Lecture 8: AMERICAN ENGLISH STRUCTURE CONTENTS
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Objectives
3.0Main Body
3.1 General Overview
3.2 General America (GA)
3.3 American English Structure
3.4 Other American English types
4.0 Conclusion
5.0 Summary
6.0 Tutor Marked Assignments
7.0 References and Other Sources
1.0 INTRODUCTION
In this unit, we shall study American English variety, its characteristics, emergence
and usage. It is pertinent to state that the English in use in America is an offshoot
of standard British English since the mainstream politicians and early immigrants
to America were from Europe and their basic language was English. However, the
English language in America is conditioned to carry the American way of
communication, attitude and culture. British and American English shared similar
linguistic forms except certain differences which we will enumerate and discuss in
further modules in this course. We shall discus the historical development of this
variety and the contemporary position of this variety amongst the vast emerging
varieties of English worldwide.
2.0 OBJECTIVES
By the end of the unit, the students should be able to:
1. Trace the origin of American English variety
2. Understand the emergence of General America (GA) as a variety
3. Discuss the major characteristics of the language
4. Distinguish between American English and other varieties
5. Assess the linguistic differences in the variety
3.0 MAIN BODY
3.1 General Overview
The English language as used in the United States is American English (AmE, AE,
AmEng, USEng, en-US), also known as United States English or U.S. English. It
is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. It is
estimated that approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the
United States. The use of English in the United States was inherited from British
colonization. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America
in the 17th century. During that time, there were also speakers in North America of
Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Spanish,
Swedish, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Finnish, as well as numerous Native
American languages. While written AmE is standardized across the country, there
are several recognizable variations in the spoken language, both in pronunciation
and in vernacular vocabulary. Historical background The English language was
first introduced to the Americas by British colonization, beginning in the early
17th century. Similarly, the language spread to numerous other parts of the world
as a result of British colonization elsewhere and the spread of the former British
Empire, which, by 1921, held sway over a population of about 470–570 million
people: approximately a quarter of the world's population at that [Link] the past
400 years, the form of the language used in the Americas – especially in the United
States – and that used in the United Kingdom and the British Islands have diverged
in many ways, leading to the dialects now commonly referred to as American
English and British English. Differences between the two include pronunciation,
grammar, vocabulary (lexis), spelling, punctuation, idioms, formatting of dates and
numbers, and so on. A small number of words have completely different meanings
between the two dialects or are even unknown or not used in one of the dialects.
One particular contribution towards formalizing these differences came from Noah
Webster, who wrote the first American dictionary (published in 1828) with the
intention of showing that people in the United States spoke a different dialect from
Britain. This divergence between American English and British English once
caused George Bernard Shaw to say that the United States and United Kingdom
are "two countries divided by a common language"; a similar comment is ascribed
to Winston Churchill. Likewise, Oscar Wilde wrote, "We have really everything in
common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language." (The
Canterville Ghost, 1888) Henry Sweet predicted in 1877 that within a century,
American English, Australian English and British English would be mutually
unintelligible. It may be the case that increased worldwide communication through
radio, television, the Internet, and globalization has reduced the tendency to
regional variation. This can result either in some variations becoming extinct (for
instance, the wireless, superseded by the radio) or in the acceptance of wide
variations as "perfectly good English" everywhere. Often at the core of the dialect,
though, the idiosyncrasies remain.
After the Civil War, the settlement of the western territories by migrants from the
Eastern U.S. led to dialect mixing and leveling, so that regional dialects are most
strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard. The Connecticut River and
Long Island Sound is usually regarded as the southern/western extent of New
England speech, which has its roots in the speech of the Puritans from East Anglia
who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Potomac River generally
divides a group of Northern coastal dialects from the beginning of the Coastal
Southern dialect area; in between these two rivers several local variations exist,
chief among them the one that prevails in and around New York City and northern
New Jersey, which developed on a Dutch substratum after the British conquered
New Amsterdam. The main features of Coastal Southern speech can be traced to
the speech of the English from the West Country who settled in Virginia after
leaving England at the time of the English Civil War, and to the African influences
from the African Americans who were enslaved in the South. Although no longer
region-specific, African American Vernacular English, which remains prevalent
among African Americans, has a close relationship to Southern varieties of AmE
and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans. A distinctive
speech pattern was also generated by the separation of Canada from the United
States, centered on the Great Lakes region. This is the Inland North Dialect—the
"standard Midwestern" speech that was the basis for General American in the mid-
20th Century (although it has been recently modified by the northern cities vowel
shift). In the interior, the situation is very different. West of the Appalachian
Mountains begins the broad zone of what is generally called "Midland" speech.
