MEETING 9

AMERICAN ENGLISH

A. LEARNING OBJECTIVE
This chapter will explain words that relate todescribe place. By the end of
this lesson, students will be able to:
1.1 Drscribe the American English
1.2 Identify the American Vocabulary

B. MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Learning Objective 1.1:
American English

American English (AmE, AE, AmEng, USEng, en-US), sometimes

called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English
language native to the United States. American English is considered one of the
most influential dialects of English globally, including on other varieties of English.
English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and is the
de facto common language used by the federal and state governments, to the extent
that all laws and compulsory education presume English as the primary language.
English is explicitly given official status by 32 of the 50 state governments. While
the local courts in some divisions of the United States grant equivalent status to
both English and another language—for example, English and Spanish in Puerto
Rico—under federal law, English is still the official language for any matters being
referred to the United States district court for the territory.
The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of
the Americas. 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. During the 17th century, dialects from many different regions of England
existed in every American colony, allowing a process of extensive dialect mixture
and levelling in which English varieties across the colonies became more

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homogeneous compared with varieties in England. English thus predominated in
the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first massive immigrations of
non-English speakers from Europe and Africa, and firsthand descriptions of a fairly
uniform American English became common after the mid-18th century. Since then,
American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional
dialects that, in some cases, show minor influences from successive waves of
immigrants of diverse language backgrounds in the last two centuries, though
primarily from Europeans.
American English varieties include many pronunciations, vocabulary,
spelling, and other features that are unified nationwide but distinct from other
English dialects around the world. Any North American English accent perceived
as free of noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markers is popularly called "General"
or "Standard" American, a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions
and associated nationally with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech.
However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of
there being one single "mainstream" American accent. On the contrary, the sound
of American English continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but
several larger regional accents emerging.

Learning Objective 1.2:

American English Vocabulary

The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as English-

speaking British-American colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora,
fauna, and topography from the Native American languages. Examples of such
names are:

opossum, raccoon,

squash, moose
(from Algonquian),

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 wigwam, and
moccasin.

The languages of the other colonizing nations also added to the American
vocabulary; for instance, cookie, from Dutch; kindergarten from German,
levee from French; and rodeo from Spanish. Landscape features are often
loanwords from French or Spanish, and the word corn, used in England to refer to
wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in the
U.S.
Most Mexican Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812, with the
opening of the West, like ranch (now a common house style). Due to the Mexican
culinary influence, many Spanish words are incorporated in general use when
talking about certain popular dishes: cilantro (instead of coriander), queso, tacos,
quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, burritos, and guacamole. These words
don't really have an English equivalent and are found in popular restaurants. New
forms of dwelling created new terms (lot, waterfront) and types of homes like log
cabin, adobe in the 18th century; apartment, shanty in the 19th century;
project, condominium, townhouse, mobile home in the 20th century; and parts
thereof (driveway, breezeway, backyard).
Industry and material innovations from the 19th century onwards provide
distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms through railroading (see further at rail
terminology) and transportation terminology, ranging from types of roads (dirt
roads, freeways) to infrastructure (parking lot, overpass, rest area), to automotive
terminology often now standard in English internationally. Already existing English
words—such as store, shop, lumber—underwent shifts in meaning; others
remained in the U.S. while changing in Britain. Science, urbanization, and
democracy have been important factors in bringing about changes in the written and
spoken language of the United States.
From the world of business and finance came new terms (merger, downsize,
bottom line), from sports and gambling terminology came, specific jargon aside,
common everyday American idioms, including many idioms related to baseball.
The names of some American inventions remained largely confined to North
America (elevator, gasoline) as did certain automotive terms (truck, trunk).
New foreign loanwords came with 19th and early 20th century European

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immigration to the U.S.; notably, from Yiddish (chutzpah, schmooze) and
German (hamburger, wiener).[73][74] 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, for 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.
American English has always shown a marked tendency to use words in
different parts of speech and nouns are often used as verbs. Examples of nouns that
are now also verbs are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end,
transition, feature, profile, hashtag, head, divorce, loan, estimate, X-ray,
spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, bad-mouth, vacation, major, and many others.
Compounds coined in the U.S. are for instance foothill, landslide (in all
senses), backdrop, teenager, brainstorm, bandwagon, hitchhike, smalltime, and a
huge number of others. Other compound words have been founded based on
industrialization and the wave of the automobile: five-passenger car, four-door
sedan, two-door sedan, and station-wagon (called an estate car in England).[78]
Some are euphemistic (human resources, affirmative action, correctional
facility).
Many compound nouns have the verb-and- preposition combination:
stopover, lineup, tryout, spin-off, shootout, holdup, hideout, comeback, make over,
and many more. Some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin
(win out, hold up, back up/off/down/out, face up to and many others).[79]
Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian
(beautician) are also particularly productive in the U.S. Several verbs ending in -
ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize,
weatherize, etc; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, curate, donate,
emote, upholsterand enthuse). Among syntactical constructions that arose are
outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, etc. Americanisms formed by
alteration of some existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious,
buddy, sundae, skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in the U.S.
are, for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, punk (in all senses), sticky (of the
weather), through (as in "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as
peppy or wacky.
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 A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early
Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United States have since
disappeared in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in
Lowland Scots. Terms such as fall ("autumn"), faucet ("tap"), diaper ("nappy";
itself unused in the U.S.), candy ("sweets"), skillet, eyeglasses, 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." Gotten (past participle of get) is often considered to be
largely an Americanism.

Other words and meanings were brought back to Britain from the U.S.,
especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"),
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 adjectives mad
meaning "angry," smart meaning "intelligent," and sick meaning "ill" are also
more frequent in American (and Irish) English than British English.

C. COMPREHENSION QUESTION

D. REFERENCE

Plichta, Bartlomiej, and Dennis R. Preston (2005). "The /ay/s Have It: The
Perception of /ay/ as a North-South Stereotype in the United States English."
Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 37.1: 107-130.
Zentella, A. C. (1982). Spanish and English in contact in the United States: The
Puerto Rican experience. Word, 33(1-2), 41.
Crystal, David (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-53032-3.
Engel, Matthew (2017). That's The Way It Crumbles: the American Conquest of
English. London: Profile Books. ISBN 9781782832621. OCLC 989790918.

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"Fears of British English's disappearance are overblown". The Economist. July
20, 2017. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved April 18, 2019.
Harbeck, James (July 15, 2015). "Why isn't 'American' a language?".
www.bbc.com. Retrieved April 18, 2019.
Anderson, Hephzibah. "How Americanisms are killing the English language".
www.bbc.com. Retrieved April 18, 2019.
Reddy, C. Rammanohar. "The Readers' Editor writes: Why is American English
becoming part of everyday usage in India?". Scroll.in. Retrieved April 18,
2019.
"48 U.S. Code § 864 - Appeals, certiorari, removal of causes, etc.; use of English
language | LII / Legal Information Institute". Law.cornell.edu. Retrieved
June 1, 2015.
Hickey, R. (2014). Dictionary of varieties of English. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 25.
Kretzchmar, William A. (2004), Kortmann, Bernd; Schneider, Edgar W. (eds.), A
Handbook of Varieties of English, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter,
pp. 262–263, ISBN 9783110175325
Skeat, Walter William (1892). Principles of English etymology: The native
"Definition of sure adjective from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary".
Oup.com. Retrieved May 29, 2013

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