-
January
-
Email hacking
-
Laura Pausini
-
Expedition of the Thousand
-
You can't have your cake and eat it
-
Ravi Shankar
-
Association football
-
Fractional reserve banking
-
American English
-
Shaken, not stirred
-
Skyfall
-
Smart
-
Adele
-
Sanremo Music Festival
-
Amazon Kindle
-
iPad Mini
-
2012 Italian shooting in the Arabian Sea
-
John Kerry
-
Arms industry
-
Gérard Depardieu
-
Camorra
-
Angela Merkel
-
Venice
-
Samsung Galaxy Note II
-
Crowd funding
-
Freedom of the press
-
WikiLeaks
-
Curiosity
-
Lucio Dalla
-
Influenza
-
Taxation in the United States
-
J. K. Rowling
-
Juventus F.C.
-
Italian diaspora
-
Life of Pi
-
Pub
-
Lidl
-
Book scanning
-
English as a second or foreign language
-
Microsoft Surface
-
The Adventures of Tintin
-
United States fiscal cliff
-
Peer-to-peer lending
-
Pinterest
-
PayPal
-
Italian dialects
-
The Right Honourable
-
High-speed rail
-
Expatriate
-
Cesare Beccaria
|
WIKIMAG n. 2 - Gennaio 2013
American English
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Traduzione
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- Togli il segno di spunta per disattivarla
American English is a set of
dialects
of the
English language used mostly in the
United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's
native speakers of English live in the United States.[3]
English is the most common language in the United States. Though the
U.S.
federal government has no official language, English is the common
language used by the federal government and is considered the
de
facto language of the United States because of its widespread use.
English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state
governments.[4][5]
The use of English in the United States is a result of
English colonization. The first wave of English-speaking settlers
arrived in
North America during the 17th century, followed by further
migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Since then, American English
has been influenced by the languages of
West Africa, the
Native American population,
Irish,
Spanish, and immigration.
Phonology
Compared with
English as spoken in England, North American English[6]
is more homogeneous. Some distinctive accents can be found on the
East Coast (for example, in eastern New England and New York City)
partly because these areas were in close contact with
England
and imitated prestigious varieties of
British English at a time when these were undergoing changes.[7][need
quotation to verify] In addition, many speech
communities on the East Coast have existed in their present locations
for centuries, while the interior of the country was settled by people
from all regions of the existing United States and developed a far more
generic linguistic pattern.[citation
needed]
The red areas are those where non-rhotic pronunciations are
found among some Caucasians in the United States.
AAVE-influenced non-rhotic pronunciations may be
AAVE speakers throughout the country. [8]
Most North American speech is
rhotic, as English was in most places in the 17th century. Rhoticity
was further supported by
Hiberno-English,
West Country English and
Scottish English as well as the fact most regions of England at this
time also had rhotic accents.[9]
In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to
the letter r is an
alveolar approximant
[ɹ] or
retroflex
[ɻ] rather than a trill or a tap. The loss of syllable-final r
in North America is confined mostly to the accents of
eastern New England,
New York City and surrounding areas and the coastal portions of the
South, and
African American Vernacular English.
In rural
tidewater Virginia and eastern
New England, 'r' is non-rhotic in accented (such as "bird", "work",
"first", "birthday") as well as unaccented syllables, although this is
declining among the younger generation of speakers.[citation
needed] Dropping of syllable-final r
sometimes happens in natively rhotic dialects if r is located in
unaccented syllables or words and the next syllable or word begins in a
consonant. In
England,
the lost r was often changed into
[ə] (schwa),
giving rise to a new class of falling
diphthongs.[citation
needed] Furthermore, the er sound of fur
or butter, is realized in AmE as a
monophthongal
r-colored vowel (stressed
[ɝ] or unstressed
[ɚ] as represented in the
IPA).[citation
needed] This does not happen in the non-rhotic
varieties of North American speech.[citation
needed]
Some other English changes in which most North American dialects do
not participate:
- The shift of
/æ/ to
/ɑ/ (the so-called "broad
A") before
/f/, /s/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, /v/ alone or preceded by a
homorganic nasal. In the United States, only eastern New England
speakers took up this modification, although even there it is
becoming increasingly rare. However, the Mid-Atlantic
split-a system has been noted to be a related phenomenon,
creating instead a tensed, diphthongized variant before certain
consonants, moving in the opposite direction in the mouth compared
to the backed British "broad A."
