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 (or American National Standard).

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'; mail 'post'; store 'shop'.

In the American variant there is an important distinction between Americanisms belonging to the literary norm and those existing in low colloquial and slang. The difference between the American and British literary norm is not systematic.

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

Speaking about the historic causes of these deviations it is necessary to mention that American English is based on the language imported to the new continent at the time of the first settlements, that is on the English of the 17th century. The first colonies were founded in 1607, so that the first colonizers were contemporaries of W. Shakespeare, E. Spenser and J. Milton. Words, which have died out in Britain, or changed their meaning may survive in the USA. Thus, guess, was used by G. Chaucer for think. 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. Hence bull­frog 'a large frog', moose (the American elk), opossum, raccoon (an Amer­ican animal related to the bears) for animals; and corn, hickory, etc. for plants.

The opposition of any two lexical systems among the variants des­cribed provides ample data for observing the influence of extra-linguistic factors upon vocabulary. American political vocabulary shows this point very definite­ly: absentee voting 'voting by mail', dark horse 'a candidate nominated unexpectedly and not known to his voters', gerrymander 'to arrange and falsify the electoral process to produce a favourable result in the interests of a particular party or candidate', all-outer 'an adept of decisive measures'.

Many of the foreign elements borrowed into American English from the Indian languages or from Spanish penetrated very soon not only into British English but also into several other languages, Russian not ex­cluded, and so became international due to the popularity of J.F. Coop­er and H. Longfellow. They are: canoe, moccasin, squaw, tomahawk, wigwam, etc. and translation loans: pipe of peace, pale-face and the like, taken from Indian languages. The Spanish borrowings like cafeteria, mustang, ranch, sombrero, etc. are very familiar to the speakers of many European languages. It is only by force of habit that linguists still in­clude these words among the specific features of American English.

As to the toponyms, for instance Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missou­ri, Utah (all names of Indian tribes), or other names of towns, rivers and states named by Indian words, it must be borne in mind that in all countries of the world towns, rivers and the like show in their names traces of the earlier inhabitants of the land in question.

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 [ae] 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.

British spelling cosy offence practice jewellery travelling thraldom encase

American spelling cozy offense practise jewelry traveling thralldom incase

In the course of time with the development of the modern means of communication the lexical differences between the two variants show a tendency to decrease. Americanisms penetrate into Standard English and Britishisms come to be widely used in American speech. Americanisms mentioned as specific in manuals issued a few decades ago are now used on both sides of the Atlantic or substituted by terms formerly considered as specifically British. It was, for instance, custom­ary to contrast the English word autumn with the American fall. In reality both words are used in both countries, only autumn is some­what more elevated, while in England the word fall is now rare in literary use, though found in some dialects and surviving in set expressions: spring and fall, the fall of the year are still in fairly common use.

Cinema, TV and the Internet are probably the most important channels for the passage of Americanisms into the language of Britain and other lan­guages as well: the Germans adopted the word teenager and the French speak of l'automatisation. The influence of American advertising is also a vehicle of Americanisms. This is how the British term wireless is re­placed by the Americanism radio.

The existing cases of difference between the two variants are con­veniently classified into:

1) Cases where there are no equivalents in British English: drive-in 'a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car' or 'a shop where motorists buy things staying in the car'; dude ranch 'a sham ranch used as a summer residence for holiday-makers from the cities'.

2) Cases where different words are used for the same denotatum, such as can, candy, mailbox, movies, suspenders, truck in the USA and tin, sweets, pillar-box (or letter-box), pictures or flicks, braces and lorry in England.

3) Cases where the semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement, for example, means in the first place 'covering of the street or the floor and the like made of asphalt, stones or some other material'. In England the derived meaning is 'the foot­way at the side of the road'. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means 'the roadway'.

4) Cases where otherwise equivalent words are different in distri­bution (words commonly used with them). The verb ride in Standard English is mostly combined with such nouns as a horse, a bicycle, more seldom they say ride on a bus. In American English combinations like a ride on the train, ride in a boat are quite usual.

5) It sometimes happens that the same word is used in American English with some difference in emotional and stylistic colouring. Nas­ty, for example, is a much milder expression of disapproval in Eng­land than in the States, where it was even considered obscene in the 19th century. Politician in England means 'someone in politics', and is derogatory in the USA. Bal­ance in its lexico-semantic variant 'the remainder of anything' is sub­standard in British English and quite literary in America.

