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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Fubar Obfusco (talk | contribs) at 04:45, 7 December 2004 (→Scope of American English: "American English" over "US English" -- people's objections to "American" should be recognized, but it's not ambiguous; the latter is ambig. with the political group.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Having personally lost a city wide spelling bee over plough/plow (my elementary school used an Australian grammar series, American grammar books having already gone to hell) I still hold a grudge against Noah Webster. And its not anecdotal. Is there a page yet for spelling reform? There are certainly lots of 'em. This entry is going to shift to more substantive issues (17th century English as the base for American dialects, etc.) when a dialectician gets ahold of it, but I'm not up to that. --MichaelTinkler

Someone please consolidate this with the English language/American English subpage entry.

Slovene and German loanwords

Interesting readings about borowings in the American English. One small question. As there are a lot of Slovenes in the States, did American English borrowed any words from Slovene language? I am missing any borrowings from German language, too. I know some by heart - but I know just they are from English language (flak, Einsatz, ...), because I had never learned American English in deep. -- XJamRastafire 18:58 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)

Never heard of Einsatz. That's supposedly and American English word? -- Zoe
Could we cut the width of this table, too? It runs over the left-hand margins. -- Zoe
I had an edit conflict. So here's my text: Sorry I meant Ansatz. This word is not in Wikipedia. See for an example at http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/VariationOfParameters.html. I am not good at German grammar at all. My native language has a lot of borrowings from it. For example s<caron>us derived from Schuß, meaning shot. -- XJamRastafire 19:15 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)
I don't know the word Ansatz, either. You sure it's an American English word? You don't mean ersatz, do you? -- Zoe
"Ansatz" is not in my general-purpose dictionaries, though it's entirely possible that it has some obscure mathematical usage. --Brion VIBBER
To Zoe (edit conflict+)
We slightly do not understand each other :-). I didn't wrote that Ansatz is an American English word. I just wrote that I saw it sometimes in English articles, specially at math pages (see the link above). And I just asked for another borrowings to the American English (e.g. German, and specially for Slovene). I know common English, let us say for a 70-80 %, but I must say that this culture is still so different than mine. So that is why it is quite a big curiosity for non-native-English reader to get such useful (why not usefull - these are those 20-30 % of ignorance) informations and vice versa for English reader from different cultures and languages. And the Wikipedia is a good place for this!!!! Any futher help is very much appreciated. Best regard.
To Brion
Yes, Americans would know better than anyone. I am looking here of course for those with no obscure usages. Check the above link, too for instance. And by heart I think I saw it on many places. -- XJamRastafire 15:59 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

Here are some English Ansatz obscure usages from the Google:

  • and many more...

For my opinion - interesting, (but it can be wiped out eventually from here in some near future - it is here just for an information). We all learn every single day... Uph, I guess I'll have to write a Wikipedian article about the Ansatz, but first I have to clarify with a little help... -- XJamRastafire 16:18 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

In the article Problem solving Ansatz is simply translated to an approach. I would better tranlsate it as more general term an equation or a formula. But I have no slightest idea what it means in fact. -- XJamRastafire 16:27 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

Japanese loanwords removed

From Japanese

kamikaze suicide attack. Japanese for Divine Wind
karate Japanese for the Unarmed Way
origami paper crafts
tycoon wealthy and powerful businessperson. Japanese for big monarch
tsunami tidal wave
sake a Japanese liqour

