American English (variously abbreviated AmE, AE, AmEng, USEng, en-US^[1]), also known as United States English or U.S. English, is a set of dialects A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation . Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, the term accent is appropriate, not dialect (although in common usage, "dialect" and "accent" are usually synonymous) of the English language English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and of the United States since the late 19th century, it has become the lingua franca in many parts of the world. It is used used mostly in the United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the. Approximately two thirds of native speakers Sometimes the term first language is used for the language that the speaker speaks best of English live in the United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the.^[2]

English is the most common language in the United States. Though the U.S. federal government The federal government of the United States is the central United States governmental body, established by the United States Constitution. The federal government has three branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial. Through a system of separation of powers and the system of "checks and balances," each of these branches has some has no official language, English is considered the de facto De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact". In law, it is meant to mean "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but without being officially established". It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or technique (such language of the United States due to its widespread use. English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state governments.^[3]

The use of English in the United States was inherited from British colonization British colonization of the Americas began in the late 16th century and reached its peak when colonies had been established throughout the Americas and a protectorate had been established over the Kingdom of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The British were one of the most important colonizers of the Americas, and their American empire came to rival. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America in the 17th century. During that time, there were also speakers in North America of Spanish Spanish sometimes called Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade. It was taken most notably to the Americas, and also to Africa and Asia Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the, French French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 90 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 54 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France, where the language originated. The rest live, Dutch Dutch ( Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language, and over 5 million people as a second language. Most native speakers live in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, with smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. It is closely related to other, German German (Deutsch, [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native, Norwegian Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants (see Danish language#Classification), Swedish Swedish ( svenska ) is a North Germanic language, spoken by around 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. It is to a considerable extent mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish (see especially "Classification"). Along with the, Scots Scots or Lowland Scots refers to the Germanic varieties spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster. It is not to be confused with Scottish Gaelic, the surviving Celtic language of Scotland, Welsh Welsh , is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic spoken natively in Wales, in England by some along the Welsh border and in the Welsh immigrant colony in the Chubut Valley in Argentine Patagonia, Irish Irish is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken natively by a small minority of the Irish population – mostly in Gaeltacht areas – but also plays an important symbolic role in the life of the Irish state, and is used across the country in, Scottish Gaelic 92,400 people aged three and over in Scotland had some Gaelic language ability in 2001 with an additional 2000 in Nova Scotia. 1,610 speakers in the United States in 2000. 822 in Australia in 2001. 669 in New Zealand in 2006, Finnish Finnish ( suomi , or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% as of 2006[update]) and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken. The Kven, Russian Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three living members of the East Slavic languages, the others being Belarusian and Ukrainian (and possibly Rusyn, (Alaska Alaska ( /əˈlæskə/ , Russian: Аляска Alyaska) is the largest state of the United States of America by area; it is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait) and numerous Native American languages Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language isolates and unclassified languages. Many proposals to.

Contents 1 Phonology 2 Vocabulary 2.1 Creation of an American lexicon 2.2 Morphology 2.3 English words that survived in the United States 3 Regional differences 4 Differences between British English and American English 5 See also 6 Bibliography 6.1 General 6.2 History of American English 6.3 Regional variation 6.4 Social variation 6.4.1 African American 6.4.2 American Indian 6.4.3 Latino American 6.5 Visual media 7 Notes 8 External links

Phonology

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See also: North American English regional phonology North American English regional phonology is the study of variations in the pronunciation of spoken English by the inhabitants of various parts of North America. North American English can be divided into several regional dialects based on phonological, phonetic, lexical, and some syntactic features. North American English includes American

In many ways, compared to English English There are many different accents and dialects throughout England and people are often very proud of their local accent or dialect, but there are many associated prejudices— illustrated by George Bernard Shaw's comment:, North American English^[4] is conservative in its phonology Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system. When describing the formal area of study, the term typically describes linguistic analysis either beneath the.^{[citation needed]} Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast The East Coast of the United States, also known as the "Eastern Seaboard" or "Atlantic Seaboard", refers to the easternmost coastal states in the central and northern United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. In a geographical sense, the term Eastern Seaboard is widely used; in popular usage, the (for example, in Eastern New England and New York City), partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of English English at a time when those varieties were undergoing changes.^[5] In addition, many speech communities on the East Coast have existed in their present locations longer than others. The interior of the United States, however, was settled by people from all regions of the existing United States and, therefore, developed a far more generic linguistic pattern.

The red areas are those where non-rhotic pronunciations are found among some white people in the United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the. AAVE African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular (BEV), or Black Vernacular English (BVE)—is an African American variety (dialect, ethnolect and sociolect) of American English. Non-linguists sometimes call it Ebonics (a term that also has other-influenced non-rhotic pronunciations may be found among black people American English · African American Vernacular English · minorities of Spanish · French · indigenous African languages throughout the country.^[6]

