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Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism by Henry Seidel Canby
page 71 of 253 (28%)

The foreigner, it is true, has modified the English language
precisely as he has modified the American tradition. Continental
Europe is audible in the American tongue, as it is evident in the
American mind; but it is like the English or the Spanish touch
upon the Gothic style in architecture--there is modification, but
not fundamental change.

Many a foreign-born American has been restless under this
domination. The letters and memoirs of the French immigrants from
revolutionary France express discomfort freely. The Germans of
'48, themselves the bearers of a high civilization, have often
confessed an unwilling assimilation. The Germans of earlier
migrations herded apart like the later Scandinavians, in part to
avoid the tyranny of tongue.

Imagine a German coming here in early manhood. His tradition is
not English; he owes nothing to a contemporary England that he but
dimly knows. Speaking English, perhaps only English, he grows
impatient with a tongue every concept of which has an English
coloring. The dominance of the language, and especially of its
literature, irks him. He no longer wants to think as a German; he
wants to think as an American; but the medium of his thought must
be English. His anger often enough goes out against English
history, English literature. He is easily irritated by England.
But it is the American past that binds and is converting him. Such
consciousness of the power of environment is perhaps rare, but the
fact is common. In our few centuries of history millions have been
broken into English, with all that implies. Millions have
experienced the inevitable discomfort of a foreign tradition which
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