6) Last but not least, there may be a marked difference in frequen­cy characteristics. Thus, timetable, which occurs in American English very rarely, yielded its place to schedule.

This question of different frequency distribution is also of para­mount importance if we wish to investigate the morphological peculiari­ties of the American variant.

Practically speaking the same patterns and means of word-forma­tion are used in coining neologisms in both variants. Only the frequency observed in both cases may be different. Some of the suffixes more fre­quently used in American English are: -ee (draftee n 'a young man about to be enlisted'), -ette (tambour-majorette 'one of the girl drum­mers in front of a procession'), -dom and -ster, as in roadster 'motor­car for long journeys by road' or gangsterdom.

American slang uses alongside the traditional ones also a few spe­cific models, such as verb stem+-er+adverb stem+-er, e. g. opener-upper 'the first item on the programme' and winder-upper 'the last item'. It also possesses some specific affixes and semi-affixes not used in literary colloquial: -o, -eroo, -aroo, -sie, -sy, as in coppo 'policeman', fatso 'a fat man', bossaroo 'boss', chapsie 'fellow'.

The trend to shorten words and to use initial abbreviations in Ameri­can English is even more pronounced than in the British variant. New coinages are incessantly introduced in advertisements, in the press, in everyday conversation; soon they fade out and are replaced by the new­est creations. Ring Lardner, very popular in the 30s, makes one of his characters, a hospital nurse, repeatedly use two enigmatic abbrevia­tions: G.F. and B.F.; at last the patient asks her to clear the mystery.

"What about Roy Stewart?" asked the man in bed.

"Oh, he's the fella I was telling you about," said Miss Lyons. "He's my G.F.'s B.F."

"Maybe I'm a D.F. not to know, but would you tell me what a B.F. and G.F. are?"

"Well, you are dumb, aren't you!" said Miss Lyons. "A G.F. that's a girl friend, and a B.F. is a boy friend. I thought everybody knew that."

The phrases boy friend and girl friend, now widely used everywhere, originated in the USA. So it is an Americanism in the wider meaning of the term, i.e. an Americanism "by right of birth", whereas in the above definition we have defined Americanisms synchronically as lexical units peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA.

Particularly common in American English are verbs with the hang­ing postpositive. They say that in Hollywood you never meet a man: you meet up with him, you do not study a subject but study up on it. In British English similar constructions serve to add a new meaning.

With words possessing several structural variants it may happen that some are more frequent in one country and the others in another. Thus, amid and toward, for example, are more often used in the United States and amidst and towards in Great Britain.

The lexical peculiarities of American English are an easy target for ironical outbursts on the part of some writers.

A well-known humourist G. Mikes goes as far as to say:

"It was de­cided almost two hundred years ago that English should be the language spoken in the United States. It is not known, however, why this deci­sion has not been carried out." In his book "How to Scrape Skies" he gives numerous examples to illustrate this proposition: "You must be extremely careful concerning the names of certain articles. If you ask for suspenders in a man's shop, you receive a pair of braces, if you ask for a pair of pants, you receive a pair of trousers, and should you ask for a pair of braces, you receive a queer look.

I should like to mention that although a lift is called an elevator in the United States, when hitchhiking, you do not ask for an elevator, you ask for a lift.

There is some confusion about the word flat. A flat in America is called an apartment; what they call a flat is a puncture in your tyre (or as they spell it, tire). Consequently the notice: FLATS FIXED does not indicate an estate agent where they are going to fix you up with a flat, but a garage where they are equipped to mend a puncture."

Disputing the common statement that there is no such thing as the American nation, he says: "They do indeed exist. They have produced the American constitution, the American way of life, the comic strips in their newspapers: they have their national game, baseball — which is cricket played with a strong American accent — and they have a na­tional language, entirely their own, unlike any other language."

This is of course an exaggeration, but a very significant one. It con­firms the fact that there is a difference between the two variants to be reckoned with. Although not sufficiently great to warrant American English the status of an independent language, it is considerable enough to make a mixture of variants sound unnatural and be called Mid-Atlantic.

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