Most North American speech is rhotic English pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: A rhotic speaker pronounces the letter R in hard or water. A non-rhotic speaker does not. In other words, rhotic speakers pronounce written /r/ in all positions, while non-rhotic speakers pronounce /r/ only if it is followed by a vowel sound in the same syllable (see "linking, as English was in most places in the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English Hiberno-English – also known as Anglo-Irish and Irish English – is English as spoken in Ireland, partly the result of the interaction of the English and Irish languages. English was mainly brought to Ireland during the Plantations of Ireland in the sixteenth century[citation needed] and established itself in Dublin and in the area of Leinster and Scottish English Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not include Scots depending on the observer as well as the fact most regions of England at this time also had rhotic accents. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter r is a retroflex The retroflex approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɻ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\`. The IPA symbol is a turned lowercase letter r with a rightward hook protruding from the lower right of the letter [ɻ] or alveolar approximant The alveolar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents alveolar and postalveolar approximants is ɹ, a lowercase letter r rotated 180 degrees; the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\ [ɹ] rather than a trill or a tap. The loss of syllable-final r in North America is confined mostly to the accents of eastern New England The Boston accent is found not only in the city of Boston, Massachusetts itself, but also much of eastern Massachusetts. The Boston accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. These regions are frequently grouped together with Rhode Island and eastern, New York City The English spoken in northern New Jersey is distinct from yet shares much in common with the New York City dialect, and the New York dialect is spoken in some parts of New Jersey nearest to New York. Similarly, a variety of unrelated dialects are spoken in those parts of New York State outside the metropolitan area and surrounding areas, South Philadelphia South Philadelphia, nicknamed "South Philly," is the section of Philadelphia bounded by South Street to the north, the Delaware River to the east and south, and the Schuylkill River to the west. In 2000, the area's population was 162,683. It is home to a diverse population of Italian Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and, and the coastal portions of the South Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Southern and Eastern Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to throughout most of Texas. In rural tidewater Virginia The Tidewater region of Virginia is a term used to refer to the eastern portion of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The term "Tidewater" may be correctly applied to all portions of Virginia where the water level is affected by the tides. In general, this is most of the land east of I-95, which runs between major cities along the fall line, and eastern New England New England is a region of the United States located in the northeastern corner of the country, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Canada and New York State, and consisting of the modern states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, 'r' is non-rhotic in accented (such as "bird", "work", "first", "birthday") as well as unaccented syllables, although this is declining among the younger generation of speakers. Dropping of syllable-final r sometimes happens in natively rhotic dialects if r is located in unaccented syllables or words and the next syllable or word begins in a consonant. In England, the lost r was often changed into [ə] (schwa The word "schwa" is from the Hebrew word שְׁוָא , which designates the Hebrew niqqud vowel sign shva "ְ" that in modern Hebrew indicates either the phoneme /e/ or the complete absence of a vowel. The spelling "schwa" is German in origin), giving rise to a new class of falling diphthongs Diphthongs often form when separate vowels are run together in rapid speech. However, there are also unitary diphthongs, as in the English examples above, which are heard by listeners as single vowel sounds. Furthermore, the er sound of fur or butter, is realized in AmE as a monophthongal A monophthong is a "pure" vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation; compare diphthong r-colored vowel In phonetics, vocalic r refers to the phenomenon of a rhotic segment such as [r] or [ɹ] occurring as the syllable nucleus. This is a feature of a number of Slavic languages such as Czech, Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian, as well as some western Bulgarian dialects. It also appears in languages like English and Mandarin Chinese, where it occurs as an (stressed [ɝ] or unstressed [ɚ] as represented in the IPA Occasionally symbols are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of 2008, there are 107 distinct letters, 52 diacritics, and 4 prosody marks in the IPA proper). This does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech.

Some other British English changes in which most North American dialects do not participate:

• The shift of /æ/ to /ɑ/ (the so-called "broad A The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English , in the Boston accent, and in the Southern Hemisphere accents (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), by which the Early Modern English phoneme /æ/ was lengthened in certain environments and ultimately merged with the long /�") before /f/, /s/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, /v/ alone or preceded by a homorganic In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact, where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an active (moving) articulator (typically some part of the tongue) and a passive (stationary) articulator (typically some part of the roof of the mouth). Along with the manner of articulation and nasal. This is the difference between the British Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation —also called the Queen's (or King's) English and BBC English—is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional dialects similar to that of other European languages. Although there is nothing intrinsic about RP that marks it as superior to any other variety, sociolinguistic factors give and American pronunciation of bath and dance. In the United States, only eastern New England speakers took up this modification, although even there it is becoming increasingly rare.
• The realization of intervocalic /t/ as a glottal stop [ʔ] (as in [bɒʔəl] for bottle). This change is not universal for British English and is not considered a feature of Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation —also called the Queen's (or King's) English and BBC English—is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional dialects similar to that of other European languages. Although there is nothing intrinsic about RP that marks it as superior to any other variety, sociolinguistic factors give. This is not a property of most North American dialects. Newfoundland English Newfoundland English is a name for several dialects of English found in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, often regarded as the most distinctive dialect of English in Canada. Some specific Newfoundland dialects are similar to the accent heard in the southeast of Ireland , while others are similar to those of West Country England, or a is a notable exception.

On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound changes not found in Britain, especially not in its standard varieties. Many of these are instances of phonemic differentiation Phonemic differentiation is the phenomenon of a language maximizing the acoustic distance between its phonemes, presumably to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding and include:

• The merger of /ɑ/ and /ɒ/ The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English . In those accents with the merger father and bother rhyme, and Kahn and con are homophonous as [kɑn]. "Balm and "bomb" may also be homophones as /bɑm/: however this merger is, making father and bother rhyme. This change is nearly universal in North American English, occurring almost everywhere except for parts of eastern New England, hence the Boston accent The Boston accent is found not only in the city of Boston, Massachusetts itself, but also much of eastern Massachusetts. The Boston accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. These regions are frequently grouped together with Rhode Island and eastern.
• The merger of /ɒ/ and /ɔ/. This is the so-called cot-caught merger The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English . In those accents with the merger father and bother rhyme, and Kahn and con are homophonous as [kɑn]. "Balm and "bomb" may also be homophones as /bɑm/: however this merger is, where cot and caught are homophones A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose (past tense of "rise"), or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms. The term ". This change has occurred in eastern New England, in Pittsburgh Pittsburgh English, popularly known as Pittsburghese, is the dialect of American English spoken by many residents of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and surrounding Western Pennsylvania and surrounding areas, and from the Great Plains The Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie and steppe which lie west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming, and the Canadian provinces of westward.

