In the written work of grades VI and VII, however, certain changes appear, no doubt because of the special pedagogical effort against the more salient oral errors. The child, pen in hand, has in mind the cautions oftenest heard, and so reveals something of that greater exactness which all of us show when we do any writing that must bear critical inspection. Thus, the relative frequency of confusions between the past tense forms of verbs and the perfect participles drops from 24 per cent to 5 per cent, and errors based on double negatives drop to 1 per cent. But this improvement in one direction merely serves to unearth new barbarisms in other directions, concealed in the oral tables by the flood of errors now remedied. It is among the verbs that they are still most numerous; altogether, the errors here amount to exactly 50 per cent of the total. Such locutions as /I had went/ and /he seen/ diminish relatively and absolutely, but in all other situations the verb is treated with the lavish freedom that is so characteristic of the American common speech. Confusions of the past and present tenses jump from 2 per cent to 19 per cent, thus eloquently demonstrating the tenacity of the error. And mistakes in the forms of nouns and pronouns increase from 2 per cent to 16: a shining proof of a shakiness which follows the slightest effort to augment the vocabulary of everyday.
The materials collected by Dr. Charters and his associates are not, of course, presented in full, but his numerous specimens must strike familiar chords in every ear that is alert to the sounds and ways of the /sermo vulgus/. What he gathered in Kansas City might have been gathered just as well in San Francisco, or New Orleans, or Chicago, or New York, or in Youngstown, O., or Little Rock, Ark., or Waterloo, Iowa. In each of these places, large or small, a few localisms might have been noted--/oi/ substituted for ur in New York, /you-all/ in the South, a few Germanisms in Pennsylvania and in the upper Mississippi [Pg190] Valley, a few Spanish locutions in the Southwest, certain peculiar vowel-forms in New England--but in the main the report would have been identical with the report he makes. That vast uniformity which marks the people of the United States, in political doctrine, in social habit, in general information, in reaction to ideas, in prejudices and enthusiasms, in the veriest details of domestic custom and dress, is nowhere more marked than in language. The incessant neologisms of the national speech sweep the whole country almost instantly, and the iconoclastic changes which its popular spoken form are undergoing show themselves from coast to coast. "He hurt /his/self," cited by Dr. Charters, is surely anything but a Missouri localism; one hears it everywhere. And so, too, one hears "she invited /him/ and /I/," and "it hurt /terrible/," and "I /set/ there," and "this /here/ man," and "no, I /never, neither/", and "he /ain't/ here," and "where is he /at/?" and "it seems /like/ I remember," and "if I /was/ you," and "/us/ fellows," and "he /give/ her hell." And "he /taken/ and kissed her," and "he /loaned/ me a dollar," and "the man was /found/ two dollars," and "the bee /stang/ him," and "I /wouldda/ thought," and "/can/ I have one?" and "he got /hisn/," and "the boss /left/ him off," and "the baby /et/ the soap," and "/them/ are the kind I like," and "he /don't/ care," and "no one has /their/ ticket," and "how /is/ the folks?" and "if you would /of gotten/ in the car you could /of rode/ down."