Every language allows
different kinds of variations: geographical or territorial, perhaps the most
obvious, stylistic, the difference between the written and the spoken form of
the standard national language and others. It is the national language of England proper,
the USA,
Australia,
New Zealand
and some provinces of Canada.
It is the official language of Wales,
Scotland,
in Gibraltar and on the island of Malta.
Modern linguistics distinguishes territorial variants of a national language
and local dialects. Variants of a language are regional varieties of a standard
literary language characterized by some minor peculiarities in the sound
system, vocabulary and grammar and by their own literary norms.
Standard
English – the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and
universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by
educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and
literary, substantially uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever English
is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words or
dialectisms belonging to various local dialects. Local dialects are varieties
of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized
literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called
variants. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of
Standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio,
television and cinema.
The differences between
the English language as spoken in Britain. The USA, Australia and Canada are
immediately noticeable in the field of phonetics. However these distinctions
are confined to the articulatory-acoustic characteristics of some phonemes, to
some differences in the use of others and to the differences in the rhythm and
intonation of speech. The few phonemes characteristic of American pronunciation
and alien to British literary norms can as a rule be observed in British
dialects.
The variety of English
spoken in the USA
has received the name of American English. The term variant or
variety appears most appropriate for several reasons. American English cannot
be called a dialect although it is a regional variety, because it has a
literary normalized form called Standard American, whereas by definition given
above a dialect has no literary form.
Neither is it a separate language, as some American authors, like H. L.
Mencken, claimed, because it has neither grammar nor vocabulary of its own.
From the lexical point of view one shall have to deal only with a heterogeneous
set of Americanisms.
An Americanism may be
defined as a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as
spoken in the USA.
E.g. cookie 'a biscuit'; frame house 'a house consisting of a
skeleton of timber, with boards or shingles laid on'; frame-up 'a staged
or preconcerted law case'; guess 'think'; store 'shop'.
A general and
comprehensive description of the American variant is given in Professor
Shweitzer's monograph. An important aspect of his treatment is the distinction
made between americanisms belonging to the literary norm and those existing in
low colloquial and slang. The difference between the American and British
literary norm is not systematic.
The American variant of
the English language differs from British English in pronunciation, some minor
features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary, and this paragraph will deal
with the latter.1 Our treatment will be mainly diachronic.
Speaking about the
historic causes of these deviations it is necessary to mention that American
English is based on the language imported to the new continent at the time of
the first settlements, that is on the English of the 17th century. The first
colonies were founded in 1607, so that the first colonizers were contemporaries
of Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton. Words which have died out in Britain, or
changed their meaning may survive in the USA. Thus, I guess was used
by Chaucer for I think. For more than three centuries the American
vocabulary developed more or less independently of the British stock and, was
influenced by the new surroundings. The early Americans had to coin words for
the unfamiliar fauna and flora. Hence bull-frog 'a large frog', moose
(the American elk), oppossum, raccoon (an American animal related to the
bears), for animals; and corn, hickory, etc. for plants. They also had
to find names for the new conditions of economic life: back-country
'districts not yet thickly populated', back-settlement, backwoods 'the
forest beyond the cleared country', backwoodsman 'a dweller in the
backwoods'.
The opposition of any
two lexical systems among the variants described is of great linguistic and
heuristic value because it furnishes ample data for observing the influence of
extra-linguistic factors upon the vocabulary. American political vocabulary
shows this point very definitely: absentee voting 'voting by mail', dark
horse 'a candidate nominated unexpectedly and not known to his voters', to
gerrymander 'to arrange and falsify the electoral process to produce a
favorable result in the interests of a particular party or candidate', all-outer
'an adept of decisive measures'.
Many of the foreign
elements borrowed into American English from the Indian dialects or from Spanish
penetrated very soon not only into British English but also into several other
languages, Russian not excluded, and so became international. They are: canoe,
moccasin, squaw, tomahawk, wigwam, etc. and translation loans: pipe of
peace, pale-face and the. like, taken from Indian languages. The Spanish
borrowings like cafeteria, mustang, ranch, sombrero, etc. are very
familiar to the speakers of many European languages. It is only by force of
habit that linguists still include these words among the specific features of
American English.
As to the toponyms, for
instance, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Utah (all names of Indian
tribes), or other names of towns, rivers and states named by Indian words, it
must be borne in mind that in all countries of the world towns, rivers and the
like show in their names traces of the earlier inhabitants of the land
in question.
