Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 01:34:51 EST From: Bapopik Subject: American Popular Speech; White House AMERICAN POPULAR SPEECH No response? No response at all? The AMERICAN POPULAR SPEECH online publication will accept ads (which, on the computer, would be charged per site "hit"). Unlike AMERICAN SPEECH, everyone who writes for it will be PAID! It could be a lot or a little--whatever the ADS & ANS feel like payin'. Depends on the site "hits." We'll send a press release to every computer magazine and computer column. We'll tell every college and high school language program. We'll get an Associated Press story. Entertainment Weekly, too. Maybe even Safire will write about it. And we'll advertise. If you go to the movies, you notice that there are advertising slides before the main presentation. One of the slides will say something like, "Movie Reviews & a lot more. WWW.AMPOPSPEECH.COM, a new (free!) online magazine from the American Dialect Society and the American Name Society." Those kids who go to the movies are very computer literate. Many are applying to college programs, including language programs. Not one is an ADS member, and probably not one has read AMERICAN SPEECH. That's our fault. The first issue of AMERICAN POPULAR SPEECH online will have 50,000-100,000 hits. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------- WHITE HOUSE AMERICA IN SO MANY WORDS has "White House" as the word of the year for 1811. Is this too early? I found this--which never mentions "White House"--in the Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 13 April 1841, pg. 2, col. 4: "THE PALACE."--We perceive that the Washington letter writers apply this term to the President's house. One of them, in writing to the Journal of Commerce, says that the arrangements for the funeral of General Harrison were made at the "palace." This letter writer is, probably, an Englishman; and were this a solitary instance of substitution of foreign for native phraseology, we should let it pass without notice. But when we daily meet with similar attempts, we feel disposed to say a word in favor of our own established usages and terms. One of the New York papers, conducted by a foreigner, calls the President and his Secretaries, "the Ministry." We are not disposed to adopt foreign terms, when terms for the same ideas are established among us by custom, and especially when they are established by law. _Palace_, a term recognised by the laws of England, is not mentioned in ours, and the executive residence at Washington is legally named, in acts of Congress, the _President's House_. Therefore, our laws have settled the question; and we ought to have _native_ pride _enough_ to observe them, and _too much_ to reject them for the sake of becoming servile imitators of European aristocracies. Neither _ministry_ nor _cabinet_, as applied to the President and heads of departments, are recognized by our laws. But the latter is recognized by _custom_, and that ought to be a sufficient argument against the change. But if it be not, we find another in the resemblance which the charge establishes between us and European monarchies. If we are really ashamed of our legal or political costume, and must go abroad for fashions, let us borrow from _Republics_, and not from monarchies. If the term _Cabinet_ does not suit us, let us borrow something from Holland or Switzerland. The Dutch, though living under a monarchy, still retain their republican language and customs. The Jews very wisely thought that the exclusion of foreign manners and customs was a good barrier against foreign corruptions. We might profit by their wisdom, and _hanker_ less after John Bull's cast clothes. If the Lincoln Bedroom really is for sale, maybe we should go back to "palace."