Society for Pure English, Tract 03 (1920) A Few Practical Suggestions

Excerpt

The Naturalization of Foreign Words.

There is no point on which usage is more uncertain and fluctuating than in regard to the words which we are always borrowing from foreign languages. Expression generally lags behind thought, and we are now more than ever handicapped by the lack of convenient terms to describe the new discoveries, and new ways of thinking and feeling by which our lives are enriched and made interesting. It has been our national custom in the past to eke out our native resources by borrowing from other languages, especially from French, any words which we found ready to our needs; and until recent times, these words were soon made current and convenient by being assimilated and given English shapes and sounds. We still borrow as freely as ever; but half the benefit of this borrowing is lost to us, owing to our modern and pedantic attempts to preserve the foreign sounds and shapes of imported words, which make their current use unnecessarily difficult. Owing to our false taste in this matter many words which have been long naturalized in the language are being now put back into their foreign forms, and our speech is being thus gradually impoverished. This process of de-assimilation generally begins with the restoration of foreign accents to such words as have them in French; thus ‘role’ is now written ‘rôle’; ‘debris’, ‘débris’; ‘detour’, ‘détour’; ‘depot’, ‘dépôt’; and the old words long established in our language, ‘levee’, ‘naivety’, now appear as ‘levée’, and ‘naïveté’. The next step is to italicize these words, thus treating them as complete aliens, and thus we often see rôle, dépôt, &c. The very old English word ‘rendezvous’ is now printed rendezvous, and ‘dilettante’ and ‘vogue’ sometimes are printed in italics. Among other words which have been borrowed at various times and more or less naturalized, but which are now being driven out of the language, are the following: confrere, congee, cortege, dishabille, distrait, ensemble, fête, flair, mellay (now mêlée), nonchalance, provenance, renconter, &c. On the other hand, it is satisfactory to note that ‘employee’ appears to be taking the place of ‘employé’.

The printing in italics and the restoration of foreign accents is accompanied by awkward attempts to revert to the foreign pronunciation of these words, which of course much lessens their usefulness in conversation. Sometimes this, as in nuance, or timbre practically deprives us of a word which most of us are unable to pronounce correctly; sometimes it is merely absurd, as in ‘envelope’, where most people try to give a foreign sound to a word which no one regards as an alien, and which has been anglicized in spelling for nearly two hundred years.

Members of our Society will, we hope, do what is in their power to stop this process of impoverishment, by writing and pronouncing as English such words as have already been naturalized, and when a new borrowing appears in two forms they will give their preference to the one which is most English....