GOOD USAGE

Despite the stout resistance of grammarians and scholars, the vulgarisms of popular speech are finally gaining their deserved recognition. Such at least is the opinion set forth in an editorial in "Liberty" which takes up the cause of natural expressions such as "He don't" and "It's me" as opposed to the stilted "He doesn't" and "It's I." "Ain't," the writer admits with a sigh, is gradually losing ground in its fight to supplant the awkward "am not" or "aren't."

If phrases which so completely violate the principles of correct grammar as "He don't" are to become permissible in good usage, purists and scholars may indeed mourn the loss of a great battle in their age long fight against popular ignorance and carelessness. And America, often belittled by foreigners as a land of little culture and less scholarship, will be quite defenceless against the jibes of its European detractors.

However loud the popular cry may grow against the difficulty and affection of speaking corectly, however much "Liberty" may protest against the refusal of dictionary makers to substitute the easy idiom of the masses for the artificial language of scholarship, the essentials of good speech in a language as completely crystallized as English must remain the same. The efforts of the language reformers to force doubtful or incorrect expressions into recognized good usage can have but one result--to subvert good usage itself.