In the complete sentence, assimilation makes this disorganization much more obvious. Mearns, in a brief article[84] gives many examples of the extent to which it is carried. He hears "wah zee say?" for "what does he say?" "ware zee?" for "where is he?" "ast 'er in" for "ask her in," "itt'm owd" for "hit them out," "sry" for "that is right," and "c'meer" for "come here." He believes that /t/ is gradually succumbing to /d/, and cites "ass bedder" (for "that's better"), "wen juh ged din?" (for "when did you get in?"), and "siddup" (for "sit up"). One hears countless other such decayed forms on the street every day. /Have to/ is almost invariably made /hafta/, with the neutral vowel where I have put the second /a/. /Let's/, already noticed, is /le' 's/. The neutral vowel replaces the /oo/ of /good/ in /g'by/. "What did you say" reduces itself to "wuz ay?" /Maybe/ is /mebby/, /perhaps/ is /p'raps/, /so long/ is /s'long/, /excuse me/ is /skus me/; the common salutation, "How are you?" is so dismembered that it finally emerges as a word almost indistinguishable from /high/. Here there is room for inquiry, and that inquiry deserves the best effort of American phonologists, for the language is undergoing rapid changes under their very eyes, or, perhaps more accurately, under their very ears, and a study of those changes should yield a great deal of interesting matter. How did the word /stint/, on American lips, first convert itself into /stent/ and then into /stunt/? By what process was /baulk/ changed into /buck/? Both /stunt/ and /buck/ are among the commonest words in the everyday American vocabulary, and yet no one, so far, has investigated them scientifically.
A by-way that is yet to be so much as entered is that of naturalized loan-words in the common speech. A very characteristic word of that sort is /sashay/. Its relationship to the French /chassé/ seems to be plain, and yet it has acquired meanings in [Pg240] American that differ very widely from the meaning of /chassé/. How widely it is dispersed may be seen by the fact that it is reported in popular use, as a verb signifying to prance or to walk consciously, in Southeastern Missouri, Nebraska, Northwestern Arkansas, Eastern Alabama and Western Indiana, and, with slightly different meaning, on Cape Cod. The travels of /café/ in America would repay investigation; particularly its variations in pronunciation. I believe that it is fast becoming /kaif/. /Plaza/, /boulevard/, /vaudeville/, /menu/ and /rathskeller/ have entered into the common speech of the land, and are pronounced as American words. Such words, when they come in verbally, by actual contact with immigrants, commonly retain some measure of their correct native pronunciation. /Spiel/, /kosher/, /ganof/ and /matzoh/ are examples; their vowels remain un-American. But words that come in visually, say through street-signs and the newspapers, are immediately overhauled and have thoroughly Americanized vowels and consonants thereafter. School-teachers have been trying to establish various pseudo-French pronunciations of /vase/ for fifty years past, but it still rhymes with /face/ in the vulgate. /Vaudeville/ is /vawd-vill/; /boulevard/ has a hard /d/ at the end; /plaza/ has two flat /a/'s; the first syllable of /menu/ rhymes with /bee/; the first of /rathskeller/ with /cats/; /fiancée/ is /fy-ancé-y/; /née/ rhymes with /see/; /décolleté/ is /de-coll-ty/; /hofbräu/ is /huffbrow/; the German /w/ has lost its /v/-sound and becomes an American /w/. I have, in my day, heard /proteege/ for /protégé/, /habichoo/ for /habitué/, /connisoor/ for /connisseur/, /shirtso/ for /scherzo/, /premeer/ for /première/, /eetood/ for /étude/ and /prelood/ for /prelude/. /Divorcée/ is /divorcey/, and has all the rakishness of the adjectives in /-y/. The first syllable of /mayonnaise/ rhymes with /hay/. /Crème de menthe/ is /cream de mint/. /Schweizer/ is /swite-ser/. /Rochefort/ is /roke-fort/. I have heard /début/ with the last syllable rhyming with /nut/. I have heard /minoot/ for /minuet/. I have heard /tchef doover/ for /chef d'[oe]uvre/. And who doesn't remember