GROUP 10 TBI 4 A
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN AMERICA
To Fulfill History of English
Subject
Lecturer
: H. Abdul Mu’in, S.Ag., M.M
Created
by :
1. Siti
Fitri Mardiah (152301793)
2. Risniani
Ganarsih (152301773)
3. Ika
Anggraeni (152301791)
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
AND TEACHER TRAINING
THE STATE INSTITUTE FOR
ISLAMIC STUDIES
SULTAN MAULANA HASANUDDIN BANTEN
2017
PREFACE
First of all, thanks to Allah SWT
because of the help of Allah, writer finished writing the paper entitled “The English
Language in America” right in the calculated time.
The purpose in writing this paper is to fulfill the
assignment that given by Mr. Abdul Mu’in as lecturer of History of English
Subject.
In arranging this paper, the writer
trully get lots challenges and obstructions but with help of many indiviuals,
those obstructions could passed. writer also realized there are still many
mistakes in process of writing this paper.
Because of that, the writer says
thank you to all individuals who helps in the process of writing this paper.
hopefully allah replies all helps and bless you all.the writer realized tha
this paper still imperfect in arrangment and the content. then the writer
hope the criticism from the readers can help the writer in perfecting the next paper.last
but not the least Hopefully, this paper can helps the readers to gain more
knowledge about samantics major.
Serang,
Maret 5th, 2017
Author
I
TABLE
OF CONTENT
PREFACE........................................................................................................... i
TABLE OF CONTENT..................................................................................... ii
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Background
.............................................................................................. 1
B. Formulas
of problems................................................................................ 1
C.
Purpose...................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER II DISCUSSION
A. Definition
Of American English............................................................... 2
B.
The
origin of American English in the USA............................................. 3
C.
National Consciousness............................................................................. 5
D.
The Pronunciation..................................................................................... 6
E.
Regional vocabularies of American
English and
North
American English regional phonology ........................................... 7
CHAPTER III CLOSING
A. Conclusion................................................................................................. 12
B. Suggestion................................................................................................. 12
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
The
English language was brought to America by colonists from England who settled
along the Atlantic seaboard in the seventeenth century. 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. Until now English Language in
America is still used and growing so it makes the American English be one of
type English language excepts the British and Australian language.
In this work we shall will open up and discuss the
definition, the historical backgrounds and the stages of development of
American English, see the process of their formation and be informed of key factors
that have influenced their development. It will also show and discuss the forms
of standard pronunciation in some regions of America
B. Formulas
of Problem
1. How
about the background and the historical The English language in America?
2. How
the Pronounciation in American English?
3. What
kind of Regional vocabularies of American English?
C. Purpose
This paper is made by
the authors to know about :
1. The
background and the historical The English language in America,
2. The
Pronounciation in American English
3. What
kind of Regional vocabularies of American English
CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION
A. Definition
Of American English
American
English also called United States English or U.S. English is the set of
varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the
most widely spoken language in the United States and is the common language
used by the federal government, considered the de facto language of the country
because of its widespread use. English has been given official status by 32 of
the 50 state governments. As an example, while both Spanish and English have
equivalent status in the local courts of Puerto Rico, under federal law,
English is the official language for any matters being referred to the United
States district court for the territory.
The
use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the
Americas. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America
during the 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th
centuries. Since then, American English has been influenced by the languages of
West Africa, the Native American population, German, Dutch, Irish, Spanish, and
other languages of successive waves of immigrants to the United States.
Any American
English accent perceived as free of noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural
markers is popularly called "General American", described by
sociolinguist William Labov as "a fairly uniform broadcast standard in the
mass media", but otherwise there is not a mainstream standard English of
the country, according to historical and present linguistic evidence. According
to Labov, with the major exception of Southern American English, regional
accents throughout the country are not yielding to this broadcast standard. On
the contrary, the sound of American English continues to evolve, with some
local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents emerging and
advancing.
B.
The
origin of American English in the USA
The history of
American English may be divided into two significant periods: Colonial period
and National period. The events in these periods contributed to the
diversification of British and American English. The exploring of these two
periods is a step towards a better understanding of the recent distinctions
between British and American English.
The first
significant period of American English was the Colonial period. The Colonial period began with the settlers at the
colony subsequently named Jamestown in Virginia in 1607. The motive for
settlement was the political and religious oppression that forced Europeans and
British inhabitants to seek the better life in America. Immigrants created a
new nation and the newly created nation in America needed a mutual means of
communication.
