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| Hamburger with One Pickle Slice |
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The Hope of American English (Vanity Fair Magazine, 1919)
Vanity Fair correspondent L.L. Jones cracked open a copy of "American English" by H.L. Mencken:"At last a man has arrived who knows something about English prose style under American conditions..."
| H.L Mencken on American English (The Smart Set, 1921)
H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956; author of The American Language ) reviewed American English by Gilbert M. Tucker.
"The fact is, of course, that American English is noticeably superior to British English in several important respects, and that not the least of these superiorities lies in the learned department of spelling. Here even the more intelligent Englishmen are against their own rules, and in favor of the American rules, and every year one notices a greater tendency among them to spell "wagon" with one "g" instead of two...The English "-our" ending, the main hallmark of English spelling, dies harder."
| British Attempts to Comprehend the American Lingo (Yank Magazine, 1943)
A small article pertaining to a booklet titled, "When You Meet an American", which was distributed to British girls by their government during World War II in order to help them understand American GIs and their own unique brand of English:"Try not to appear shocked at some of their expressions...if a lad from back home asks for a hot dog he actually means, 'fried sausage in split rolls'...'Hi'ya baby!' is legitimate". Click here to read further about American teen slang.
*Watch this Color Footage of American GIs Enjoying the Company of English Girls*
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| American English and American Identity (The American Legion Weekly, 1920)
When it came to the issue of assimilating immigrants on American shores and deporting "Alien Slackers" (among other assorted foreign ingrates), few groups yelled louder than the editors at The American Legion Weekly. In this anonymous opinion piece, one writer "gently" advocates for the recognition of American English in all schools with heavy immigrant numbers.
| American English is Better Than U.K. English... (Literary Digest, 1922)
E.B. Osborn of the London Morning "Post" reviewed Mencken's book, "American Language" (1921) and came away amused and in agreement with many of the same conclusions that the "Bard of Baltimore" had reached:
"...Americans show superior imaginativeness and resourcefulness; for example, "movie" is better than "cinema"...The American language offers a far greater variety of synonyms than ours; transatlantic equivalents for "drunk" are"Piffled, spifflicated, awry-eyed, tanked, snooted, stewed, ossified, slopped, fiddled, edged, loaded, het-up, frazzled, jugged and burned."
| A German Champion of American English (Literary Digest, 1908)
Professor Alois Brandl (1855 - 1940), founder of the German Shakespeare Society and chief Professor of English at the University of Berlin stated "that the English of Americans was not only improving, but was already as good as that of our English cousins." Anglo-Saxon scholar Professor W.W. Skeat (1835 - 1912) of Cambridge University, agreed with the German savant and went on in greater detail. No mention is made as to what unit of measure was applied to reach their conclusions.
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