This is divided into two discrete subdivisions, the North Midland that begins north
of the Ohio River valley area, and the South Midland speech; sometimes the
former is designated simply "Midland" and the latter is reckoned as "Highland
Southern." The North Midland speech continues to expand westward until it
becomes the closely related Western dialect which contains Pacific Northwest
English as well as the well-known California English, although in the immediate
San Francisco area some older speakers do not possess the cot-caught merger and
thus retain the distinction between words such as cot and caught which reflects a
historical Mid-Atlantic heritage. Mormon and Mexican settlers in the West
influenced the development of Utah English. 3.1 Self-Assessment Exercise
“Written AmE is standardized across the country but there are several recognizable
variations in the spoken language both in pronunciation and in vernacular
vocabulary.” Explain this statement with regards to the nature of American English
varieties.
3.2 General American (GA) General American (GA) is the name given to any
American accent that is relatively free of noticeable regional influences. Written
forms of American English are fairly well standardized across the United States.
An unofficial standard for spoken American English has developed because of
mass media and of geographic and social mobility. This standard is generally
called a ‘General American’ or Standard Midwestern accent and dialect, and it can
typically be heard from network newscasters, although local newscasters tend
toward more parochial forms of speech. Despite this unofficial standard, regional
variations of American English have not only persisted, but have actually
intensified. Regional dialects in the United States typically reflect the elements of
the language of the main immigrant groups in any particular region of the country,
especially in terms of pronunciation and vernacular vocabulary. Scholars have
mapped at least four major regional variations of spoken American English:
Northern (really north-eastern), Southern, Midland, and Western. After the
American Civil War, the settlement of the western territories by migrants from the
east led to dialect mixing and levelling, so that regional dialects are most strongly
differentiated in the eastern parts of the country that were settled earlier. Localized
dialects also exist with quite distinct variations, such as in Southern Appalachia
and New York City.
The South Midland or Highland Southern dialect follows the Ohio River in a
generally southwesterly direction, moves across Arkansas and Oklahoma west of
the Mississippi, and peters out in West Texas. It is a version of the Midland speech
that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms (outsiders often mistakenly
believe South Midland speech and coastal South speech to be the same). The island
state of Hawaii has a distinctive Hawaiian Pidgin. Dialect development in the
United States has been notably influenced by the distinctive speech of such
important cultural centers as Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Charleston, New
Orleans, and Detroit, which imposed their marks on the surrounding areas.
American English, unlike British English, seems loose in phonology, morphology
and syntax. There is the intended simplicity in the language use in order to bridge
the archaic and old model English lexis, vocabulary and syntactic models. General
America is not easily recognizable among the general populace because American
has a hybrid of races that live within it but those who are involved in official things
like the parliament, politics, administration, marketing and business employ GA in
the writing of memos, letters and official documents, while the broadcast media
employ the same in the broadcast except when the need arises for a shift in
language use. Generally, GA is to America what RP is to Britain but America is
not class conscious in this usage like the British.
3.2 Self-Assessment Exercise Critically assess the statement that “General
American is beyond accent and region”
3.3 American English Structure North America has given the English lexicon
many thousands of words, meanings, and phrases. Several thousand are now used
in English as spoken internationally; others, however, died within a few years of
their creation. The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as the
colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from
the Native American languages. Examples of such names are opossum, raccoon,
squash, and moose (from Algonquian). Other Native American loanwords, such as
wigwam or moccasin, describe artificial objects in common use among Native
Americans. The languages of the other colonizing nations also added to the
American vocabulary, for instance, cookie, cruller, and pit (of a fruit) from Dutch;
levee, portage "carrying of boats or goods," and (probably) gopher from French;
barbecue, from Spanish. Among the earliest and most notable regular "English"
additions to the American vocabulary, dating from the early days of colonization
through the early 19th century, are terms describing the features of the North
American landscape; for instance, run, branch, fork, snag, bluff, gulch, neck (of the
woods), barrens, bottomland, notch, knob, riffle, rapids, watergap, cutoff, trail,
timberline, and divide. Already existing words such as creek, slough, sleet, and (in
later use) watershed, received new meanings that were unknown in England. Other
noteworthy American toponyms are found among loanwords; for example, prairie,
butte (French); bayou (Louisiana French); coulee (Canadian French, but used also
in Louisiana with a different meaning); canyon, mesa, arroyo (Spanish); vlei, kill
(Dutch, Hudson Valley).