I've removed this table because this article is supposed to be about American English, whereas all of the above terms are used also in British English. --Zundark 09:28 Jan 6, 2003 (UTC)

kosher correct, proper, ("That's not kosher" is similar to "That's not cricket".)
patio an outdoor paved area of a house
incommunicado lack of communication
OK 'yes' or 'you are correct'. A word now used by many languages.
Its origin is not clear - for more information, read the "Ask Oxford" article at http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=4&q=http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwordorigins/ok&e=42.
Likewise I dumped the above as being very common in the UK. I wondered about "fiesta" and "cookie" too, but I think they're not that common. Honestly who thought us Britons don't use "kosher" or "ok"?
The way OK was included was a little odd, I agree, but OK originated in the United States, and furthermore, its origin is well known and has been since approximately 1965. But I don't like working on articles with tables in them and usually avoid them, so it is up to someone else to fix this. (If I worked on the article, the tables would go.) The story on OK is, briefly, that there was a word game popular in the United States in the early 19th century of misspelling phrases and using only the initials -- not unlike the transformations of Cockney rhyming slang -- in which "O.K." stood for "oll korrect". This origin was obscured by the subsequent combination of the phrase with the nickname of Martin Van Buren in the campaign slogan "Old Kinderhook is O.K." and the proliferation of many, many a folk etymology in later years. The research by A. W. Read tracing the origin as stated here is accepted by both the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's III. OK is, perhaps, the best known of all Americanisms and certainly belongs in the article on American English as well as in an article of its own, which I have just half written. (Why the "Ask Oxford" article is less positive on this is a mystery since their own, more authoritative OED presents it, but "Ask Oxford" is a good source for all the folk etymologies.) Ortolan88
OK. There could perhaps be a table of words of US origin put in this article. Bagpuss

loanwords comemntary

I think it should be noted that not all of the loanwords are common in all parts of the United States. In my section of the Midwest at least many of these borrowings, especially the Yiddish ones and Spanish ones not dealing with food, have not yet become standard vocabulary.

A couple of the loanwords currently listed are, in my opinion, placed under the wrong headings. "Gumbo" is ultimately of African origin, but it entered English via Louisiana French. The same goes for "bayou" -- it comes from Louisiana French, which took it from Choctaw. In short, if English gets a word from French, it should be irrelevant where the French got it from. After all, we're not listing "adobe" as an Arabic loanword. BrianSmithson 19:54 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Surely this page is incorrectly titled? The subject is clearly USA English, as opposed to Canadian English, Mexican English etc. markb

"American" in this context means "United States of America". This is nothing new and it's also the standard name (used both commonly, dictionaries, and so forth). Mexico has Spanish as its primary language and Canada has Canadian English. North American English is both Canadian and American. Daniel Quinlan 19:56 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Webster POV

This page seems a bit disparaging of Webster, perhaps written from the perspective of someone who doesn't like his spelling reforms. The article should be more neutral about Webster, perhaps mentioning that Webster did simplify the spelling of many words in American English and a good number of those reforms have stuck. Daniel Quinlan 19:56 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

American English an oxymoron?

Why is "American English" supposed to be an oxymoron --- or at least more so than, say, Australian English, Latin American Spanish or Quebecois French? Perhaps a better word for American English would be majority English. After all, most English speakers worldwide speak and write a variety from North America. This comment strikes me as non-NPOV, and an attempt to portray some social-class-bound insular dialect as normative, an attitude which ever has been and remains a jaw-dropping pretension. -- IHCOYC 11:47 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Most? Since when?
Population of the USA: around 280 millions. Canada adds 85% of 31 millions. Population of the UK is 58 millions, add 19 millions for Australia, 8m for New Zealand and maybe 4m for the native English speaking population of South Africa. No matter how you slice the pie, the center of gravity for the English language is in North America and not in any of the outlying islands. -- IHCOYC 13:40 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

In India English is the language in which most university courses are taught. It is also the language used in most areas of administration, and they have many English language newspapers. Out of a total population of 1 billion potential speakers, some 40 million plus Indians speak British English there. The situation is similar in countries like Pakistan, Ghana, Nigeria and Singapore etc. etc. When English is taught as a foreign language in Europe and elsewhere it is very often taught as British English through organizations like the British Council.

