vania - the american language

8/2/2019 Vania - The American Language

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American Language

Ading P

Annisa A

Aristya PDiana C

Vania D


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The American Language

It was a great movement to the West that finally fixed

the character of the American Language, preserving as

it did the Elizabethan boldness which characterized thespeech of the first settlers.

Our ancestor, said James Russell

Lowell in his On a Certain

Condescension in Foreigners


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The English, once predominantly insular and

introspective, became an eager and

expensive race, full of strange curiosities and

iconoclastic enterprises.


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investigate Madecontact

looked


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The last of the bonds that fastened it to the other

tongues of the Indo-European family were loosed and it

settled into a grammatical structure so slipshod that in

more than one detail, it suggested less the related

German, French, Latin, and Greek than Chinese.

Simultaneously, there was a sudden increase in its

vocabulary, with new words and idioms coming in on

all levels, from that of the street boys of London to that

of the court poets and university illuminati.


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to happy

to child

To verse

Shakespeare failedto find a market for

his novelties

To fool, disgraceful, barefaced,bump, countless, critic, gloomyand laughable

Shakespeareintroduced

Dimension, conscious, jovial,rascality, scientific, audacious,and obsccure.

Without theswarming coinagesof his contemporarypoets and dramatics


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Tudor license began to succumb to Puritan

dogmatism, there was a tightening of the

whole English Kultur, and the language did not

escape its effects.

All novelties in speech were received hostilely,

and the doctrine was launched that there were

enough words already, and no more were

needed.


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Samuel Johnsonbecome its chief

fugleman

No man who everundertook to

write a dictionary

He tried to putdown touchyand

to coax

Stingyand toderange

Chaperon andfun

Nor did he battlealone

Jonathan Swifthad frowned

upon

Banterand sham,bubble and mob, ..

Bullyand tobamboozle


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The tony English style became an imitation

of Johnsons quasi-Latin, and no term was

countenanced by the elegant that was not in

his dictionary


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19th CENTURY

ENGLISH PURISM

AMERICAN

SPEECH


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CONT..

The Indian Element in American English by

Alexander F. Chamberlain in 1902..

Is much larger than is commonly believed to be caseIn the

local speech of New England , especially among

fishermanmany words of Algonkian origin, not familiar to

the general public , are still preserved, and many more were

once current, but have died out within the last one hundred

years.


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AMERICAN ENGLISH

AMERICAN

ENGLISH

NON-ENGLISH

IMMIGRANTS

DUTCH,FRENCH,SPANISH and GERMAN


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CONT.

French of Canada : Bureau, chowder, andrapids, prairrie and ghoper.

Spanish and German : there was no appreciableinfiltration Until the middle of the eighteenthcentury.

Dutch : Scow, hook, sleigh, stoop, span, cooky,coleslaw, spook, cruller, waffle, boss, SantaClaus.


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Basic Forming of New WordsThe new word that the colonists made is mainly by

compounding but also by giving old words new meaning.

The example is from the Dictionary Of American English:

- Snowshoe (1666)

- Backlog (1684)

- Leaf tobacco (1637)

- Statehouse (1662)

- Frame house (1639)

- Selectman (1635)


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In the middle of eighteen centuries neologisms invented to:

designate natural objects not known in England. The

examples are:-Bluegrass (1751) -Backwoods (1748)

-Catbird (1709) -Salt lick (1751)

-Tree frog (1738) -Garter snake (1775)

-Slippery elm (1748)

Other were names for new artifacts. The examples are:

-Smokehouse (1759) -Shingle roof (1749)

-Ball ground (1772) -Sheating paper (1790)

-Breechclout (1757) -Springhouse (1755)

-Buckshot (1775) -Hoecake (1755)


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Neologisms

is a newly coined term, word, or phrase, that may be in the

process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted

into mainstream language.

In psychiatry, the term neologism is used to describe the use of

words that have meaning only to the person who uses them,

independent of their common meaning.

In theology, a neologism is a relatively new doctrine . In this

sense, a neologist is one who proposes either a new doctrine or

a new interpretation of source material such as religious texts.


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The colonists devised novel appellations for objects that were

quite well known in England.

Examples:

-Broomstraw (1785)

-Sheet iron (1776)

-Smoking tobacco (1796)-Lightning bug (1778)

-Bake oven (1777)

The colonists often gave old English names to new objects.

