Конкурс исследовательских работ обучающихся Ступинского муниципального района Предметная секция: Лингвистика

I. THE HISTORY AND REASONS FOR THE FORMATION OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

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   THE HISTORY OF THE FORMATION OF AMERICAN ENGLISH
   

Today English has various dialects. For example, after the colonization of America, a new type of English was born - American English. The word “canoe”, e.g., was not used in Great Britain; it appeared first in a book by Captain John Smith in 1608. The colonists had to find new words to describe the things they discovered in America. Many American words are different from those used in England.

The English language came to North America in the seventeenth century. It is about four centuries old. It became a direct contrary to the standards adopted in England at that time. In colonial times most critics thought that American English was inferior to British English.
There are two main periods of development of the English language in America:
- The early period from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, this is characterized by the formation of the American dialects;
- The late period (the nineteenth – the twentieth centuries) is characterized by the creation of the American Standard English.
The first English settlers founded Jamestown in North America in 1607. In November 1620 Plymouth was founded by the puritans who arrived on the ship “Mayflower”. The inhabitants of these two settlements spoke their own dialects. In the seventeenth - eighteenth centuries the number of immigrants was growing, they brought a great variety of languages and dialects with them. They needed a common language.
New words were added for animals, plants, food. The settlers borrowed words from Indian languages for such strange trees as the persimmon and hickory and for such strange animals as raccoons.
They made new combinations of English words, such as bullfrog or backwoods, or gave old English words new meanings, such as corn (it means in British any grain, especially wheat). Some of the new terms were needed because there were new and unknown things. Others can be explained only on the general theory that languages are always changing, and American English is no exception.
But many of the colonists continued to maintain links with England. The American version of English has not established itself as a literary yet, because America did not have its own national culture. For a long time most of the books read in America came from England, and a surprising amount of Americans read those books.
After the Revolutionary War, Americans wanted to be independent of British influence in language. American writers such as James Fennimore Cooper began to use American expressions in their books.
The languages of Dutch and French settlers, and of the huge numbers of immigrants entering the US in 19th and 20th centuries, also contributed to the development of American English. Inventions such as electric lighting, the typewriter, telephone and television added large numbers of words to the language.
In Great Britain American English was still considered to be an “impure” form of the language. It was until the Civil War, when writers (Mark Twain among them) became popular in England. Only then American English was accepted in Great Britain.

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