When I was in Sweden in the mid-1970s, the saying there was that people over 35 had learned British English in school, and that people under 30 learned American English. -- IHCOYC 15:10 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

IHCOYC is correct, at least regarding number of speakers. There are 341 million first language speakers of English, 210 million of those are in the United States (228 million in North America). There are 508 million including second language speakers, and 240 million of those are in the United States (260 million in North America). I'm not even accounting for some English usage being American rather than British (or another Commonwealth country) in origin outside of North America. It is also worrisome that some Wikipedia editors feel obliged to move pages and alter spelling on the basis that Commonwealth English is not only more correct, but is also more common than either American English or North American English. (My United States figures are actually a bit low since they date from 1984 and most of the other figures are from the late 1990s.) I believe the US probably has the most influence on the English language today, although only partially due to the influence of numbers. More of the influence is through movies, television, books, the internet, and other media. More immediately, I think Wikipedia would benefit from a clearer definition and analysis of the various types of English, including different orthographies. My figures are primarily from http://www.ethnologue.com/ Daniel Quinlan 08:21, Aug 3, 2003 (UTC)

The main thing that concerns me is when British English is taken as a familiar norm in descriptions of other languages. I've seen pronunciation guides that say to pronounce Goethe as "Gertie," for example. Reference to the variety of broad A and O sounds in British English are other frequent sources of confusion; most North Americans don't even hear the sounds as separate phonemes. Since the introduction of the IPA this sort of thing is seen less often, but there's still a lot of it in older reference books; and older reference books have a way of being perpetuated here.
Some writers on British English treat American English with profound condescension. This annoys especially when you realize that the prestige dialect of British English is strongly bound to social class --- you had to have gone to a handful of the "right" boarding schools to get it exactly right --- and a dialect spoken by a much smaller percentage of the population of the British Isles than Standard American is in North America. There's a passage in Fowler's The King's English that mocks American place names like Indianapolis and Memphis, as if Bognor Regis or Stow-on-the-Wold were superior in euphony or dignity. This tradition is not wholly dead among the prescriptive usage writers, and I think that some North Americans are still cowed by it. -- IHCOYC 13:58, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)
"Proper" British English is not simply the preserve of the public school elite - whilst it may be true that those from the public schools may be more likely to use RP in their everyday speech, most across the nation know how to use the correct form and do so for official documents etc., even if they revert to their local dialect for normal usage. Even though I was comprehensive-schooled (in Scotland nonetheless) I still know how to correctly use the English Language and so do those around me. This appears to be in contrast with the situation in the USA. 217.43.185.226 10:34, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh the superiority of everything American! Hah! Considering the linguistic inabilities of your president, the hilarity of watching winners of Oscars trying to construct sentences and the sheer inability of an astonishing number of American students to communicate in any even moderately articulate manner (which is why a number of European universities in the last five years have been forced to start summer courses for visiting American students with special 'basic english' grinds explaining such things as use of verbs, definite and indefinite articles, how to use the past tense!!!) America can hardly brag about its skill or knowledge of english. The lame excuse about comparing population numbers is a nonsense. American english (well at least the lliterate variety) is found on the American continent. The result of the world uses British english or a nativised version of British english, in which some aspects of American english may make an appearance. In no sense can American english claim the right to be the international brand of english and it is a particularly ludicrous form of arrogance to think it can, based on the fact that there are more people in America that in Britain, Ireland, Australia. But the worst form of 'so called' english has got to be MTV english, which consists of nothing more than a string of empty-headed, poorly constructed cliches with all the substance of a quarter pounder and fries. :-) FearÉIREANN 14:41, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the point of this discussion. Whoever added "oxymoron" to this article was obviously aiming tickle a few ribs with some humour. I am given to understand from the couple of business trips I've made to Sweden that they very sensibly take courses in Business English (which leans towards British English as much of Sweden's business is centred on the EU) and Technical English (which leans towards American English for spellings like 'program' and 'color' extensively used in software). Whatever the figures say (and I dispute the validity of your source Daniel which quotes only 11 million speakers of English in India from a 1960s survey) there's no denying that a significant number of people prefer to read and write in British English. It's just the same with American English of course; only the vast majority of British English speakers don't live in the state of technical bliss that is the USA. On Wikipedia we quite rightly have a policy at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV#Americo-centric_point_of_view decrying Americo-centrism in view of the fact that this is an international encyclopaedia. It's a shame that attempts to roll-back Americo-centrism as sometimes paranoiacally(sic) seen anti-Americanism by certain individuals. Let the status quo survive. Mintguy 15:13, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The two points I actually sought to make was that calling American English an "oxymoron" struck me as a violation of NPOV; and that assuming easy familiarity with the phonemic structure of British English is not a good idea in explaining the pronunciation of non-English words. I do admit to being somewhat ornery about the Brits presuming to judge "Americanisms," and the supposed pre-eminence and universality of the British boarding-school dialect. I went to grade school in Canada, and learned a subset of the British spellings myself. I'm not on a tear to remove them.
I cheerfully agree that Dubya is no Churchill. -- IHCOYC 19:05, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You are a bit behind the times as regards english dialects. The days when Oxbridge english was viewed as the correct version have long long since gone. Right now, a BBC programme is on using scouse (a dialect I hate, BTW. It sounds to me like a cat chewing a wasp.) But BBC Four seems to require it. 'Proper english', ie, Oxbridge, has been out of fashion for decades, with Estuary English, Scouse etc far more popular. BTW 2 (sounds like a TV station that!:-) I came across a US student's history essay that has down in my university's history as one of the worst attempt at communication ever witnessed. (You'll enjoy this!) Writing about the Irish Easter Rising, an American woman (allegedly a history major, though I find it hard to believe!) wrote:

