11. American-English.
The history of English in America. A language, a dialect, a variant. The lexical (words having equivalents and no equivalents in British English), phonetic (differences in the articulation of vowels and consonants, separate words, stress differences) and grammatical peculiarities of English in the USA.
Standard Eng is the official lang of Great Britain taught at schools & universities, used by the press, the radio and TV and spoken by educated people. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. The variant of Eng spoken in the USA is called American Eng.
The term variant or variety seems to be the most appropriate because it has neither grammar nor vocabulary of its own. There are only some differences btw American & British Eng. The American variant of the Eng lang differs from British Eng in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar but chiefly in vocabulary.
There are historic causes of these deviations. American Eng is based on the lang imported to the new continent at the time of the 1st settlements on the Eng lang of the 17th c. Words which died in Britain or changed their meaning survived in the USA.
E.g. guess = think (early in Britain, now in the USA).
The early Americans have to make up words for the unfamiliar fauna [o:] and flora. E.g. opossum, …
Contact with Indians and Spanish led to the penetration of many words – canoe, wigwam, moccasin (Indian); mustang (Sp.).
American spelling is simpler than its British counterpart: colour – color, through – thru.
Lexical peculiarities, differences in vocabulary which were very great in the 18-19th c are now becoming vage. Still there are words in American Eng which have no equivalents in British Eng: words connected with the US of political structure and social life.
E.g. selectman, junior high school, senior high school, precinct, a drugstore.
Words having British equivalents:
Am. Installment plan – Br. Higher purchase system
Mail box – pillar box, letter box.
Grammar peculiarities are not numerous. Some forms of irregular verbs differ.
E.g. gotten – got, stricken – struck.
Synthetic forms of subjunctive and suppositional mood are used in American Eng.
E.g. He suggested that we go.
Present Perfect is seldom used, Past Simple is used instead.
E.g. Did it happened before?
And will is use instead of shall.
Phonetic peculiarities: in American Eng some vowels are pronounced differently than in British Eng.
The vowel o is more open and resembles a (stop),
[a:] – [ae] in aunt, glass.
[t, k] is omitted in twenty, asked.
Some separate words are pronounced differently Asia []…
There are some stress differences as well. In American Eng words ending in -ory, -ery, -mony have 2 stresses, whereas in British Eng they have one stress.
E.g. se’creta’ry, la’borato’ry.