• For speakers who do not merge caught and cot: The replacement of the cot vowel with the caught vowel before voiceless fricatives Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of [f]; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German [x], the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue against the molars, in (as in cloth, off [which is found in some old-fashioned varieties of RP]), as well as before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long), usually in gone, often in on, and irregularly before /g/ (log, hog, dog, fog [which is not found in British English at all]).
• The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut vowel in most utterances of the words was, of, from, what and in many utterances of the words everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody; the word because has either /ʌ/ or /ɔ/;^[7] want has normally /ɔ/ or /ɑ/, sometimes /ʌ/.^[8]

• Vowel merger The English language has undergone a number of phonological changes before the historic phoneme /r/. In recent centuries, most or all of these changes have involved merging of vowel distinctions before intervocalic /ɹ/. Which vowels are affected varies between dialects. One such change is the laxing of /e/, /i/ and /u/ to /ɛ/, /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ before /ɹ/, causing pronunciations like [pɛɹ], [pɪɹ] and [pjʊɹ] for pair, peer and pure. The resulting sound [ʊɹ] is often further reduced to [ɝ], especially after palatals Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex, so that cure, pure, mature and sure rhyme with fir.
• Dropping of /j/ The phonological history of English consonant clusters is part of the phonological history of the English language in terms of changes in the phonology of consonant clusters after alveolar consonants Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue (so-called apical consonants), as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip (the " so that new, duke, Tuesday, suit, resume, lute are pronounced /nu/, /duk/, /tuzdeɪ/, /sut/, /ɹɪzum/, /lut/.
• æ-tensing The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English , in the Boston accent, and in the Southern Hemisphere accents (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), by which the Early Modern English phoneme /æ/ was lengthened in certain environments and ultimately merged with the long /� in environments that vary widely from accent to accent; for example, for many speakers, /æ/ is approximately realized as [eə] before nasal consonants A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue. Rarely, other types of consonants may be nasalized. In some accents, particularly those from Philadelphia Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania and the sixth-most-populous city in the United States to New York City The City of New York, commonly called New York City and New York, has been the most populous city in the United States since 1790, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city located in the state of New York, it exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance,, [æ] and [eə] can even contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I can [kæn] vs. tin can [keən].
• The flapping Intervocalic alveolar flapping is a phonological process found in many dialects of English, especially North American English and Australian English, by which prevocalic (preceding a vowel) /t/ and /d/ surface as the alveolar tap [ɾ] after sonorants other than /ŋ/, /m/, and (in some environments) /l/ of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap The alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar flaps is ɾ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 4 [ɾ] before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/ (bottle), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding are pronounced the same. For many speakers, this merger is incomplete and does not occur after /aɪ/; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with [əɪ] and rider with [aɪ]. This is a form of Canadian raising Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which diphthongs are "raised" before voiceless consonants . /aɪ/ (the vowel of "eye") becomes [ʌi], while the outcome of //aʊ// (the vowel of "loud") varies by dialect, with [ʌu] more common but, unlike more extreme forms of that process, does not affect /aʊ/. In some areas and idiolects, a phonemic distinction between what elsewhere become homophones through this process is maintained by vowel lengthening in the vowel preceding the formerly voiced consonant, e.g., [læ:·ɾɹ̩] for "ladder" as opposed to [læ·ɾɹ̩] for "latter".
• Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realized as [n] or [ɾ̃], rarely making winter and winner homophones. Most areas in which /nt/ is reduced to /n/, it is accompanied further by nasalization of simple post-vocalic /n/, so that V/nt/ and V/n/ remain phonemically distinct. In such cases, the preceding vowel becomes nasalized, and is followed in cases where the former /nt/ was present, by a distinct /n/. This stop-absorption by the preceding nasal /n/ does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in entail.
• The pin-pen merger The high front vowels of English have undergone a variety of changes over time, which may vary from dialect to dialect, by which [ɛ] is raised to [ɪ] before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Southern and Eastern Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to throughout most of Texas but is now also sometimes found in parts of the Midwest and West as well, especially in people with roots in the mountainous areas of the Southeastern United States The US Southeast is the eastern portion of the Southern United States, but the Census Bureau does not provide a standard definition of a "Southeast" region of the United States, and organizations that need to subdivide the US are free to define a "Southeast" region to fit their needs. However, Georgia is almost always included,.

Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include:

• The merger The English language has undergone a number of phonological changes before the historic phoneme /r/. In recent centuries, most or all of these changes have involved merging of vowel distinctions of the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/ before 'r', making pairs like horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning, etc. homophones A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose (past tense of "rise"), or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms. The term ".
• The wine-whine merger The pronunciation of the digraph wh in English has varied with time, and can still vary today between different regions. According to the historical period and the accent of the speaker, it is most commonly realised as the consonant cluster /hw/ or as /w/. Before rounded vowels, as in who and whole, it is often realized as /h/ making pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where, etc. homophones A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose (past tense of "rise"), or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms. The term ", in most cases eliminating /ʍ/, the voiceless labiovelar fricative The voiceless labiovelar approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʍ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is W. Many older varieties of southern and western AmE still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading.

Vocabulary

North America has given the English lexicon In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes many thousands of words, meanings, and phrases. Several thousand are now used in English as spoken internationally; others, however, died within a few years of their creation.