There are two basic
aspects of the need for a new language. The first aspect was based on
communication and understanding. English speakers were exposed to everyday
communication with the native inhabitants in America. The need for a national
and unique language was required for mutual understanding. The second aspect
for the diversification from the mother tongue was the evident distance.
British colonial settlers in America had no verbal contact with the British people
at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. They were cut off from verbal
communication with the British nation. Being that there was no verbal contact
with the British people, the need for the preservation of their native language
was slowly vanishing and the need for the new common language was increasingly
growing.
The second
significant period for the history and beginnings of the American language was
the National period. The National
period contributed to the development of a new American nation along with a new
American English language. The American Declaration of Independence in 1776
brought a desire for a language culturally independent from British. The
British government started to tax colonists on everyday commodities. The
conflict erupted when the British taxing of tea resulted in the War of
Independence. The American nation wanted to be independent from the British
government and their separation from the British system was in its infancy. The
war ended with the Declaration of Independence that redefined the American
nation. The new political system in America required new language institutions
as well as the new linguistic rules. The division of Britain and America
brought new linguistic changes in both countries.
As Samuel Johnson
issued a dictionary of the British language in 1755, the same happened in
America with Noah Webster’s Dictionary in 1806. Noah Webster, a lexicographer, contributed to the American
English language in the National period by proposing a new American standard
speech and spelling. Moreover, besides new American linguistic rules, Webster’s
work gave Americans new sense of identity.
According to
Webster, British English definitely build the foundation stone for American
English. In Webster’s work Dissertations on the English language (1789), he
confessed that American English is "an inheritance which the Americans
have received from their British parents." Further in his influential
Essay on Necessity he urges the establishment of the new system arising from
English. Webster issued the substantiation for the new standard in his essay,
saying that "Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose language we
speak, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is
already corrupted, and her language on the decline.". It seemed obvious
that the national American language would share English roots but by no means
British orthography and grammar. Except for the above cited, Webster proposed a
new educational standard since "as an independent nation, our honours require us to have a system of our own, in language as
well as government."
Apart from essays
and dissertations, Webster issued an American Spelling Book where he suggested
spelling reforms that distinguished American English from British English.
The spelling reforms
included the spelling of American -or rather than British –our (color/colour)
and the spelling of American –er rather than British –re (center/ centre). To round off the reform of American English,
he compiled a first volume of a dictionary called A Compendious Dictionary of
the English Language in 1806. Webster
admitted that half of the words used in the second edition of the dictionary
from 1828 did not occur in Johnson’s British Dictionary. The American language
was starting to develop in a different direction to its British ancestor.
Despite the
criticism Webster has received for his work, his successful reform has changed
the spelling of the words such as center, honor or defense still being used in
American English.
C.
National Consciousness.
There
is evidence that at the time of the American Revolution and especially in the
years immediately following it, Americans were beginning to be conscious of
their language and to believe that it might be destined to have a future as
glorious as that which they confidently expected for the country itself. It was
apparent that in the 150 years since the founding of Jamestown and Plymouth the
English language on this continent had developed certain differences that were
often the subject of remark.
Thomas
Jefferson thought that Americans were more tolerant of innovations in speech
than the people of England and that these innovations might eventually justify
calling the language of America by a name other than English. The consciousness
of an American variety of English with characteristics of its own led to the
consideration of a standard that should be recognized on this side of the
Atlantic. John Witherspoon, whose papers on the English language in the Pennsylvania
Journal for 1781 have already been mentioned, believed it probable that
American English would not follow the course of Scots and become a provincial
dialect. “Being entirely separated from Britain,” he says, “we shall find some
centre or standard of our own, and not be subject to the inhabitants of that island,
either in receiving new ways of speaking or rejecting the old.” That others
were thinking along the same lines and were unwilling that this standard should
be left to chance is evident from a communication published in January 1774 in
the Royal American Magazine.
D.
The Pronunciation.
