American English is a form of the English language

æ-tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent; for example, for many speakers, /æ/ is approximately realized as [eə] before nasal consonants. In some accents, particularly those from Philadelphia to New York City, [æ] and [eə] can even contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I can [kæn] vs. tin can [keən].

The flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before unstressed vowels (as in butter, party) and syllabic /l/ (bottle), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else, whatever). Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding are pronounced the same. For many speakers, this merger is incomplete and does not occur after /aɪ/; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with [əɪ] and rider with [aɪ]. This is a form of Canadian raising but, unlike more extreme forms of that process, does not affect /aʊ/. In some areas and idiolects, a phonemic distinction between what elsewhere become homophones through this process is maintained by vowel lengthening in the vowel preceding the formerly voiced consonant, e.g., [læ:·ɾɹ̩] for “ladder” as opposed to [læ·ɾɹ̩] for “latter” [2; 102].

Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realized as [n] or [ɾ̃], rarely making winter and winner homophones. Most areas in which /nt/ is reduced to /n/, it is accompanied further by nasalization of simple post-vocalic /n/, so that V/nt/ and V/n/ remain phonemically distinct. In such cases, the preceding vowel becomes nasalized, and is followed in cases where the former /nt/ was present, by a distinct /n/. This stop-absorption by the preceding nasal /n/ does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in entail.

The pin-pen merger, by which [ɛ] is raised to [ɪ] before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English but is now also sometimes found in parts of the Midwest and West as well, especially in people with roots in the mountainous areas of the Southeastern United States.

Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include:

1) he merger of the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/ before “r”, making pairs like horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning, etc. homophones;

2) the wine-whine merger making pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where, etc. homophones, in most cases eliminating /hw/, the voiceless labiovelar fricative. Many older varieties of southern and western AmE still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading.

Ranch, later applied to a house style, derives from Mexican Spanish; most Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West. Among these are, other than toponyms, chaps (from chaparreras), plaza, lasso, bronco, buckaroo, rodeo; examples of “English” additions from the cowboy era are bad man, maverick, chuck (food) and Boot Hill; from the California Gold Rush came such idioms as hit pay dirt or strike it rich. The word blizzard probably originated in the West. A couple of notable late 18^th century additions are the verb belittle and the noun bid, both first used in writing by Thomas Jefferson.

With the new continent developed new forms of dwelling, and hence a large inventory of words designating real estate concepts (land office, lot, outlands, waterfront, the verbs locate and relocate, betterment, addition, subdivision), types of property (log cabin, adobe in the 18^th century; frame house, apartment, tenement house, shack, shanty in the 19^th century; project, condominium, townhouse, split-level, mobile home, multi-family in the 20^th century), and parts there of (driveway, breezeway, backyard, dooryard; clapboard, siding, trim, baseboard; stoop (from Dutch), family room, den; and, in recent years, HVAC, central air, walkout basement.

Ever since the American Revolution, a great number of terms connected with the U.S. political institutions have entered the language; examples are run, gubernatorial, primary election, carpetbagger (after the Civil War), repeater, lame duck and pork barrel. Some of these are internationally used (for instance, caucus, gerrymander, filibuster, exit poll).

The rise of capitalism, the development of industry and material innovations throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries were the source of a massive stock of distinctive new words, phrases and idioms. Typical examples are the vocabulary of railroading and transportation terminology, ranging from names of roads (from dirt roads and back roads to freeways and parkways) to road infrastructure (parking lot, overpass, rest area), and from automotive terminology to public transit (e.g. in the sentence “riding the subway downtown”); such American introductions as commuter (from commutation ticket), concourse, to board (a vehicle), to park, double-park and parallel park (a car), double decker or the noun terminal have long been used in all dialects of English. Trades of various kinds have endowed (American) English with household words describing jobs and occupations (bartender, longshoreman, patrolman, hobo, bouncer, bellhop, roustabout, white collar, blue collar, employee, boss (from Dutch), intern, busboy, mortician, senior citizen), businesses and workplaces (department store, supermarket, thrift store, gift shop, drugstore, motel, main street, gas station, hardware store, savings and loan, hock (also from Dutch)), as well as general concepts and innovations (automated teller machine, smart card, cash register, dishwasher, reservation (as at hotels), pay envelope, movie, mileage, shortage, outage, blood bank) [2; 112].

Already existing English words – such as store, shop, dry goods, haberdashery, lumber – underwent shifts in meaning; some – such as mason, student, clerk, the verbs can (as in “canned goods”), ship, fix, carry, enroll (as in school), run (as in “run a business”), release and haul – were given new significations, while others (such as tradesman) have retained meanings that disappeared in England. From the world of business and finance came breakeven, merger, delisting, downsize, disintermediation, bottom line; from sports terminology came jargon aside, Monday-morning quarterback, cheap shot, etc. A number of Americanisms describing material innovations remained largely confined to North America: elevator, ground, gasoline; many automotive terms fall in this category, although many do not (hatchback, SUV, station wagon, tailgate, motorhome, truck, pickup truck, to exhaust).

