Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original edition for your reading pleasure. (Worth every penny!)
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Contents:
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
I. Introductory
1. The Diverging Streams of English
2. The Academic Attitude
3. The View of Writing Men
4. Foreign Observers
5. The General Character of American English
6. The Materials of the Inquiry
II. The Beginnings of American
1. The First Differntiation
2. Sources of Early Americanisms
3. New Words of English Material
4. Changed Meaning
5. Archaic English Words
6. Colonial Pronunciation
III. The Period of Growth
1. Character of the New Nation
2. The Language in the Making
3. The Expanding Vocabulary
4. Loan-Words and Non-English Influences
5. Pronunciation Before the Civil War
IV. American and English Today
1. The Two Vocabularies
2. Differences in Usage
3. Honorifics
4. Euphemisms
5. Expletives and Forbidden Words
V. International Exchanges
1. Americanisms in England
2. Briticisms in the United States
VI. Tendencies in American
1. General Characters
2. Lost Distinctions
3. Processes of Word-Formation
4. Foreign Influences Today
VII. The Standard American Pronunciation
1. General Characters
2. The Vowels
VIII. American Spelling
1. The Two Orthographies
2. The Influence of Webster
3. The Advance of American Spelling
4. British Spelling in the United States
5. Simplified Spelling
6. The Treatment of Loan-Words
7. Minor Differences
IX. The Common Speech
1. Grammarians and Their Ways
2. Spoken American As It Is
3. The Verb
4. The Pronoun
5. The Adverb
6. The Noun
7. The Adjective
8. The Double Negative
9. Other Syntactical Peculiarities
10. Vulgar Pronunciation
X. Proper Names in America
1. Surnames
2. Given Names
3. Geographical Names
4. Street Names
XI. American Slang
1. Its Origin and Nature
2. War Slang
Appendices
I. Specimens of the American Vulgate
1. The Declaration of Independence in American
2. Baseball-American
3. Ham-American
4. Vers Américain
II. Non-English Dialects in America
1. German
1. French
2. Spanish
3. Yiddish
4. Italian
5. Dano-Norwegian
6. Swedish
7. Dutch
8. Icelandic
9. Greek
10. The Slavic Languages
III. Proverb and Platitude
Bibliography
1. General
2. Dictionaries of Americanism
3. The Process of Language Growth
4. Loan-Words
5. Pronunciation
6. Regional Variations
a. General Discussions
b. New England
c. The Middle States
d. The South
e. The Middle West
f. The Far West
g. The Colonies
h. Negro-English
7. Spelling
8. Geographical Names
9. Surnames and Given Names
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An excerpt from the Preface to the Second Edition:
This edition has been greatly enlarged and thoroughly rewritten. Every chapter has been scrutinized for errors, and nearly every page shows changes. The corrections and suggestions that accumulated after the publication of the first edition---they came from all parts of the world, and from observers of the most various equipment and accuracy---were of such bulk that they almost alarmed me into abandoning the work altogether, but after due prayer I finally tackled them, and the result is now spread before the nobility and gentry. I thought it well, in a book opening so much new ground, to document liberally, that possible successors might be spared the tedious searches that I had to make myself. In the revision I have pursued the same plan, and I believe that all the useful material is now charted. Especially in the first chapter and in the chapters on Tendencies in American, American and English Today, American Spelling, and Proper Names in America there are summaries of much new matter, and somewhat elaborate references. The discussion of foreign languages in the United States, scarcely more than a footnote in the first edition, is now enlarged and put into an appendix. Another appendix offers some specimens of the American vulgate. The bibliography has been augmented, reorganized, and I hope, made more useful. Everywhere the text has been revised in the light of the criticism that has reached me.
Unluckily, the book does not contain all of the new matter that I hoped to get into it. For one thing, there is the “more scientific examination of the grammar of the American vulgar speech,’’ spoken of in the preface to the first edition. It is not that I made no effort to carry out this promised inquiry; it is simply that I found it
