American English

I

Introduction

American English English spoken in the United States. It differs from English spoken elsewhere in the world not so much in particulars as in the total configuration. That is, the dialects of what is termed Standard American English share enough characteristics so that the language as a whole can be distinguished from Received Standard (British) English or, for example, Australian English. See English Language.

The differences in pronunciation and cadence between spoken American English and other varieties of the language are easily discernible. In the written form, however, despite minor differences in vocabulary, spelling, and syntax, and apart from context, it is often difficult to determine whether a work was written in England, the United States, or any other part of the English-speaking world.

The American lexicographer Noah Webster was among the first to recognize the growing divergence of American and British usages. His American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) marked this difference with its inclusion of many new American words, indigenous meanings attached to old words, changes in pronunciation, and a series of spelling reforms that he devised (-er instead of British -re, -or to replace -our, check instead of cheque). Webster went so far as to predict that the American language would one day become a distinct language. Some later commentators, notably H.L.Mencken, compiler of The American Language (3 vols., 1936-1948), have also argued that it is a separate language, but most authorities today agree that it is a dialect of British English.

II

Patterns of American English

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the study of American English was concerned mainly with identifying Americanisms and giving the etymologies of Americanisms in the vocabulary: words borrowed from Native American languages (mugwump, caucus); words retained after having been given up in Great Britain (bug, to mean insects in general rather than bedbug specifically, as in Great Britain); or words that developed a new significance in the New World (corn, to designate what the British call maize, rather than grain in general). Large numbers of American terms (elevator, truck, hood [of an car], windshield, garbage collector, drugstore) were shown to differ from their British counterparts (respectively: lift, lorry, bonnet, windscreen, dustman, chemist's). Such lexical differences between Standard American and British English still exist; but as a result of modern communications, speakers of English everywhere have little trouble in understanding one another. More recently, linguistic researchers have turned their attention to the study of variation patterns in American English and to the social and historical sources of these patterns.

A

Regional Dialects

Regionally oriented research before 1940 distinguished three main regional dialects of Standard American English, each of which has several subdialects. The Northern (or New England) dialect is spoken in New England and New York State; one of its subdialects is the “New Yorkese” of New York (city). The Midland (or General American) dialect is heard along the coast from New Jersey to Delaware, with variants spoken in an area bounded by the Upper Ohio Valley, West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee. The Southern dialect, with its varieties, is spoken from Delaware to South Carolina. From their respective focal points these dialects, according to this theory, have spread and mingled across the rest of the country.

B

Social/Cultural Dialects and Languages

Social/cultural dialects vary both the vocabulary and grammar of Standard American English and are not always intelligible to speakers of the standard language, so are often classed as languages in their own right. Sea Island English Creole (Gullah) is a contact language, or creole, spoken by blacks in the Georgia-South Carolina low country, but also as far away as south-east Texas. Gullah, combining 17th- and 18th-century Black English and several West African languages, has given to American English such words as goober (peanut), gumbo (okra), and voodoo. It is the language used in the novel Porgy (1925) by the American writer DuBose Heyward. “Me beena shum” (I was seeing him/her/it) is barely intelligible to a speaker of Standard American English, and almost all Gullah speakers shift to more standard usage when conversing with outsiders.

Pennsylvania German, another distinguishable American language, is a mixture of several German dialects (from German settlers in Pennsylvania) with English. In this language such a construction as “He may come back bothsides, ain't?” (He might come back on either side, mightn't he?) is possible. Most Pennsylvania German speakers are bilingual with Standard American English.