- The regular realization of intervocalic
/t/ as a glottal stop
[ʔ] (as in
[ˈbɒʔəl] for bottle). The only environment in which
t-glotallization is standard in American English is before "n," as
in "button"
/ˈbʌʔn/.
On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound
changes not found in other varieties of English speech:
- The
merger of
/ɑ/ and
/ɒ/, making father and bother rhyme. This
change is nearly universal in North American English, and has given
rise to alternative spellings of common English language names, for
example, Byonka (Bianca), both of which sound identical. Another
example is Antwon (Antoin). Exceptions are accents in northeastern
New England, such as the
Boston accent, and in
New York City.[10][11][12]
- For speakers who do not merge caught and cot: The
replacement of the cot vowel with the caught vowel
before
voiceless fricatives (as in cloth, off [which is found in
some old-fashioned varieties of RP]), as well as before
/ŋ/ (as in strong, long), usually in gone,
often in on, and irregularly before
/ɡ/ (log, hog, dog, fog [which is not found in British
English at all]).
- The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut
vowel in most utterances of the words was, of, from, what and
in many utterances of the words everybody, nobody, somebody,
anybody; the word because has either
/ʌ/ or
/ɔ/;[13]
want has normally
/ɔ/ or
/ɑ/, sometimes
/ʌ/.[14]
-
Vowel merger before intervocalic
/ɹ/. Which vowels are affected varies between dialects, but
the
Mary-marry-merry,
nearer-mirror, and
hurry–furry mergers are all widespread. Another such change is
the laxing of
/e/,
/i/ and
/u/ to
/ɛ/,
/ɪ/ and
/ʊ/ before
/ɹ/, causing pronunciations like
[pɛɹ],
[pɪɹ] and
[pjʊɹ] for pair, peer and pure. The resulting
sound
[ʊɹ] is often further reduced to
[ɝ], especially after
palatals, so that cure, pure, mature and sure
rhyme with fir.
-
Dropping of
/j/ is more extensive than in RP. In most North American
accents,
/j/ is dropped after all
alveolar and interdental consonant, so that new, duke,
Tuesday, resume are pronounced
/nu/,
/duk/,
/ˈtuzdeɪ/,
/ɹɪˈzum/.
-
æ-tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to
accent; for example, for many speakers,
/æ/ is approximately realized as
[eə] before
nasal stops. In some accents, particularly those from
Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and
New York City,
[æ] and
[eə] contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I can
[kæn] vs. tin can
[keən].
- The
flapping of intervocalic
/t/ and
/d/ to
alveolar tap
[ɾ] before unstressed vowels (as in butter,
party) and syllabic
/l/ (bottle), as well as at the end of a word
or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever).
Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter,
metal/medal, and coating/coding are pronounced the same.
For many speakers, this merger is incomplete and does not occur
after
/aɪ/; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with
[ʌɪ] and rider with
[aɪ]. This is a form of
Canadian raising but, unlike more extreme forms of that process,
does not affect
/aʊ/. In some areas and idiolects, a phonemic distinction
between what elsewhere become homophones through this process is
maintained by vowel lengthening in the vowel preceding the formerly
voiced consonant, e.g.,
[ˈlæːɾɚ] for "ladder" as opposed to
[ˈlæɾɚ] for "latter".
