Our Founding Fathers and Yosemite Sam

Over the past few days, I’ve been reading Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States. While some of you might start snoozing before finishing the title, it’s much more interesting than you think because the author is Bill Bryson. Well-known for a variety of books, including A Walk in the Woods, The Lost Continent, and A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bryson pulls out another sardonic, irreverent, well-researched and fascinating book.

Made in America is not simply about the language, but the people and history that shaped it. Since I haven’t studied American history in seven years, I’ve been having a blast taking this refresher course that focuses on the changes that occurred as seen through the language. Bryson is not needlessly cynical, but likes to talk about people’s flaws as much as their accomplishments. I appreciate this especially in the discussion of America’s early years, as we Americans could stand to take a more realistic view of our Founding Fathers and the Constitution, rather than idolizing them as patriarchs and scripture. 

Something that has struck me in the book is the way that fiction affects what most people believe about history— sometimes to an alarming extent. Thanks to Washington Irving’s romanticized and completely inaccurate account of Columbus’s voyage to America, a huge part of the population still thinks that people in the 1400s didn’t know the earth was round. Due to fanciful poems, made-up accounts, and hero-stories that unapologetically exaggerate, some basic concepts about the founding and growth of America get skewed. Bryson inspires me to double-check my facts and be sure they are pulled from reliable sources, not just romanticized accounts.

Although I’m not finished with the book yet, it’s already been a fun and fascinating ride. If you get the chance, check it out.

And now, will all credit to Bill Bryson, here is my favorite quote in the book so far. Here he talks about how the way that people in the 1700s spelled shows a lot about their pronunciation. Keep George Washington, Paul Revere and Patrick Henry in mind as you read this passage that blew my mind:

“…We can find find libity for liberty, patchis for purchase, ort for ought, weamin for women, through for throw, nater for nature, keer for care, jest for just, ole for old, pizen for poison, darter (or even dafter) for daughter. The pronunciations ‘chaw’ for chew, ‘varmint’ for vermin, ‘stomp’ for stamp, ‘heist’ for hoist, ‘rile’ for roil, ‘hoss’ for horse, and ‘tetchy’ for touchy were commonly, if not invariably, heard among educated speakers on both sides of the Atlantic. All of this suggests that if we wished to find a modern-day model for British and American speech of the late eighteenth century, we could probably do no better than Yosemite Sam.”

When I teach my kids the Preamble to the Constitution, I’m going to tell them to recite it in Yosemite Sam’s voice. Sound good, Zachary?

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