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An ungoverned vocabulary
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在美国，规范语言的界限同地理界限一样难以确定。哪里在以最快的速度发展并不断走向未知领域，哪里的词汇也高速扩充。
An ungoverned vocabulary
不拘一格的词汇
THE American language grew not by "legal" incorporation of new words into grammar books and dictionaries, but by the unauthorized, unnumbered casual novelties of actual speech.
美国语言的发展不是依靠文法书籍和字典"合法"收编新词形成的，而是依靠现实语言中无数未经规范和随意创造的词汇实现的。
John Russell Bartlett, in the 19th century's most ambitious catalogue of American linguistic crimes (real or supposed), confessed that "our literary dialect" was inferior to that of England. But he still insisted that Americans generally spoke an English purer even than that spoken by the mass of Englishmen. Aiming at "a vocabulary of the colloquial language of the Untied States", Bartlett included "all the perversions of language, and abuses of words into which people, in certain sections of the country, have fallen, and some of those remarkable and ludicrous forms of speech which have been adopted in the western states."
Repeatedly he explained his focus on "the colloquial or familiar language." After the Civil War (while still defending the theoretical "purity" of American spoken English), Bartlett included every slang term he could find. He rejected the suggestion that printing slang words in his dictionary would "perpetuate" their use. What preserved words, he argued, was not dictionaries, but usage, "Slang terms will remain in use only so long as they may be useful in colloquial language... Slang is thus the source whence large additions are made to our language."
约翰·拉塞尔·巴特利特在他那部19世纪最为壮观的论述美国人在语言上所犯"罪行"(不管事实是否如此)的巨著中，承认"我们的书面文学语言"劣于英国。不过，他仍然坚持认为美国人通常讲的英语甚至比许多英国人讲的更为纯正。为了编写一本《美国口语词汇》，巴特利特收集了"美国某些地区人民使用的所有语汇，以及西部各州已使用的某些离奇荒唐的语言形式"。他反复解释说，他的注意中心是"口语或人们熟悉的语言"。南北战争以后，巴特利特虽然仍然要维护美国口头英语理论上的"纯洁性"，一面却收集了他所能发现的每一条俚语短语。他反对那种认为在他的字典里编入俚语会使得这些俚语"永远"使用下去的看法。他认为，使单词得以保存下来的不是字典而是用法，"只要这些俚语在口语中仍使用，它们就会保存下来，……所以，俚语是大量补充人们语言的源泉。"
The American language became the apotheosis of slang. Cultivated American speech was far readier to accept the slang of the humbler classes than was cultivated (or literary) British English. Walt Whitman in his November Boughs (1888) was one of the first to describe unashamedly — and even to boast of — this peculiarly American achievement:
美国语言是俚语发展的顶峰。优雅的美国语言比起优雅而书面的英国英语更加容易接受下层阶级的俚语。沃尔特·惠特曼在他的《十一月花束》(1888年)中首次毫不掩饰(甚至是夸大其词)地描述了这项美国的特殊成就:
Slang, profoundly considered, is the lawless germinal element, below all words and sentences, and behind all poetry, and proves a certain perennial rankness and Protestantism in speech. As the United States inherit by far their most precious possession — the language they talk and write — from the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes, I will allow myself to borrow a simile even of those forms farthest removed from American democracy. Considering language then as some mighty potentate, into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch ever enters a personage like one of Shakespeare's clowns, and takes position there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such is slang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism, and express itself illimitably, which in the highest walks produces poets and poems, and doubtless in pre-historic times gave the start to, and perfected, the whole immense tangle of the old mythologies. For, curious as it may appear, it is strictly the same impulse-source, the same thing. Slang, too, is the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently crystallize...
深刻地思考一下，俚语是一种不受约束的原始语言成分，它处于一切单词和句子之下，匿于一切诗歌之后，并且证明语言有一种经久不衰的、代表一定阶级的、带有一定反抗和革新意味的成分。由于美国从封建统治的旧世界继承了他们最珍贵的财富――他们口头的和书写的语言，我愿意借用那些远非美国民主形式的话来做比喻：不妨说语言是一位威权显赫的君王，而一个类似莎士比亚笔下小丑的人物竟然进入皇家的神圣大厅，占上一个席位，并在庄严无比的盛典上扮演了一个角色。这就是俚语，或者称之为兜圈子的语言，这也是普通人企图逃避拘泥于文字的单调俗套，无拘无束地表现自己的一种尝试。当其发展到最高峰时便产生了诗人和诗篇，而在史前时代，它无疑会创造出整套古代神话，并使之日臻完善。因为，虽然看来有点古怪，然而俚语、诗歌、神话的推动力实出于同一源泉，具有同样的本和源。俚语是一种有益的发酵素和催化剂，泡沫和小颗粒全都会冒出来，其中大部分迅速消失得无影无踪，但时而也会有一些保存下来，并永久结晶下来……
The science of language has large and close analogies in geological science, with its ceaseless evolution, its fossils, and its numberless submerged layers and hidden strata, the infinite go-before of the present. Or, perhaps language is more like some vast living body, or perennial body of bodies. And slang not only brings the first feeders of it, but is afterward the start of fancy, imagination and humor, breathing into its nostrils the breath of life.
语言科学非常近似地质科学，因为它也处于永不停息的发展演变之中，也有自己的化石、有自己无数淹没的岩层和深蔵的地层，以及无穷无尽的过去。或者说，语言更加近似某些活的机体，或者机体多年生长的躯干。俚语不仅为语言提供了原始的原料，而且还为语言提供幻想、想象和幽默，并注入生命的气息。
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