Concetti Chiave
- American English has become the most influential English variety globally, driven by the United States' power and cultural influence through advanced communication developments.
- Noah Webster played a crucial role in linguistic independence by creating a systematic spelling reform in his dictionary, promoting American English distinct from British English.
- Southern American English is a complex dialect with unclear geographic and cultural boundaries, possibly originating from West African languages and evolving into a creole.
- Black English features distinct grammatical rules, such as the elimination of "to be" and "do," and specific uses of tense and articles, as outlined by June Jordan.
- New Zealand English developed from various linguistic contacts, notably between English and Maori, with influences from British dialects, and possibly London Cockney or Australian dialects.
What is the Influence of American English?
Today American English is the most influential English variety in the world, this because US is the most powerful nation on earth and America’s culture has been extended thanks to a quick development of communications.
In the beginning AE was derided by many and there were many prejudices.
In the early phases of settlement there were several languages such as English dialects, European languages, African languages and American languages spoken by indigenous population.
Linguistic Independence and Noah Webster
For the language independence one of the most important roles was played by Noah Webster, who wrote the Webster’s Dictionary with the aim to rationalize English and make it more systematic: new spelling, reduction of unnecessary sounds.
Que --> ck
Gue --> g
Mme --> m
Ou --> o
Re --> er
Ce --> se
Another fundamental figure in promoting American English is Mencken, who wrote: The American language, and where in the first edition in 1919 he underlined the divergences from British English.
In 1992, Kahane wrote about the reasons that caused AE to break of from BE:
• A decline in Anglophilia
• The leveling of social dialects
• The integration of foreign elements (influence from languages of African and European immigrants).
Variation in American Englishes Socio-linguistic factors influencing variation:
• Language contacts
• Metropolizations
• Increasing migration
• Expanding ethnic diversity
Today there are in US 5 main dialect regions:
• The Inland North
• The North Central
• The Midland (the most neutral dialect in the opinion of Americans)
• The West
• The South
Characteristics of Southern American English
the Southern American English is not easy to define, either geographically or culturally, therefore it cannot be considered a single variety.
+ New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, etc…
Origin, there are different hypothesis, one of these is that it could be a sort of dialect born from the incorrectly and autonomous learning of English. Another hypothesis is that it developed as a mixture of English an d originally West African languages and it became first pidgin and later creole.
Grammatical Rules of Black English
It is characterized by distinctive features on lexical, phonological and grammatical level.
June Jordan’s listed 19 rules as guidelines for the writing of Black English, some of these are:
• Minimal number of words for every idea
• Eliminate the use of the verb “to be” whenever possible
• Eliminate “do”
• Never use the –ed suffix to indicate the past tense of a verb.
• Never use an apostrophe construction
• Never use the suffix –ly form of an adverb
• Never use the indefinite article “an”
Selected grammatical features:
• Absence of copula for present tense
• Use of inviariant “be” for future
• Absence of third person –s
• Use of don’t instead of doesn’t
Linguistic Contacts in New Zealand
Tthe last habitable landmass in the world to be colonized.
The language contact in NZ has been an imposition from English to Maori, thus have been some changes from a phonological, grammatical and lexical point of view. But there have been some borrowing in English from Maori, for instance native flora and fauna, place names or cultural concept. New Zealand English origins are not very clear, but one of the hypothesis is that it could be a variation of London Cockney, or a dialect imported from Australia, or that it could be a blend between North English vocabulary and South English pronunciation.
Languages spoken during settlement were: British dialects, Maori, Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Scottish and also Chinese.
Social Factors in the Development of NZE
Some social factors that influenced the development of NZE in the 20th century are:
• Sense of historical relationship & cultural sympathy with Britain (stronger than in Australia)
• Growing sense on national identity (New Zealand is not Australia)
• Importance given to the rights and needs of Maori people.
Domande da interrogazione
- How did American English become the most influential English variety globally?
American English gained its influence due to the United States being the most powerful nation and the rapid spread of American culture through advanced communications.
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