Creation of an American lexicon

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The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as the colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the Native American languages Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language isolates and unclassified languages. Many proposals to. Examples of such names are opossum Didelphimorphia is the order of common opossums of the Western Hemisphere. They are commonly also called possums, though that term is also applied to Australian fauna of the suborder Phalangeriformes. The Virginia Opossum is the original animal named opossum. The word comes from Algonquian wapathemwa. Opossums probably diverged from the basic, raccoon The raccoon , sometimes spelled as racoon, and also known as the common raccoon, North American raccoon, northern raccoon and colloquially as coon, is a medium-sized mammal native to North America. As a result of escapes and deliberate introductions in the mid-20th century, raccoons are now also distributed across the European mainland, the, squash Squashes generally refer to four species of the genus Cucurbita native to Mexico and Central America, also called marrows depending on variety or the nationality of the speaker. It is also natively grown in parts of North America, Europe, India, and Australia. In North America, squash is loosely grouped into summer squash or winter squash, as well and moose The moose or elk (Europe), Alces alces, is the largest extant species in the deer family. Moose are distinguished by the palmate antlers of the males; other members of the family have antlers with a "twig-like" configuration (from Algonquian The Algonquian languages languages are a subfamily of Native American languages that includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is itself a member of the Algonquian language family. The). Other Native American loanwords, such as wigwam A wigwam or wickiup is a domed single-room dwelling used by certain Native American tribes. The term wickiup is generally used to label these kinds of dwellings in American Southwest and West. Wigwam is usually applied to these structures in the American Northeast. The use of these terms by non-Native Americans is somewhat arbitrary and can refer or moccasin A moccasin is a shoe made of deerskin or other soft leather, consisting of a sole and sides made of one piece of leather, stitched together at the top, and sometimes with a vamp . The sole is soft and flexible and the upper part often is adorned with embroidery or beading, et cetera. Historically, it is the footwear of many Native American tribes;, describe artificial objects in common use among Native Americans. The languages of the other colonizing nations also added to the American vocabulary; for instance, cookie In the United States and Canada, a cookie is a small, flat-baked treat, containing milk, flour, eggs, and sugar, etc. In most English-speaking countries outside North America, the most common word for this is biscuit; in many regions both terms are used, while in others the two words have different meanings—a cookie is a plain bun in Scotland,, cruller A traditional crudder is a twisted, oblong, fried pastry made of dough somewhat like that of a cake doughnut, often topped with plain powdered sugar; powdered sugar mixed with cinnamon; or icing, stoop, and pit (of a fruit) from Dutch Dutch ( Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language, and over 5 million people as a second language. Most native speakers live in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, with smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. It is closely related to other; levee A levee, levée, dike , embankment, floodbank or stopbank is a natural or artificial slope or wall to regulate water levels. It is usually earthen and often parallel to the course of a river or the coast, portage ("carrying of boats or goods") and (probably) gopher All gophers have in common the digging of tunnels and subterranean chambers, and the association with the rodent order, Rodentia. Disruption of such human plans for the surface as commercial agriculture, garden plots, and some landscaping, by their underground activities, leads to their frequent treatment as pests. In contrast, North American from French French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 90 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 54 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France, where the language originated. The rest live; barbecue Barbecue or barbeque (with abbreviations BBQ, Bar-B-Q and Bar-B-Que; diminutive form barbie, used chiefly in Australia & New Zealand; and called Braai in South Africa) is a method and apparatus for cooking food, often meat, with the heat and hot gases of a fire, smoking wood, or hot coals of charcoal and may include application of a marinade,, stevedore The words stevedore, docker, dock labourer and longshoreman can have various waterfront-related meanings concerning loading and unloading ships, according to place and country, and rodeo Rodeo is a sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States, western Canada, and northern Mexico. Today it is a sporting event from Spanish Spanish sometimes called Castilian (castellano) is a Romance language that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade. It was taken most notably to the Americas, and also to Africa and Asia Pacific with the expansion of the Spanish Empire between the.

Among the earliest and most notable regular "English" additions to the American vocabulary, dating from the early days of colonization through the early 19th century, are terms describing the features of the North American landscape; for instance, run, branch, fork, snag In forest ecology, a snag refers to a standing, partly or completely dead tree, often missing a top or most of the smaller branches, bluff, gulch A gulch is a deep V-shaped valley formed by erosion. It may contain a small stream or dry creek bed and is usually larger in size than a gully. Occasionally, sudden intense rainfall may produce flash floods in the area of the gulch, neck (of the woods), barrens, bottomland In studies of the ecology of freshwater rivers, habitats are classified as upland and lowland. Upland habitats are cold, clear, rocky, fast flowing rivers in mountainous areas; lowland habitats are warm, slow flowing rivers found in relatively flat lowland areas, with water that is frequently coloured by sediment and organic matter, notch, knob, riffle, rapids A rapid is a section of a river where the river bed has a relatively steep gradient causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence. A rapid is a hydrological feature between a run and a cascade. A rapid is characterised by the river becoming shallower and having some rocks exposed above the flow surface. As flowing water splashes over and, watergap, cutoff, trail, timberline and divide. Already existing words such as creek, slough, sleet and (in later use) watershed received new meanings that were unknown in England.

Other noteworthy American toponyms are found among loanwords; for example, prairie, butte (French); bayou (Choctaw via Louisiana French); coulee (Canadian French, but used also in Louisiana with a different meaning); canyon, mesa, arroyo (Spanish); vlei, kill (Dutch, Hudson Valley).