-
T glottalization is common when
/t/ is in the final position of a syllable or word (get,
fretful:
[ɡɛʔ],
[ˈfɹɛʔfəl]), though this is always superseded by the
aforementioned rules of flapping
- Both intervocalic
/nt/ and
/n/ may be realized as
[n] or
[ɾ̃], making winter and winner homophones. In
most areas where
/nt/ is reduced to
/n/, it is accompanied further by nasalization of simple
post-vocalic
/n/, so that
/Vnt/ and
/Vn/ remain phonemically distinct. In such cases, the
preceding vowel becomes nasalized, and is followed in cases where
the former
/nt/ was present, by a distinct
/n/. This stop-absorption by the preceding nasal
/n/ does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as
in entail.
- The
pin–pen merger, by which
[ɛ] is raised to
[ɪ] before nasal stops, making pairs like pen/pin
homophonous. This merger originated in
Southern American English but is now also sometimes found in
parts of the Midwest and West as well, especially in people with
roots in the mountainous areas of the
Southeastern United States.
Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British
English include:[citation
needed]
- The
merger of the vowels
/ɔ/ and
/o/ before 'r', making pairs like horse/hoarse,
corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning, etc.
homophones.
- The
wine–whine merger making pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet,
Wales/whales, wear/where, etc.
homophones, in most cases eliminating
/ʍ/, the
voiceless labiovelar fricative. Many older varieties of southern
and western American English still keep these distinct, but the
merger appears to be spreading.
Vocabulary
North America has given the English
lexicon
many thousands of words, meanings, and phrases. Several thousand are now
used in English as spoken internationally.
Creation of an American lexicon
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.[15]
Examples of such names are
opossum,
raccoon,
squash and
moose
(from
Algonquian).[16]
Other Native American loanwords, such as
wigwam
or
moccasin, describe articles in common use among Native
Americans. The languages of the other colonising nations also added to
the American vocabulary; for instance,
cookie,
cruller,
stoop, and pit (of a fruit) from
Dutch;
levee,
portage ("carrying of boats or goods") and (probably)
gopher from
French;
barbecue,
stevedore, and
rodeo
from
Spanish.[17][18][19][20]
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[citation
needed]. Already existing words such as
creek,
slough,
sleet and (in later use)
watershed received new meanings that were unknown in England.[citation
needed]
Other noteworthy American toponyms are found among loanwords; for
example,
prairie,
butte
(French);
bayou (Choctaw
via Louisiana French);
coulee
(Canadian French, but used also in Louisiana with a different meaning);
canyon,
mesa,
arroyo (Spanish); vlei, skate,
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. 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.[citation
needed]
Ranch,
later applied to a
house style, derives from
Mexican Spanish; most Spanish contributions came after the
War of 1812, with the opening of the West. Among these are, other
than toponyms,
chaps
(from chaparreras),
plaza,
lasso,
bronco,
buckaroo,
rodeo; 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. The word blizzard probably originated in the
West. A couple of notable late 18th century additions are the verb
belittle and the noun bid, both first used in writing by
Thomas Jefferson.[citation
needed]
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).[citation
needed]
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 (a
British term used originally in Banking)[21]
and
pork barrel. Some of these are internationally used (for
example,
caucus,
gerrymander,
filibuster,
exit
poll).
19th century
onwards
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 (see further at
rail terminology) 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 (for example, 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.[22]
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).[citation
needed]
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
breakeven,
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).[citation
needed]
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, tush) and
German—hamburger
and culinary terms like frankfurter/franks, liverwurst, sauerkraut,
wiener,
deli(catessen);
scram,
kindergarten,
gesundheit;[23]
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.[24]
Finally, a large number of English colloquialisms from various
periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor
(from OK
and cool to
nerd
and
24/7), while others have not (have
a nice day, sure);[25]
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?, it ain't over till it's over, what goes around comes
around, and will the real x please stand up?[26]
Morphology
American English has always shown a marked tendency
to use nouns as verbs.[27]
Examples of verbed nouns are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby,
pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, spearhead, skyrocket,
showcase, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in
"exit the lobby"), factor (in mathematics), gun ("shoot"),
author (which disappeared in English around 1630 and was revived
in the U.S. three centuries later) and, out of American material,
proposition, graft (bribery), bad-mouth,
vacation, major,
backpack,
backtrack, intern, ticket (traffic violations), hassle,
blacktop, peer-review, dope and
OD, and, of course verbed as used at the start of this
sentence.
