Main Comparative Peculiarities of American and British English Standards

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter II

Main features of American English

2.1 The history of American English Language

In the early seventeenth century colonists from England began to bear their own language in America. The first English settlement in North America was founded in 1607 - it was the city of Jamestown on the territory of Virginia. In November of 1620 arrived on the ship "Mayflower" Puritans founded the city of Plymouth.           Residents of these two settlements have different linguistic traditions. Jamestown colonists "came mainly from the West of England, from such counties as Somerset and Gloucestershire, with the characteristic of these places pronunciation (voicing the sound [s], that is, they pronounce the name of Somerset as Zomerzet and sonorous pronunciation of the sound [r] after vowels). Plymouth colonists arrived from the eastern counties of England (Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Essex, Kent) and London, where he spoke were of a different kind - so the sound [r] after vowels it was absent. These sonic differences persisted and in the future. Carriers of different dialects settled in the west and south. And although the picture is the spread of dialects has never been clear because of the constant migration of population from north to south and in the reverse direction and flow of immigrants from various countries, the differences at the level of dialects persist in the U.S. now          In the XVII - XVIII centuries. flows of migrants are increasing, bringing with it a variety of languages and dialects. For example, Pennsylvania, inhabited mainly by Quakers, which occurred usually from the middle and northern parts of England.

The formation of colonies of language influenced not only England. Already in the XVIII century. in North America surged wave of immigrants from Ireland. In the west and south-west of the modern United States has been primarily Spanish. Along the St. Lawrence River, settled immigrants from France.  In New York City, originally named New Amsterdam, the predominant Dutch. In Pennsylvania, settled by the Germans. In addition, in southern imported a large number of blacks who are the object of the slave trade. All these new residents of North America (we must not forget also the indigenous population - Indians) contributed to the formation of the dialect of the colonies.     Mass emigration to the new state - United States - continued in the XIX - XX centuries. However, despite the abundance of languages and cultures new settlers, the bogeyman of the language was still English. "Thanks to the natural process of assimilation, most immigrant families began to speak in English during the life of one or two generations." However, the multicultural nature of the United States is not difficult to notice. In particular, multiculturalism is expressed at the level of anthroponimics: "In the U.S. there are antroponomikone personal names, which have retained their national characteristics: spanish - Rodolfo, Dolores, and others, Italian - Antonio, Niccolo, Paolo et al, Portuguese - Mario, Manuel, Raul and others, German - Rupert, Rudolf and others. "      However, the English North American colonies was substantially enriched by borrowings. Settlers borrowed words from Indian languages to represent unfamiliar plants (eg, hickory - sort of hazel, or persimmon - persimmon) and animal (raccoon - raccoon, woodchuck - Groundhog). From the French borrowed the word chowder - kind of soup, prairie - prairie, from the Dutch - the words scow - scow, scull, sleigh - a sleigh. Many new words came through the combination of already known, for example, backwoods - backwoods, backwater, bullfrog - bullfrog (frog species). Many English words have new meaning, for example, lumber in the means. "Junk" (used in the English language in a narrower sense - rags, rags); corn in the meaning of "corn" (in England the word meant before any grain, usually wheat).          Obviously, the new words appeared in so far as the life of former Europeans now appear set of new realities, for which the designation is in English and other languages were no words. In addition to the lexicon, appeared differences in pronunciation, in the grammatical structures, particularly strong - in the intonation. Often argued that if colonization occurred two or three centuries earlier, American English as much would be different from the British, as a modern French - from the Italian, ie instead of different versions of one language would appear different languages. However, the colonization occurred after the invention of printing, and continued in the Enlightenment with its ideas of universal education. Over time most of the books read in America, were British. Moreover, many of the colonists continued to maintain ties with Britain, in which they differ from their Anglo-Saxon ancestors, as we know, has severed all links with the continent after the relocation of the British Isles. Pro-British, Americans have denounced any "Americanisms", emphasizing the difference between them and the British. At the present time, many "Americanisms" have proliferated, even in British English.

 

2.2 Regional Variations of American English Language

While written American English 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.    Although no longer region-specific, African American Vernacular English, which remains prevalent among African Americans, has a close relationship to Southern varieties of Am. E. 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.       Also, the sounds of American speech can be identified with a number of public figures: President John F. Kennedy spoke in the Boston accent, while President Jimmy Carter speaks with a Southern coastal accent. The North Midlands speech is familiar to those who have heard Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, while the South Midland speech was the speech of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Comedians Mel Brooks and Ray Romano retain typical New York accents while Jack Black and Pauly Shore have the standard sound of southern California.           Finally, dialect development in the United States has been notably influenced by the distinctive speech of such important cultural centers as Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which imposed their marks on the surrounding areas.