In addition to the above-mentioned loans from French, Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Dutch, and Native American languages, other accretions from foreign languages came with 19^th and early 20^th century immigration; notably, from Yiddish (chutzpah, schmooze, tush and such idioms as need something like a hole in the head) and German – hamburger and culinary terms like frankfurter/franks, liverwurst, sauerkraut, wiener, deli(catessen); scram, kindergarten, gesundheit; musical terminology (whole note, half note, etc.); and apparently cookbook, fresh (“impudent”) and what gives? Such constructions as Are you coming with? and I like to dance (for “I like dancing”) may also be the result of German or Yiddish influence.

Finally, a large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from OK and cool to nerd and 24/7), while others have not (have a nice day, sure); many are now distinctly old-fashioned (swell, groovy). Some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey, boost, bulldoze and jazz, originated as American slang. Among the many English idioms of U.S. origin are get the hang of, take for a ride, bark up the wrong tree, keep tabs, run scared, take a backseat, have an edge over, stake a claim, take a shine to, in on the ground floor, bite off more than one can chew, off/on the wagon, stay put, inside track, stiff upper lip, bad hair day, throw a monkey wrench, under the weather, jump bail, come clean, come again?, it ain’t over till it's over, what goes around comes around, etc.

During the 17^th century English immigration to the colonies in North America was at its peak and the new settlers took their language with them. While the term fall gradually became obsolete in Britain, it became the more common term in North America. Gotten (past participle of get) is often considered to be an Americanism, although there are some areas of Britain, such as Lancashire and North-eastern England, that still continue to use it and sometimes also use putten as the past participle for put (which is not done by most speakers of American English).

Other words and meanings, to various extents, were brought back to Britain, especially in the second half of the 20^th century; these include hire (“to employ”), quit (“to stop” which spawned quitter in the U.S.), I guess (famously criticized by H.W. Fowler), baggage, hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently (“currently”). Some of these, for example monkey wrench and wastebasket, originated in 19th-century Britain.

So American English has both spelling and grammatical differences from British English, some of which were made as part of an attempt to rationalize the English spelling used by British English at the time. Unlike many 20^th century language reforms (e.g., Turkey’s alphabet shift, Norway’s spelling reform) the American spelling changes were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary makers.

The first American dictionary was written by Noah Webster in 1828. At the time America was a relatively new country and Webster’s particular contribution was to show that the region spoke a different dialect from Britain, and so he wrote a dictionary with many spellings differing from the standard. Many of these changes were initiated unilaterally by Webster. Webster also argued for many “simplifications” to the idiomatic spelling of the period. Somewhat ironically, many, although not all, of his simplifications fell into common usage alongside the original versions, resulting in a situation even more confused than before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2. Lexical and semantic peculiarities of American English in fiction

2.1. Americanisms as structural component of the novel “Love Story” by Erich Segal

It is necessary to notice that the elements of American variant of English are rather wide-spread in the novel “Love Story” by E. Segal. For instance, the phrase to eye the cheese (its Ukrainian equivalent is “задивлятися на дівчат”) is used as the element of American variant of English in the following fragment:

“…Not to eye the cheese, although I admit that I liked to look” [16; 9].

Besides, the lexical unit Preppie that means the peculiar type of the student that origins from a rich family is used in the following fragment:

“I’m not talking legality, Prepie” [16; 9].

The lexical unit music major that means the student specialized in music is used in the following fragment:

“And a music major”, she added [16; 12].

The lexical unit dorm (its Ukrainian equivalent is “гуртожиток”) is used in  the following fragment:

And as I walked Jenny back to her dorm, I had not despaired of ultimate victory over this snotty Radcliffe bitch [16; 14].

The lexical unit buddy (its Ukrainian equivalent is “дружище, приятель”) is used in the following fragment:

Every afternoon of my college life I walked into that place, greeted my buddies with friendly obscenities, shed the trappings of civilization and turned into a jock [16; 21].

The lexical unit Canuck is used in the following fragment in order to mark the nationality of Canadians:

At a heated juncture, I made the unfortunate error of referring to their center as a “fucking Canuck” [16; 27].

The lexical unit breeze is used in order to underline that the deal was easy in the following fragment:

“Please, Jen. It’ll be a breeze” [16; 60].

To underline the peculiarities of the literary character’s behaviour the author uses the lexical unit demeanor as the element of American variant of English:

Doubtless, Mother was sizing up Jennifer, checking out her costume (not Boho this afternoon), her posture, her demeanor, her accent [16; 64].

The lexical unit diner that means a cheap restaurant is used in the following fragment:

I kept my cool long enough to pull into the parking lot of a seafood diner [16; 72].

The lexical unit bucks that means dollar as the currency is used in the following fragment:

“But he’d be happier if I had a few bucks” [16; 82].

The lexical unit zilch that means zero is used in the following fragment:

“I have absolutely zilch in the bank, and I’m already accepted” [16; 93].

The lexical unit dough that means money is used in the following fragment:

… we would be able to scrape up enough dough to do whatever it was we had to do [16; 102].

The lexical unit counselor (its Ukrainian equivalent is “консультант”) is used in the following fragment:

… and Jenny was a children’s counselor [16; 103].

