The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
LANGUAGE / ENGLISH
I have been pleased to see that in all cases you appeal to usage, as
the arbiter of language; and justly consider that as giving law to
grammar, and not grammar to usage. I concur entirely with you in
opposition to Purists, who would destroy all strength and beauty of
style, by subjecting it to a rigorous compliance with their rules.
I have been not a little disappointed, and made suspicious of my own
judgment, on seeing the Edinburgh Reviewers, the ablest critics of the
age, set their faces against the introduction of new words into the
English language; they are particularly apprehensive that the writers
of the United States will adulterate it. Certainly so great growing a
population, spread over such an extent of country, with such a variety
of climates, of productions, of arts, must enlarge their language, to
make it answer its purpose of expressing all ideas, the new as well as
the old. The new circumstances under which we are placed, call for new
words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects.
An American dialect will therefore be formed; so will a West-Indian
and Asiatic as a Scotch and an Irish are already formed. But whether
will these adulterate, or enrich the English language? Has the
beautiful poetry of Burns, or his Scottish dialect, disfigured it? Did
the Athenians consider the Doric, the Iionian, the Aeolic, and other
dialects, as is-figuring or as beautifying their language? Did they
fastidiously disavow Herodotus, Pindar, Theocritus, Sappho, Alcaeus,
or Grecian writers? On the contrary, they were sensible that the
variety of dialects, still infinitely varied by poetical license,
constituted the riches of their language, and made the Grecian Homer
the first of poets.
to John Waldo, 16 August 1813
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