Historical background

american english word

Since America originally meant the continent, American was originally used (1578) to mean a native of it, an Indian. Many British writers, including essayist Joseph Addison, used American to mean Indian well into the 18th century, calling the colonists not Americans but transplanted Englishmen. Beginning in 1697, however, Cotton Mather popularized the word Ameri­can to mean an English colonist in America. The language was called American by 1780; a citizen of the United States was called an American by 1782; and Thomas Jefferson used Americanism to mean United States patriotism in 1797.The name the United States of America is said to have been created by Tom Paine; it was first used officially in the Declaration of Independence, whose subtitle is "The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America". [9. p.6 ]

This distinction between colonies and states confused many people and throughout the Revolutionary War many called the new country the United Colonies. In 1776, too, the name the United States of America was already shortened to the United States (in the proceedings of the Continental Congress) and even to the shorter the States. George Washington wrote the abbreviation U.S. in 1791, and the abbreviation U.S.A. was recorded in 1795. Even though the United States of America appeared in the Dec­laration of Independence, the new government used the official title the United States of North America until 1778, when the "North" was dropped from the name by act of the Continental Congress.

When this new nation took its first census in 1790 there were four million Americans, 90% of them descendants of English colonists. Thus there was no question that English was the mother tongue and native language of the United States. By 1720, however, some English colonists in America had already begun to notice that their language differed seriously from that spoken back home in England. Almost without being aware of it, they had:

(1) coined some new words for themselves;

(2) borrowed other words from the Indians, Dutch, French, and Spanish;

(3) been using English dialect words in their general speech;

(4) continued to use some English words that had now be come obsolete in England;

(5) evolved some peculiar uses, pronunciation, grammar, and syntax.

Many of the coinages and borrowings were for plants, animals, landscapes, living conditions, institutions, and attitudes which were seldom if ever encountered in England, so the English had no words for them. The widespread use of English dialect words was also natural: most of the Puritans came from England's southern and southeastern counties and spoke the East Anglia dialect, most of the Quakers spoke the midland dialect, and after 1720 many new colonists were Scots-Irish, speak­ing the Ulster dialect. The continuing use of words that had be­come obsolete in England, and of unusual usage, pronunciation, grammar, and syntax, was also natural for colonists isolated from the niceties of current English speech and English education. Thus, naturally, a hundred years after the Pilgrims landed, English as spoken in America differed from that spoken in England. [9. p.7 ]

In 1756, a year after he published his Dictionary of the English Language, "Doctor" Samuel Johnson was the first to refer to an American dialect. In 1780, soon after the American Revolution began, the word American was first used to refer to our language; in 1802 the term the American Language was first recorded, in the U.S. Congress; and in 1806 Noah Webster coined the more precise term American English.

Was American English good or bad? By 1735 the English began calling it "barbarous" and its native words barbarisms. When the anti-American Dr. Johnson used the term American dialect he meant it as an insult. Such English sneering at the language con­tinued unabated for a hundred years after the Revolutionary War. The English found merely colorful or quaint such American terms as ground hog and lightning rod and such borrowings as oppossum, tomahawk, and wampum (from the Indians), boss (Dutch), levee (French), and ranch (Spanish). They laughed at and condemned as unnecessary or illiterate hundreds of American terms and usages, such as:

Examples: allow, guess, reckon, meaning “to think”, which had all become obsolete in England.

bluff, used in the South since 1687, instead of tte British river "bank." This has the dis­tinction of being the first word attacked as being a "barbarous" American term.

bureau, meaning “chest” of drawers, which was obsolete in England.

card, meaning a “person who likes to joke”, an American use since 1835.

clever, meaning “sharp witted”, an East Anglia dialect use com­mon to all Americans.

fall, obsolete in England where "autumn" was now the pre­ferred word.

fork, which the British ate with but which also drive or paddle on, using it since 1645 to mean the “branch of a road or river”. [9. p.8]

It wasn't only American words that the English disliked, but American pro­nunciation and grammar as well. They jeered when Americans said "missionary" instead of "mission'ry," "shew" for "show," and "whare" and "bhar" for "where" and "bear." In 1822 visitor Charles Dickens said that outside of New York and Boston all Americans had a nasal drawl and used "doubtful" grammar. In 1832 Mrs. Trollop said that during her visit in America she seldom heard a correctly pronounced sentence. And in 1839 visitor Captain Frederick Marryat said it was remarkable how debased the English language had become in such a short time in America.

On the other hand, during and after the Revolutionary War Americans became proud of American language. It was a badge of independence. In 1778 the Continental Congress recommended that when the French minister visited "all replies or answers" to him should be made "in the language of the United States" (not only as opposed to French but also as opposed to English English). Ameri­cans were bound to continue to develop their own brand of English. What the English called barbarisms Americans proudly called American­isms. John Witherspoon coined this word in 1781, in a series of papers he wrote for rhe Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, and defined it as any word or usage peculiar to English as used in America.

Later, of course, Americans were to add more Indian and Spanish words to their language, borrow words and intonations from such immigrant groups as the Germans and Italians, and —like the English themselves —continue to coin new words and change the meanings of old ones, develop their own dialects and pronunciations, and evolve more of their own gram­matical and syntactical uses and misuses. Since World War II, however, best-selling books, movies, TV shows, popular songs, and jet-propelled tourists have spread American English to England and English English to the U.S. Modern politics, pop culture, jet planes, and electronics seem to be bringing the two "languages" closer together again. [9. p.9]