The concise history of standard english реферат

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Г 95 "Deep Are the Roots. ": A Concise History of Britain. = Гурьева Ю. Ф. Глубоки корни. Очерки по краткой истории Британии.– Обнинск: Титул, 1999.– 72 с.: ил.

Учебное пособие "Deep Are the Roots. " представляет собой краткое историческое введение в курсы страноведения и лингвострановедения для факультетов иностранных языков педагогических университетов и других высших учебных заведений.

Пособие содержит сжатую информацию об исторических событиях в Великобритании, выделяет ключевые слова и термины для каждого раздела, предлагает вопросы для проверки понимания и усвоения материала по каждому историческому периоду.

Это пособие может найти применение у широкого круга студентов, изучающих английский язык и английскую историю: оно вполне доступно для учащихся старших классов спецшкол, студентов колледжей, курсов иностранных языков.

Глубоки корни современного британского общества, государственности, английской нации и других народов, населяющих Британские острова.

Любая страна и нация, любое государство и общество тесно связаны с историческими корнями в своем развитии, а Великобритания и англичане всегда являли миру свою особенность, свою обособленность и почтение к собственной истории. Несмотря на модернистские планы современных молодых реформаторов изменить и заменить традиционные стереотипы старой доброй Англии, исторические корни не только определяют современные традиции и английский менталитет, они вошли в плоть и кровь английской культуры, вплелись во все слои и структуры Великого английского языка.

Современная лингводидактика, выделяя формированне коммуникативной компетенции в качестве цели обучения иностранным языкам, подчеркивает значимость ее разновидностей, прежде всего лингвистической компетенции, а также, среди прочих, и социально-культурную компетенцию. Именно социокультурная компетенция является основой культурной грамотности, определяет понимание учащимися национально-культурных особенностей лексических единиц, экстралингвистических характеристик общения.

Лингводидактические традиции и концепция преподавания ИЯ на факультете иностранных языковМПГУ опираются на интеграцию лингвострановедческого (социокультурного) подхода в обучении ИЯ с постоянным изучением фоновой информации и социокультурных реалий, которые содержатся во многих специальных учебных дисциплинах: зарубежной литературе, страноведении, лингвострановедении.

Помещенные после разделов и подразделов вопросы можно и следует использовать для проверки понимания и знания материала на семинарах, коллоквиумах, контрольных работах, а также на зачетах и экзаменах.

Автор с признательностью примет замечания и пожелания.

UNIT I

ANCIENT BRITAIN 4

BRITAIN IN MIDDLE AGES 13

THE STUARTS AND THE STUGGLE OF THE PARLIAMENT AGAINST THE CROWN41

THE 18тн CENTURY– OF WEALTH, TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION AND POWER 53

THE 19тн CENTURY– THE VICTORIAN AGE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND. THE NEW RIVAL 64

Invasion, Resistance, Settlement and Conquest

PRE CELTIC AND CELTIC PEOPLE. ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN. INVASIONS OF THE VIKINGS. THE ENGLAND OF ALFRED THE GREAT. EDWARD THE CONFESSOR. THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

until 1649 that English became the language of legal documents in place of Latin.

The formal rules intended to keep the use of French in official capacities were

not enough to combat the effects of the Black Death and the Hundred Years War

between France and England, which both contributed greatly to the rise of

English and fall of French. By the fourteenth century, English was again known

by most people, although French was not forgotten, and the people who spoke

French were generally bilingual. The? Statute of Pleading made it law that

English and not French would be used in the courts. However, it needs to be

emphasized that at the end of this statement, it says that after the pleadings,

debates, etc. in English were finished, they should be entered and enrolled in

Latin. English became the official language of the court in 1413, but French was

permitted until the eighteenth century.

More than the official bureaucratic changes in rules and law were the changes in

the use of the language by the everyday speakers. The changes that distinguish

Early Modern English from Middle English are substantial. The rules for spelling

were set down for the first time. The key is the new consistency used by

teachers, printers and eventually by the general populace. The sign of maturity

for English was the agreement on one set of rules replacing the spelling free-

for-all that had existed.

Out of the variety of? local dialects there emerged toward the end of the

fourteenth century a written language that in course of the fifteenth century

won general recognition and has since become the recognized standard in speech

and writing. The part of England that contributed most to the formation of this

standard was the East Midland type of English that became itst basis,

particularly the dialect of the metropolis, London. East Midland district was

the largest and most populous of the major dialect areas. There were also two

universities, Oxford and Cambridge. In the fourteenth century the monasteries

were playing a less important role in the spread of learning than they had once

played, while the two universities had developed into important intellectual

centers. So far as Cmbridge is concerned any ist influence was exerted in

support of the East Midland dialect. That of Oxford is less certain because

Oxfordshire was on the border between Midland and Southern and its dialect

shows certain characteristic Southern features.

