• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

When Did “American English” Emerge?

July 9, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Along with their attitude toward tipping waiters, variations in language are one of the biggest differences between Americans and Brits. Despite their overwhelming similarities, they still can’t agree on how to spell colour/color – and let’s not even begin to discuss whether the world’s most popular sport is called football or soccer. So, when did this slight linguistic gap emerge?

Advertisement

The US officially became independent on July 4, 1776, when 13 American colonies cut their political ties to Great Britain. A break from British English didn’t emerge with the signing of a document, though. 

American English was starting to surface decades before the Declaration of Independence was signed, back when the early American colonies were established in the 17th century and the two populations were separated by an ocean. Linguistic independence, so to speak, perhaps occurred before political independence. 

Much like the evolution of a new species, novel accents, dialects, and languages emerge over long periods of time when speakers of the same language become isolated from each other and small, subtle differences accumulate. Eventually, enough contrast builds up that the vernacular can be considered distinct.

As such, there isn’t a black-and-white boundary between the language variation that we can ascribe to a specific year or decade. It’s more like a continuum; neither black nor white, but a series of grey/gray shades from light to dark. Furthermore, in the absence of audio recordings, it’s very hard to pinpoint exactly when American English became “a thing.” 

However, there is evidence that English speakers noticed that the language had shifted “across the pond” around the late 17th and early 18th century.

Advertisement

One of the earliest mentions of linguistic differences can be found in a 1699 travel book called A Trip to New-England by English writer Ned Ward. He writes: “Notwithstanding their sanctity, they [the New Englanders] are very profane in their common dialect.”

American English was initially considered to be a sloppy, bastardized version of the original mother tongue, as is often the case with “new” accents and dialects. Along with changes in pronunciation and emphasis on syllables, American English rustled up new words and phrases, which also attracted scorn from “traditional” English speakers. 

In 1735, British geographer Francis Moore commented on how speakers of English in the “New World” had started to alter the language. While speaking about a town in Georgia, he observed: “It stands upon the flat of a Hill; the Bank of the River (which they in barbarous English call a bluff) is steep.”

These changes had significantly built up by the time of the Declaration of Independence. One of the Founding Fathers who signed the sacred document, Scottish churchman John Witherspoon, was particularly aware of the language’s reshaping – and he wasn’t a fan.

Advertisement

“I have heard in this country, in the senate, at the bar, and from the pulpit, and see daily in dissertations from the press, errors in grammar, improprieties, and vulgarisms which hardly any person of the same class in point of rank and literature would have fallen into in Great Britain,” Witherspoon wrote in 1781, just five years after the declaration was signed. 

The differences became so profound that some thinkers suggested “American” would develop as its only distinct language, totally independent from English. Towards the end of the 18th century, Jonathan Boucher, an English clergyman and philologist living in Maryland, wrote: “Their language will become as independent of England, as they themselves are.”

Clearly, that did not become a reality, and the language did not unfold into an entirely new entity. Nevertheless, the stigma surrounding American English still lingered for centuries to come.

In 1995, Prince Charles (now King Charles) caused a kerfuffle when he made some snooty comments about the “very corrupting” influence of American English. He lamented: “[Americans] invent all sorts of nouns and verbs and make words that shouldn’t be… We must act now to ensure that English –and that, to my way of thinking, means English English – maintains its position as the world language.”

Advertisement

All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.  

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Tennis – Kerber sails through to set up battle of former champions
  2. Canadians rush to early polls in election, mail-in ballots underwhelm
  3. Only 1 Percent Of Chemicals Have Been Discovered – How Can We Find The Rest?
  4. Free Bella: Activists Urge To Release Captive Beluga From Mega Mall In South Korea

Source Link: When Did "American English" Emerge?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • The “Rumpelstiltskin Effect”: When Just Getting A Diagnosis Is Enough To Start The Healing
  • In 1962, A Boy Found A Radioactive Capsule And Brought It Inside His House — With Tragic Results
  • This Cute Creature Has One Of The Largest Genomes Of Any Mammal, With 114 Chromosomes
  • Little Air And Dramatic Evolutionary Changes Await Future Humans On Mars
  • “Black Hole Stars” Might Solve Unexplained JWST Discovery
  • Pretty In Purple: Why Do Some Otters Have Purple Teeth And Bones? It’s All Down To Their Spiky Diets
  • The World’s Largest Carnivoran Is A 3,600-Kilogram Giant That Weighs More Than Your Car
  • Devastating “Rogue Waves” Finally Have An Explanation
  • Meet The “Masked Seducer”, A Unique Bat With A Never-Before-Seen Courtship Display
  • Alaska’s Salmon River Is Turning Orange – And It’s A Stark Warning
  • Meet The Heaviest Jelly In The Seas, Weighing Over Twice As Much As A Grand Piano
  • For The First Time, We’ve Found Evidence Climate Change Is Attracting Invasive Species To Canadian Arctic
  • What Are Microfiber Cloths, And How Do They Clean So Well?
  • Stowaway Rat That Hopped On A Flight From Miami Was A “Wake-Up Call” For Global Health
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version