The United States of English: The American Language from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century

by Rosemarie Ostler Narrated by Christa Lewis

Overview

The story of how English became American-and how it became Southern, Bostonian, Californian, African American, Chicano, elite, working-class, urban, rural, and everything in between



By the time of the Revolution, the English that Americans spoke was recognizably different from the British variety. Americans added dozens of new words to the language, either borrowed from Native Americans (raccoon, persimmon, caucus) or created from repurposed English (backwoods, cane brake, salt lick). Americans had their own pronunciations (bath rhymed with hat, not hot) and their own spelling (honor, not honour), not to mention a host of new expressions that grew out of the American landscape and culture (blaze a trail, back track, pull up stakes). Americans even invented their own slang, like stiff as a ringbolt to mean drunk. American English has continued to grow and change ever since.



The United States of English tells the engrossing tale of how the American language evolved over four hundred years, explaining both how and why it changed and which parts of the "mother tongue" it preserved (I guess was heard in the British countryside long before it became a typical Americanism). Plentiful examples of the American vernacular, past and present, bring the language to life and make for an engaging as well as enlightening listen.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"From a rich body of literature, Ostler mines material for this special history of the United States with the stories and reasons for creating the uniquely American language." — Robert S. Davis, New York Journal of Books

"In this accessible, elegantly written, and handsomely produced book, Rosemarie Ostler, author of several popular books on language, brings together a wide range of facts (large and small) about English as used in the United States." — Tim William Machan, Modern Philology

"Ostler's book synthesizes and updates previous scholarly works on this subject with endnotes and an extensive bibliography. Though linguists will enjoy the work, Ostler writes for the nonspecialist reader, so no prior knowledge of linguistics is required." — Choice

Kirkus Reviews

2023-03-28
A learned tour of American English and its many peculiarities.

Chalk up the first “American” word in English to John Smith, who described a meeting with the Powhatan people. A few years later, the spelling raccoon was more or less fixed. As linguist Ostler writes, there’s American English, but then there are multiples of it. For example, regional dialects afford their speakers at least eight ways of saying you in the plural, including y’all, yinz, and youse. American English is replete with British terms, naturally, but many had begun to diverge in both pronunciation and meaning before the Revolution. Whereas a British creek is an inlet of the sea, in the American version, a creek is any small stream. Ostler analyzes numerous avenues of words and expressions in American English, from Native American languages recorded by the Lewis and Clark expedition (medicine man, camas) to Spanish, French, German, Chinese, and many other sources. She is also good on borrowings from popular culture—from baseball, for example, we have phrases such as three strikes and step up to the plate, while political cartooning may have given us o.k. as a jocular abbreviation for oll korrect. (The latter etymology is a topic of much discussion among linguists.) Throughout, the author invites readers to participate in limning local and regional speechways: What, she asks, do you call a “sudden, heavy rain” or “someone who worries or fusses a lot”? Ostler also examines words and expressions that remain in use after the relevant technology is long gone, such as hang up, still used decades after the last phone circuit was closed by hanging a handset on a hook. Modern sources for inputs into English include technology, in-group slang, politics, and gender identity, to say nothing of older sources such as the phrase-happy hippies, surfers, and “Valley girls” of yore.

An accessible, entertaining outing for logophiles.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159854179
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	09/12/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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