A history of the English Language

11
The English Language in America 
238.
The Settlement of America.
The English language was brought to America by colonists from England who settled 
along the Atlantic seaboard in the seventeenth century.
1
It was therefore the language 
spoken in England at that time, the language spoken by Shakespeare and Milton and 
Bunyan. In the peopling of this country three great periods of European immigration are 
to be distinguished. The first extends from the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 to the 
end of colonial times. This may be put conveniently at 1787, when Congress finally 
approved the Federal Constitution, or better, 1790, when the last of the colonies ratified it 
and the first census was taken. At this date the population numbered approximately four 
million people, 95 percent of whom were living east of the Appalachian Mountains, and 
90 percent were from various parts of the British Isles. The second period covers the 
expansion of the original thirteen colonies west of the Appalachians, at first into the 
South and into the Old Northwest Territory, ending finally at the Pacific. This era may be 
said to close with the Civil War, about 1860, and was marked by the arrival of fresh 
immigrants from two great sources, Ireland and Germany. The failure of the potato crop 
in Ireland in 1845 precipitated a wholesale exodus to America, a million and a half 
emigrants coming in the decade or so that followed. At about the same time the failure of 
the revolution in Germany (1848) resulted in the migration of an equal number of 
Germans. Many of the
1 
There is no easy solution to the ambiguity of “American” and “Americans.” The present chapter is 
about English in the United States, and although many of the observations apply to Canadian 
English as well, the distinctive characteristics of Canadian English are discussed in Chapter 10. 

---

latter settled in certain central cities such as Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and St. Louis or 
became farmers in the Middle West. The third period, the period since the Civil War, is 
marked by an important change in the source from which our immigrants have been 
derived. In the two preceding periods, and indeed up to about 1890, the British Isles and 
the countries of northern Europe furnished from 75 to 90 percent of all who came to this 
country. Even in the last quarter of the nineteenth century more than a million 
Scandinavians, about one-fifth of the total population of Norway and Sweden, settled 
here, mainly in the upper Mississippi valley. But since about 1890 great numbers from 
Southern Europe and the Slavic countries have poured in. Just before World War I, 
Italians alone were admitted to the number of more than 300,000 a year, and of our 
annual immigration of more than a million, representatives of the east and south 
European countries constituted close to 75 percent. 
Outside the patterns of European immigration was the forced immigration of Africans 
through the slave trade that began in the seventeenth century and continued until the mid-
nineteenth. There are presently some 25 million African Americans in the United States, 
mostly settled in the South and in the larger cities of the North. Finally, one should note 
the influx during the mid-twentieth century of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and other Hispanic 
immigrants. Extreme economic imbalances among the countries of the Western 
Hemisphere have caused a sharp increase in migration, both legal and illegal, to the 
United States during the past two decades. 
For the student of the English language the most interesting period of immigration to 
America is the first. It was the early colonists who brought us our speech and established 
its form. Those who came later were largely assimilated in a generation or two, and 
though their influence may have been felt, it is difficult to define.
2
It is to these early 
settlers that we must devote our chief attention if we would understand the history of the 
English language in America.