The
earliest changes in the English language in America, distinguishing it from the
language of the mother country, were in the vocabulary. These have already been
mentioned. From the time when the early colonists came, however, divergence in pronunciation
began gradually to develop. This has been due in part to changes that have occurred
here but has resulted still more from the fact that the pronunciation of
England has undergone further change and that a variety of southern English has
come to be recognized as the English received standard. At the present time
American pronunciation shows certain well-marked differences from English use perhaps
the most noticeable of these differences is in the vowel sound in such words as
fast, path, grass, dance, can’t, half. At the end of the eighteenth
century southern England began to change from what is called a flat a to
a broad a in these words, that is from a sound like the a in man
to one like the a in father. The change affected words in which
the vowel occurred before f, sk, sp, st, ss, th, and n followed
by certain consonants. In parts of New England the same change took place, but
in most other parts of the country the old sound was preserved, and fast,
path, etc., are pronounced with the vowel of pan. In some speakers
there is a tendency to employ an intermediate vowel, halfway between the a of
pan and father, but the “flat a” must be regarded as the
typical American pronunciation. Next to the retention of the flat a, the
most noticeable difference between English and American pronunciation is in the
treatment of the r. In the received pronunciation of England this sound
has disappeared except before vowels. It is not heard when it occurs before
another consonant or at the end of a word unless the next word begins with a vowel.
In America, eastern New England and some of the South follow the English
E. Regional
vocabularies of American English and North American English regional phonology
While
written American English is (in general) standardized across the country, there
are several recognizable variations in the spoken language, both in
pronunciation and in vernacular vocabulary. The regional sounds of present-day
American English are reportedly engaged in a complex phenomenon of "both
convergence and divergence": some accents are homogenizing and levelling,
while others are diversifying and deviating further away from one another. In
2010, William Labov summarized the current state of regional American accents
as follows some regional American English has undergone "vigorous new
sound changes" since the mid-nineteenth century onwards, spawning
relatively recent Mid-Atlantic (centered on Philadelphia and Baltimore),
Western Pennsylvania (centered on Pittsburgh), Inland Northern (centered on
Chicago, Detroit, and the Great Lakes region), Midland (centered on
Indianapolis, Columbus, and Kansas City) and Western accents, all of which
"are now more different from each other than they were fifty or a hundred
years ago."
Meanwhile,
the unique features of the Eastern New England (centered on Boston) and New
York City accents appear to be stable. "On the other hand, dialects of
many smaller cities have receded in favor of the new regional patterns",
for example, the traditional accents of Charleston and of Cincinnati have given
way to the general Midland accent, and of St. Louis now approaches the sounds
of the Inland Northern accent. At the same time, the Southern accent, despite
its huge geographic coverage,"is on the whole slowly receding: younger
speakers everywhere in the South are shifting away from the marked features of
Southern speech."
Finally,
the "Hoi Toider" dialect shows the paradox of receding among younger
speakers in North Carolina's Outer Banks islands, yet strengthening in the
islands of the Chesapeake Bay.
1.
Eastern
New England English
Marked New England speech is mostly associated with
eastern New England, centering on Boston and Providence, and traditionally
includes occasional or systematic r-dropping (or non-rhoticity), as well as the
back tongue positioning of the /uː/ vowel (to [u]) and the /aʊ/ vowel (to [ɑʊ~äʊ].
In and north of Boston, the /ɑːr/ sound is famously centralized or even
fronted. Boston shows a cot-caught merger, while Providence keeps the same two
vowels sharply distinct.
2.
New
York City English
The Potomac River generally divides the Northern and
Midland coastal dialects from the geographic beginning of the Southern dialect
areas; in between these two rivers several regional variations exist, chief
among them being New York City English, which prevails in and around New York
City (including Long Island and northeastern New Jersey), defined by consistent
or variable non-rhoticity and a locally unique short-a vowel pronunciation
split. New York City English otherwise broadly follows Northern patterns,
except that the /aʊ/ vowel is fronted. The cot-caught merger is strongly
resisted around New York City. As is well known in popular stereotypes, as in
tawwk and cawwfee, the thought vowel is typically tensed in New York City.
3.
Southern
American English
The main features of Southern American English can
be traced to the speech of the English from the West Country and Southern
England who settled in Virginia after leaving England at the time of the
English Civil War. Most older Southern speech along the Eastern seaboard was
non-rhotic, though, today, all local Southern dialects are strongly rhotic,
defined most recognizably by the /aɪ/ vowel losing its gliding quality and
approaching [aː~äː], the initiating event for the Southern Vowel Shift, which
includes a "Southern drawl" that makes short front vowels into
gliding vowels.
