American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the U.S. and is an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states. It is the common language used in government, education, and commerce in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and in all U.S. territories except Puerto Rico. Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide.
Varieties of American English include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other forms of English around the world. Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markers is known in linguistics as General American; it covers a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. but especially associated with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of there being one single mainstream American accent. The sound of American English continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents having emerged in the 20th century.
History
The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing a process of extensive dialect leveling and mixing in which English varieties across the Thirteen Colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in the British Isles. English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and Africa.Firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English became common after the mid-18th century, while at the same time speakers' identification with this new variety increased.
Since the 18th century, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that retain minor influences from waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages, primarily European languages.
Some racial and regional variation in American English reflects these groups' patterns of geographic settlement, segregation, and resettlement. This can be seen, for example, in the influence of 18th-century Protestant Ulster Scots immigrants in Appalachia developing Appalachian English and the 20th-century Great Migration bringing African-American Vernacular English to the Great Lakes urban centers.
Phonology
General American
Most American English accents fall under an umbrella known as General American. Rather than one particular accent, General American is a spectrum of those American accents that Americans themselves do not associate with some particular region, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group. General American features are used most by Americans in formal contexts or who are highly educated. Regional accents whose native features are perceived as General American include the accents of the North Midland, Western New England, and the West.The General American sound system's scope of influence and degree of expansion has been debated by linguists since the term was first used roughly a century ago. Many late-20th and early-21st century studies are showing that it is gradually ousting the regional accents in urban areas of the South and the interior North, New York City, Philadelphia, and many other areas. It can generally be said that younger Americans are avoiding their traditional local features in favor of this more nationwide norm. Furthermore, even General American itself appears to be evolving, with linguists identifying new features in speakers born since the last quarter of the 20th century, like a merger of the low-back vowels and a potentially related vowel shift, that are spreading across the nation.
Phonological features
Phonological features that are typical of American dialects—in contrast to British dialects—include features that concern consonants, such as rhoticity, T and D flapping, velarization of L in all contexts, and yod-dropping after alveolar consonants. Like many British accents, T glottalization is the norm in American accents, though only in particular environments.American features that concern vowel sounds include various vowel mergers before , raising and gliding of pre-nasal , the weak vowel merger, and at least one of the vowel mergers. Specifically, the – merger is complete among most Americans and the – merger among roughly half. A three-way –– merger is also very common. Most Americans pronounce the diphthong before a voiceless consonant different from that same vowel before a voiced consonant: thus, in price and bright versus in prize and bride. For many, outside the South, the first element of the diphthong is a higher and shorter vowel sound when in pre-voiceless position as opposed to pre-voiced position. All of these phenomena are explained in further detail under General American.
Studies on historical usage of English in both the United States and the United Kingdom suggest that, while spoken American English deviated away from period British English in many ways, it is conservative in a few other ways, preserving certain features 20th- and 21st-century British English has since lost: namely, rhoticity. Unlike American accents, the traditional standard accent of England has evolved a trap–bath split. Moreover, American accents preserve at the start of syllables, while perhaps a majority of the regional dialects of England participate in /h/ dropping, particularly in informal contexts.
Vocabulary
The process of developing new lexical items began as soon as British English-speaking colonists in North America began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the Native American languages. Examples of such names are opossum, raccoon, squash, moose, wigwam, and moccasin. American English speakers have integrated traditionally non-English terms and expressions into the mainstream cultural lexicon; for instance, en masse, from French; cookie, from Dutch; kindergarten from German, and rodeo from Spanish. Landscape features are often loanwords from French or Spanish, and the word corn, used in England to refer to wheat, came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in the U.S.Other common differences between UK and American English include: aerial vs. antenna, biscuit vs. cookie/cracker, car park vs. parking lot, caravan vs. trailer, city centre vs. downtown, flat vs. apartment, fringe vs. bangs, and holiday vs. vacation.
Most Mexican Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West, like ranch. Due to Mexican culinary influence, many Spanish words are incorporated in general use when talking about certain popular dishes: cilantro, queso, tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, burritos, and guacamole. These words usually lack an English equivalent and are found in popular restaurants. New forms of dwelling created new terms ' and types of homes like log cabin, adobe in the 18th century; apartment, shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium, townhouse, mobile home in the 20th century; and parts thereof '. Industry and material innovations from the 19th century onwards provide distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms through railroading and transportation terminology, ranging from types of roads to infrastructure , to automotive terminology often now standard in English internationally. Already existing English words—such as store, shop, lumber—underwent shifts in meaning; others remained in the U.S. while changing in Britain. Science, urbanization, and democracy have been important factors in bringing about changes in the written and spoken language of the United States. From the world of business and finance came new terms, from sports and gambling terminology came, specific jargon aside, common everyday American idioms, including many idioms related to baseball. The names of some American inventions remained largely confined to North America as did certain automotive terms.
New foreign loanwords came with 19th and early 20th century European immigration to the U.S.; notably, from Yiddish and German. A large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor, while others have not ; many are now distinctly old-fashioned . Some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey, boost, bulldoze and jazz, originated as American slang.
American English has always shown a marked tendency to use words in different parts of speech and nouns are often used as verbs. Examples of nouns that are now also verbs are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, hashtag, head, divorce, loan, estimate, X-ray, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, bad-mouth, vacation, major, and many others. Compounds coined in the U.S. are for instance foothill, landslide, backdrop, teenager, ''brainstorm, bandwagon, hitchhike, smalltime, and a huge number of others. Other compound words have been founded based on industrialization and the wave of the automobile: five-passenger car, four-door sedan, two-door sedan, and station-wagon. Some are euphemistic .'' Many compound nouns have the verb-and-preposition combination: stopover, lineup, tryout, spin-off, shootout, holdup, hideout, comeback, makeover, and many more. Some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin.
Noun endings such as -ee, -ery, -ster and -cian are also particularly productive in the U.S. Several verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, weatherize, etc.; and so are some back-formations . Among syntactic constructions that arose are outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, etc. Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, buddy, sundae, skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in the U.S. are, for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, punk, sticky, through, and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky.
A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United States have since disappeared in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots. Terms such as fall, faucet, diaper, candy, skillet, eyeglasses, and obligate are often regarded as Americanisms. Fall, however, came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year". Gotten is often considered to be largely an Americanism. Other words and meanings were brought back to Britain from the U.S., especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire, I guess, baggage, hit, and the adverbs overly and presently. Some of these, for example, monkey wrench and wastebasket, originated in 19th century Britain. The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American English than British English.
Linguist Bert Vaux created a survey, completed in 2003, polling English speakers across the United States about their specific everyday word choices, hoping to identify regionalisms. The study found that most Americans prefer the term sub for a long sandwich, soda for a sweet and bubbly soft drink, you or you guys for the plural of you, sneakers for athletic shoes, and shopping cart for a cart used for carrying supermarket goods.