Another big group of peculiarities
as compared with the English of Great Britain is caused by some specific
features of pronunciation, stress or spelling standards, such as [ae] for in ask, dance, path, etc., or Ie] for
[ei] in made, day and some other.
The American spelling is
in some respects simpler than its British counterpart, in other respects just
different. The suffix -our is spelled -or, so that armor
and humor are the American variants of armour and humour.
Altho stands for although and thru for through. The
table below illustrates some of the other differences but it is by no means
exhaustive. For a more complete treatment the reader is referred to the
monograph by A. D. Schweitzer:
British spelling American
spelling
offence offense
cosy cozy
practice practise
thralldom thralldom
jewellery jewelery
traveling traveling
In the course of time
with the development of the modern means of communication the lexical
differences between the two variants show a tendency to decrease. Americanisms
penetrate into Standard English and Britishisms come to be widely used in
American speech. Americanisms mentioned as specific in manuals issued a few
decades ago are now used on both sides of the Atlantic
or substituted by terms formerly considered as specifically British. It was,
for instance, customary to contrast the English word autumn with the
American fall. In reality both words are used in both countries, only autumn
is somewhat more elevated, while in England the word fall is now rare in
literary use, though found in some dialects and surviving in set expressions: spring
and fall, the fall of the year are still in fairly common use.
Cinema and TV are probably the most
important channels for the passage of Americanisms into the language of Britain and
other languages as well: the Germans adopted the word teenager and the
French speak of Vautomatisation. The influence of American publicity is
also a vehicle of Americanisms. This is how the British term wireless is
replaced by the Americanism radio. The jargon of American
film-advertising makes its way into British usage; i.e. of all time (in
"the greatest film of all time"). The phrase is now firmly
established as standard vocabulary and applied to subjects other than films.
The personal visits of
writers and scholars to the USA
and all forms of other personal contacts bring back Americanisms.
The existing cases of
difference between the two variants, are conveniently classified into:
1) Cases where there are
no equivalents in British English: drive-in a cinema where you can see
the film without getting out of your car' or 'a shop where motorists buy things
staying in the car'; dude ranch 'a sham ranch used as a summer residence
for holiday-makers from the cities'. The noun dude was originally a
contemptuous nickname given by the inhabitants of the Western states to those
of the Eastern states. Now there is no contempt intended in the word dude.
It simply means 'a person who pays his way on a far ranch or camp'.
2) Cases where different
words are used for the same denotatum, such as can, candy, mailbox, movies,
suspenders, truck in the USA and tin, sweets, pillar-box (or letter-box),
pictures or flicks, braces and lorry in England.
3) Cases where the
semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement,
for example, means in the first place 'covering of the street or the floor and
the like made of asphalt, stones or some other material'. The derived meaning
is in England
'the footway at the side of the road'. The Americans use the noun sidewalk
for this, while pavement with them means 'the roadway'.
4) Cases where otherwise
equivalent words are different in distribution. The verb ride in
Standard English is mostly combined with such nouns as a horse, a bicycle,
more seldom they say to ride on a bus. In American English combinations
like a ride on the train to ride in a boat are .quite usual.
5) It sometimes happens
that the same word is used in American English with some difference in
emotional and stylistic colouring. Nasty, for example, is a much milder
expression of disapproval in England
than in the States, where it was even considered obscene in the 19th century. Politician
in England
means 'someone in polities', and is derogatory in the USA. Professor
Shweitzer, pays special attention to phenomena differing in social norms of
usage. E.g. balance in its lexico-semantic variant 'the remainder of anything'
is substandard in British English and quite literary in America.
6) Last but not least,
there may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. Thus, time-table
which occurs in American English very rarely, yielded its place to schedule.
This question of different
frequency distribution is also of paramount importance if we wish to
investigate the morphological peculiarities of the American variant. Practically
speaking the same patterns and means of word-formation are used in coining
neologisms in both variants. Only the frequency observed in both cases may be
different. Some of the suffixes more frequently used in American English are: -ее
(draftee n 'a young
man about to be enlisted'), -ette - tambourmajorette 'one of the girl
drummers in front of a procession'), -dom and -ster, as in roadster
'motor-car for long journeys by road' or gangsterdom.
American slang uses
alongside the traditional ones also a few specific models, such as verb
stem-1- -er+adverb stem +--er: e.g. opener-upper 'the first
item on the programme' and winder-upper 'the last item', respectively.