The word corn, used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the plant Zea mays, the most important crop in the U.S., originally named Indian corn by the earliest settlers; wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc. came to be collectively referred to as grain (or breadstuffs). Other notable farm related vocabulary additions were the new meanings assumed by barn (not only a building for hay and grain storage, but also for housing livestock) and team (not just the horses, but also the vehicle along with them), as well as, in various periods, the terms range, (corn) crib, truck, elevator, sharecropping and feedlot.

Ranch, later applied to a house style, derives from Mexican Spanish; most Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West. Among these are, other than toponyms, chaps (from chaparreras), plaza, lasso, bronco, buckaroo, rodeo; examples of "English" additions from the cowboy era are bad man, maverick, chuck ("food") and Boot Hill; from the California Gold Rush came such idioms as hit pay dirt or strike it rich. The word blizzard probably originated in the West. A couple of notable late 18th century additions are the verb belittle and the noun bid, both first used in writing by Thomas Jefferson.

With the new continent developed new forms of dwelling, and hence a large inventory of words designating real estate concepts (land office, lot, outlands, waterfront, the verbs locate and relocate, betterment, addition, subdivision), types of property (log cabin, adobe in the 18th century; frame house, apartment, tenement house, shack, shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium, townhouse, split-level, mobile home, multi-family in the 20th century), and parts thereof (driveway, breezeway, backyard, dooryard; clapboard, siding, trim, baseboard; stoop (from Dutch), family room, den; and, in recent years, HVAC, central air, walkout basement).

Ever since the American Revolution, a great number of terms connected with the U.S. political institutions have entered the language; examples are run, gubernatorial, primary election, carpetbagger (after the Civil War), repeater, lame duck and pork barrel. Some of these are internationally used (e.g. caucus, gerrymander, filibuster, exit poll).

The rise of capitalism, the development of industry and material innovations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries were the source of a massive stock of distinctive new words, phrases and idioms. Typical examples are the vocabulary of railroading (see further at rail terminology) and transportation terminology, ranging from names of roads (from dirt roads and back roads to freeways and parkways) to road infrastructure (parking lot, overpass, rest area), and from automotive terminology to public transit (e.g. in the sentence "riding the subway downtown"); such American introductions as commuter (from commutation ticket), concourse, to board (a vehicle), to park, double-park and parallel park (a car), double decker or the noun terminal have long been used in all dialects of English.^[9] Trades of various kinds have endowed (American) English with household words describing jobs and occupations (bartender, longshoreman, patrolman, hobo, bouncer, bellhop, roustabout, white collar, blue collar, employee, boss [from Dutch], intern, busboy, mortician, senior citizen), businesses and workplaces (department store, supermarket, thrift store, gift shop, drugstore, motel, main street, gas station, hardware store, savings and loan, hock [also from Dutch]), as well as general concepts and innovations (automated teller machine, smart card, cash register, dishwasher, reservation [as at hotels], pay envelope, movie, mileage, shortage, outage, blood bank).

Already existing English words —such as store, shop, dry goods, haberdashery, lumber— underwent shifts in meaning; some —such as mason, student, clerk, the verbs can (as in "canned goods"), ship, fix, carry, enroll (as in school), run (as in "run a business"), release and haul— were given new significations, while others (such as tradesman) have retained meanings that disappeared in England. From the world of business and finance came breakeven, merger, delisting, downsize, disintermediation, bottom line; from sports terminology came, jargon aside, Monday-morning quarterback, cheap shot, game plan (football); in the ballpark, out of left field, off base, hit and run, and many other idioms from baseball; gamblers coined bluff, blue chip, ante, bottom dollar, raw deal, pass the buck, ace in the hole, freeze-out, showdown; miners coined bedrock, bonanza, peter out, pan out and the verb prospect from the noun; and railroadmen are to be credited with make the grade, sidetrack, head-on, and the verb railroad. A number of Americanisms describing material innovations remained largely confined to North America: elevator, ground, gasoline; many automotive terms fall in this category, although many do not (hatchback, SUV, station wagon, tailgate, motorhome, truck, pickup truck, to exhaust).

In addition to the above-mentioned loans from French, Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Dutch, and Native American languages, other accretions from foreign languages came with 19th and early 20th century immigration; notably, from Yiddish (chutzpah, schmooze and such idioms as need something like a hole in the head) and German —hamburger and culinary terms like frankfurter/franks, liverwurst, sauerkraut, wiener, deli(catessen); scram, kindergarten, gesundheit;^[10] musical terminology (whole note, half note, etc.); and apparently cookbook, fresh ("impudent") and what gives? Such constructions as Are you coming with? and I like to dance (for "I like dancing") may also be the result of German or Yiddish influence.^[11]

Finally, a large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from OK and cool to nerd and 24/7), while others have not (have a nice day, sure);^[12] many are now distinctly old-fashioned (swell, groovy). Some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey, boost, bulldoze and jazz, originated as American slang. Among the many English idioms of U.S. origin are get the hang of, take for a ride, bark up the wrong tree, keep tabs, run scared, take a backseat, have an edge over, stake a claim, take a shine to, in on the ground floor, bite off more than one can chew, off/on the wagon, stay put, inside track, stiff upper lip, bad hair day, throw a monkey wrench, under the weather, jump bail, come clean, come again?, it ain't over till it's over, what goes around comes around, and will the real x please stand up?^[13]

Morphology

American English has always shown a marked tendency to use nouns as verbs.^[14] Examples of verbed nouns are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, room, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, belly-ache, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in "exit the lobby"), factor (in mathematics), gun ("shoot"), author (which disappeared in English around 1630 and was revived in the U.S. three centuries later) and, out of American material, proposition, graft (bribery), bad-mouth, vacation, major, backpack, backtrack, intern, ticket (traffic violations), hassle, blacktop, peer-review, dope and OD.

