Lecture 8 American English

1. Linguistic status of American English.

2. Vocabulary of American English.

3. The grammar system of American English.

1. Linguistic status of American English.

For historical and economic reasons the English language has spread over vast territories. It is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and some provinces of Canada. It is the state language in the Wales, Scotland, in Gibraltar and on the island of Malta. The English language was also at different times enforced as a state language on the people who fell under British rule or USA domination in Asia, Africa, Central and South America. After World War II as a result of the national liberation movement throughout Asia and Africa many former colonies have gained independence and in some of them English as the state language has been or is being replaced by the national language of the people inhabiting these countries (by Hindi in India, Urdu in Pakistan, Burmanese in Burma, etc.) though by tradition it retains there the position of an important means of communication.

It is but natural that English is not spoken with uniformity on the British Isles and in Australia, in the USA and New Zealand, etc. These varieties are essentially different in character. Only two have their own literary standards, i.e. their own generally accepted norms of speaking and writing – British English and American English.

Opinions differ as to the nature of these two main varieties of English. Some American linguists, H.L. Mencken for one, speak of two separate languages. They even claim that the American influence on British English is so powerful that there will come a time when the American standard will be established in Britain.

Yet, there are also other points of view. There are scholars who regard American English as one of the dialects of the English language. This theory can hardly be accepted because a dialect is usually opposed to the literary variety of the language whereas American English possesses a literary variety of its own.

Other scholars label American English a “regional variety” of the English language.

A language is supposed to possess a vocabulary and a grammar system of its own. Let us see if American English has them.

2. Vocabulary of American English.

There exist lexical differences between the British and American vocabulary. There are whole groups of words which belong to American vocabulary exclusively and constitute its specific feature. These words are called Americanisms.

1) The first group of such words is historical Americanisms. The English language was brought to the American continent at the beginning of the 17^th century as a result of the expansion of British colonialism. Quite a number of words that were once in current usage in England have survived in America after becoming obsolete at home. Such are the words to loan ‘to lend’, fall as ‘autumn’, guess as ‘think’ or ‘suppose’, homely as ‘ugly, crude’, sick ‘ill, unwell’. These words are used by the Americans and the English in different meanings, but nevertheless they are found both in American and in British vocabulary.

2) The second group of Americanisms includes specifically American words, not found in British vocabulary, they are:

a) proper (early) Americanisms

The migrants were faced with a new world with different landscape, climate, trees, plants, birds and animals. Gradually they formed words to name all these new things. They are: backwoods ‘wooded, uninhabited districts’, cold snap ‘a sudden frost’, blue–grass, ‘grass peculiar to North America’, blue–jack, ‘a small American oak’, egg–plant, sweet potato, redbud ‘the state free of Oklahoma’, red cedar, cat–bird, cat–fish, bull-frog, sun–fish ‘a fish with a round flat golden body’.

These words cannot be found in British English vocabulary but the word-building pattern of composition and the constituents of these compounds are essentially English.

b) later proper Americanisms are represented by names of objects which are called differently in the USA and in England:

British	American
chemist’s sweets luggage underground lift railway carriage car flat lorry pavement	drug store, druggist’s candy baggage subway, tube elevator railroad car automobile apartment truck sidewalk

Some words though found both in English and American vocabulary have developed meanings characteristic of American usage. The noun date meaning ‘the time of some event’, ‘the day of the week or month’, ‘the year’ both in British and American English developed another meaning in American English only: ‘an appointment for a particular time’. The word corn originally meant ‘grain’ came to denote ‘maize’ in America.

3) American vocabulary is rich in borrowings. Alongside with the principal groups of borrowed words which are the same as in the English vocabulary, there are groups of specifically American borrowings. They were borrowed from the languages with which the American English came into contact, they are Spanish borrowings: canyon, ranch, mustang, sombrero, cinch, etc.; Negro borrowings: banjo, etc.; Indian borrowings: wigwam, squaw, canoe, moccasin, toboggan, caribou, tomahawk, hickory, moose, raccoon, etc. There are also some translation –loans of Indian origin: pale–face, war path, war paint, pipe of peace, fire–water, etc.

Many of the names of places, rivers, lakes, even of states are of Indian origin, they are, e.g. Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky.

4) One more group of Americanisms is represented by American shortenings. This type of word–structure is especially characteristic for American word–building. The following shortenings were produced in America, but are used both in American English and British English: movies, talkies, auto, gym, dorm (dormitory), perm (permanent wave), mo (moment), circs (circumstances), cert (certainty), n.g. (no good), b.f. (boyfriend), g.f. (girlfriend, grandfather), g.m. (grandmother), OK (okay).

5) Less obvious, but no less important are the lexical differences of another kind, the so–called structural variants of the words, i.e. words differing in derivational affixes though identical in lexical meaning:

British	American
acclimate aluminium speciality	acclimatize aluminum specialty