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English in the US

 

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

One group of English people sailed across the Atlantic and reached the east coast of America for to settle on but they were not the first in America.

Then in 1620 more English settlers landed north of Virginia. These were people from the ship called the Mayflower, who came because they wanted to follow a different kind of Christianity from the kind in England.

In 1640 sailors from England and other European countries were taking Africans to America and selling them as slaves.

The Africans had to live in terrible conditions during the long voyage, and many not survive. This business was ended in 1808, but the people were allowed to own slaves until the end of the American Civil War in 1865.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries more and more people arrived in America.

American English developed from the languages used by these different people. The first English settlers immediately discovered news copies that were new to them. Sometimes the settlers used English words to name a new species. The Spanish and French controlled some parts of the country until the nineteenth century. Occasionally the English settlers borrowed words for things or people from other European languages.

Some of the pronunciation of the first settlers also survives in Modern American English.

American English has borrowed only a few words from the languages spoken by the nineteenth-century immigrants. The reason for this is social. People who had recently arrived in the US wanted to become American, and they and their children learned English to do so.

African-Americans developed their own varieties of English. They had an effect on American English, specially in the twentieth century.

At the time of independence in 1776, Americans began to take interest in their language. They feel proud of their country and way of life. Someone who felt very proud of American English was a teacher called Noah Webster. Webster wrote speller, a grammar, and a reader for American schools. The speller was later sold as The American Spelling Book, and was extremely successful. With the money from speller, Webster was able to write dictionaries. He wanted to show that American English was as good as British English, and that Americans did not have to copy the British. His first dictionary appeared in 1806, followed in 1828 by his famous work An American dictionary of the English Language.

Sixty years earlier, Benjamin Franklin has suggested many changes to English spelling, and his ideas influenced Webster. In both dictionaries Webster suggested new spellings, and many of these are now the accepted American spellings. Some of his other suggestions were not followed but Webster also influenced American pronunciation. By saying that each part of a word must be clearly pronounced.

 

 

All kinds of English

 

All over the world people speaking English as a first or second language use different vocabulary, grammar and accents in a large number of varieties of English.

A variety of English is a type of English spoken by one group of people. In each English-speaking country one variety of English is used nationally. This is the Standard English of that country. Everyone in the country uses the same grammar, vocabulary and spelling when they use their country’s Standard English, touch they may speak it with different accents. Different countries have different Standard Englishes.

All dialects have some words and expressions, both old and new that are different from

Standard English.

 

Jargon and slang

 

Jargon and slang are kinds of English that are not part of Standard English. Jargon is difficult or strange language used by a group of people to describe things that the rest of us do not know about.

People use jargon because they need to describe very detailed things or ideas and the rest of us have to try and understand it.

 

Slang is an extremely informal kind of language, much more informal than jargon. It is usually only spoken; jargon is often written as well as spoken. Slang usually belongs to a group of people who use it to show that they belong to that group and others do not. Sometimes they need language others will not understand.

Most slang changes quite quickly, because the people who use it need to make new words to keep confusing outsiders.

 

The future of English

 

English continues to be used by speakers of other languages all over the world, and to be changed by those languages.

English will continue to change, but it will not lose its importance in the world.

However, other people think that the future of English as a world language is not so certain.

Although international business may grow, some of it may be with countries in the same part of the world, and other shared languages may be used instead English.

If English remains a world language, some governments may try to stop its use in their own countries. They may fear that the use of English will endanger their own languages and customs.

It seems probable that as English is use internationally more and more, the need for a standard grammar and vocabulary, standard spelling rules, and some standard pronunciation will remain. Perhaps a new simpler kind of World Standard English will develop from the regional varieties, one that all users can easily use and understand.

As the number of second and foreign language speakers of English grows larger than the number of first language speakers, other languages will have a greater effect on English. Extremely large numbers of words from other languages will probably continue to cross into English at great speed.

You never know what will happen next, just depends on progress in this century.