Some things were named with new compounds: rattlesnake, bluegrass, bobcat, bullfrog later, as the need arose, sidewalk, skyscraper, and drugstore. Once the Americans had their new government, words were pressed into service for some of its details as well, such as congress, senate, and assembly. Some things were named using existing words for passably similar things: laurel, beech, walnut, hemlock, robin, blackbird, lark, swallow, hedgehog. Many words were also taken (usually somewhat altered) from the indigenous cultures, eg moose, raccoon, caribou, opossum, skunk, hickory, pecan, squash, and toboggan.Įnglish was also altered to suit need. Later immigrant groups brought still more words. Spanish gave many words useful in the South West, such as canyon, coyote, mesa, and tornado French handed over words such as prairie, bureau, and levee Dutch gave words such as bluff, boss, and waffle German gave pretzel, sauerkraut, and nix the African languages of the slaves gave words such as goober, jambalaya, and the synonyms gumbo and okra. It had influences not present in England: a new landscape, new animals, and new people – not just those who were already there when the Europeans arrived but immigrants from continental Europe, as well as African slaves brought over to work on the plantations. Bill Bryson, in Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States, lists a number of words the English have left in the dustbin but Americans have kept using, including cabin, bug, hog, deck (of cards), junk, jeer, hatchet, slick, molasses, cesspool, trash, chore, and mayhem, American uses of gotten as a past participle of get, fall to mean autumn, mad to mean angry, and sick to mean more generally ill, which came from England but fell out of favour in the native land.Īmerican English changed too. The ‘ah’ pronunciation was considered low-class in England until after the Revolution.Īlong with pronunciation, word use in the two countries began to differ. Even at the time of the American Revolution, educated speech in England fully pronounced “r” in all places, and King George III probably said after, ask, dance, glass, and path the same as George Washington did: with the same a as in hat and fat. The ‘proper’ English of the early 1600s would sound to us like a cross between the English spoken in Cornwall and Dallas the accent has changed more in British English than in much of American. Then British English started changing in ways American didn’t. The earliest American linguistic landscape was strongly influenced by dialects of the sort that even today are not highly esteemed by those with money. Once tobacco caught on, America became more attractive for those with money, but it still needed servants more than owners – servants and eventually slaves. Four hundred years ago, the colonies were particularly attractive to people who were strongly opposed to the Church of England or couldn’t make a living there – they were not the cream of society. It starts with the identities of the first American English speakers. So why is American not a separate language? Or should we view it as one? How did it come to be so different, and how did it not come to be more different? As the linguist Max Weinreich said, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy the US has been an independent country for more than two centuries – and boasts the world’s most powerful examples of both. Since then, American English has been evolving, influenced by other languages, culture and technology. On the other hand, why has it not taken more liberties? English speakers first started colonising America more than 400 years ago. Why does American English take such liberties with our common tongue?
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