Written London English of the close of the fourteenth century as used by a

number of Middle English authors, such as John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer, had

not achived the status of a regional standard but was soon to become the basis

for a new national literary standard of English. It was the language of the

capital. Geographically, it occupied a position midway between the extreme North

and the extreme South. Already by 1430, this new standard had assumed a

relatively mature form. It was spread throughout England by professional clerks

in the administrative apparatus of the country and also became the model for

business aand pri-vate correspondence in English. It was this Chancery standard,

the normal language for all official written communication by the time when

Caxton set up his Printing Press in West-minster (1476), which became the direct

ancestor of Modern Standard English. As a result of this developments, the use

of regional dialects in writing receded more and more in the course of the?

fifteenth century until, in the Early Modern English period, writing came to be

exclusively done in the standard literary language.

The language of Chaucer’s late fourteenth century and of the fifteenth were

often describe as Late Middle English. It could as well be called Early Modern

English. Ich and I ran side by side in Chaucer’s language, and the distinction

between? ye? and? you was still that of nomina-tive versus accusative. Northern

they had replaced the earlier Anglo-Saxon hie, but hem was still alive. Such

became the preferred Chancery form which had ousted sich, sych, seche and swiche.

Which was replacing wich. The auxiliary verbs appear more regularly in their

modern forms: can, could, shall, should and would. A standardised spelling was

developing which was divorced from the phonetic environment so that sound and

spelling were becoming two separete systems.

An important linguistic change was also in syntax. Syntax governs the structure

of a sentence as well as the structure of verbs. Auxiliary verbs came into use,

for example the use of? do and? have which extended the capability of expression

for verbs. The subtle differences between? I walk, I do walk, and? I am walking

are not available in many other languages. This improvement assisted English in

differentiating itself from other languages. The use of? do as a “helping” verb

led the way for a host of other helping verbs: be, have, can, may, will and so

forth. This significant innovation set in motion a new way for verbs to be used.

English now uses subject-verb-object (SVO), which was not always true, nor must

it be true. Other languages use SOV and some do not require a particular order.

These languages use words such as particles, case endings or emphasis for order

selection criteria. In the year 1000, the beginning of the Middle English period,

the direct object appeared before the verb in? 52% of the sentences. By 1500, it

appeared before the verb in only 2% of the sentences. The biggest change was

between 1300 (40%) and 1400 (14%). The result is that today we use the sentence

order established at that time.? The important point was the establishment of

the convention of word order that helped to structure the language for general

use. The significant change in English sentences was the level of complexity

with new structures to support it. Science did not so much create the complexity,

but rather used the available capability.

The changes in grammar during the early modern period were more far reaching the

examples given. In fact, they were so far reaching that the grammar of English

has changed very little since then. What changes have happened have been slight,

gradual and not significant. The English language experienced a major upheaval

in grammar followed by a stability for many centuries. The changes were

fundamental and powerful enough to sustain tremendous change in science,

literature, technology and all other facets of human existence. Besides grammar,

an unusual change in the 1300s occurred called the Great Vowel Shift. For no

obvious reason the pronunciation of most vowels changed. There is a clear

pattern of how they shifted, but not why. There is also no clear benefit to the

language, only that it was part of the overall, dramatic metamorphosis of

English. Every known aspect of the language experienced change and growth.

The Great Vowel Shift had also cosiderably increased the discrepancies between

spelling and proununciation. Therefore were the “spelling-reformers” first to

appear on the scene, beginning with a book in Latin by Sir Thomas Smith,

entitled: De recta et emendata Linguae Anglicanae Scriptione (1568). Soon

followed on the same subject by John Hart An Orthographie (1569), William

Bullokar and Richard Mulcaster’s book The right writing of our English tung

(1582), Simon Daines Orthoepia Anglicana (1640). However, none of these achived

anything like the stabilizing effect on orthography which ultimately proceeded

from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) whose spelling

has become the ‘normal’ spelling of? Present-Day British Standard English.

The orthographical reformers of the seventeenth century were soon joined by

grammarians. Aims at ‘regularizing grammar’ became more and more pronounced in

the latter part of the seventeenth century and completly dominated grammatical

thinking in the century to follow, and not ‘grammatical thinking’ in the narrow

sense only. The laying down of rules about acceptable usage was now, and

especially in the latter half of the eighteenth century, extended to all

components of Standard English.

In the latter part of the fifteenth century the London standard had been

accepted in most parts of the country. By the middle of the century a fairly

cosistent variety of written English in both spelling and grammar had developed.

With the introdution of? printing in 1476 a new influence of great importance in

the spread of London English came into play. From the beginning London has been

the centre of book publishing in England. Caxton the first English printer, used

the current speech of London in his numerous translations, and the books the

issued from his press and from the presses of his successors gave a currency to

London English that assured more than anything else its rapid adoption. In the

sixteenth century the use of London English had become a matter of precept as

well as practice.

