Chapter 1.4 Summary

Many works point how continental philologists are aware of the English and American lay observations, says Mencken. He notes evidence in the publication of separate editions of the same work of, for example, Sprachf'hrer, which appears in both Amerikanisch and Englisch. Despite these and other publications which acknowledge the awkwardness for non-Americans to grasp American, the author maintains continental Europeans still take for granted that English and American are two different languages now separated: 1) in French articles, comments still point to the "peculiarities of American;" and 2) Scandinavians such as Elias Molee write that acquiring correct English is a great burden for "people grown so mongrel in blood as the Americans." However, Molee's suggested new language, a mix of English, American, and German, is for Mencken too complex a grammar for anyone to adopt.

Chapter 1.4 Analysis

As a proponent of language in general, and...