 

2.3 Social variations of American English

 

African American English

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety formerly known as Black English Vernacular or Vernacular Black English among sociolinguists, and commonly called Ebonics outside the academic community. While some features of AAVE are apparently unique to this variety, in its structure it also shows many commonalties with other varieties including a number of standard and nonstandard English varieties spoken in the US and the Caribbean. AAVE has been at the heart of several public debates and the analysis of this variety has also sparked and sustained debates among sociolinguists.    It is extremely difficult to say how many people speak AAVE because it is not clear what exactly this would mean. Some speakers may use some distinctive aspects of phonology (pronunciation) and lexis (vocabulary) but none of the grammatical features associated with the variety. Many sociolinguists would reserve the term AAVE for varieties which are marked by the occurrence of certain distinctive grammatical features some of which are discussed below. Even so it may still be difficult to say with any exactitude how many AAVE speakers there are since such grammatical features occur variably, that is, in alternation with standard features. Such variability in the speech both of groups and individuals reflects the complex social attitudes surrounding AAVE and other nonstandard varieties of English and it was this variability which initially attracted the attention of sociolinguists such as William Labov.        The history of AAVE and its genetic affiliation, by which we mean what language varieties it is related to, are also a matter of controversy. Some scholars contend that AAVE developed out of the contact between speakers of West African languages and speakers of vernacular English varieties. According to such a view, West Africans learnt English on plantations in the southern Coastal States (Georgia, South Carolina, etc.) from a very small number of native speakers (the indentured laborers). Some suggest that this led to the development of a rudimentary pidgin which was later expanded through a process of creolization. Others who advocate a contact scenario for the development of AAVE suggest that the contact language (an early creole-like AAVE) developed through processes of second language acquisition. According to such a view West Africans newly arrived on plantations would have limited access to English grammatical models because the number of native speakers was so small (just a few indentured servants on each plantation). In such a situation a community of second language learners might graft what English vocabulary that could be garnered from transient encounters onto the few grammatical patterns which are common to the languages of West Africa. What linguists refer to as universal grammar (the law-like rules and tendencies which apply to all natural human language) would have played a significant role in such processes as well. This kind of thing seems to have taken place in the Caribbean and may also have happened in some places, at some times in the United States. For instance Gullah or Sea Islands Creole spoken in the Coastal Islands of South Carolina and Georgia seems to have formed in this way. A number of scholars do not accept such a scenario. These researchers argue that the demographic conditions in the US and the Caribbean (where restructured creole languages are widely spoken) were really quite different and that the conditions necessary for the emergence of a fully fledged creole language were never met in the US. These scholars have shown on a number of occasions that what look like distinctive features of AAVE today actually have a precedent in various varieties of English spoken in Great Britain and the Southern United States. It seems reasonable to suggest that both views are partially correct and that AAVE developed to some extent through restructuring while it also inherited many of its today distinctive features from older varieties of English which were once widely spoken.            As mentioned above AAVE is a matter of some public controversy as was seen most recently in the debate over the Ebonics ruling by the Oakland School Board. More than anything this debate made it clear to sociolinguists that they had failed in one of their primary objectives -- to educate the public and to disseminate the results of over twenty-five years of intense research. Unfortunately, many public policy makers and sections of the public hold on to mistaken and prejudiced understandings of what AAVE is and what it says about the people who speak it. This matter is compounded by the fact that, with the AAVE-speaking community, attitudes towards the language are complex and equivocal. Many AAVE speakers contrast the variety with something they refer to as "Talking Proper". At the same time these same speakers may also express clearly positive attitudes towards AAVE on other occasions and may also remark on the inappropriateness of using standard English in certain situations. While the situation in this case is made more extreme by the context of racial and ethnic conflict, inequality and prejudice in the United States, it is not unique. Such ambivalent and multivalent attitudes towards nonstandard varieties of a language have been documented for a great many communities around the world and in the United States.

AAVE does not have a vocabulary separate from other varieties of English. However AAVE speakers do use some words which are not found in other varieties and furthermore use some English words in ways that differ from the standard dialects.

A number of words used in standard English may also have their origin in AAVE or at least in the West African languages that contributed to AAVE's development.

A discussion of AAVE vocabulary might proceed by noting that words can be seen to be composed of a form (a sound signal) and a meaning. In some cases both the form and the meaning are taken from West African sources. In other case the form is from English but the meaning appears to be derived from West African sources. Some cases are ambiguous and seem to involve what the late Fredric Cassidy called a multiple etymology (the form can be traced to more than one language -- e.g. "cat" below).

West African Form + West African Meaning:

bogus  'fake/fraudulent' cf. Hausa boko, or boko-boko 'deceit, fraud'.

hep, hip  'well informed, up-to-date' cf. Wolof hepi, hipi 'to open one's eyes, be aware of what is going on'.

