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American English or U.S. English (en-US according to RFC 3066) is the diverse form of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. It is the primary language used in the United States. According to the 1990 census, 97 percent of U.S. residents speak English "well" or "very well". Only 0.8% (8 people out of a thousand) speak no English at all, as compared with 3.6 percent in 1890. As of 2004, more than two-thirds of native speakers of English use the American dialect.
History
English was inherited from British colonization. The first wave of English-speaking immigrants was settled in North America in the 17th century. In this century, there were also speakers in North America of the Dutch, French, German, Native American, Spanish, Swedish and Finnish languages.
Phonology
In many ways, compared to British English, American English is conservative in its phonology. It is sometimes claimed that certain rural areas in North America speak "Elizabethan English," and there may be some truth to this, but the standard American English of the upper Midwest has a sound profile much closer to 17th century English than contemporary speech in England. The conservatism of American English is largely the result of the fact that it represents a mixture of various dialects from the British Isles. Dialect in North America is most distinctive on the East Coast of the continent; this is largely because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of British English at a time when those varieties were undergoing changes. The interior of the country was settled by people who were no longer closely connected to England, as they had no access to the ocean during a time that journeys to Britain were always by sea. As such the inland speech is much more homogeneous than the East Coast speech, and did not imitate the changes in speech from England.
Most North American speech is rhotic, as English was everywhere in the 17th century. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter "R" is a retroflex semivowel rather than a trill or a tap. The trilled or tapped 'r' was a sound change that took place in England in the eighteenth century, and in which most current North American varieties did not participate. The loss of syllable-final r in North America is confined mostly to parts of New England, New York City, and the southern coast of the United States. In England, lost 'r' was often changed into [ə] (schwa), giving rise to a new class of falling diphthongs. Furthermore, the 'er' sound of (stressed) fur or (unstressed) butter, which is represented in IPA as stressed [ɝ] or unstressed [ɚ] is realized in American English as a monophthongal rhoticized vowel. This does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech.
Other British English changes which most North American dialects do not participate include:
- The shift of [æ] to ɑ before /f/, /s/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, /v/ alone or preceded by /n/. This is the difference between the British and American pronunciation of bath and dance. See broad A
- The shift of intervocalic [t] to glottal stop ʔ, as in [bɒʔəl] for bottle. This change is not universal for British English (and in fact is not considered to be part of Received Pronunciation), but it does not occur in most North American dialects Newfoundland English is a notable exception.
- The shift of [oʊ] to [əʊ]. This is difference between the southern English and North American pronunciation of boat or mode.
North American English, while more phonologically conservative, has undergone some sound changes. These include:
- Leveling of the distinction between [ɑ] and [ɒ]. This is the merger that makes father and bother rhyme. This change is nearly universal in North American English, occurring almost everywhere except for parts of north-east New England, like Boston (see Boston accent phonology.
- The merger of [ɑ] and [ɔ]. This is the so-called cot-caught merger, where cot and caught are homophones. This change has occurred to a large extent everywhere except in the Northeast, the Inland North, and in the South. It is most pervasive west of the Mississippi River.
- The merger of mid and low front vowels [eɪ], [ɛ], and [æ] before 'r'. The words Mary, merry, and marry are homophones for many speakers of American English, although in some cases the merger is incomplete, and only two of the three are homophones.
- The merger of intervocalic [t] and [d] to alveolar tap [ɾ] before non-initial reduced vowels. The words ladder and latter are mostly or entirely homophonous, possibly distinguished only by the length of preceding vowel. For some speakers, the merger is incomplete and 't' before a reduced vowel is sometimes not tapped follwing [eɪ] or [ɪ] when it represents underlying 't'; thus greater and grader, and unbitten and unbidden are distinguished. Others distinguish the sounds if they are preceded by the diphthongs [ɑɪ] or [ɑʊ]; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with [əɪ] and rider with [ɑɪ]. This is called Canadian raising; it is general in Canadian English, and occurs in some northerly versions of American English as well.
Differences in British English and American English
Main article: American and British English differences
American English has both spelling and grammatical differences from British English, some of which were made as part of an attempt to rationalize the English spelling used by British English at the time. Unlike many 20th century language reforms (e.g., Turkey's alphabet shift, Norway's spelling reform) the American spelling changes were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary makers.