Since the mid-twentieth century, a distinctive new
Northern speech pattern has developed near the border between Canada and the
United States, centered on the Great Lakes region (but only on the American
side). Linguists call this region the "Inland North", as defined by
its local vowel shift—occurring in the same region whose "standard Midwestern"
speech was the basis for General American in the mid-20th century (though prior
to this recent vowel shift). Those not from this area frequently confuse it
with the North Midland dialect treated below, referring to both, plus areas to
the immediate west of the Great Lakes region, all collectively as "the
Midwest": a common but vaguely delineated term for what is now the central
or north-central United States. The so-called '"Minnesotan" dialect
is also prevalent in the cultural Upper Midwest, and is characterized by
influences from the German and Scandinavian settlers of the region (like
"yah" for yes, pronounced similarly to "ja" in German,
Norwegian and Swedish). In parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio, another dialect
known as Pennsylvania Dutch English is also spoken.
4.
Midland
Between the traditional American "North"
and "South" is what linguists have long called the
"Midland." This geographically overlaps with some states situated in
the lower Midwest.
West of the Appalachian Mountains begins the broad
zone of modern-day "Midland" speech. This has often been divided into
two discrete subdivisions, the "North Midland" that begins north of
the Ohio River valley area, and the "South Midland" speech, which to
the American ear has a slight trace of the "Southern accent"
(especially due to some degree of /aɪ/ glide weakening). Sometimes the former
region is designated simply "Midland" and the latter is labelled as
"Highland Southern". The South Midland or Highland Southern dialect
follows the Ohio River in a generally southwesterly direction, moves across
Arkansas and Oklahoma west of the Mississippi, and peters out in West Texas. It
is a version of the Midland speech that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms.
Modern Midland speech also has no obvious presence
or absence of the cot–caught merger. Historically, Pennsylvania was the home of
the Midland dialect, however, this state of early English-speaking settlers has
now largely split off into new dialect regions, with distinct Philadelphia and
Pittsburgh dialects documented since the latter half of the twentieth century.
5.
Western
American English
A generalized Midland speech continues westward
until becoming a somewhat internally diverse Western American English that
unites the entire western half of the country. This Western dialect is mostly
unified by the cot–caught merger and a conservatively backed pronunciation of
the long oh sound in goat, toe, show, etc., but a fronted pronunciation of the
long oo sound in goose, lose, tune, etc. Western speech itself contains such
advanced sub-types as Pacific Northwest English and California English (with
the Chicano English accent also being a sub-type primarily of the Western
accent), although, in the immediate San Francisco area, some older speakers do
not possess the normal Californian cot–caught merger, which reflects a
historical Mid-Atlantic heritage.
The island state of Hawaii, though primarily
English-speaking, is also home to a creole language known commonly as Hawaiian
Pidgin, and native Hawaiians may even speak English with a Pidgin accent.
6.
The
Other varieties
Although no longer region-specific,[30] African
American Vernacular English, which remains prevalent particularly among
working- and middle-class African Americans, has a close relationship to
Southern varieties of American English and has greatly influenced everyday
speech of many Americans, including in areas such as hip hop culture. The same
aforementioned socioeconomic groups, but among Hispanic and Latino Americans,
have also developed native-speaker varieties of English. The best-studied
Latino Englishes are Chicano English, spoken in the West and Midwest, and New
York Latino English, spoken in the New York metropolitan area. Additionally, ethnic
varieties such as Yeshiva English and "Yinglish" are spoken by some
American Jews, and Cajun Vernacular English by some Cajuns in southern
Louisiana.
CHAPTER III
CLOSING
A. Conclusion
American
English also called United States English or U.S. English is the set of
varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the
most widely spoken language in the United States and is the common language
used by the federal government, considered the de facto language of the country
because of its widespread use.
The history of American English
may be divided into two significant periods: Colonial period and National
period. The
earliest changes in the English language in America, distinguishing it from the
language of the mother country, were in the vocabulary. These have already been
mentioned. From the time when the early colonists came, however, divergence in pronunciation
began gradually to develop. While written American English is (in general)
standardized across the country, there are several recognizable variations in
the spoken language, both in pronunciation and in vernacular vocabulary
B. Sugesstion
Based on the conclusions, this paper has many
drawbacks and away from perfection, therefore all critism and conscructive suggestions
so is the writer expected mainly from lecturer and fellow readers for the
perfection of the future. Hopefully this paper useful for us and can add to our
knowledge.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hogg,
Richard and David Denison. 2006. A
History of The English Language, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Baugh, Albert C and
Thomas Cable.2002. A History Of The English Language. British:Routledge.
Fifth edition.
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