3. American english

The variety of English spoken in the USA has received the name of American English. The term variant or variety appears most appropriate for several reasons. American English cannot be called a dialect although it is a regional variety, because it has a literary normalized form called Standard American, whereas by definition given above a; dialect has no literary form. Neither is it a separate language, as some American authors claimed, because it has neither grammar nor vocabulary of its own. From the lexical point of view we shall have to deal only with a heterogeneous set of Americanisms.

An Americanism may be defined as a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA.

e.g. cookie 'a biscuit'; frame-up 'a staged or preconcerted law case'; guess 'think'; store 'shop'.

The American variant of the English language differs from British English in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary.

American English is based on the language brought to the new continent in the 17th century. The first English settlers (1620) reached what was later called “New England”. 1 002 passengers arrived on board of the “May Flower”. They came to the American continent determined to make their home there. Most of them died of deceases and hunger but 10 years later more ships brought hundreds of new settlers. By 1640 there were 21 000 inhabitants in New England. The colonists brought with them dialects and cultivated colloquial dialects there. Many 17^th century forms of English still survive:

e. g. nature – nater

creature – critter

Virtue – vartu

We can find these words in Shakespear’s plays.

Words which have died out in Britain, or changed their meaning may survive in the USA. Thus, / guess was used by Chaucer for / think. Americanisms going back to the 17^th century we call historical Americanisms.

For more than three centuries the American vocabulary developed more or less independently of the British stock and was influenced by the new surroundings. The early Americans had to coin words for the unfamiliar fauna and flora? For new phenomena in economic life etc. These Americanisms are called proper Americanisms.

e. g. bull-frog 'a large frog', moose (the American elk), oppossum, raccoon (an American animal related to the bears), for animals; and corn, hickory, etc. for plants.

e. g. backwoods (чащоба); coldsnap (заморозки); blue grass (амер. трава).

They also had to find names for the new conditions of economic life: back-country 'districts not yet thickly populated', back-settlement, backwoods 'the forest beyond the cleared country', backwoodsman 'a dweller in the backwoods'.

Some words were borrowed from the Indian dialects: names of territories (later states), rivers (Mississipi, Missouri).

.e. g. Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Utah (all names of Indian tribes)

e. g. canoe, moccasin, squaw,' tomahawk, wigwam, etc. and translation loans: pipe of peace, pale-face

Spanish borrowings are numerous in the northern states.

e. g. canyon, rodeo, cafeteria, mustang, ranch, sombrero, etc.

Later on new words appeared to name new things. They often show the influence of extra-linguistic factors.

e. g. absentee voting 'voting by mail', dark horse 'a candidate nominated unexpectedly and not known to his voters', to gerrymander 'to arrange and falsify the electoral process to produce a favourable result in the interests of a particular party or candidate'

The formation of the American literary standard refers to the 19^th century. However the Americans declared themselves independent of the Britains. They saw themselves as a nation much earlier. In 1778 Benjamen Franklin was instructed to use the language of the USA when he was sent to Europe to take part in peace-talks in England. The term American English was used in 1781. In 1828 Noah Webster published his “Dictionary of the English language”. This dictionary takes into account differences between English in GB and In America.

Another big group of peculiarities as compared with the English of Great Britain is caused by some specific features of pronunciation, stress or spelling standards, such as [аз] for [a] in ask, dance, path, etc., or [e] for [ei] in made, day and some other.

The American spelling is in some respects simpler than its British counterpart, in other respects just different. The suffix -our is spelled -or, so that armor and humor are the American variants of armour and humour. Altho stands for although and thru for through. The table below illustrates some of the other differences but it is by no means exhaustive.