From the time of Caxton on, English is not merely a series of related oral

dialects, which are occasionaly written. It is a fully developed cultural tongue,

the equal, in its own fashion, of the Latin and Greek of Classical antiquity. It

is a language with a numerous body of unified speakers and writers, a language

with a vast potential and actual market. The modern English that emerges from

the era of Chaucer and Caxton is a tongue that still possesses vast

possibilities of change, channeled in the direction of vocabulary rather than of

sounds or grammatical structure.

1. Baugh, A. and Cable Thomas, A History of the English Language ( London, 1978

2. Berndt, Rolf, History of the English Language ( Leipzig, 1982 )

3. Blake, Norman, The Cambridge History of the English Language ( Cambridge,

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“Historical Background of the Middle English Period”

The problem of periodization. The role of the Middle English Period in the history of English language.The influence of the Scandinavian invasions.The Norman Conquest.Early Middle English dialects. Neighborhood of three languages in England.Written records of the M. E. P. Late M. E. P. Development of English dialects and the rise of London dialect.

The historical development of a language is a continuous, uninterrupted process without sudden breaks or rapid transformations. Therefore any periodisation imposed on language history by linguists, with precise dates, might appear artificial. There are some periodizations of the history of English language. The author of the first scientific historical phonetic and grammar of En. Language. H. Sweet suggested the periodization that corresponds to the morphological structure of different centures. He called the Old English Period – ‘The period of full endings ‘, the M. E. P. – ‘The period of reduced endings’ , the New En. P. – ‘The period of lost endings.’ But this periodization is not full because it is not quite right to devide the logical features, but phonological or syntactical ones (they were not mentioned in the periodization.) So, thus I consider that any periodization is based on some principles, but can’t touch all the sides of the language.

One of the prominent and well-known English scientists Henry Sweet worked out several periodisations of the history of English language. He suggested to single out the period of transition and to subdivide the transitional stage between the Old and the Middle English Periods cover 1100-1200. H. Sweet reckoned 1200 to be the limning of the Middle English based on morphological phenomena the Middle English Period is considered to le the Period of Levelled English.

Another periodization is extralinguistical. It’s based on the historical events, which influenced on the English language. I must notice that this one is the most traditional. The commonly accepted traditional periodization divides English language history into three periods: Old English, Middle English and New English with boundaries attached to definite dates and historical effects affecting the language. Old English is connected with the German settle in Britain (5th century) and with the beginning of writing (7th century) and ends with the Norman Conquest (1066). Middle English begins with Norman Conquest end ends on the introduction of printing (1475). The Middle English period itself may be also divided into two smaller ones – Early Middle English and Late Middle English.

Early Middle English covers the main events of the 14th century. It is the stage of greatest dialectal divergence caused by the feudal system and by foreign influences-Scandinavian and French. The dialectal division of present-day English owes its origin to this period of history. Great changes of the language took place at all the levels, especially in lexis and grammar.

Later 14th till the end of the 15th century is a time known as Late or Classical Middle English. This period umbra’s the age of Chaucer, the greatest English medieval writer and forerunner of the English Renaissanu, and is characterized by restoration of English to the position of the state and literary language and by literary flourishing, which has a stabilizing effect on language, so that the rate of linguistic changes was slowed down. At the same time the written forms of the language developed and improved.

The Old English period in the history of the language corresponds to the position of the state and literary language corresponds to the transitional stage from the slave-owning and tribal system to the feudal system in the history of Britain. In the 11th century feudalism was already well established. According to a survey made in the late 11th c. slaves and freemen were declining classes. The majority of the agricultural population (and also of the total population, which amounted to about 2.000.000 people) was bound to their lord and land. Under natural economy, characteristre of feudalism, most of the things needed for the life of the lord and the villain were produced on the estate. Feudal manors were separated from their neighbors by tells, local feuds, and various restrictions concerning settlement, traveling and employment. These historical conditions produced a certain influence on the development of the language.

In Early M.E. the differences between the regional dialects grew. Never in history, before or after, was the historical background more favorable for dialectal differentiation. The main is the dialectal division in England, which survived in later ages with some slight modification of the feudal stage of British history.

In the age poor communication dialect boundaries often coincided with geographical barriers such as rivers, mashes, forests, and mountains, as these barriers would hinder the diffusion of linguistic features.