It also possesses some specific affixes and semi-affixes not used in literary
Colloquial: -o, -eroo, -aroo, -sie/sy, as in coppo 'policeman', fatso
'a fat man', bossaroo 'boss', chapsie 'fellow'.
The trend to shorten
words and to use initial abbreviations is even more pronounced than in the
British variant. New coinages are incessantly introduced in advertisements, in
the press, in everyday conversation; soon they fade out and are replaced by the
newest creations. Ring Lardner, very popular in the 30's, makes one of his
characters, a hospital nurse, repeatedly use two enigmatic abbreviations: G.F.
and P. F.; at last the patient asks her to clear the mystery.
"What about Roy Stewart?" asked the man in bed.
"Oh, he's the fella I was telling you about," said Miss
Lyons. "He's my G. F B. F"
"Maybe I'm a D.F. not to know, but would yoa tell me what a B.F.
and G.F. are?"
"Well, you are dumb, aren't you?" said Miss Lyons. "A G.F.,
that's a girl friend, and a B.F. is a boy friend. I thought everybody knew
that"
The phrases boy
friend and girl friend, now widely used everywhere, originated in
the USA.
So it is an Americanism in the wider meaning of the term, i.e. an Americanism
"by right of birth", whereas in the above definition it was defined
Americanism synchronically as lexical units peculiar to the English language as
spoken in the USA. Particularly common in American English are verbs with the
hanging postpositive. They say that in Hollywood
you never meet a man: you meet up with him, you do not study
a subject but study up on it. In British English similar constructions
serve to add a new meaning.
With words possessing
several structural variants it may happen that some are more frequent in one
country and the others in another. Thus, amid and toward, for
example, are more often used in the States and amidst and towards
in Great Britain.
A well-known humourist
G. Mikes goes as far as to say: "It was decided almost two hundred years
ago that English should be the language spoken in the United States.
It is not known, however, why this decision has not been carried out." In
his book "How to Scrape Skies" he gives numerous examples to
illustrate this proposition: "You must be extremely careful concerning
the names of certain articles. If you ask for suspenders in a man's shop, you
receive a pair of braces, if you ask for a pair of pants, you receive a pair of
trousers and should you ask for a pair of braces, you receive a queer look. It
has to be mentioned that although a lift is called an elevator in the United States,
when hitch-hiking, you do not ask for an elevator, you ask for a lift.
There is some confusion about the word flat. A flat
in America
is called an apartment; what they call a flat is a puncture in your tyre (or as
they spell it, tire). Consequently
the notice: flats fixed does not indicate an estate agent where they
are going to fix you up with a flat, but a garage where they are equipped to
mend a puncture." Disputing the common statement that there is no such
thing as the American nation, he says: "They do indeed exist. They have produced the American constitution, the American way of life,
the comic strips in their newspapers: .they have their national game, baseball
—which is cricket played with a strong American accent — and they have a
national language, entirely their own."
This is of course an
exaggeration, but a very significant one. It confirms the fact that there is a
difference between the two variants to be reckoned with. Although not
sufficiently great to warrant American English the status of an independent
language, it is considerable enough to make a mixture of variants sound
unnatural, so that students of English should be warned against this danger.
Local Dialects in the USA
The English language in
the USA
is characterized by relative uniformity throughout the country. One can travel
three thousand miles without encountering any but the slightest dialect
differences. Nevertheless, regional variations in speech undoubtedly exist and
they have been observed and recorded by a number of investigators. The
following three major belts of dialects have so far been identified, each with
its own characteristic features: Northern, Midland and Southern, Midland being
in turn divided into North Midland and South Midland.
The differences in
pronunciation between American dialects are most apparent, but they seldom
interfere with understanding. Distinctions in grammar are scarce. The
differences in vocabulary are rather numerous, but they are easy to pick up.
Cf., e.g., Eastern New England sour-milk cheese, Inland Northern Dutch cheese, New York
City pot
cheese for Standard American/cottage cheese (творог).
The American linguist F.
Emerson maintains that American English had not had time to break up into
widely diverse dialects and he believes that in the course of time the American
dialects might finally become nearly as distinct as the dialects in Britain. He is
certainly greatly mistaken. In modern times dialect divergence cannot
increase. On the contrary, in the United States, as elsewhere, the
national language is tending to wipe out the dialect distinctions and to become
still more uniform.
