1939, p. 84. See also Foreign Words, by H. L. Mencken, San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 3, 1934.
6 German Papers Near 4 Million, Sept. 28, 1946, p. 54.
1 S. J. P.’s Ilks, by Phil Stong, Sept. 21, 1946, p. 23.
2 Scully’s Scrapbook, by Frank Scully, Jan. 17, 1945, p. 2. This article includes some interesting contributions to the history of vaudeville.
3 Rome (N.Y.) Sentinel, editorial, June 21, 1944.
4 The necessary linotype matrices were laid in by the Evening Sun in 1914 or thereabout. I was at that time a member of the editorial staff of the paper, and had been carrying on an intra-office campaign for their purchase since 1910. It took about five years to induce the copy-desk and proof-room to use them. The morning Sun followed ten or eleven years later. It was a long and bitter battle, and left me pretty well exhausted.
5 Style Book of the New York Herald Tribune, 1929, p. 2. On Dec. 25, 1938 it printed a Christmas editorial in which the following words all had accents: marzipän, turrón, pfeffernüsse, gemüthlichkeit, crèche, Père Noël and Nürnberg. This probably broke all American newspaper records. I am indebted here to Mr. Valdemar Viking, of Red Bank, N. J.
6 Chicago Tribune Rules of Composition, 1934, pp. 8–9.
1 United States Government Printing Office Style Manual, revised edition, Jan., 1945, p. 49.
2 Style Manual of the Department of State, by Margaret M. Hanna and Alice M. Ball; Washington, 1937, p. 113.
3 Cassell’s New French-English English-French Dictionary, edited by Ernest A. Barker; New York, 1930, p. 563.
4 S.P.E. Tract No. XXII, 1925, p. 65.
5 Extension of Remarks of Hon. Francis Case, of South Dakota, Nov. 23, 1945, p. A5440.
6 Two examples are on p. 9, Aug. 7, 1937, and a third is noted in Latin Plurals, by Mamie Meredith, American Speech, Oct., 1937, p. 178.
7 The headline was: Delay in Arms Merger Decision is Urged Until More Data is In. Someone must have squawked in the office, for in later editions this was changed to the equivocal Delay in Arms Merger Decision Urged Until There is More Data. I am indebted here to Mr. Alexander Kadison.
8 Censor’s Office Discusses Rules of Advertising, March 7, 1942, p. 8.
9 Drum Hunt, Jan., 1944, p. 10.
10 The Hulls of Tennessee, April 8, 1940: “I have never seen a better Americana.”
1 The Pluralization of Latin Loan-Words in Present-Day American Speech, Classical Journal, Dec., 1919, pp. 163–68.
2 Plural Singulars From Latin Neuters, American Speech, Oct., 1927, pp. 26–27.
3 Latin Plurals, by Mamie Meredith, American Speech, Oct., 1937, p. 178.
4 I take the former from Dozen Periodicals Fold, Variety, June 23, 1937; the latter is ascribed to John Steinbeck in Minimum? Minimis? Minima?, by Ernest Fuld, Saturday Review of Literature, Jan. 20, 1945, p. 23. The true Latin plural of prospectus is the singular unchanged, and the plural of octopus, according to Dr. Fuld, is octopodes.
5 S.P.E. Tract No. XXII, pp. 66–67.
6 Dr. Ball is a distinguished botanist. He was attached to the Bureau of Plant Industry of the Department of Agriculture in 1928. In 1931 he went to the University of California. He has been editor for agronomy of Biological Abstracts since 1926.
1 Why not errors?
2 English or Latin Plurals for Anglicized Latin Nouns?, American Speech, April, 1928, pp. 291–325.
3 Plurals of Nouns Ending in -itis, July 26, 1930, p. 287.
4 Suggestions to Medical Authors; Chicago, 1919, p. 32.
5 In 1944 the Archbishop of Armagh wrote to the London Times denouncing questionnaire and proposed questionary in its place. Questionnaire, Liverpool Daily Post, July 1, 1944.
6 The Japanese Stage, Galaxy, Jan., 1876, pp. 76, 78 and 79 respectively.