by JD Collins @1995 All Rights Reserved

Recently HRH Charles Prince of England rebuked the former North American colonies for linguistic innovations infecting the mother country's tongue through the computer. The Standard English, according to the Prince, should be the BBC Broadcast Manual. Stopping short of canning bubble gum, His Highness would leave 'Jive Talking' back in America where it belongs.

Some lamented the words of the Prince. English they said should be the American National lanuage, "If Americans spoke English."

But long before the Prince voiced his concerns, John Adams foresaw the parting of the tounges to follow a parting of the ways when he rejected an English language version of a treaty in favor of one written to an American taste. By the administration of the great patriot Andrew Jackson, American and English had already formally parted ways. The early American Dictionaries simplified English spelling and grammar which had become inconsistent with the democratic terms of the settlement in America. The conquest of Mexico's northern province, 20 years later, completed the task. The treaty of Gaudoloupe-Hildago not only attached to the union the old Spanish cities of the southwest, it brought forth a new lexicon adapted from the Spanish and Mexican lexicons: buckaroo (Vaccarro), commpadre, adios (pronounced awdious), amigo, coyote, arroyo, mesa...such that the American language was irrevocably transformed.

While Prince Charles' speech received poor reception in America, the Gentlemen of the Rockaway Park Philosophical Society praised it as granting America at long last literary independence. The freer, more imaginative and creative language of North America has become too hip and funky for the somber and stiltified Old World. Thus the English and the Americans are no longer separated by a common language, but divided by a chasm: American Standard Jive, the new American tongue which should wag proudly in the forums of the world.

The sources of American Jive are many: the rhythm of the Black American (soul or true jive), the poetry of the American Vaccarro Cowboy (Cowboy jive), and the toil of the American working class (gangster talk), and the farmer (Cornpone). However due to its humble origins, jive can use many terms imprecisely or duplicitly. "Jive" itself means both to talk and to lie. The double meaning of Jive shows American creative wisdom at work.

Long ago, when recognizing the inevitable parting of the tounges in rejection of an English translation of a treaty in favor of an American one, John Adams may have become the great-grandfather of a proud new Rap.

This special flair in American jive can easily seen at a governmental level, by revising the titles of the major offices:

Main Man = (President) - - - - Third Wheel = (Vice President) - - - - The Man* Congress** = The Wheels - - - - (Chief Judge) House of Dudes*** = (Cabinet) - - - - Rapper Money Bags = (Speaker) (Treasurer) - - - - House of Honkeys*** = Mouthpiece - - - (Attorney General) = Bombs Guy = (Secretary of Defense) - - - - 5-0 = (Director, FBI)

* The Man - Jive uses the term duplicitly. It can mean a leader, Judge, Policeman, or even Lawyer, depending on the context. And of course only in Jivetalkin can THE MAN be a woman. To make Jive a viable language, certain of the colorful but duplicit terms would have to be limited to a particular meaning. Thus the President would be The Main Man and the Chief Judge would merely be the Man.

** Congress - Congress in insular English meant a 'meeting' without any juridical connotation. Its legal significance was an American invention. Thus the term is preserved.

*** House of Dudes - The lower house would be the House of 'Dudes'. In Modern Jive, a dude is an ordinary person. However in its derivation from a form of Old Cowboy Jive it meant an Easterner or "fancy pants." A 'Dude' wore fancy 'Duds'. To be all "duded up" means to dress up. "Dude's" duplicit meaning works well with the function of the lower house. It's a bunch of ordinary people all dressed up.

**** House of Honkeys - The upper chamber's new name might be controversial. However Honkey is a term which has changed meanings several times in the past few decades. As late as the 1960's both blacks and whites used the term to depict white trash. It probably was a corruption of an older ethnic slur (Old Gangster Jive) at immigrants from province of Bohemia, "Hunkeys". In Middle Jive, the term came to be used exclusively by blacks at whites perceived for undeserved superior status. In shaping modern standard jive, the term would preserve that connotation of superiority, without a racial overtone. But the duplicity of jive may hint that the superiority is undeserved.

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