“‘You do not say ‘ouse’ and ‘and’ for ‘house’ and ‘hand’; all the children, and all of you, pronounce all these words like Americans, and not as real English pronounce them. Their way of speaking makes us always say that we talk better English than the English themselves.’ I had, indeed, often heard the Americans laughed at for saying so; but now the matter was explained. My carpenter repeated with great accuracy various instances of provincialisms and vulgarisms which he and all of them had noticed more or less, in all the English emigrants who had come amongst them. Seeing none of any other class, they naturally supposed that all English people pronounced the language in the same manner, and so prided themselves upon the superiority of American English. For notwithstanding the disagreeable nasal tone and drawling whine in which most of them speak, and notwithstanding a few national phrases and the peculiar use and pronunciation of certain words, it must be admitted that the American people, in general, speak English without provincial dialect or vulgarisms. Whence, in fact, could they acquire such, since all the emigrants they see came from different parts of England, and the provincialisms of the one neutralize those of the other.” Professor Whitney, in his “Language and the Study of Language,” expresses in academic terms much the same idea.[17] Lapses in pronunciation have never been punishable with death on the Wabash, as at the fords of the Jordan, where the shibboleth test of the Gileadites cost the Ephraimites forty and two thousand. The native Indianian is not sensitive about his speech and refuses to be humble before critics from the far East who say “idea-r” and “Philadelphia-r.” James Whitcomb Riley has made the interesting and just observation that the average countryman knows in reality a wider range of diction than he permits himself to use, and that his abridgments and variations are attributable to a fear lest he may offend his neighbors by using the best language at his command.[18] This is wholly true, and it is responsible in a measure for contributions to the common speech of local idioms and phrases. In rural Indiana and generally in the Southwest the phrase “’s th’ fellah says” is often used by a rustic to indicate his own appreciation of the fact that he has employed an unusual expression. Or it may be an actual quotation, as, for example, “Come over fer a visit, an’ we’ll treat you ’n a hostile manner, ’s Uncle Amos use t’ say.” This substitution of hostile for hospitable once enjoyed wide currency in Indiana and Illinois. Sulgrove confirms Riley’s impression:--