The History of American English

The history of American English can be divided into the colonial (1607-1776), the national (1776-1898), and the international (1898-present) periods. During nearly four hundred years of use in North America, the English language changed in small ways in pronunciation and grammar but extensively in vocabulary and in the attitude of its speakers.

English settlements along the Atlantic Coast during the seventeenth century provided the foundation for English as a permanent language in the New World. But the English of the American colonies was bound to become distinct from that of the motherland. When people do not talk with one another, they begin to talk differently. The Atlantic Ocean served as an effective barrier to oral communication between the colonists and those who stayed in England, ensuring that their speech would evolve in different directions.

On the one hand, changes in the English of England were slow to reach America, and some never made the crossing, so American English became in certain respects old-fashioned and eventually archaic, from the standpoint of the British. But on the other hand, the colonists were forced to talk about new physical features, flora, and fauna. For example, an Americanism early noted (and objected to) by British travelers was the use of bluff for the steep, high bank of a river. British rivers usually do not have such banks but are nearly level with the surrounding land, so when the colonists encountered the new fluvial topography, they had no name for it. Consequently, they pressed into service a word that means "steep" in naval jargon.

Americans also came cheek-to-jowl with Amerindians of several linguistic stocks, as well as French and Dutch speakers. They had to talk in new ways to communicate with their new neighbors. Moreover, the settlers had come from various districts and social groups of England, so there was a homogenizing effect: those in a given colony came to talk more like one another and less like any particular community in England. All these influences combined to make American English a distinct variety of the language.

Despite such changes, the norm of usage in the colonies remained that of the motherland until the American Revolution. Thereafter American English was no longer a colonial variety of the English of London but had entered its national period. Political independence was soon followed by cultural independence, of which a notable Founding Father was Noah Webster. As a schoolmaster, Webster recognized that the new nation needed a sense of linguistic identity. Accordingly he set out to provide dictionaries and textbooks for recording and teaching American English with American models. The need Webster sought to fill was twofold: to help Americans realize they should no longer look to England for a standard of usage and to foster a reasonable degree of uniformity in American English. To those ends, Webster's dictionary, reader, grammar, and blue-backed speller were major forces for institutionalizing what he called Federal English.

The language preserved its unity through the challenge of the Civil War (1861-1865); it assimilated immigrant languages and dialects, such as Spanish, German, and Irish, and replaced aboriginal Amerindian languages. The extension of American English and the preservation of its relative uniformity as the country expanded westward were aided by the railroads spanning the continent, the invention of the telegraph and telephone, and the explosion of journalism and popular education, all of which broadened communication.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Manifest Destiny of American English had been achieved, along with that of the territorial expansion of the nation. Because the domestic frontier had been exhausted, the nation had to look abroad if it was to continue to expand, territorially and linguistically. The Spanish-American War in 1898, though lasting barely four months, was a turning point in the history of the language. Before that war, American English played no more than a walk-on role on the world stage; foreign influences usually had to come to it. Afterward, international activity sharply increased, and the prominence of American English around the globe became proportionately greater.

In the course of war or commerce American English spread to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, China, Panama and other countries in Latin America, the Virgin Islands, and nations throughout the world. To the consternation of some, American popular culture followed. Through music, films, recordings, television, computers, aeronautics, multinational companies, and the military, the second half of the twentieth century became the Age of America, for good or for ill. The linguistic consequences have been profound--both on the use of English internationally and on the language itself.

As American English has been institutionalized and used internationally, the nature of its relationship to British English has changed. From the national period until the present day, there have been two opposing attitudes: Americanizing and Briticizing. The Americanizing attitude recognizes American usage as independent of British, not inferior to it; at its most extreme it seeks to exaggerate the differences. The Briticizing attitude emphasizes the connections between American and British; at its most extreme it regards American as subordinate to British. Exemplifications of the Americanizing versus Briticizing are Noah Webster's dictionary versus Joseph Worcester's; Mark Twain versus Henry James; H. L. Mencken's The American Language versus George Philip Krapp's The English Language in America, and Robert Frost versus T. S. Eliot.

If Americans have been divided on their view of the relationship between American and British English, few Britishers have had any doubt, and their confidence is widely shared by continental Europeans. To them English means British English, and American is a dialect, if not an aberration. The international prestige of British English has been maintained by both the geographical proximity of continental Europe to the British Isles and the residual influence of the British Empire around the world. It is also supported by England's reputation as a source of high culture. America, in contrast, is seen as a source of technology, commercialism, and pop culture.

Today, however, there are two main branches of English in the world, both including several national varieties: British English in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and elsewhere; and American English in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. Although British English is more widely distributed, American English is spoken by nearly three times as many persons. That numerical preponderance has as an inevitable consequence that American English is now the principal representative of the English language and the major determinant of its future.