English Form + West African Meaning:

cat  'a friend, a fellow, etc.' cf. Wolof -kat (a suffix denoting a person)

cool  'calm, controlled' cf. Mandingo suma 'slow' (literally 'cool')

dig  'to understand, appreciate, pay attention' cf. Wolof deg, dega 'to understand, appreciate'

bad  'really good' [71]

In West African languages and Caribbean creoles a word meaning 'bad' is often used to mean 'good' or 'alot/intense'. For instance, in Guyanese Creole mi laik am bad, yu noo means 'I like him a lot'. Dalby mentions Mandingo (Bambara) a nyinata jaw-ke 'She's very pretty.' (literally 'She is beautiful bad.'); cf. also Krio ( a creole language spoken in West Africa) mi gud baad.

Loan Translations:

Another interesting set of vocabulary items are called loan translations or "calques". In such cases a complex idea is expressed in some West African language by a combination of two words. In AAVE these African words appear to have been directly translated and the same concept is expressed by the combination of the equivalent English items

bad-eye  'nasty look', cf. Mandingo, nyE-jugu 'hateful glance' (lit. 'bad-eye')

big-eye  'greedy', cf. Ibo. anya uku 'covetous' (literally 'big-eye'). [68]

Any discussion of AAVE vocabulary must take note of the many recent innovations which occur in this variety and which tend to spread rapidly to other varieties of English. Most recent innovations are not enduring. These lexical items give regionally and generationally restricted varieties of AAVE their particular texture.

Social variations of American English with the verb "to be"

Standard English uses a conjugated be verb (called a copula) in a number of different sentences. (This may occur as is, 's, are, 're, etc.) In AAVE this verb is often not included. The frequency of inclusion has been shown to depend on a variety of factors. Here are some examples:

  In future sentences with gonna or gon (see below):

I don't care what he say, you __ gon laugh.

...as long as i's kids around he's gon play rough or however they're playing.

  Before verbs with the -ing or -in ending(progressive):

I tell him to be quiet because he don't know what he __ talking about.

I mean, he may say something's out of place but he __ cleaning up behind it and you can't get mad at him.

  Before adjectives and expressions of location:

He __ all right.

And Alvin, he __ kind of big, you know?

She __ at home. The club __ on one corner, the Bock is on the other.

  Before nouns (or phrases with nouns)

He __ the one who had to go try to pick up the peacock.

I say, you __ the one jumping up to leave, not me. [71]

\

Agreement

Standard English varieties mark grammatical agreement between the subject and predicate in the present tense. If the subject is third person singular (he, she, it or the name of a person or object), an -s appears at the end of a regular verb. (e.g. John walks to the store). In AAVE the verb is rarely marked in this way. When regular verbs occur with such -s marking, they often carry special emphasis. Standard English also has agreement in a number of irregular and frequently used verbs such as has vs have and is vs are and was vs were. In AAVE these distinctions are not always made.

Tense and aspect

The verb in AAVE is often used without any ending. As is the case with the English creoles, there are some separate words that come before the verb which show when or how something happens. These are called "tense/aspect markers".

Past tense:

Past tense may be conveyed by the surrounding discourse (with the help of adverbials such as, for example, "last night", "three years ago", "back in them days", etc., or by the use of conjunctions which convey a sequence of actions (e.g. "then"), or by the use of an ending as in standard English. The frequency with which the -ed ending occurs depends on a number of factors including the sounds which follow it.

Some past events are conveyed by placing been before the verb. Speakers of standard English may mistake this for the standard English "present perfect" with the "have" or "has" deleted. However the AAVE sentence with been is in fact quite different from the standard English present perfect. This can be seen by comparing two sentences such as the following:

Standard English present perfect: He has been married.

AAVE been: He been married. [71]

In the standard English sentence the implication is that he is now no longer married. However, in the AAVE sentence the implication is quite the opposite: he is still married.

Sentences equivalent to standard English perfects such as discussed above may be conveyed by the use of done in AAVE. For example the standard sentence "He has eaten his dinner" can be expressed as He done eat his dinner.

Future:

Future events and those that have not yet occurred are marked by gon or gonna

Events in progress:

Besides using the verb with the ending -ing or -in to convey that an event is in progress, AAVE has a number of other words which add particular nuances. For instance, if the activity is vigorous and intentional, the sentence may include the word steady. The item steady can be used to mark actions that occur consistently or persistently, as in Ricky Bell be steady steppin in them number nines.

Events that occur habitually or repeatedly are often marked by be in AAVE as in She be working all the time.