Compounds coined in the U.S. are for instance foothill, flatlands, badlands, landslide (in all senses), overview (the noun), backdrop, teenager, brainstorm, bandwagon, hitchhike, smalltime, deadbeat, frontman, lowbrow and highbrow, hell-bent, foolproof, nitpick, about-face (later verbed), upfront (in all senses), fixer-upper, no-show; many of these are phrases used as adverbs or (often) hyphenated attributive adjectives: non-profit, for-profit, free-for-all, ready-to-wear, catchall, low-down, down-and-out, down and dirty, in-your-face, nip and tuck; many compound nouns and adjectives are open: happy hour, fall guy, capital gain, road trip, wheat pit, head start, plea bargain; some of these are colorful (empty nester, loan shark, ambulance chaser, buzz saw, ghetto blaster, dust bunny), others are euphemistic (differently abled, human resources, physically challenged, affirmative action, correctional facility).

Many compound nouns have the form verb plus preposition: add-on, stopover, lineup, shakedown, tryout, spin-off, rundown ("summary"), shootout, holdup, hideout, comeback, cookout, kickback, makeover, takeover, rollback ("decrease"), rip-off, come-on, shoo-in, fix-up, tie-in, tie-up ("stoppage"), stand-in. These essentially are nouned phrasal verbs; some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin (spell out, figure out, hold up, brace up, size up, rope in, back up/off/down/out, step down, miss out on, kick around, cash in, rain out, check in and check out (in all senses), fill in ("inform"), kick in ("contribute"), square off, sock in, sock away, factor in/out, come down with, give up on, lay off (from employment), run into and across ("meet"), stop by, pass up, put up (money), set up ("frame"), trade in, pick up on, pick up after, lose out.^[15][16]

Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive.^[14] Some verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, itemize, editorialize, customize, notarize, weatherize, winterize, Mirandize; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, evolute, curate, donate, emote, upholster, peeve and enthuse). Among syntactical constructions that arose in the U.S. are as of (with dates and times), outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, convince someone to…, not to be about to and lack for.

Americanisms formed by alteration of existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, pry (as in "pry open," from prize), putter (verb), buddy, sundae, skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in the U.S. are for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, grounded (of a child), punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "through train," or meaning "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky. American blends include motel, guesstimate, infomercial and televangelist.

English words that survived in the United States

A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that always have been in everyday use in the United States dropped out in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots. Terms such as fall ("autumn"), pavement (to mean "road surface", where in Britain, as in Philadelphia, it is the equivalent of "sidewalk"),^[17] faucet, diaper, candy, skillet, eyeglasses, crib (for a baby), obligate, and raise a child are often regarded as Americanisms. Gotten (past participle of get) is often considered to be an Americanism, although there are some areas of Britain, such as Lancashire and North-eastern England, that still continue to use it and sometimes also use putten as the past participle for put (which is not done by most speakers of American English).^[18]

Other words and meanings, to various extents, were brought back to Britain, especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"), quit ("to stop," which spawned quitter in the U.S.), I guess (famously criticized by H. W. Fowler), baggage, hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently ("currently"). Some of these, for example monkey wrench and wastebasket, originated in 19th-century Britain.

The mandative subjunctive (as in "the City Attorney suggested that the case not be closed") is livelier in AmE than it is in British English; it appears in some areas as a spoken usage, and is considered obligatory in contexts that are more formal. The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American than British English.^[19]

Regional differences

Main articles: Regional vocabularies of American English and North American English regional phonology

While written AmE is standardized across the country, there are several recognizable variations in the spoken language, both in pronunciation and in vernacular vocabulary. General American is the name given to any American accent that is relatively free of noticeable regional influences.

After the Civil War, the settlement of the western territories by migrants from the Eastern U.S. led to dialect mixing and leveling, so that regional dialects are most strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard. The Connecticut River and Long Island Sound is usually regarded as the southern/western extent of New England speech, which has its roots in the speech of the Puritans from East Anglia who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Potomac River generally divides a group of Northern coastal dialects from the beginning of the Coastal Southern dialect area; in between these two rivers several local variations exist, chief among them the one that prevails in and around New York City and northern New Jersey, which developed on a Dutch substratum after the British conquered New Amsterdam. The main features of Coastal Southern speech can be traced to the speech of the English from the West Country who settled in Virginia after leaving England at the time of the English Civil War, and to the African influences from the African Americans who were enslaved in the South.

Although no longer region-specific,^[20] African American Vernacular English, which remains prevalent among African Americans, has a close relationship to Southern varieties of AmE and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans.

A distinctive speech pattern also appears near the border between Canada and the United States, centered on the Great Lakes region (but only on the American side). This is the Inland North Dialect—the "standard Midwestern" speech that was the basis for General American in the mid-20th Century (although it has been recently modified by the northern cities vowel shift). Those not from this area frequently confuse it with the North Midland dialect treated below, referring to both collectively as "Midwestern" in the mid-Atlantic region or "Northern" in the Southern US. The so-called '"Minnesotan" dialect is also prevalent in the cultural Upper Midwest, and is characterized by influences from the German and Scandinavian settlers of the region (yah for yes/ja in German, pronounced the same way).

In the interior, the situation is very different. West of the Appalachian Mountains begins the broad zone of what is generally called "Midland" speech. This is divided into two discrete subdivisions, the North Midland that begins north of the Ohio River valley area, and the South Midland speech; sometimes the former is designated simply "Midland" and the latter is reckoned as "Highland Southern." The North Midland speech continues to expand westward until it becomes the closely related Western dialect which contains Pacific Northwest English as well as the well-known California English, although in the immediate San Francisco area some older speakers do not possess the cot-caught merger and thus retain the distinction between words such as cot and caught which reflects a historical Mid-Atlantic heritage.