Comparison
of the dialect differences in the British Isles
and in the USA
reveals that not only are they less numerous and far less marked in the USA, but that
the very nature of the local distinctions is different. What is usually known
as American dialects is closer in nature to regional variants of the literary
language. The problem of discriminating between literary and dialect speech
patterns in the USA
is much more complicated than in Britain. Many American linguists
point out that American English differs from
British English in having no one locality whose speech patterns have
come to be recognized as the model for the rest of the country.
It should of course be
noted that the American English is not the only existing variant. There are
several other variants where difference from the British standard is
normalized. Besides the Irish and Scottish variants that have been mentioned
in the preceding paragraph, there are Australian English, Canadian English, Indian
English. Each of these has developed a literature of its own, and is
characterized by peculiarities in phonetics, spelling, grammar and vocabulary. Canadian
English is influenced both by British and American English but it also has
some specific features of its own. Specifically Canadian words are called
Canadianisms. They are not very frequent outside Canada, except shack 'a hut'
and to fathom out 'to explain'.
The vocabulary of all
the variants is characterized by a high percentage of borrowings from the
language of the people who inhabited the land before the English colonizers
came. Many of them denote some specific realia of the new country: local
animals, plants or weather conditions, new social relations, new trades and
conditions of labour. The local words for new not ions penetrate into the
English language and later on may become international, if they are of
sufficient interest and importance for people speaking other languages. The
term international w о г d s is used to denote words borrowed from one
language into several others simultaneously or at short intervals one after
another. International words coming through the English of India are for instance:
bungalow n, jute n, khaki adj, mango n, nabob
n, pyjamas, sahib, sari.
Similar examples, though
perhaps fewer in number, such as boomerang, dingo, kangaroo are all
adopted into the English language through its Australian variant. They denote
the new phenomena found by English immigrants on the new continent. A high
percentage of words borrowed from the native inhabitants of Australia will
be noticed in the sonorous Australian place names.
Otherwise an ample use
was made of English lexical material. An intense development of cattle breeding
in new conditions necessitated the creation of an adequate terminology. It is
natural therefore that nouns like stock, bullock or land find a
new life on Australian soil: stockman 'herdsman', stockyard,
stock-keeper 'the owner of the cattle'; bullock v means 'to work
hard', bullocky dray is a dray driven by bullocks; an inlander is
a stock-keeper driving his stock from one pasture to another, overland v
is 'to drive cattle over long distances'; to punch a cow 'to conduct a
team of oxen'; a puncher 'the man who conducts a team of oxen'; tucker-bag
'the bag with provision'.
The differences
described in the present chapter do not undermine our understanding of the
English vocabulary as a balanced system. It has been noticed by a number of
linguists that the British attitude to this phenomenon is somewhat peculiar.
When anyone other than an Englishman uses English, the natives of Great Britain,
often half-consciously, perhaps, feel that they have a special right to
criticize his usage because it is "their" language. It is, however,
unreasonable with respect to people in the Vfiited States, Canada, Australia and
some other areas for whom English is their mother-tongue. Those who think that
the Americans must look to the British for a standard are wrong and, vice
versa, it is not for the American to pretend that English in Great Britain
is inferior to the English he speaks. At present there is no single
"correct" English and the American, Canadian and Australian English
have developed standards of their own.
I. English is the national
language of England
proper, the USA,
Australia
and some provinces of Canada.
It was also at different times imposed on the inhabitants of the former and
present British colonies and. protectorates as well as other Britain- and
US-dominated territories, where the population has always stuck to its own
mother tongue.
II. British English, American
English and Australian English are variants of the same language, because they
serve all spheres of verbal communication. Their structural pecularities,
especially morphology, syntax and word-formation, as well as their word-stock
and phonetic system are essentially the same. American and Australian standards
are slight modifications of the norms accepted in the British
Isles. The status of Canadian English 'has not yet been
established.
III. The main lexical
differences between the variants are caused by the lack of equivalent lexical
units in one of them, divergences in the semantic structures of polysemantic
words and peculiarities of usage of some words on different territories.
IV. The British local
dialects can be traced back to Old English dialects. Numerous and distinct,
they are characterized by phonemic and structural peculiarities. The local
dialects are being gradually replaced by regional variants of the literary
language, i. e. by a literary standard with a proportion of local dialect
features.
V. The so-called local
dialects in the British Isles and in the USA are used
only by the rural population and only for the purposes of oral communication.
In both variants local distinctions are more marked in pronunciation, less
conspicuous in vocabulary and insignificant in grammar.
VI. Local variations in
the USA
are relatively small. What is called by tradition American dialects is closer
in nature to regional variants of the national literary language.