The first American dictionary was written by Noah Webster in 1828. At the time America was a relatively new country and Webster's particular contribution was to show that the region spoke a different dialect from Britain, and so he wrote a dictionary with many spellings differing from the standard. Many of these changes were initiated unilaterally by Webster.
Webster also argued for many "simplifications" to the idiomatic spelling of the period. Somewhat ironically, many, although not all, of his simplifications fell into common usage alongside the original versions, resulting in a situation even more confused than before.
Many words are shortened and differ from other versions of English. Spellings such as center are used instead of centre in other versions of English. Conversely, American English sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas British English uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE transport or where the British form is a back-formation, such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar).
Loanwords not common in British English
American English has further changed due to the influx of non-English speakers whose words sometimes enter American vernacular. Many words have entered American English from Spanish, Native American languages, and so on.
For detailed differences in British English and American English see American and British English differences.
Examples of common American English loanwords, not common in British English (many, however, would be recognised due to the influence of the American entertainment industry):
- gumbo
- okra, or a stew thickened with okra
- cookie
- a small baked cake (usually flat and crisp) made from sweetened dough (a biscuit in British English)
- stoop
- a small platform in front of a house reached by a set of steps
- caboose
- a car at the end of a train used for observing the train and braking the train in case it separated.
From French (Some of these terms are exclusive to the state of Louisiana)
- banquette
- a raised sidewalk (usage is more regional)
- beignet
- a puffy square pastry covered in powdered sugar
- boudin
- a spicy link sausage
- café au lait
- a mixture of half milk and half coffee (also sometimes used as slang for Mulatto descent)
- chowder
- a thick seafood stew
- étouffée
- a spicy stew of vegetables and seafood (usage is more regional)
- jambalaya
- rice cooked with herbs, spices, and ham, chicken, or seafood
- lagniappe
- an extra or unexpected gift (usage is more regional)
- pain perdu
- New Orleans-style French toast
- pirogue
- a canoe made from a hollowed tree trunk (usage is more regional)
- zydeco
- a native Louisiana style of music (usage is more regional)
- avatar
- a new personification of a familiar idea
- guru
- an expert, learned person in a field
- pundit
- expert in a field
- bayou
- a swampy, slow-moving stream or outlet
- chinook
- a strong wind blowing down off the mountains
- hickory (pawcohiccora)
- a North American deciduous tree of the genus Carya
- high muckamuck
- an important person (often used ironically)
- mugwump
- a political independent
- that neck of the woods (naiack)
- an expression; from whence a person hails
- powwow
- a gathering or meeting, esp. of Native Americans
- squash (askutasquash)
- a vegetable, similar to English marrow
- succotash
- mixture of corn and other vegetables like peas, beans
- woodchuck (wuchak)
- a marmot-like mammal
- adobe
- a mud-and-straw construction material used exclusively for bricks (originally an Arabic word, at-taub, brick)
- arroyo
- dry gulch or creek bed
- barrio
- neighborhood, especially an ethnic ghetto
- buckaroo
- cowboy (vaquero, cowboy)
- burro
- donkey
- desperado
- criminal (obsolete noun desperate, hopeless)
- frijoles
- beans
- gringo
- a disparaging term meaning white, especially English-speaking (New World Spanish, foreigner <Spanish griego, Greek)
- hacienda
- the principal dwelling on a ranch
- hombre
- man
- jalopy
- beat-up car from Jalapa, Mexico
- mesa
- flat topped mountain (mesa, table)
- peccadillo
- a small infraction, especially moral (pecadillo, a little sin)
- savvy;
- understand, knowledgeable (¿Sabe?, Do (you) know?)
- chutzpah
- gall, nerve
- klutz
- a clumsy person
- kvetch
- complain
- lox
- cured salmon
- mashuganuh
- a fool or a foolish person
- schlep
- to carry or to travel
- schmuck
- a fool, or the penis
- schmutz
- dirt
- shlemiel
- a fool
- shmat
- newspaper, rag
- boondocks (bundok)
- rural area, backcountry
English words that arose in the US
A number of words that have arisen in the United States have become common, to varying degrees, in English as it is spoken internationally. Although its origin is disputed, the most famous word is probably OK, which is sometimes used in other languages as well. Other American introductions include "belittle," "gerrymander" (from Elbridge Gerry), "applesauce", "blizzard" and "teenager," and there are of course many more.