Examples:

Corn, shoe, rock, lumber, store, cracker, partridge, and team.


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Some of the latter were extended in meaning:

-rock: a large mass of stone in England

-barn: a building for storing corps, with no accommodations for cattle Some of the latter were narrowed:

-corn: indicated any kind of dibble grain to the English

-boot: indicated any leather footgear

Yet others underwent a complete change in significance:-Freshet

English: applied to a small stream of fresh water

Americans: an inundation

-PartridgeEnglish: applied to Perdix perdix

Americans: applied to Bonasa umbrellas, Colinus virginianus, and

various other birds.


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The Progress

Alexander Gill (1621): Notes that some of the new words bred in

America were coming into recognition in England.

Francis Moore (1735): Denounces that one of the most vivid of new

words in the sense of a precipice or escarpment.

Richard Owen Cambridge (1754): Suggests that a glossary of the new

words would soon be in order.

The philological historian as Allen Walker Read, M.M. Matthews, and

W.B. Cairns have revealed, there was no attempt at an orderly treatise

upon the new words.

John Witherspoon (1781): He protested against the peculiar American

use ofto notify, he said thatwe do notnotifythe person of the thing, but

the thing to the person. But he didntget attention from the Americans.


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Noah Webster: He was an ardent reformer of spelling and

believed in the future autonomy of American English, gave

attention to Americanism but did not list them in any number

until hisAmerican Dictionaryof 1828

Maximilian Schele de Vere: In his book (The English of the New

World in 1871), he attempted a classification of Americanism, andwas the first to give adequate attention to the loan words among

them.

John S. Farmer (1889): published Americanism, Old and New, auseful compilation but not altogether free from English prejudice.

In 1890 the American Dialect Society was formed and the

publication ofDialect Notes was begun.


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Philology

Philology is the study of the historical development of

languages (historical sources)

Philologians is the person who study about historical

sources.

In British English usage, and in British academia,

"philology" remains largely synonymous with "historical

linguistics", while in US English and US academia, the

wider meaning of "study of a language's grammar, history

and literary tradition" remains more widespread.


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Richard H. Thornton

Migrated to the United States in 1874

Publish American Glossary in 1912

He produce a really comprehensive dictionary

of America

Between 1931 and 1939 the printing of his

posthumous materials went on in Dialect

Notes


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Richard HThorntonDictionary ofAmerican English

Sir William CraigieUniversity of

Chicago Press


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US UK

Commerce and

manufactures increase

Agriculture and

mining developed in

almost geometrical

progression that gave

promise of newillimitable flood of

wealth

Alarming menace to

English world trade

Contemptuous,

began to view the

republic with a

mixture of envy and

dread and most oftheir chosen augurs

that the civil war

would wreck it


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The Insular Hostility to America

Every returning English traveler brought americanbook in the baggage

Every American book bristled with them

Sidney Smith could still launch his hictoric sneer atAmerica

The English purist successes especially against such

shocking westernisms

Objected in vain when they encountered the more

decorous and plausible american novelties


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The English plain people, ever since the civil

war era, have exhibited an increasing and, in

late years, overwhelming preference for thenovelties marked make in America


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American Movie

1907 they were too few and too crude to attractthe attention of the guardians of the national

speech

1910 protesting of new words and phrases in

the english newspaper

1927 legislation was adopted limiting the influx

of american films


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London Evening News

English children in the streets of London and

elsewhere talked exactly the same as

children in United States


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American Spelling andPronounciation

The efforts to simplify the American spelling were begun

in early 16 century

Noah Webster, American, work for the first effective

reforms. He drop you in our words and also defent a large

number of other reformed spelling

Chemist and Neger, they willing to change the common

america pronounciation, but they never got a lodgment


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Cont...

In its heyday, Theodore Rosevelt and Andrew Carnegie

brought out long list of new spelling including corus, giv,

stomac,etc during 15 years following but the country

not have them. After the died, it succesfully reducing the

words of the programme program, cataloque catalog

John Witherspoon 1781 against the first englishmen

statement that say there were no dialects in this country

by his wrote


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Three Major Speech Area

1. Includes new england states

2. The south

3. All the rest of the country

Those three areas divided into subareas more

or less narrow


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The differences has to do with the pronounciation,

but an american are really understand of an

another american

General american is much clearer and more logical

than any of their dialects, either english and

american


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Thank You

vania - the american language

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