Compounds coined in the U.S. are for instance
foothill,
flatlands,
badlands,
landslide (in all senses),
overview (the noun),
backdrop,
teenager,
brainstorm,
bandwagon,
hitchhike, smalltime,
deadbeat,
frontman, lowbrow and highbrow, hell-bent, foolproof,
nitpick, about-face (later verbed), upfront (in all senses),
fixer-upper, no-show; many of these are phrases used as adverbs
or (often) hyphenated attributive adjectives:
non-profit,
for-profit, free-for-all, ready-to-wear, catchall, low-down,
down-and-out, down and dirty, in-your-face, nip and tuck; many
compound nouns and adjectives are open:
happy hour,
fall
guy,
capital gain,
road
trip, wheat pit, head start,
plea bargain; some of these are colorful (empty
nester,
loan shark,
ambulance chaser,
buzz saw,
ghetto blaster, dust bunny), others are euphemistic (differently
abled (physically challenged),
human resources,
affirmative action,
correctional facility).
Many compound nouns have the form verb plus preposition:
add-on, stopover, lineup,
shakedown, tryout, spin-off,
rundown
("summary"),
shootout,
holdup, hideout, comeback, cookout,
kickback,
makeover,
takeover, rollback ("decrease"), rip-off, come-on, shoo-in,
fix-up, tie-in, tie-up ("stoppage"), stand-in. These
essentially are nouned
phrasal verbs; some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of
American origin (spell out, figure out, hold up, brace up, size up,
rope in, back up/off/down/out, step down, miss out, kick around, cash
in, rain out, check in and check out (in all senses), fill
in ("inform"), kick in or throw in ("contribute"),
square off, sock in, sock away, factor in/out, come down with, give up
on, lay off (from employment), run into and across
("meet"), stop by, pass up, put up (money), set up
("frame"), trade in, pick up on, pick up after, lose out.[28][29]
Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster
(gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly
productive.[27]
Some verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example,
fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, itemize, editorialize,
customize, notarize,
weatherize, winterize,
Mirandize; and so are some
back-formations (locate, fine-tune, evolute, curate, donate,
emote, upholster, peeve and enthuse). Among syntactical
constructions that arose in the U.S. are as of (with dates and
times), outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, convince
someone to..., not to be about to and lack for.
Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include
notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, pry (as in "pry open," from
prize), putter (verb), buddy,
sundae,
skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in
the U.S. are for example, lengthy, bossy,
cute
and cutesy, grounded (of a child), punk (in all senses),
sticky (of the weather), through (as in "through train,"
or meaning "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy
or wacky. American
blends
include
motel, guesstimate,
infomercial and
televangelist.
English words that survived in the United States and not Britain
A number of words and meanings that originated in
Middle English or
Early Modern English and that always have been in everyday use in
the United States dropped out in most varieties of British English; some
of these have cognates in
Lowland Scots. Terms such as
fall
("autumn"),
faucet,
diaper,
candy,
skillet,
eyeglasses,
noon,
and
obligate are often regarded as Americanisms. Fall for
example came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction
of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the
year".[30]
During the 17th century,
English immigration to the British colonies in North America was at
its peak and the new settlers took the English language with them. While
the term fall gradually became obsolete in Britain, it became the
more common term in North America. Gotten (past
participle of get) is often considered to be an Americanism,
although there are some areas of Britain, such as Lancashire and
North-eastern England, that still continue to use it and sometimes also
use putten as the past participle for put (which is not
done by most speakers of American English).[31]
Other words and meanings, to various extents, were brought back to
Britain, especially in the second half of the 20th century; these
include hire ("to employ"), quit ("to stop," which spawned
quitter in the U.S.), I guess (famously criticized by
H. W. Fowler),
baggage,
hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently
("currently"). Some of these, for example
monkey wrench and
wastebasket, originated in 19th-century Britain.
