Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1920 — FEAR OF YANKEE SLANG [ARTICLE]

FEAR OF YANKEE SLANG

British Afraid Youth of Land Will Be Corrupted. Film Subtitles Seen as Menace to Vaunted English Purity of Speech. London.—England is apprehensive lest the vocabularies of her youth become corrupted through Incursions of American frequency with which resort is made to “Yankee talk” by British song and play writers seeking to enUvten their productions. Bands and orchestras throughout the country, when playing popular music, play American selections almost Exclusively. American songs monopolise the English musical hall and musical comis sub-title of Uie American constitutes the moat menacing threat

of vaunted English purity of speech. "The child at the pictures Is' picking up a new language from, the slangy American films,” says a critic in a contribution to the London- Daily News headed “The Vulgar Tongue.” “I visited two picture theaters today for. the express purpose of collecting slang phrases and of noticing the effect of the new language on the child as well as on the adult What the villain said to the hero when the latter started to argue with him was ‘Cub out that dope,* and a hundred piping voices repeated the injunction. The comic man announced his marriage to the belle of Lumbertown by saying, Tm hitched.’ “Of course, the American child can comprehend these things much better than the British child, who is quite unfamiliar with such phrases. Imagine A chlldf going home to mother and asking the meaning of ‘fly cop.’ We may admire the terseness of the

phrase “forget it,’ but does the subtitle “The Bun’s Gone Daffy’ convey anything to a theater full of cockneys? “In another picture a man trafficked secretly with Indian ß ’ exchanging bottles of “fire water* for beaver skins was sub-titled “The Bootlegger.*”