   #copyright

American English

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Languages

   English language spread in the United States. The deeper the shade of
   blue, the higher the percentage of English speakers in the state.
   Enlarge
   English language spread in the United States. The deeper the shade of
   blue, the higher the percentage of English speakers in the state.

   American English (AmE) is the dialect of the English language used
   mostly in the United States of America. It is estimated that
   approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the
   United States. American English is also sometimes called United States
   English or U.S. English.

   The use of English in the United States has been inherited from British
   colonization. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in
   North America in the 17th century. In that century, there were also
   speakers in North America of Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Swedish,
   Scots, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Finnish, and a myriad of Native
   American languages.

Phonology

   In many ways, compared to British English, American English is
   conservative in its phonology. Dialects in North America are most
   distinctive on the East Coast of the continent partly because these
   areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties
   of British English at a time when those varieties were undergoing
   changes, and partly merely because many speech communities on the East
   Coast have existed in their present locations longer than others. The
   interior of the country was settled by people who were not closely
   connected to England, as they had no access to the ocean during a time
   when 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.
   The red areas are those where non-rhotic pronunciations are found among
   some white people in the United States. AAVE-influenced non-rhotic
   pronunciations may be found among black people throughout the country.
   Enlarge
   The red areas are those where non-rhotic pronunciations are found among
   some white people in the United States. AAVE-influenced non-rhotic
   pronunciations may be found among black people throughout the country.

   Most North American speech is rhotic, as English was in most places in
   the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English,
   Scottish English, and West Country English. In most varieties of North
   American English, the sound corresponding to the letter "R" is a
   retroflex or alveolar approximant 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,
   South Philadelphia, and the coastal portions of the South. 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, 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 r-colored vowel. This
   does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech.

   Some other British 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 [n]. This is the difference
       between the British Received Pronunciation and American
       pronunciation of bath and dance. In the United States, only
       linguistically conservative eastern New England speakers took up
       this innovation, which is becoming increasingly rare even there.
     * 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 and the dialect of New Britain, Connecticut are notable
       exceptions.

   On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound
   changes not found in Britain, at least not in standard varieties. Many
   of these are instances of phonemic differentiation and include:
     * The merger of [ɑ] and [ɒ], making father and bother rhyme. This
       change is nearly universal in North American English, occurring
       almost everywhere except for parts of eastern New England, like the
       Boston accent.
     * The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut vowel in most
       utterances of the words was, of, from, what, everybody, nobody,
       somebody, anybody, because, and in some dialects want.
     * The merger of [ɒ] and [ɔ]. This is the so-called cot-caught merger,
       where cot and caught are homophones. This change has occurred in
       eastern New England, in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, and from
       the Great Plains westward.
     * Vowel merger before intervocalic /r/. Which (if any) vowels are
       affected varies between dialects.
     * The merger of [ʊɹ] and [ɝ] after palatals in some words, so that
       cure, pure, mature and sure rhyme with fir in some speech registers
       for some speakers.
     * Dropping of [j] after alveolar consonants so that new, duke,
       Tuesday, suit, resume, lute are pronounced /nuː/, /duːk/,
       /tuːzdeɪ/, /suːt/, /ɹɪzuːm/, /luːt/.
     * æ-tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent.
       In some accents, particularly those from Philadelphia to New York
       City, [æ] and [eə] can even contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I can
       [kæn] vs. tin can [keən].
     * 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 flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before
       reduced vowels. The words ladder and latter are mostly or entirely
       homophonous, though distinguished by some speakers by a lengthened
       vowel preceding an underlying 'd'. For some speakers, the merger is
       incomplete and 't' before a reduced vowel is sometimes not tapped
       following [eɪ] or [ɪ] when it represents underlying 't'; thus
       greater and grader are distinguished. Even among those words where
       /t/ and /d/ are flapped, words that would otherwise be homophonous
       are, for some speakers, distinguished if the flapping is
       immediately 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
       (often just applying to the diphthong /ɑɪ/, but not to /ɑʊ/).
     * Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realized as [n] or [ɾ̃],
       making winter and winner homophones. This 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
       consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger
       originated in Southern American English but is now found in parts
       of the Midwest and West as well.

   Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British
   English include:
     * The horse-hoarse merger of the vowels [ɔ] and [oʊ] 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.

Differences between British English and American English

   American English has many spelling differences from English as used
   elsewhere (especially British English), some of which were made as part
   of an attempt to make more rational the spelling used in Britain at the
   time. Unlike many 20th century language reforms (for example, Turkey's
   alphabet shift, Norway's spelling reform) the American spelling changes
   were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary
   makers. Spelling tendencies in Britain from the 17th century until the
   present day (e.g. -ise for -ize, programme for program, kerb for curb
   (noun), skilful for skillful, chequered for checkered, etc.), in some
   cases favored by the francophile tastes of 19th century Victorian
   England, had little effect on American English.

   The first American dictionary was written by Noah Webster in 1828. At
   the time the United States 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. Many, although not all, of his simplifications
   fell into common usage alongside the original versions with simple
   spelling modifications.

   Some words with simplified spellings in American English are words such
   as centre, colour, and maneuver, which are spelled centre, colour, and
   manoeuvre in other forms of English.

   American English also has many lexical differences from British English
   (BrE). 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).

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; several however died within a few years of
   their creation.

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. Examples of such names
   are opossum, raccoon, squash, and moose (from Algonquian). Other Native
   American loanwords, such as wigwam or moccasin, describe artificial
   objects in common use among Native Americans. The languages of the
   other colonizing nations also added to the American vocabulary; for
   instance, cookie, cruller, and pit (of a fruit) from Dutch; levee,
   portage "carrying of boats or goods," and (probably) gopher from
   French; barbecue, stevedore from Spanish.

   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, intervale, notch,
   knob, riffle, rapids, watergap, cutoff, trail, timberline, and divide.
   Already existing words such as creek, slough, sleet, and (in later use)
   watershed, received new meanings that were unknown in England. Other
   noteworthy American toponyms are found among loanwords; for example,
   prairie, butte (French); bayou (Louisiana French); coulee (Canadian
   French, but used also in Louisiana with a different meaning); canyon,
   mesa, arroyo (Spanish); vlei, 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 (or
   breadstuffs). 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, lay by (a crop), truck, elevator,
   sharecropping, and feedlot.

   Ranch, later applied to a house style, derives from Mexican Spanish;
   most Spanish contributions came indeed after the War of 1812, with the
   opening of the West. Among these are, other than toponyms, chaps (from
   chaparreras), plaza, lasso, bronco, buckaroo; examples of "English"
   additions from the cowboy era are bad man, maverick, chuck, 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.

   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, 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).

   Ever since the American Revolution, a great deal 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, and pork barrel. Some of these are
   internationally used (e.g. caucus, gerrymander, filibuster, exit poll).

   The rise of capitalism, 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 ( Interstate, freeway, parkway, etc.) to road infrastructure (
   parking lot, overpass, rest area), and from automotive terminology to
   public transit (e.g. 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), jump (as a red light), double decker, terminal (as a
   noun), or centre (of a city) have long been used in all dialects of
   English. Trades of various kinds have endowed (American) English with
   household words describing jobs and occupations ( bartender and
   barkeep, 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 ( mail "letters
   and packages," automated teller machine, smart card, cash register,
   dishwasher, reservation (as at hotels), pay envelope, movie, mileage,
   shortage, outage, blood bank). 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; miners coined bedrock, bonanza, peter 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, power cord, ground, gasoline; many
   automotive terms fall in this category, although many do not (
   hatchback, compact car, SUV, station wagon, tailgate, motorhome, truck,
   pickup truck, to exhaust).

   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, and such idioms as need
   something like a hole in the head) and German ( hamburger,
   kindergarten, gesundheit, hinterland, wiener, scram, deli, and
   apparently cookbook, fresh "impudent," what gives?, and perhaps the
   often criticized use of hopefully as a sentence modifier).