American English, although remarkably uniform considering that over 230 million people speak it, is by no means monolithic. It varies by location, social level, ethnic group, and other factors. There are four primary regional dialects in the United States: Southern or Coastal Southern, South Midland or Southern Mountain, North Midland or Lower Northern, and Northern or Upper Northern. The boundaries between them, which are traceable to the earliest settlements, are clearest in the eastern part of the country, where settlement came first. They become less distinct and more overlapping in the West.

The dialect regions are distinguished mainly by differences of pronunciation and vocabulary and only to a small extent by grammar. Pronunciation differences include the sounding or nonsounding of r in words like mother and mirth; the quality of the "aw" vowel in words like lawn and caught; the use of an "s" or "z" sound in greasy; and many other such features. Vocabulary differences include choices among faucet, spigot (spicket), and tap; downtown and uptown for a main business district; soda, pop, Coke, tonic, and soft drink for a carbonated beverage; and many other variations, including more restricted ones, such as schlepp for "mosey" or "lug" in the New York area or arroyo in the Southwest.

Ethnic dialects have phonological and grammatical characteristics, but they are most easily recognized by vocabulary. Many ethnic communities have contributed to the general American word stock: Louisiana creole gumbo and lagniappe, New York Dutch cookie and boss, Yiddish schnook and chutzpa, Mexican-Spanish lasso and ranch, Irish shebang and blarney, African-American jazz and goober, and many others.

Black English, one of the most prominent ethnic dialects, is the subject of great controversy concerning its history and present use. There are two opinions about its origin. One holds that slaves came from many tribes in Africa; they had no common language and therefore learned English from whites. In this view, Black English is a historical evolution of forms of nonstandard English that can be traced to the British Isles. The other holds that sailors and natives along the African coast used an English-based pidgin (or reduced language used for communication among persons speaking no other common tongue). Slaves brought to America knew this pidgin or soon learned it, and on the plantations it developed into a creole (a full language of mixed origins). In this view, Black English is a remnant of an independent language that has been gradually assimilating to general English, so that it now appears to be only a dialect. There is evidence for both opinions; it is impossible to say which is nearer to the historical reality.

The other controversy over Black English concerns its use and social status today. Some view it as a "home dialect" whose speakers need also to learn standard English to live effectively in the dominant society. Others regard that position as linguistic imperialism. They believe that the dominant society should respect minority cultures, including dialects, instead of expecting minorities to do the adapting. In practical terms, those who hold the second view would use Black English as a medium of instruction in the schools and would provide pedagogical materials written in it. Among the strong opponents of the second view are older-generation, middle-class African-Americans, who believe this would limit opportunities for social and economic advancement among blacks.

Hispanic English, another major ethnic dialect in the United States, exists in several subvarieties, notably Puerto Rican English in New York City, Cuban English in south Florida, and Chicano English in the Southwest. The main issue about Hispanic English (and other immigrant languages with sizable numbers of speakers) is that of bilingualism. It is parallel to the issue of the use and status of Black English. Specifically, the question is, should those who do not speak English be provided with schools, public services, legal proceedings, and so on in their native languages or should they be expected to learn English quickly and be linguistically disadvantaged until they do? In a larger sense, the question is whether non-English ethnic cultures should be preserved and fostered in Anglophone America or assimilated as quickly and completely as possible.

Both Black English and bilingualism are highly emotional issues with political overtones. The English First movement, which arose in opposition to other languages' achieving official status within American life, seeks the constitutional establishment of English as the only official language. Although seen by its opponents as xenophobic, the movement is a contemporary version of Noah Webster's Federal English--that is, an effort to provide a distinctive standard language for all citizens of the United States.

The very existence of a standard language has been called into question, but several things are clear. First, there is a standard written form of the language, extensively described in dictionaries and grammar books and used for most printed matter and public discourse. Second, this written standard is by no means monolithic but has a good deal of variation in it. Third, most arguments about what is or is not "good" English are concerned not with differentiating standard from nonstandard use but with variations within the standard. Fourth, standard English is chiefly a matter of grammar, spelling, and word choice; being primarily a matter of written English, it has little to do with pronunciation. Fifth, there is no standard pronunciation in the United States comparable to the Received Standard (or bbc English) of the United Kingdom.

Some particular pronunciations have low prestige ("ax" for ask or "liberry" for library), but pronunciation has not been institutionalized--there is no standard American accent. Recent presidents have spoken the easily identifiable regional accents of Massachusetts, Texas, and Georgia. What is called "General American" is a myth. Persons who deal with those from other regions may modify their pronunciation to eliminate phonetic features that are most readily identified as local dialect, but the result is not a unified, consistent accent. Rather, it is a pronunciation that has been "smoothed out" by avoiding easily recognized regionalisms.

Today English is an international language, widely used as a second and foreign language as well as a primary one. Although British English is more prestigious, American English is increasingly used. But in fact, the differences between them, especially in their written forms, are not great. In the foreseeable future, the unity of English--internationally and nationally in the United States--seems assured.