It is like the Irish don't like the english and their rules. So they like rebel in Easter. Patrik (sic) Pierce (sic) leads the rebells (sic) and they take a big post office in Oconnel (sic) street, and they gang up on the British. And they tell them like 'no queen here'. But the english don't like it and send in their soldiers from the first world war in France or somewhere to stop them. And the english like arrest Pierce and devillera (sic) and lock them in a big prisom (sic) but the Irish keep rebelling and rebelling and get their new republic with devillera as president and Michael Collin's (sic) becomes his right hand man. And then they fight a war of independents. And the Irish throws the english out and then have a civil war, where Collin's is killed at Bale na Bla (sic) and Northern Ireland joins england and the queen.

AAAAAGH! And that is only one paragraph. The strange thing was that the woman could not understand when she got a fail mark for the paper! She said she had never failed anything before in her life. The question on all our lips was, how could she have possibly passed a single exam in her life, let alone make it to college? But she was the worst. Nobody else has ever quite hit that level of awfulness, though every year some try and come close! :-) FearÉIREANN 20:03, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

One doesn't want to belabor a point or anything, and perhaps this effusion should be passed over in silence; but would you mind explaining just what in the bloody Hell that has to do with the article that this page supposedly exists to improve? Dandrake 02:03, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC)

I expexct she'll get a job as a Hollywood screenwriter. Andy G 20:29, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Anti-intellectualism (zeech! that page needs a real article) is a major feature of the culture of the USA. One of the many ways this trait manifests is in a certain impatience with usage norms. Reading is a solitary vice to most Americans, and it gives you no fresh air and exercise. There are indeed many US high schools who would look at that paper and see that the student had learned where the event took place, who the combatants were, and kept in mind enough proper nouns to make small talk about the Uprising. And that would in the minds of many teachers be enough. Spelling and grammar is another department.
Now if you want to hear ugly English, let me send you to Tennessee. The speech of that state, especially in the female mouth, sounds like a cat being tortured.
You haven't heard an Ozark dialect then. Then again there are both Western and Eastern accents within the Dialects. I'm always shocked by a lot of these studies on phonology and dialects within the US... When they get to MO, Southern Il, and Arkansas they don't tend to do enough studies, especially as the demographic centor of the US is in MO. I can't find the article, or perhaps it was this one, but there was one a few days ago which listed the differences in the Saint Louis Metro Area from Midwestern English. The blurb wasn't quite right but it was right in the fact that the Peoples inside Saint Louis City and in parts of the county talk different than lets say 30 miles away in Franklin and Jeffereson counties and that the dialect is unique to St. Louis. It was wrong becuase it grouped accents in the saint louis area which are actually in deep Franklin Counties and Jeff Counties. The accent in Tennessee is actually pleasent compared to that of your typical Ozarkian.
But most of this seems to be leaving behind the main business of embellishing the article on American English. -- IHCOYC 01:01, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Loan words from British English