Negatives

AAVE has a number of ways of marking negation. Like a number of other varieties of English, AAVE uses ain't to negate the verb in a simple sentence. In common with other nonstandard dialects of English, AAVE uses ain't in standard English sentences which use "haven't". For example standard "I haven't seen him." is equivalent to AAVE I ain't seen him. Unlike most other nonstandard varieties of English, AAVE speakers also sometimes use ain't for standard "didn't" as in the following examples:

I ain't step on no line.

I said, "I ain't run the stop sign," and he said, "you ran it!"

I ain't believe you that day, man. [71]

           As the first sentence above shows, AAVE also allows negation to be marked in more that one position in the sentence (so called double or multiple negation). In this respect, AAVE resembles French and a number of other Romance languages and also a number of English creoles. Certain kinds of nouns actually require negative marking in negative sentences. In so far as the negation must be expressed with indefinite nouns (e.g. "anything", "anyone" etc.), this is a form of agreement marking. (e.g. I ain't see nothing).

AAVE also has a special negative construction which linguists call "negative inversion". An example from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon follows:

Pilate they remembered as a pretty woods-wild girl "that couldn't nobody put shoes on." [73]

In this example (in the part in italics), a negative auxiliary (couldn't) is moved in front of the subject (nobody). Some other examples illustrate this:

Ain't no white cop gonna put his hands on me.

Can't nobody beat 'em

Can't nobody say nothin' to dem peoples!

Don' nobody say nothing after that. (Ledbetter, born 1861)

Wasn't nobody in there but me an' him. (Isom Moseley, born 1856) [69]

 

 

Indian English

Indian English is a catch-all phrase for the dialects or varieties of English spoken widely in India (by about 11% of the population, according to the 1991 census) and the Indian subcontinent in general. The dialect is also known as South Asian English. Due to British colonialism that saw an English-speaking presence in India for over two hundred years, a distinctly South Asian brand of English was born.

Variations in the pronunciation of several phonemes are affected by the regional tongues (see Languages of India) across the subcontinent, the greatest distinction being that between South India and Sri Lanka on the one hand and the north of the subcontinent (including Pakistan, North India and Bangladesh) on the other. Several idiomatic forms crossing over from Indian literary and vernacular language also have made their way into the English of the masses. In spite of India's diversity, however, there is indeed a general homogeneity in syntax and vocabulary that can be found among speakers across South Asia. It will be found that excellent English bearing less regional grammatical peculiarities is spoken in upper-class families (commonly referred to, in India, as 'Westernised'), though even among them hints of a uniquely Indian flavor (particularly in a so-called 'Indianised' British accent) are typically retained.

 

2.3.1  Influences : British and American

The form of English that Indians (and other subcontinentals) are taught in schools is essentially British English. Also known as Hinglish, it has also some similarities with Scottish English in pronunciation, as Indians speak English with trilled r, especially the final r 's. The Indian government though, accepts both forms of spellings as 'correct' English and makes no distinction. However, for most, it is desirable to emulate the brand of English that is linguistically known as Received Pronunciation or, more commonly, BBC English. In particular, Indian spellings follow British conventions to the point at which American English variations are considered untenable. However, even during the time of British imperialism (before the creation of a separate Pakistan and Bangladesh), Indian English had established itself as an audibly distinct dialect with its own quirks and specific phrases. Following the departure of the British from India in 1947, Indian English took on a divergent evolution and many phrases that the British may consider antiquated are still popular in India. Official letters continue to include phrases like "please do the needful", "you will be intimated shortly", and "your obedient servant". This difference in style, though, is not as marked a difference as between British and American English (and unlike Canadian or Australian English there is no variation in spelling whatsoever.) Older British writers who made creative (and comical) use of now obsolete forms of colloquial English, like P. G. Wodehouse, and others who were en vogue fifty years ago, like Thomas Hardy, are immensely popular in India. British writer, journalist and wit Malcolm Muggeridge once joked that the last Englishman would be an Indian.     American English, due to the burgeoning influence of American pop culture on the rest of the world, has begun challenging traditional British English as the premier brand of English spoken in the Indian subcontinent, though this is largely limited to the youth in the last decade or two. The proliferation of "MTV culture," especially through pop and hip hop, and the increasing desire of Indians to attend US, as opposed to British, collegiate institutions for higher education, is leading to the spread of more emulation of American English among Indian youth. Also, the economic and political puissance of the U.S. often leads to heated debates as to whether or not British English or American English is the more practical accent for emigré Indians to adopt. It must be stressed, however, that British English retains its hold on the majority of Indians, particularly those of the older generation.  In a survey  [1], it was found that "the majority of the informants (70%) felt that RP (Received Pronunciation: BBC English; Standard English in Britain) would serve as the best model for Indian English, 10% thought General American English (ed. standard American English) would be better, and 17% preferred the Indian variety of English."