Both Uses of
H.L. Mencken
in
Do You Speak American?
- But H. L. Mencken argued that American and British speech had evolved so differently that by the beginning of the twentieth century Americans had as reasonable a claim as the British to consider English their language.†
Chpt Intr. *
- So little attention had been paid to the language of America's black population that in the 1920s H. L. Mencken could seriously claim, "The Negro dialect, as we know it today, seems to have been formulated by the song writers for minstrel shows.†
Chpt 6
Definition:
influential U.S. journalist and literary critic (1880-1956)