I've removed the table of loan-words from English. American English is a form of English, so there can't be loan-words from itself. If it was meant to represent loan-words from British English, then that's wrong too; such words as draperies, rooster, skillet just don't exist in current British English. To say they come from an earlier from of British English is hardly an argument, since the great majority of American English does derive from an earlier form of British English!

What the table was listing was differences between American and British usage - not loan-words - so I've moved the relevant entries from that table to List_of_American_English_words_not_used_in_British_English. Spellbinder 14:25, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Phonics

The northern cities ... extending west through Cleveland, Ohio ... have undergone a shift ... where the vowels in the words stuck, stalk, stock, and stack have shifted from [ʌ], [ɔ], [ɑ], [æ] (SAMPA [V], [O], [A], [}]) to [ɔ], [ɑ], [a], [eæ] (SAMPA [O], [A], [a], [e}]).

Does this truly happen? I live in Cleveland, and I pronounce stuck, stalk, stock, and stack as /stVk/, /stOk/, /stAck/ and /st{k/, and as far as I know, everyone I know that lives here pronounces them the same. Gus 03:51, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)

The northern cities shift is not universal in these areas and varies in the degree of the shift, but see [1] and [2]. Also, the fact that you live in Cleveland may color your impression of these vowels. They may well be more different from the IPA spec than you imagine. Nohat 06:53, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)

American English#Loanwords not common in British English

I am confused why the definition of hacienda 'a type of ranch house' replaced 'principal house on a ranch'.
Dictionary.com/hacienda has:

  1. A large estate or plantation in Spanish-speaking countries.
  2. The house of the owner of such an estate.

Merriam-Webster Online has:

  1. : a large estate especially in a Spanish-speaking country : PLANTATION
  2. : the main dwelling of a hacienda

Are these American dictionaries incorrect? Pædia 15:17, 2004 May 24 (UTC)

I'm confused by this too. The first definition of 'hacienda' isn't distinct from 'estate' as used by Americans, so I figured not to include it. A house is a hacienda because of its function as the main house, not because of any sort of architectural features implied by 'a type of ranch house'. The dictionaries jibe with how I've heard and seen the word used. --Atemperman 22:59, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Cape

I wish to question the inclusion of cape with the meaning headland as being American English. Even if derived from a native american language, it seems to have entered both American and Brtish English quickly and equally. Witness: Cape Town, Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope, Cape Province (all 17th-18th century, some possibly earlier). And 18th century English explorers named many capes in Australia and New Zealand - the majority of headlands in NZ being named cape. -- dramatic 00:17, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Loanwords, again

I have removed the following "Loanwords not common in British English", because they are common in British English:

  • Cape (this may be similar to an American Indian word, but is derived from Latin and pre-dates the discovery of the new world)
  • Toboggan
  • Squash
  • Barbecue
  • Hammock
  • Tycoon

PhilHibbs 16:14, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Words that have dropped out of common usage in British English?

