The growth of Standard American

The English language was brought to America by colonists from England in the 17th century. The language spoken in England at that time is now called 'Shakespearean'.

The period of European immigration from с. 1607 (the settlement of Jamestown) to с.1787 (the approval of the Federal Constitution by Congress) is the most important one for the history of American English. A.Baugh in his famous book 'A History of the English Lan­guage' wrote in this regard: «It was the early colonists who brought us our speech and established its forms. Those who came later were largely assimilated in a generation or two, and though their influence may have been felt, it is difficult to define and seems not to have been great».

The majority of the early colonists came from the eastern coun­ties of England.

Most radical structural changes in the English language sys­tem had already taken place before the colonization of North America, so structurally (typoiogically) American Standard does not differ from British Standard. There are of course some minor distinctions, pe­ripheral for the language system. E.g. The use of 'will' for the first person singular instead of'shall'; 'gotten', 'proven' in place of'got', 'proved' as the past participles of 'get', 'prove', etc.

The English language in Britain had already been standardized and codified by the time the first colonists came to America. This is a fact contributing to relative uniformity of American English. Had the colonization of America taken place a bit earlier (say, in the 14—15th century), when the literary standard had not yet been fixed in Britain, there might have been a greater dialectal diversity in the USA, which might have caused greater differentiations between the two standards.

There exist several views explaining the present distinctions. One of them is expressed in the term 'colonial lag' and attributes American peculiarities to the archaic character of this variety, i.e. to its ability to preserve such features of the language which have gone out of use in the standard speech of England.

A number of phonetic peculiarities are considered to be archaic. Here belong:

1) either [i:]

neither

2) the preservation of [r] in all positions (it was vocalized after vowels in Standard British in the 18th century);

3) the preservation of the open [ae] in the words which con­tain stable [a:] in British English (before f, sk, sp, st, ss, th, n+a consonant) E.g. fast, path, etc. [ae] [ae]

Some American words are no longer used in British English. E.g. fall (autumn), platter, rare (rare meat), mad (angry), etc.

On the other hand, American English has introduced some innovations so that it became possible to find British words which are archaic for American English. E.g. porridge, moor, ironmonger, fortnight. These words are either lost or uncommon in America.

American innovations mostly concern vocabulary. Peculiar American changes in vocabulary are due to cross-ethnic contacts in America. Those were subethnic contacts (between colonists speaking different English dialects) and superethnic ones (between colonists from different European countries and American native population, later — negroes).

There were some innovations imposed by the new experiences which colonists underwent. The physical features of the American continent and lot of new things and objects had to be named.

E.g. bluff, foothill, gap, divide, watershed, clearing, notch,

potato bug, hickory, raccoon, skunk, opossum, moose, etc.

Superethnic contacts brought words of marginal importance; mostly they are confined to some thematic spheres. Thus, Indian way of life is reflected in: tomahawk, canoe, wampum, squaw, pa­poose, war paint, to scalp, paleface, war path, medicine man, etc.

The new mode of life in contact with the new natural environ­ment is reflected in: prairie, squatter, backwoodsman, back country, log cabin, snow plow, cold snap, etc.

Words from the French, Dutch and German languages are easily recognizable: bureau, cache, portage, caribou, cookie, boss, noodle, pretzel, sauerkraut...

There were also some differentiations caused by different usages of one and the same word.

Cf. corn, lumber, timber, robin, etc. in Britain and America;

their meanings are different in the two variants.

A lot of new idioms were coined by Americans.

E.g.: Log rolling, to be on the fence, to face the music, to fly off the handle, to come out at the little end of the horn, to go on the war path, to saw wood, to bark up the wrong tree, etc.

Some of the words mentioned above and the words given below appeared first in America, but they are now used all over the world.

E.g.: dope-fiend, jazz, high-brow, sob-stuff, advocate, caucus, joyride, etc.

They are American insofar as they are associated with the purely American things (whose origin is American).

Present differentiation of vocabulary is not so great as might be expected. Yet, there are spheres of life where these distinctions are important and noticeable: railroad (railway), household utensils, automobile (car), etc. Actually, differences occur in any part of the vocabulary. Consider the following examples:

ironmongery (hardware)

lift (elevator)

post (mail)

dustman (garbage collector)

spanner (wrench)

nappy (diaper)

underground (subway).

The American and English are aware of these differences. Be­sides, there are such words which might be misunderstood in Eng­land or which are incomprehensible to English ears.

E.g.: tuxedo, pressman, lumber, etc.

The lower the register the more incomprehensible to the English people words we can find.

Flivver, dumbbell, bonehead, punk, go-getter, hootch, boot-legger are examples of American slang coinages. One may also find Brit­ish slang coinages unknown in America. Colloquial language has always shown more local variation than the more formal levels of speech.

6. In the written language the difference between the two va­riants is often slight and mostly consists in spelling. American spelling seems to be more motivated than the conventional British one. Cf.:

American English	British English
honor	honour
color	colour
traveler	traveller
wagon	waggon
center	centre
defense	defence
ax	axe
plow	plough
tire	tyre
story	storey
czar	tsar
jail	gaol
medieval	mediaeval
program	programme
	etc.

Most of the American Orthographic innovations are due to Noah Webster's influence. It is his 'Spelling Book' which was used in thousands of schools with lasting effects.

The common practice at schools consisted in pupils' standing to­gether and reading (with one voice) columns of words from the tables for spelling, letter by letter, syllable by syllable, word by word. That practice couldn't but influence the way Americans pronounce unaccented syllables. They tend to give them fuller value by keeping a secondary stress on one of them:

E.g., neces'sary, adver'tisement.

The rise of Standard American is associated with the activities of Noah Webster. The Declaration of Independence and the years of fighting to establish freedom from England produced a change in American psychology. Most of the books and ideas had been imported from Europe. All those things came to be identified as signs of the former dependence. The demand for an American civilization to become distinctive from the European traditions was the order of the day. To write new school-books and dictionaries which would reflect American reality, and its social and political back­ground meant to codify the language and fix the American norm at the same time.

Noah Webster (1758—1843) was animated by the purpose to show that the English language in America was an American thing, developing along its own lines. His efforts resulted in 'A Grammatical Institute of the English Language' comprising three books for schools. 'The American Spelling Book' was one of them.

In 1828 he published his dictionary in two volumes. It is to Noah Webster that Americans owe the most characteristic peculiarities of their spelling, they all being fixed in the dictionary. The value of his dictionary, which recorded American usage, can hardly be overestimated.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-02