ABSTRACT
ISO U R ENG LIS H D E G ENE RAT I N G '? 27 try peasant 'cannot understand the tongue 'Of Y'Ork~ shire-as I know well, for I was a country parson in Devonshire for four years-and speaks of him too, occasionally, as a 'farriner.'" Yorkshire and Devonshire are separated by what seems to Americans the trifling distance of about 180 miles, nearer each other than are Pennsylvania and Indiana; and the speech of the two counties is mutually unintelligible. Think of the jargons that you hear in other districts also, districts in which only English is supposed to be spoken-the varied patois of Scotland, of Wales, of many parts of Ireland, of considerable regions in England itself. I shall never forget-and many readers must have had similar experience if, like myself, they enjoy talking with all sorts of people, and especially with specimens of sorts that are new to them-I shall never forget trying one day, on a steamer, to converse with an English workingman, English born and bred, and finding it just barely possible to understand him. He recognized the difficulty himself, and apol'Ogized, saying, as near as I can represent him: "Ah know thut ah hahv ah varra bahd ahxunt." Find anything like that in the United States if you can. And here is part of an editorial article in the New Y'Ork Ti'mes:
"Over here we enrage our cousins by talking about their 'English accent,' calmly ignoring the fact that their speech is standard, and we have the 'accent,' not they. But one of the war correspondents laments that the English troops in France. and Belgium often cannot make themselves understood even