The South Midland or Highland Southern dialect follows the Ohio River in a generally southwesterly direction, moves across Arkansas and Oklahoma west of the Mississippi, and peters out in West Texas. It is a version of the Midland speech that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms (outsiders often mistakenly believe South Midland speech and coastal South speech to be the same).

The island state of Hawaii has a distinctive Hawaiian Pidgin.

Finally, dialect development in the United States has been notably influenced by the distinctive speech of such important cultural centers as Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charleston, New Orleans, and Detroit, which imposed their marks on the surrounding areas.

Differences between British English and American English

Main article: American and British English differences

American English and British English (BrE) differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a lesser extent, grammar and orthography. The first large American dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language, was written by Noah Webster in 1828; Webster intended to show that the United States, which was a relatively new country at the time, spoke a different dialect from that of Britain.

Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and normally do not affect mutual intelligibility; these include, but are not limited to: different use of some verbal auxiliaries; formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns; different preferences for the past forms of a few verbs (e.g. AmE/BrE: learned/learnt, burned/burnt, and in sneak, dive, get); different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (e.g. AmE in school, BrE at school); and whether or not a definite article is used, in very few cases (AmE to the hospital, BrE to hospital). Often, these differences are a matter of relative preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable, since the two varieties are constantly influencing each other.^[21]

Differences in orthography are also trivial. Some of the forms that now serve to distinguish American from British spelling (color for colour, center for centre, traveler for traveller, etc.) were introduced by Noah Webster himself; others are due to spelling tendencies in Britain from the 17th century until the present day (e.g. -ise for -ize, although the Oxford English Dictionary still prefers the -ize ending) and cases favored by the francophile tastes of 19th century Victorian England, which had little effect on AmE (e.g. programme for program, manoeuvre for maneuver, skilful for skillful, cheque for check, etc.).^[22]

AmE sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas BrE uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE transport or where the British form is a back-formation, such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar).

The most noticeable differences between AmE and BrE are at the levels of pronunciation and vocabulary.

See also

• Dictionary of American Regional English
• IPA chart for English
• Regional accents of English speakers

Bibliography

General

• Bartlett, John R. (1848). Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded As Peculiar to the United States. New York: Bartlett and Welford.
• Ferguson, Charles A.; & Heath, Shirley Brice (Eds.). (1981). Language in the USA. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Finegan, Edward. (2004). American English and its distinctiveness. In E. Finegan & J. R. Rickford (Eds.), Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century (pp. 18–38). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Finegan, Edward; & Rickford, John R. (Eds.). (2004). Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Frazer, Timothy (Ed.). (1993). Heartland English. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
• Glowka, Wayne; & Lance, Donald (Eds.). (1993). Language variation in North American English. New York: Modern Language Association.
• Garner, Bryan A. (2003). Garner's Modern American Usage. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kenyon, John S. (1950). American pronunciation (10th ed.). Ann Arbor: George Wahr.
• Kortmann, Bernd; Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge, Kate; Mesthrie, Rajend; & Upton, Clive (Eds.). (2004). A handbook of varieties of English: Morphology and syntax (Vol. 2). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Labov, William; Sharon Ash; Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016746-8.
• Lippi-Green, Rosina. (1997). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. New York: Routedge.
• MacNeil, Robert; & Cran, William. (2005). Do you speak American?: A companion to the PBS television series. New York: Nan A. Talese, Doubleday.
• Mathews, Mitford M. (ed.) (1951). A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Mencken, H. L. (1936, repr. 1977). The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (4th edition). New York: Knopf. (1921 edition online: www.bartleby.com/185/).
• Simpson, John (ed.) (1989). Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Schneider, Edgar (Ed.). (1996). Focus on the USA. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Schneider, Edgar W.; Kortmann, Bernd; Burridge, Kate; Mesthrie, Rajend; & Upton, Clive (Eds.). (2004). A handbook of varieties of English: Phonology (Vol. 1). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Thomas, Erik R. (2001). An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. Publication of American Dialect Society (No. 85). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Thompson, Charles K. (1958). An introduction to the phonetics of American English (2nd ed.). New York: The Ronald Press Co.
• Trudgill, Peter and Jean Hannah. (2002). International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English, 4th ed. London: Arnold. ISBN 0-340-80834-9.
• Wolfram, Walt; & Schilling-Estes, Natalie. (1998). American English: Dialects and variation. Malden, MA: Basil Blackwell.

History of American English

• Algeo, John (Ed.). (2001). The Cambridge history of the English language: English in North America (Vol. 6). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bailey, Richard W. (1991). Images of English: A cultural history of the language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Bailey, Richard W. (2004). American English: Its origins and history. In E. Finegan & J. R. Rickford (Eds.), Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century (pp. 3–17). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bryson, Bill. (1994). Made in America: An informal history of the English language in the United States. New York: William Morrow.
• Finegan, Edward. (2006). English in North America. In R. Hogg & D. Denison (Eds.), A history of the English language (pp. 384–419). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Kretzschmar, William A. (2002). American English: Melting pot or mixing bowl? In K. Lenz & R. Möhlig (Eds.), Of dyuersitie and change of language: Essays presented to Manfred Görlach on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday (pp. 224–239). Heidelberg: C. Winter.
• Mathews, Mitford. (1931). The beginnings of American English. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Read, Allen Walker. (2002). Milestones in the history of English in America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Regional variation