The mandative
subjunctive (as in "the City Attorney suggested that the case not
be closed") is livelier in American English than it is in British
English. It appears in some areas as a spoken usage and is considered
obligatory in contexts that are more formal. The adjectives mad
meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick
meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American (these meanings are
also frequent in Hiberno-English) than British English.[32]
Regional
differences
While written AmE is standardized across the country, there are
several recognizable variations in the spoken language, both in
pronunciation and in vernacular vocabulary.
General American is the name given to any American accent that
is relatively free of noticeable regional influences.
Eastern seaboard
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 English 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.
Midwest
A distinctive speech pattern also appears near the border between
Canada
and the United States, centered on the
Great Lakes region (but only on the American side). 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). Those not from this area frequently
confuse it with the North Midland dialect treated below, referring to
both collectively as "Midwestern" in the mid-Atlantic region or
"Northern" in the Southern US. The so-called '"Minnesotan"
dialect is also prevalent in the cultural
Upper Midwest, and is characterized by influences from the German
and Scandinavian settlers of the region (yah for yes/ja in German,
pronounced the same way). In parts of
Pennsylvania and
Ohio,
another dialect known as
Pennsylvania Dutch English is also spoken.
Interior
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.
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).
Although no longer region-specific,[33]
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.
The island state of Hawaii has a distinctive
Hawaiian Pidgin.
Finally, dialect development in the United States has been notably
influenced by the distinctive speech of such important cultural centers
as
Baltimore,
Boston,
Buffalo,
Charleston,
Cleveland,
Chicago,
Detroit,
New Orleans,
New York City,
Philadelphia and
Pittsburgh, which imposed their marks on the surrounding areas.
Differences between British and American English
American English and
British English (BrE) differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics,
vocabulary, and, to a lesser extent, grammar and orthography. The first
large American dictionary,
An American Dictionary of the English Language, was written by
Noah Webster in 1828; Webster intended to show that the United
States, which was a relatively new country at the time, spoke a
different dialect from that of Britain.
Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and normally do not
affect mutual intelligibility; these include: different use of some
verbal auxiliaries; formal (rather than notional) agreement with
collective nouns; different preferences for the past forms of a few
verbs (for example, AmE/BrE: learned/learnt, burned/burnt,
snuck/sneaked, dove/dived); different prepositions and
adverbs in certain contexts (for example, AmE in school, BrE
at school); and whether or not a definite article is used, in very
few cases (AmE to the hospital, BrE to hospital; contrast,
however, AmE actress Elizabeth Taylor, BrE the actress
Elizabeth Taylor). Often, these differences are a matter of relative
preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable, since
the two varieties are constantly influencing each other.[34]
Differences in
orthography are also trivial. Some of the forms that now serve to
distinguish American from British spelling (color for colour,
center for centre, traveler for traveller,
etc.) were introduced by Noah Webster himself; others are due to
spelling tendencies in Britain from the 17th century until the present
day (for example, -ise for -ize, although the Oxford
English Dictionary still prefers the -ize ending) and cases
favored by the
francophile tastes of 19th century
Victorian England, which had little effect on AmE (for example,
programme for program, manoeuvre for maneuver,
skilful for skillful, cheque for check,
etc.).[35]
One of the most common spelling differences is that words ending in
"-re" in BrE are rendered as "-er" in AmE (such as "centre" and
"center", "theatre" and "theater", and "metre"
and "meter").
AmE sometimes favors words that are
morphologically more complex, whereas BrE 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). It should, however, be noted that while
individuals usually use one or the other, both forms will be widely
understood and mostly used alongside each other within the two systems.
See also
Notes
-
^
English Adjective – Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary –
Oxford University Press ©2010.
-
^
"SELECTED SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS IN THE UNITED STATES". US
Census Bureau. Retrieved
2012-11-23.
-
^
Crystal, David (1997). English as a Global Language.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-53032-6.
-
^ Crawford, James.
"Language Legislation in the U.S.A.". languagepolicy.net.