The lexical unit freshman that means the student of the first course is used in the following fragment:

“…And by the time he’s a freshman, you’ll probably be in Supreme Court!” [16; 113]

The lexical unit tackle (its Ukrainian equivalent is “напівзахисник”) is used in the following fragment:

“Bozo Barrett, Harvard’s huge All-Ivy tackle” [16; 135]. So the elements of American variant of English are rather wide-spread in the mentioned literary work. This variant of English makes the literary work more expressive and helps to represent the peculiarities between the literary characters better.

2.2. The functional role of American English in the novel

The use of American English American English in the novel is characterized by its functional role. For instance, the lexical unit goddamn that means чортова in Ukrainian is used as the element of slang in the following fragment:

I normally cut these types to ribbons, but just then I badly needed that goddamn book [16; 4]. In this case the mentioned lexical unit is used to underline the literary character’s attitude to the book.

The lexical unit knock their heads off that means покажи їм! in Ukrainian is used in the following fragment:

Go, Oliver, go! Knock their heads off [16; 23]. The mentioned lexical unit is used in order to underline the literary character’s peculiarities.

The lexical unit buddy that means товариш, приятель in Ukrainian is used in the following fragment:

Every afternoon of my college life I walked into that space, greeted my buddies with friendly obsenties… [16; 37]. In this case the mentioned lexical unit is used in order to underline the literary character’s attitude to his friends.

The lexical unit a slightly chicken type that means трохи боягуз in Ukrainian is used as the element of slang in the following fragment:

I could see Davey Johnston on my left, but I thought I would take it all the way, their goalie being a slightly chicken type I had terrorized since he played for Deerfield [16; 34]. In this case the mentioned lexical unit is used in order to give the estimation of the literary character.

The lexical unit streak that means період, проміжок in Ukrainian is used in the following fragment:

But then Davey, our captain, had this incredible streak, but Jesus – tears! [16; 38]. In this case the mentioned lexical unit is used in order to represent the literary character’s peculiarities.

Another element of slang represented with the help of the lexical unit jock that means спортсмен in Ukrainian is also used to give the estimation of the literary character:

Every afternoon of my college life I walked into that place, greeted my buddies with friendly obscenities, shed the trapping of civilization and turned into a jock [16; 42].

The lexical unit wonk that means заучка in Ukrainian is used in the following fragment:

Some musical wonk? [16; 47]. In this case the mentioned lexical unit is used in order to underline the literary character’s attitude to the elements represented in the novel.

The lexical unit breeze that means легка справа, дрібниця in Ukrainian is used in the following fragment:

It’ll be a breeze [16; 53]. In this case the mentioned lexical unit is used in order to underline the literary character’s attitude to the elements represented in the novel.  The lexical unit it’s all crap that means це все дрібниці in Ukrainian is used in the following fragment in order to play the similar functional role:

“It’s all crap”, I told her [16; 54].

The lexical unit a put-up job that means заздалегідь продумана схема in Ukrainian is used in the following fragment:

I mean, it was a put-up job, if ever there was one [16; 63]. In this case the mentioned lexical unit is used in order to underline the literary character’s attitude to the elements represented in the novel.

The lexical unit zilch that means нуль in Ukrainian is used in the following fragment:

I have absolutely zilch in the bank, and I’m already accepted [16; 71]. The mentioned lexical unit is used in order to underline the literary character’s financial situation.

The lexical unit steep that means дуже високий in Ukrainian is used in the following fragment:

Your tuition is pretty steep, Dean Thompson [16; 79]. In this case the mentioned lexical unit is also used in order underline the literary character’s attitude to the elements represented in the novel.

Another lexical element of slang represented with the help of the lexical unit honesty dig it that means чесно кажучи, від цього в захваті in Ukrainian is also used to give the estimation of the literary character:

I honesty dig it [16; 80].

The lexical unit to feel absolutely shitty that means почуватися препаскудно in Ukrainian is used in the following fragment:

And then Jenny explained how she had feeling “absolutely shitty”… [16; 89]

In this case the mentioned lexical unit is used in order to represent the peculiarities of the literary character’s state. So the elements of slang used in the novel “Love Story” by E. Segal are characterized by their functional role.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusions

           So American English has both spelling and grammatical differences from British English, some of which were made as part of an attempt to rationalize the English spelling used by British English at the time. Unlike many 20^th century language reforms (e.g., Turkey’s alphabet shift, Norway’s spelling reform) the American spelling changes were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary makers.

As mentioned above American English and British English differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a lesser extent, grammar and orthography. The first large American dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language, was written by Noah Webster in 1828; Webster intended to show that the United States, which was a relatively new country at the time, spoke a different dialect from that of Britain.

Besides, differences in grammar are relatively minor, and normally do not affect mutual intelligibility. Often, these differences are a matter of relative preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable, since the two varieties are constantly influencing each other.

         The elements of American variant of English are rather wide-spread in the novel “Love Story” by E. Segal. In this case the mentioned lexical units are used in order to represent the peculiarities of the literary character’s state. So the elements of slang used in the novel “Love Story” by E. Segal are characterized by their functional role.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

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