   With respect to morphology, American English has always shown a marked
   tendency to use substantives as verbs and form compound words. Examples
   of verbed nouns are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, expense, room,
   pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, buffalo, weasel,
   express (mail), belly-ache, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase,
   merchandise, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in "exit a
   place"), 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. Compounds coined in the U.S. are for instance foothill, sidehill,
   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),
   split-level, 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, human
   resources, physically challenged, affirmative action, correctional
   facility). Many compound nouns have the form verb plus preposition:
   add-on, backup (reserve, stoppage, music), stopover, lineup, shakedown,
   tryout, spinoff, 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 on, kick around, cash in, rain out, check in and check out (in
   all senses), fill in "inform," kick 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); in a few
   cases the preposition was prefixed (offset, downplay, downshift,
   overkill, update). Some verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for
   example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, itemize,
   editorialize, customize, notarize, automatize, weatherize, winterize,
   Mirandize, Manhattanize; and so are some back-formations (locate,
   fine-tune, evolute, curate, donate, emote, upholster, and enthuse).
   Among syntactical constructions that arose in the U.S. are as of,
   outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, and lack for.

   Finally, a great deal of common English colloquialisms from various
   periods are American in origin ( OK, cool, darn, gnarly, hot, lame,
   doing great, hang (out), no-brainer, hip, fifty-fifty, gross, doofus,
   diddly-squat, screw up, fool around, nerd, jerk, nuke, nutball, 24/7,
   heads-up, thusly, way back), and so are many other English idioms (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, for the birds, stay put, inside track, stiff upper lip, bad hair
   day, throw a monkey wrench, give the hairy eyeball, under the weather,
   jump bail, come clean, come again?, will the real x please stand up?);
   some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey,
   boost, bulldoze, and jazz, originated as American slang. Americanisms
   formed by alteration of existing words include notably pesky (from
   pest), phony (from fawney), rambunctious (from rumbustious), pry (as in
   "pry open," from prize), putter (verb, from potter), buddy (from
   brother), sundae (from Sunday), and skeeter (from mosquito). Adjectives
   that arose in the U.S. are for example capsule, deadpan, lengthy,
   submittable, upcoming, wrathy, leery, logy, cluttered (up), bossy, cute
   and cutesy, vanilla, flippy, gloppy, peppy, glitzy, picayune, grouchy,
   scroungy, wacky, grounded (of a child), punk (in all senses), sticky
   (of the weather), and through (as in "through train," or meaning
   "finished").

English words that survived in the U.S.

   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
   U.S. dropped out in most varieties of British English. Outside of North
   America, many of these words and meanings (some of which have cognates
   in Lowland Scots) either remained as regionalisms or were later brought
   back, to various extents, especially in the second half of the 20th
   century; these, for instance, include: mad "angry," hire "to employ,"
   quit "to stop" (witness quitter), smart "intelligent," dirt "loose
   soil," guess "to suppose," dampen, oftentimes, supplemental, overly,
   presently "currently," meet with "to have a meeting with," baggage, hit
   (a place), and the verbs squire and loan. Others are no longer in
   common use in Britain and are often regarded as Americanisms; for
   example, fall "autumn," gotten ( past participle of get), sick (in
   general use meaning "ill"), obligate, acclimate, doghouse, broil, rider
   " passenger," sidewalk, pavement "road surface," faucet, spigot,
   coverall, necktie, range "cook stove," letter carrier, attorney
   "lawyer," misdemeanor (law), teller (in a bank), crib (for a child),
   plat, pillow " cushion," pocketbook, monkey wrench, candy, night table,
   to name for, station house, wastebasket, skillet, raise (a child), and
   diaper; some of these originated in 19th century Britain.

   The mandative subjunctive (as in "the City Attorney suggested that the
   matter not be tabled") 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.

Regional differences

   While written American English 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. It enjoys high prestige among Americans, but is
   not a standard accent in the way that Received Pronunciation is in
   England.

   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 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 British 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, and to the African influences from the
   African Americans who were enslaved in the South.

   Although no longer region-specific, African American Vernacular
   English, which remains prevalent amongst African Americans, has a close
   relationship to Southern varieties of American English.

   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 (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 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.
   Mormon and Mexican settlers in the West influenced the development of
   Utah English.

   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).

   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 Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; New York, New York;
   Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Charleston, South Carolina; and New
   Orleans, Louisiana; Detroit, Michigan; which imposed their marks on the
   surrounding areas.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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