2008-06-24. Retrieved 2011-10-03.
-
^
"States with Official English Laws". us-english.org.
Retrieved 2011-10-03.
-
^
North American English (Trudgill, p. 2) is a collective
term used for the varieties of the English language that are
spoken in the United States and Canada.
-
^ Trudgill, pp.
46–47.
-
^ Labov, p. 48.
-
^
.
JSTOR 25484343.
-
^
Merriam Webster Pronunciation Guide
-
^
Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-22919-7
(vol. 1), ISBN 0-521-24224-X (vol. 2), ISBN 0-521-24225-8 (vol.
3)., pp. 136–37, 203–6, 234, 245–47, 339–40, 400,
419, 443, 576
-
^ Labov et al.
(2006), p. 171
-
^ According to
Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. For
speakers who merge caught and cot,
/ɔ/ is to be understood as the vowel they have in both
caught and cot.
-
^
[1],
[2][dead
link],
[3]
-
^
Principles of English etymology: The ... - Google Books
-
^
Principles of English etymology: The ... - Google Books
-
^
"The history of Mexican folk foodways of South Texas: Street
vendors, o" by Mario Montano
-
^
What's in a word?: etymological ... - Google Books
-
^
GOPHER
-
^
The American Language: A Preliminary ... - Google Books
-
^ "Lame Duck". Word
Detective.com. Retrieved 2008-12-15
-
^ A few of these are
now chiefly found, or have been more productive, outside of the
U.S.; for example, jump, "to drive past a traffic
signal;" block meaning "building," and center,
"central point in a town" or "main area for a particular
activity" (cf. Oxford English Dictionary).
-
^
The Maven's Word of the Day,
Random House. Retrieved February 8, 2007.
-
^
Trudgill, Peter (2004). New-Dialect Formation: The
Inevitability of Colonial Englishes.
-
^
[4],
[5] Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Retrieved April
24, 2007.
-
^
[6],
[7],
[8],
[9],
[10],
[11],
[12],
[13],
[14],
[15],
[16],
[17],
[18],
[19],
[20],
[21],
[22],
[23],
[24],
[25],
[26],
[27]
- ^
a
b
Trudgill, p. 69.
-
^
[28]
[29]
[30]
[31]
[32]
[33]
[34]
[35]
[36]
[37]
[38]
[39]
[40]
-
^ British author
George Orwell (in English People, 1947, cited in OED
s.v. lose) criticized an alleged "American tendency" to
"burden every verb with a preposition that adds nothing to its
meaning (win out, lose out, face up to,
etc.)".
-
^
Harper, Douglas.
"fall".
Online Etymology Dictionary.
-
^ A Handbook of
Varieties of English,Bernd Kortmann & Edgar W. Schneider,
Walter de Gruyter, 2004, page 115
-
^ Oxford Advanced
Learner's Dictionary.
[41]
[42]
[43]. Retrieved March 23, 2007.
-
^ Cf. Trudgill,
p.42.
-
^ Algeo, John
(2006). British or American English?. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-37993-8.
-
^ Peters, Pam
(2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-62181-X, pp. 34 and 511.
Further reading
-
Bartlett, John R. (1848). Dick of Americanisms: A Glossary of
Words and Phrases Usually Regarded As Peculiar to the United States.
New York: Bartlett and Welford.
-
Garner, Bryan A. (2003). Garner's Modern American Usage.
New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Labov, William; Sharon Ash; Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas
of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
ISBN 3-11-016746-8.
-
Mencken, H. L. (1936, repr. 1977). The American Language: An
Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (4th
edition). New York: Knopf. (1921 edition online:
www.bartleby.com/185/).
History
of American English
- Bailey, Richard W. (2004). American English: Its origins and
history. In E. Finegan & J. R. Rickford (Eds.), Language in the
USA: Themes for the twenty-first century (pp. 3–17). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
- Finegan, Edward. (2006). English in North America. In R. Hogg &
D. Denison (Eds.), A history of the English language
(pp. 384–419). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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