From modern slang such as “deadline,” “lituation,” “prairie,” and “amirite,” the English language in the United States has developed a distinctive identity, reflecting broader cultural and historical change since independence.
The idea that American independence also required a new way of speaking was strongly supported by Thomas Jefferson. In an 1813 letter to his friend John Waldo, Jefferson reflected on the rapid growth of the young nation and its impact on language. He argued that a large and diverse population spread across different regions, climates, and industries would naturally expand vocabulary in order to express new realities.
He suggested that these new conditions required “new words, new phrases,” as well as the adaptation of existing words to describe unfamiliar concepts. In his view, British English should remain relatively fixed, while American English would continue evolving and eventually develop its own distinct character, separate from the “mother tongue.”
Even before independence, however, British commentators had expressed concern about American linguistic influence. In 1756, lexicographer Samuel Johnson described the “American dialect” as a form of linguistic corruption, suggesting that all widely spread languages inevitably undergo change and degradation over time.
In the 21st century, the United Kingdom and the United States remain two nations separated, in part, by a shared language. On the 250th anniversary of American independence, it is an apt moment to explore how British and American English developed into two distinct varieties.
Over time, differences in vocabulary and usage have emerged on both sides of the Atlantic. Terms such as “soccer” replacing “football,” “fall” instead of “autumn,” and even informal words like “cooties” illustrate how language has diverged in everyday speech.
These linguistic differences have not developed in isolation. Rather, they reflect wider social and cultural forces that have sometimes drawn the two countries closer together and, at other times, pushed them further apart. As a result, English continues to evolve differently in each context, shaped by history, identity, and ongoing cultural exchange.
The New World Order
The early process of colonisation in North America quickly separated settlers’ language from that of Britain. With migrants arriving from different parts of the British Isles and Europe, many regional accents and vocabulary differences were gradually reduced, or “levelled out,” according to linguist Jack Grieve of the University of Birmingham.
As communities spread across the continent, new regional varieties of English began to emerge. Over time, these differences developed into the distinct accents and dialects heard across North America today.
Alongside this natural linguistic drift, there were also deliberate efforts to create a distinct national language. A leading figure in this movement was lexicographer Noah Webster, who argued that language was central to national identity and unity. In 1789, he wrote that a “national language is a band of national union,” and urged that every effort should be made to make the people of the United States linguistically independent.
Webster believed that, as an independent nation, it was essential for America to establish its own system of language, separate from British English, as a matter of both national identity and political cohesion.
Noah Webster played a central role in shaping American English through a series of educational tools, including grammars, spelling books, and dictionaries. One of his most influential works was the Webster Blue-Backed Speller, which became a key resource for teaching literacy in the early United States and helped standardise a distinct American form of English.
Webster is credited with promoting several spelling reforms that differentiated American English from British usage. These included removing the “u” in words such as “honour” and “favour,” simplifying double consonants in words like “travelled” to “traveled,” changing “draught” to “draft,” and reversing spellings such as “centre” to “center.”
According to linguist Lynne Murphy of the University of Sussex, these changes were not immediately accepted. She notes that it took considerable time for the new spellings to become established, but eventually they became widely adopted and “bed down” in everyday use.
'Tung' and 'lether'?
Not all of Noah Webster’s proposed spelling reforms survived over time. Some of his more extreme suggestions, such as spelling “tongue” as “tung” or “leather” as “lether,” were ultimately rejected and quickly fell out of use.
However, his broader influence proved far more lasting. His American Spelling Book achieved extraordinary popularity, with total sales over the following century estimated at around 100 million copies. This level of reach placed it among the most widely distributed books of its time, rivalled only by the Bible in circulation.
Early American dictionaries incorporated a wide range of vocabulary that would have been unfamiliar to readers in Britain. Many of these words were adopted directly from Indigenous languages, reflecting the need to describe unfamiliar landscapes, animals, and plants encountered in North America. According to Lynne Murphy in The Prodigal Tongue, terms such as “skunk,” “raccoon,” “chipmunk,” “moose,” “opossum,” and “caribou” all originate from Algonquian languages.
American English also absorbed vocabulary from other European settler communities. For example, “prairie” comes from a French word meaning meadow, while “cookie” derives from a Dutch term referring to a small cake.
Over time, some of these American-origin words began to travel back across the Atlantic and enter British usage. The word “deadline,” for instance, became more widely used during and after the US Civil War, where it originally referred to a literal boundary line that prisoners were not permitted to cross without risk of being shot.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment