H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.
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detect anything wrong in this sentence from the London Times, denounced as corrupt by the Fowlers: “We must reconcile what we would like to do with what we can do.” Nor in this by W. B. Yeats: “The character who delights us may commit murder like Macbeth … and yet we will rejoice in every happiness that comes to him.” Half a century ago, impatient of the effort to fasten the English distinction upon American, George P. Marsh attacked it as of “no logical value or significance whatever,” and predicted that “at no very distant day this verbal quibble will disappear, and one of the auxiliaries will be employed, with all persons of the nominative, exclusively as the sign of the future, and the other only as an expression of purpose or authority.”29 This prophecy has been substantially verified. Will is sound American “with all persons of the nominative,” and shall is almost invariably an “expression of purpose or authority.”30
And so, though perhaps not to the same extent, with who and whom. Now and then there arises a sort of panicky feeling that whom is being neglected, and so it is trotted out,31 but in the main the American language tends to dispense with it, at least in its less graceful situations. Noah Webster, always the pragmatic reformer, denounced it so long ago as 1783. Common sense, he argued, was on the side of “who did he marry?” Today such a form as “whom are you talking to?” would seem somewhat affected in ordinary
Note 29. Quoted by White, in Words and Their Uses, pp. 264--5. White, however, dissented vigorously and devoted 10 pages to explaining the difference between the two auxiliaries. Most of the other authorities of the time were also against Marsh—for example, Richard Meade Bache (see his Vulgarisms and Other Errors of Speech, p. 92 et seq.). Sir Edmund Head, governor-general of Canada from 1854 to 1861, wrote a whole book upon the subject: Shall and Will, or Two Chapter on Future Auxiliary Verbs; London, 1856. In her Tendencies in Modern American Poetry; New York, 1917, Amy Lowell takes Carl Sandburg and Edgar Lee Masters to task for constantly using will for shall, and says that they share the habit “with many other modern American writers.” See also Text, Type and Style, by George B. Ives; Boston, 1921, p. 289 ff. [back]
Note 30. The probable influence of Irish immigration upon the American usage is not to be overlooked. Joyce says flatly (English As We Speak It in Ireland, p. 77) that, “like many another Irish idiom this is also found in American society chiefly through the influence of the Irish.” At all events, the Irish example must have reinforced it. In Ireland “Will I light the fire, ma’am?” is colloquially sound. [back]
Note 31. Often with such amusing results as “whom is your father?” and “whom spoke to me?” For these, alas, there is eminent authority. Cf. Matthew xvi, 13: “When Jesus came into the coasts of Cesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” See also Otto Jespersen: Chapters on English; London, 1918, p. 52. [back]