English words obsolete outside the US
A number of words that originated in the English of the British Isles are still in everyday use in North America, but are no longer used in most varieties of British English. The most conspicuous of these words are fall, the season; and gotten as a past participle of get. Some dialects of North American English use boughten, especially as a contrast to home-made. Americans are likelier than Britons to name a stream whose breadth or volume is judged insufficient to dignify it with the name of river a creek. The word diaper goes back at least to Shakespeare, and usage was maintained in the U.S. and Canada, but was replaced in the British Isles with nappy.
Some of these words are still used in various dialects of the British Isles, but not in formal standard British English. Many of these older words have cognates in Scots.
The subjunctive mood is livelier in North American English than it is in British English; it appears in some areas as a spoken usage, and is considered obligatory in more formal contexts in American English. British English has a strong tendency to replace subjunctives with auxiliary verb constructions.
Regional differences
Written American English is fairly standardized across the country. However, there is some variation in the spoken language. There are several recognizable regional variations (such as New York-New Jersey English), particularly in pronunciation, but also in slang vocabulary.
Most traditional sources cite Standard Midwestern American English (alternately referred to as General American) as the unofficial standard accent and dialect of American English. However, many linguists claim "California English" has become the de facto standard since the 1960s or 1970s due to its central role in the American entertainment industry; others argue that the entertainment industry, despite being in California, uses Midwestern. Certain features which are frequent in speakers of California English, particularly the cot-caught merger, are not often considered as part of the standard.
African American Vernacular English (AAVE, colloquially known as Ebonics) contains many distinctive forms.
Regional dialects in North America are most strongly differentiated along the eastern seaboard. The distinctive speech of important cultural centers like Boston, Massachusetts (see Boston accent phonology), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana imposed their marks on the surrounding areas. The Connecticut River is usually regarded as the southern/western extent of New England speech, while the Potomac River generally divides a group of Northern coastal dialects from the beginning of the Coastal Southern dialect area (distinguished from the Highland Southern or South Midland dialect treated below, although outsiders often mistakenly believe that the speech in these two areas is the same); 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. 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, though it has been recently modified by the northern cities vowel shift. Those not from this area frequently confuse it with the North Midland dialect dealt with in the following paragraph, referring to both collectively as "Midwestern".
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 speech of California, although in the immediate San Francisco area the speech more closely resembles that of the mid-Atlantic region.
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. This is the dialect associated with truck drivers on the CB radio and country music. It is a version of the Midland speech that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms, most noticeably the loss of the diphthong [ɑɪ], , which becomes [ɑː], and the second person plural pronoun "you-all" or "y'all". Unlike Coastal Southern, however, South Midland is a rhotic dialect, pronouncing /r/ wherever it has historically occurred.
The cities of the aforementioned Inland North, which corresponds to a broad swath of the United States, beginning near Syracuse, New York and extending west through Cleveland, Ohio, Chicago, Illinois, and north to Minneapolis, Minnesota, have undergone a shift called the northern cities vowel shift, where the vowels in the words stuck, stalk, stock, and stack have shifted from [ʌ], [ɔ], [ɑ], [æ] to [ɔ], [ɑ], [a], [eæ]. This type of shift, where a group of sounds all shift at once, some taking the place of others, is called a chain shift.
The sounds of American speech can be identified with a number of public figures. President John F. Kennedy spoke in the accent associated with the Boston Irish, while President Jimmy Carter speaks with a Southern coastal accent. The North Midlands speech is familiar to those who have heard Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, while the South Midland speech was the speech of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Miscellaneous
Dialects
Further reading
- The American Language 4th Edition, Corrected and Enlarged, H. L. Menchen, Random House, 1948, hardcover, ISBN 0394400755
- How We Talk: American Regional English Today, Allan Metcalf, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000, softcover, ISBN 0618043624
- 1st and 2nd supplements of above.
External links
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