The American Language was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1919, and it grew through four editions (1919, 1921, 1923, 1936) and two enormous supplements (1945, 1948) into one of the most comprehensive studies of a language ever undertaken by a single author. Mencken’s thesis was that American English was not a dialect of British English but a separate language — different in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, idiom, and spirit — and that its differences were not corruptions but innovations.
The book covers everything: the history of American pronunciation (why Americans say “tomayto” and the British say “tomahto”), the development of American spelling (why Americans write “color” and the British write “colour”), the contribution of immigrant languages (German, Yiddish, Italian, Spanish) to American vocabulary, the creation of new words through suffixation, compounding, and metaphor, the American genius for slang, the American treatment of proper names, and the social dynamics of linguistic change. Mencken’s research was prodigious — he corresponded with linguists, read newspapers and magazines obsessively, and collected examples of American usage with the avidity of a stamp collector.
The fourth edition (1936) is the standard text, and it is a masterpiece of readable scholarship. Mencken writes about language with the same energy and irreverence he brought to political and cultural criticism, and his examples are drawn from every level of American life — from presidential speeches to barroom talk, from literary prose to advertising copy. The two Supplements (1945, 1948), which together are longer than the main text, update and expand the original in extraordinary detail.
Collecting The American Language
First edition (Knopf, New York, 1919): Green cloth. The first edition is considerably shorter than later editions.
Market values:
- First edition (1919) in dust jacket: $300–$1,000
- Without jacket: $50–$150
- Fourth edition (1936), the definitive text: $40–$120
- Two-volume Supplements (1945, 1948): $30–$80 each
- Abridged edition (Raven McDavid, 1963): $10–$25