• Allen, Harold B. (1973-6). The linguistic atlas of the Upper Midwest (3 Vols). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Atwood, E. Bagby. (1953). A survey of verb forms in the eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Carver, Craig M. (1987). American regional dialects: A word geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10076-9
• Kurath, Hans, et al. (1939-43). Linguistic atlas of New England (6 Vols). Providence: Brown University for the American Council of Learned Societies.
• Kurath, Hans. (1949). A word geography of the eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Kurath, Hans; & McDavid, Raven I., Jr. (1961). The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic states. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• McDavid, Raven I., Jr. (1979). Dialects in culture. W. Kretzschmar (Ed.). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
• McDavid, Raven I., Jr. (1980). Varieties of American English. A. Dil (Ed.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Metcalf, Allan. (2000). How we talk: American regional English today Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-04362-4
• Pederson, Lee; McDaniel, Susan L.; & Adams, Carol M. (eds.). (1986-92). Linguistic atlas of the gulf states (7 Vols). Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.

Social variation

African American

• Bailey, Guy; Maynor, Natalie; & Cukor-Avila, Patricia (Eds.). (1991). The emergence of Black English: Text and commentary. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Green, Lisa. (2002). African American English: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Labov, William. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Lanehart, Sonja L. (Ed.). (2001). Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American English. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Mufwene, Salikoko; Rickford, John R.; Bailey, Guy; & Baugh, John (Eds.). (1998). African American Vernacular English. London: Routledge.
• Rickford, John R. (1999). African American Vernacular English: Features, evolution, and educational implications. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Wolfram, Walt. (1969). A sociolinguistic description of Detroit negro speech. Urban linguistic series (No. 5). Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
• Wolfram, Walt; & Thomas, Erik. (2002). The development of African American English: Evidence from an isolated community. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

American Indian

• Leap, William L. (1993). American Indian English. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Latino American

• Bayley, Robert; & Santa Ana, Otto. (2004). Chicano English grammar. In B. Kortmann, E. W. Schneider, K. Burridge, R. Mesthrie, & C. Upton (Eds.), A handbook of varieties of English: Morphology and syntax (Vol. 2, pp. 167–183). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Fought, Carmen. (2003). Chicano English in context. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Galindo, Letticia D. (1987). Linguistic influence and variation of the English of Chicano adolescents in Austin, Texas. (PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin).
• Santa Ana, Otto. (1993). Chicano English and the Chicano language setting. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 15 (1), 1-35.
• Santa Ana, Otto; & Bayley, Robert. (2004). Chicano English phonology. In E. W. Schneider, B. Kortmann, K. Burridge, R. Mesthrie, & C. Upton (Eds.), A handbook of varieties of English: Phonology (Vol. 1, pp. 407–424). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Wolfram, Walt. (1974). Sociolinguistic aspects of assimilation: Puerto Rican English in New York City. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Visual media

• Cran, William (Producer, Director, Writer); Buchanan, Christopher (Producer); & MacNeil, Robert (Writer). (2005). Do you speak American? [Documentary]. New York: Center for New American Media.
• Kolker, Andrew; & Alvarez, Louis (Producers, Directors). (1987). American tongues: A documentary about the way people talk in the U.S. [Documentary]. Hohokus, NJ: Center for New American Media.

Notes

1. ^ en-US is the language code for American English , as defined by ISO standards (see ISO 639-1 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2) and Internet standards (see IETF language tag).
2. ^ Crystal, David (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53032-6.
3. ^ U.S. English, Inc.
4. ^ North American English (Trudgill, p. 2) is a collective term used for the varieties of the English language that are spoken in the United States and Canada.
5. ^ Trudgill, pp. 46–47.
6. ^ Labov, p. 48.
7. ^ According to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. For speakers who merge caught and cot, /ɔ/ is to be understood as the vowel they have in both caught and cot.
8. ^ [1], [2], [3]
9. ^ A few of these are now chiefly found, or have been more productive, outside of the U.S.; for example, jump, "to drive past a traffic signal;" block meaning "building," and center, "central point in a town" or "main area for a particular activity" (cf. Oxford English Dictionary).
10. ^ The Maven's Word of the Day, Random House. Retrieved February 8, 2007.
11. ^ Trudgill, Peter (2004). New-Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes.
12. ^ [4], [5] Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Retrieved April 24, 2007.
13. ^ [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27]
14. ^ ^{a b} Trudgill, p. 69.
15. ^ [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40]
16. ^ British author George Orwell (in English People, 1947, cited in OED s.v. lose) criticized an alleged "American tendency" to "burden every verb with a preposition that adds nothing to its meaning (win out, lose out, face up to, etc.)."
17. ^ Possible entries for pavement
18. ^ A Handbook of Varieties of English,Bernd Kortmann & Edgar W. Schneider, Walter de Gruyter, 2004, page 115
19. ^ Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. [41] [42] [43]. Retrieved March 23, 2007.
20. ^ Cf. Trudgill, p.42.
21. ^ Algeo, John (2006). British or American English?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-37993-8.
22. ^ Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, pp. 34 and 511.

External links

Look up american english in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Do You Speak American: PBS special
• Dialect Survey of the United States, by Bert Vaux et al., Harvard University. The answers to various questions about pronunciation, word use etc. can be seen in relationship to the regions where they are predominant.
• Linguistic Atlas Projects
• Phonological Atlas of North America at the University of Pennsylvania
• The American•British British•American Dictionary
• Speech Accent Archive
• World English Organization
• English Speaking Union of the United States
• British, American, Australian English - Lists and Online Exercises
• Dictionary of American Regional English
• The Great Pop Vs. Soda Controversy

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