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It is an old story that a boy wrote home to his father begging him to come West, because "mighty mean men get into office out here." But Ralph concluded that some Yankees had taught school in Hoopole County who would not have held a high place in the educational institutions of Massachusetts. Hawkins had some New England idioms, but they were well overlaid by a Western pronunciation.
Since learned Europeans have not disdained to study the structure of the idioms of America with the same care as they study those of the Semitic languages, and of the Greek and Latin, they no longer attribute to the imperfection of a language, what belongs to the rudeness of the nation.
The wise king once wittily said: "My people are like bad children that kick the shins of their nurse whenever their faces are washed." But they soon became reconciled to their Prado, a name, by the way, which runs through several idioms, in Paris they had a Pre-aux-clercs, the Clerks' Meadow, and the great park of Vienna is called the Prater.
With sharp words he encouraged the soldiers in the different idioms of their tribes, reminding them of the great riches within the city, of the beauty of the Greek women, of the large numbers of slaves inside those walls, and the Balearians attacked with lowered head, holding before them their wooden spears with points hardened by fire; the Celtiberians roared their war songs, beating on their breasts as on sonorous drums, drawing their sharp two-edged swords, and the Numidians and Mauritanians, dismounting from their horses, moved from place to place, cautious and sly, hurling upon the besieged the missiles which they carried in their girdles hidden beneath their white vestments.
It was a most wonderful burlesque of the ordinary College and Senate House examination, considering the subject from every possible point of view. Especially is it rich in the department then dear to Cambridge: the explanation of words, phrases, and idioms."
The Comprachicos had not, like the gipsies, an idiom of their own; their jargon was a promiscuous collection of idioms: all languages were mixed together in their language; they spoke a medley. Like the gipsies, they had come to be a people winding through the peoples; but their common tie was association, not race.
In consequence of this difficulty, and for other reasons to which it may not be necessary to allude, we shall endeavor to translate that which passed, as closely as the English idioms will permit us so to do. "My father is very welcome!" exclaimed Crowsfeather, who, by many degrees, exceeded all his companions in consideration and rank.
By degrees, as I acquired fluency and freedom in their language, and could make such application of its more nervous idioms as suited their case, the elder and more intelligent girls began rather to like me in their way: I noticed that whenever a pupil had been roused to feel in her soul the stirring of worthy emulation, or the quickening of honest shame, from that date she was won.
He seemed to think that no language could be so far formed as that it might not be enriched by idioms borrowed from another tongue. I said this was a very dangerous practice; and added, that I thought Milton had often injured both his prose and verse by taking this liberty too frequently. I recommended to him the prose works of Dryden as models of pure and native English.
It was a clear case of "Ne cherchez pas la femme!" He lost no time in teaching me some of those full-flavoured Flemish idioms which from the first enabled me to emphasise my meaning when I wished to express it in unmistakable language.
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