The word corn, used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote
the plant Zea mays, the most important crop in the U.S., originally named Indian
corn by the earliest settlers: wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc. came to be collectively
referred to as grain (or breadstuffs). Other notable farm related vocabulary
additions were the new meanings assumed by barn (not only a building for hay and
grain storage, but also for housing livestock) and team (not just the horses, but also
the vehicle along with them), as well as, in various periods, the terms range, (corn)
crib, truck, elevator, sharecropping, and feedlot. Ranch, later applied to a house
style, derives from Mexican Spanish; most Spanish contributions came indeed
after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West. Among these are, other than
toponyms, chaps (from chaparreras), plaza, lasso, bronco, buckaroo; examples of
"English" additions from the cowboy era are bad man, maverick, chuck "food," and
Boot Hill; from the California Gold Rush came such idioms as hit pay dirt or strike
it rich. A couple of notable late 18th century additions are the verb belittle and the
noun bid, both first used in writing by Thomas Jefferson. With the new continent,
developed new forms of dwelling, and hence a large inventory of words
designating real estate concepts (land office, lot, outlands, waterfront, the verbs
locate and relocate, betterment, addition, subdivision), types of property (log cabin,
adobe in the 18th century; frame house, apartment, tenement house, shack, shanty
in the 19th century; project, condominium, townhouse, split-level, mobile home,
multi-family in the 20th century), and parts thereof (driveway, breezeway,
backyard, dooryard; clapboard, siding, trim, baseboard; stoop (from Dutch),
family room, den; and, in recent years, HVAC, central air, walkout basement. Ever
since the American Revolution, a great number of terms connected with the U.S.
political institutions have entered the language; examples are run, gubernatorial,
primary election, carpetbagger (after the Civil War), repeater, lame duck, and
pork barrel. Some of these are internationally used (e.g. caucus, gerrymander,
filibuster, exit poll).
The rise of capitalism, the development of industry, and material innovations
throughout the 19th and 20th centuries were the source of a massive stock of
distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms. Typical examples are the vocabulary
of railroading and transportation terminology, ranging from names of roads (from
dirt roads and back roads to freeways and parkways) to road infrastructure
(parking lot, overpass, rest area), and from automotive terminology to public
transit (e.g. in the sentence "riding the subway downtown"); such American
introductions as commuter (from commutation ticket), concourse, to board (a
vehicle), to park, double-park, and parallel park (a car), double decker, or the
noun terminal have long been used in all dialects of English. Trades of various
kinds have endowed (American) English with household words describing jobs
and occupations (bartender, longshoreman, patrolman, hobo, bouncer, bellhop,
roustabout, white collar, blue collar, employee, boss (from Dutch), intern, busboy,
mortician, senior citizen), businesses and workplaces (department store,
supermarket, thrift store, gift shop, drugstore, motel, main street, gas station,
hardware store, savings and loan, hock (also from Dutch), as well as general
concepts and innovations (automated teller machine, smart card, cash register,
dishwasher, reservation (as at hotels), pay envelope, movie, mileage, shortage,
outage, blood bank). Already existing English words—such as store, shop, dry
goods, haberdashery, lumber—underwent shifts in meaning; some—such as
mason, student, clerk, the verbs can (as in "canned goods"), ship, fix, carry, enroll
(as in school), run (as in "run a business"), release, and haul—were given new
significations, while others (such as tradesman) have retained meanings that
disappeared in England. From the world of business and finance came break even,
merger, delisting, downsize, disintermediation, bottom line; from sports
terminology came, jargon aside, Monday-morning quarterback, cheap shot, game
plan (football); in the ballpark, out of left field, off base, hit and run, and many
other idioms from baseball; gamblers coined bluff, blue chip, ante, bottom dollar,
raw deal, pass the buck, ace in the hole, freeze-out, showdown; miners coined
bedrock, bonanza, peter out, pan out, and the verb prospect from the noun; and
railroadmen are to be credited with make the grade, sidetrack, head-on, and the
verb railroad. A number of Americanisms describing material innovations
remained largely confined to North America: elevator, ground, gasoline; many
automotive terms fall in this category, although many do not (hatchback, SUV,
station wagon, tailgate, motorhome, truck, pickup truck, to exhaust). In addition to
the above-mentioned loans from French, Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Dutch, and