I know there are a lot of phrases that the English think of as "Americanisms", that are in fact phrases that have merely fallen out of use over here, but were maintained in the US. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I think this would be a worthwhile addition to this page. I certainly came here hoping to find some. PhilHibbs 16:16, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The two most conspicuous ones I can think of are fall, the season; and gotten as a past participle for get. Do they speak of bluffs or creeks in the UK? Smerdis of Tlön 16:30, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Bluffs yes, creeks not so often. If I saw a sentence with creek in it I would think it about 75% likely to be of US origin. I would't say that it has gone entirely out of use. PhilHibbs 12:50, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Removed claim

I took out this content:

A key area where American English has grown (on both sides of the Atlantic), is in the world of business and commerce, where use of the rhetorical euphemism is common. One example would be the phrase "are you comfortable with that". This phrase will typically be used by a business manager introducing a change which may, or may not, be welcome. A negative answer is neither expected nor, indeed, invited. However, the question is, at least on the face of it, conciliatory.
However, it was the British composers Gilbert and Sullivan who felt it necessary to point out that their ideal officer in HMS Pinafore "almost always said 'If you please.'".

because there didn't seem to be any evidence and it seems like an awfully vague assertion. Also, it only really applies to the "corporate-ese" variety of American English. It just seemed out of place here. If anyone could show a reasonable justification for why it should be put back, I'd be glad to entertain it. Nohat 06:13, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

IPA vs SAMPA

Can we (meaning "I") get rid of the SAMPA annotations? The beginning of the article has a box telling the reader that IPA is going to be used, and links to an article providing assistance if eir browser is having trouble with it. IPA is really the only standard we need for phonetic notation — it appears in every dictionary I've seen, it's all we use in the linguistics community, and it's very well-defined. The SAMPA annotations are cumbersome, not as well-understood or commonly used, and pointless in the dawning age of Unicode. The doubling of pronunciations in IPA and SAMPA makes for very unattractive clutter in my opinion. Maybe there's something I'm overlooking here, but I really don't think we need SAMPA in this article (or in many others). Comments? Jeeves 05:25, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Scope of American English

It needs to be made clear whether American English is being used to refer to US, North American or true American English. If the article is only supposed to refer to US English, it also needs to mention the existence of other English dialects in America like Canadian, Carribean, &c English with links to their articles. Or else, there needs to be a seperate article, English of the Americas, prominently linked to from here (or this needs moving to US English to make room for such an article here).

-Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley 07:58, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)

I agree. "U.S. English" is unambiguous, and is obviously what this article is about. "American English" can mean a few different things in a universal context, as could "North American English". —Michael Z. 21:52, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)
The article is fine where it is, I believe. "US English" could also refer to the movement to promote "English only" in the United States. You should take a poll and garner consensus before making such a move as this. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 03:32, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
The objection to the use of the adjective "American" to describe things of the United States of America is well-understood and widely recognized. However, it also has to be recognized that this is an objection to the common use -- it is not a misunderstanding of what the common use is, or an ambiguity that confuses people.
People who wish that the word were not used this way are not confused by its use. They object to it, much as many Trotskyists object to the use of the term "socialism" to describe the economics of the Stalinist Soviet Union. This objection and the reasons for it should be recognized, described, and respected.
However, we also have to write Wikipedia articles in some language or another. And so we need to distinguish between ambiguous usages that confuse people, which should be avoided where possible and clarified where not; and common usages to which some people object. The latter we simply cannot avoid entirely, without turning Wikipedia into a hodgepodge of periphrasis. Wikipedia has to be written in common language, so that people can understand it ... despite the fact that for many common expressions there are people who are offended by them.
"American English" is an unambiguous name for the subject matter. US English is the name of a rather controversial political advocacy group for the exclusion of other languages from American public life. The top Google hit for the expression "US English", by the way, is that group: http://www.us-english.org/ That might make "US English" a rather more ambiguous expression, oddly enough -- Wikipedia should have an article about the group, and what should that article be called? --FOo 04:45, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
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