Before it became what it is today American English has gone through a long process of change which was the consequence of historical, geographical, linguistic and socio-political factors. Indeed it was due to these factors that English came into existence in the American continent, yet this language which had its roots in the old continent changed in so many ways that it caused the birth of what came to be known as American English. Despite of the fact that colonists in America came from different countries, the British presence was so huge that English became the lingua franca of the new continent. However, the fact that America was a zone of contact definitely had an impact and a great influence on the way the English language is spoken there. In addition to that, after a few years, a clear consciousness started rising amongst the American people to make the English language peculiar to them and different from how it was used in Britain. Yet, with the vast lands and the huge number of people, any talk about American English can only include language variation.
American English
Amine Zidouh
Before it became what it is today American English has gone through a long process of change which was the consequence of historical, geographical, linguistic and socio- political factors. Indeed it was due to these factors that English came into existence in the American continent, yet this language which had its roots in the old continent changed in so many ways that it caused the birth of what came to be known as American English. Despite of the fact that colonists in America came from different countries, the British presence was so huge that English became the lingua franca of the new continent. However, the fact that America was a zone of contact definitely had an impact and a great influence on the way the English language is spoken there. In addition to that, after a few years, a clear consciousness started rising amongst the American people to make the English language peculiar to them and different from how it was used in Britain. Yet, with the vast lands and the huge number of people, any talk about American English can only include language variation.
American English came to existence as a direct consequence of the colonization of the new world by those who were referred to as “the colonists”. Most, if not all, of the first settlers came from Britain as they were escaping religious persecution. But after the first waves of British settlers, people started coming from all around Europe, America was seen as a melting pot where different people from different countries, cultures, religious backgrounds and different languages came to live together in the same space. But still, the rapid expansion of English inhabitants made the English language since the very first days very important. For example New York which is one of the most emblematic cities of
America was first a Dutch colony; it had the name of New Amsterdam and the whole area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay was claimed by the Netherlands and called: New Netherland. New York only gained the name it has today in 1664 when Peter Stuyvesant, the director general of the colony of New Netherland, surrendered to the English without bloodshed. Another example if the city of Philadelphia, founded in 1682 by William Penn, it grew so quickly and became the largest but also the most cosmopolitan city in America. German presence for example was so important that they had a whole town named after them. It is indeed this contact between different people of different nationalities that gave the English language in America its sense of uniqueness.
The mingling of different people in America gave birth in an astonishing manner to a national consciousness that would be a key element in the future development of the American English as a standard homogenous language. Not a long time passed before the colonists started to become conscious of their own language, and it is mainly for political reasons and in order to differentiate and distance themselves from Britain, a country that most of them fled, that people started talking about the uniformity of the American language. For example, the American English and against what many believe is much more conservative than British English because it kept some archaic features that no longer existed in Britain by the time. Examples of archaic features retained in American English that were lost in British English are so many. For instance, the retention of the [ r ] sound whereas British English lacks it before consonants and in final position: e.g. “bar”, “color”, “march”, “quarter”, etc. Another example might be the use of [æ] instead of [a] in words like “fast”, “ask”, “path”, “class”, “half”, “can't”. Yet another example of archaisms in American English is the pronunciation of a flat short [o] in words like “not”, “hot”, “top”, “lot”, while the British use a more rounded “o” sound. In tandem with this, Americans coined new words to refer to some new concepts, objects, animals, etc. that did not exist back in the old continent. Some new words were taken from the Native American languages, for example: moose, raccoon, skunk, etc.
Indeed, the debate around national consciousness did not mean that American English was spoken the same way by all Americans, dialects were and still are a very important facet of the American English that are celebrated rather than despised by most Americans. Indeed, the promotion of the American English would have never been the same without the person of Noah Webster (1758-1843). He was amongst the first people to ferociously advocate the very need for making the English language personal to Americans. His different dictionaries and publications focused on the spelling as well as pronunciation of words which is a very important characteristic in the American language. For example, Webster published in 1806 his first dictionary entitled: A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, and a year later another dictionary that took him 18 years to complete that he called An American Dictionary of the English Language. But it was only until 1828 that he published the first edition of his most important dictionary entitled the Webster’s American Dictionary of the English language. Indeed the fact that with Webster and many others there was finally an existing standard model of the American language did not mean that American English was spoken the same way all over the country. Variations in American English exist indeed and the most important sign of that might only be the huge number of dialects spoken in American. The New England dialect for example is one of the most important ones in the U.S.
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- Student-Researcher Amine Zidouh (Author), 2013, American English, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/212046