Native American languages, other accretions from foreign languages came with
19th and early 20th century immigration; notably, from Yiddish (chutzpah,
schmooze, and such idioms as ‘need something like a hole in the head’) and
German—hamburger and culinary terms like frankfurter/franks, liverwurst,
sauerkraut, wiener, deli(catessen); scram, kindergarten, gesundheit; musical
terminology (whole note, half note, etc.); and apparently ‘cookbook’, fresh
"impudent," and ‘what gives?’. Such constructions as ‘Are you coming with?’ and
‘I like to dance’ (for "I like dancing") may also be the result of German or Yiddish
influence. Finally, a large number of English colloquialisms from various periods
are American in origin; some have lost their American flavour (from OK and cool
to nerd and 24/7), while others have not (‘have a nice day’, ‘sure’); many are now
distinctly old-fashioned (swell, groovy). Some English words now in general use,
such as hijacking, disc jockey, boost, bulldoze, and jazz, originated as American
slang. Among the many English idioms of U.S. origin are ‘get the hang of’, ‘take
for a ride’, ‘bark up the wrong tree’, ‘keep tabs’, ‘run scared’, ‘take a backseat’,
‘have an edge over’, ‘stake a claim’, ‘take a shine to’, ‘in /on the ground floor’,
‘bite off more than one can chew’, ‘off/on the wagon’, ‘stay put’, ‘inside track’,
‘stiff upper lip’, ‘bad hair day’, ‘throw a monkey wrench’, ‘under the weather’,
‘jump bail’, ‘come clean’, ‘come again?’, and ‘will the real x please stand up?’.
3.3 Self-Assessment Exercise From your understanding of the nature of American
English, explain the major morphological influences in the development of the
American lexicon.
4.0 CONCLUSION
American English is an offshoot of British English but with modifications resulting
from the vast interactions between Americans and the native Americans (also
known as Red Indians), and the surrounding nations like the Mexicans from
Mexico, French from Canada,
English from Canada and the Spaniards. Other languages like the language of the
blacks which culminated in the existence of African-American English and accent
also had its toll in the emergence of American English. Most regions in America
have geographical accents that are identifiable. The Alaskans, the Californians, the
Utahs, the Bostonians all have unique accents for communication. America has
largely an accent based English and it is a nation that is not as class conscious as
Britain where accents denote class, education or [Link] American (GA)
resulted from the conscious need of every American towards creating a standard
means of communicating in English without prejudice to regional accents and for
ease of communication and interaction within official and administrative terrains.
The emergence is akin to the British Received Pronunciation (RP) which is based
mainly on class, education and region. The lexical and syntactic properties of both
seem identical, except some slight differences in the morphological development
of each. The nature of American English reveals much borrowing, coinage and
other forms of syntactic innovations. This means that AmE is always trying to
become what BrE is not and in some cases the influence of AmE over BrE is
prominent. A complete study of the differences between BrE and AmE will be
treated in the preceding unit because BrE and AmE form the core of contemporary
English usage.
5.0 SUMMARY American English is a unique variety. It developed from BrE but
its usage is assuming a wider dimension because of its acceptability and
phonological patterns. American English has much influence in contemporary
English Usage since much of the linguistic innovations result from science,
technology, societal change, political experiences and other universal factors which
America has been in the pivot. The rise of the Internet and the increasing demand
for technological values truly affected American English and contemporary
English usage worldwide. The steady use of General American in America reveals
that conscious attempt by Americans to standardize their variety of English thereby
avoiding the complex phonological and lexical traumas associated with Received
Pronunciation (RP). It is also clearly explained here that American English is
influencing British English in several ways thereby giving the other English
varieties the choice of choosing the version of English suitable for international
intelligibility.
6.0 TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENTS
Answer the following questions 1. Explain the factors that gave rise to American
English? 2. Discuss the rise of accents in American English? 3. Assess the basic
factors that gave rise to the emergence of General American? 4. “American
English is a mixture of borrowings and coinages”. Explain this statement 5.
“American GA is accent conscious while British RP is class conscious”. Discuss
this properly?
7.0 REFERENCES AND OTHER SOURCES McArthur, Tom.(1975) The
Oxford Guide to World English. Oxford: OUP. Fowler, Roger. (1965) Modern
English Usage. London: Longman.