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МУНИЦИПАЛЬНОЕ БЮДЖЕТНОЕ ОБЩЕОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ

СТУПИНСКОГО МУНИЦИПАЛЬНОГО РАЙОНА

Районный конкурс исследовательских работ обучающихся

Ступинского муниципального района

Лингвистика (английский язык)

Учащиеся 9 класса

Губина Марина Акимовна, учитель английского языка

INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………………….3 I. THE HISTORY AND REASONS FOR THE FORMATION OF AMERICAN ENGLISH……………………………………………………………………………………. ……4

1.1 THE HISTORY OF THE FORMATION OF AMERICAN ENGLISH………………….4 1.2 SOURCES OF AMERICAN ENGLISH………………………. …………………………..… 5

II. GRAMMATICAL AND LEXICAL-SEMANTIC FEATURES OF AMERICAN ENGLISH …………….……………………. …………………..……………….……………………….……7

2.1.DIFFERENCES IN AMERICAN AND BRITISH ENGLISH………..………. ……………..7

2.2. AMERICAN ENGLISH IN THE WORLD ..…. …………………………. ………………10

AMERICAN ENGLISH

INTRODUCTION

English is the first language for around three hundred and fifty thousand people, the mother tongue of twelve nations, the official or semiofficial language of thirty-three nations. It is the most popular language of international communication. It is spoken and written by hundreds of million people of different nationalities, e.g., more than three thousand newspapers and magazines are published in English in India. It is the language of science, business, and information technology and communication today.

English has become the "new Latin” of our modernity. In different countries it is a must for most technical jobs, such as pilots, scientists. A huge amount of people on the Earth speak and study English. Its influence is very increasable. It can influence not only the dictionary, but also the linguistic structure of other languages.

Once Sir George Bernard Shaw said, “America and Britain are two countries separated by the same language”. It reflects what many British feel about American English.
American English began to develop as soon as the first colonists from England arrived to the New World. It had more success than British being cleaner and more correct. The settlers who came from many different parts of Great Britain were together in new and risky conditions, so they tried to keep only common in speech to all of them.

I. THE HISTORY AND REASONS FOR THE FORMATION OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

THE HISTORY OF THE FORMATION OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

Today English has various dialects. For example, after the colonization of America, a new type of English was born - American English. The word “canoe”, e.g., was not used in Great Britain; it appeared first in a book by Captain John Smith in 1608. The colonists had to find new words to describe the things they discovered in America. Many American words are different from those used in England.

The English language came to North America in the seventeenth century. It is about four centuries old. It became a direct contrary to the standards adopted in England at that time. In colonial times most critics thought that American English was inferior to British English.

There are two main periods of development of the English language in America:

- The early period from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, this is characterized by the formation of the American dialects;

- The late period (the nineteenth – the twentieth centuries) is characterized by the creation of the American Standard English.

The first English settlers founded Jamestown in North America in 1607. In November 1620 Plymouth was founded by the puritans who arrived on the ship “Mayflower”. The inhabitants of these two settlements spoke their own dialects. In the seventeenth - eighteenth centuries the number of immigrants was growing, they brought a great variety of languages and dialects with them. They needed a common language.

New words were added for animals, plants, food. The settlers borrowed words from Indian languages for such strange trees as the persimmon and hickory and for such strange animals as raccoons.

They made new combinations of English words, such as bullfrog or backwoods , or gave old English words new meanings, such as corn (it means in British any grain, especially wheat). Some of the new terms were needed because there were new and unknown things. Others can be explained only on the general theory that languages are always changing, and American English is no exception.

But many of the colonists continued to maintain links with England. The American version of English has not established itself as a literary yet, because America did not have its own national culture. For a long time most of the books read in America came from England, and a surprising amount of Americans read those books.

After the Revolutionary War, Americans wanted to be independent of British influence in language. American writers such as James Fennimore Cooper began to use American expressions in their books.

The languages of Dutch and French settlers, and of the huge numbers of immigrants entering the US in 19th and 20th centuries, also contributed to the development of American English. Inventions such as electric lighting, the typewriter, telephone and television added large numbers of words to the language.

In Great Britain American English was still considered to be an “impure” form of the language. It was until the Civil War, when writers (Mark Twain among them) became popular in England. Only then American English was accepted in Great Britain.

SOURCES OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

The Pilgrims had to be thankful to the Wampanoag Indians since 1621 . That American Indian tribe brought serious contribution to the first settlers ’ survival . They taught the settlers how to catch fish and what crops to plant .
We are delighted with the names Americans have given their indigenous animals . American settlers conflated descriptive words to give extraordinary names for the local mammals , birds , reptiles , fish and insects .

A bald eagle is called so as its white neck and head make it look bald .

A bullfrog got its name of making a roaring noise like a bull .
Americans have given many of their indigenous trees , flowers and grasses descriptive names , often by conflating two old words . So they have :
- A butternut called so from the oiliness of the nut .
- A live oak is named so of being evergreen all year .
Other American plants were misnamed , as the settlers, who first saw them, thought that they were iden tical to those back home in England but they were not .

So , American beech and laurel aren’t the same as the English trees of the same names .
Americans still use the Indian words for :

- Thousands of place names ;
- Scores of words about Indians used in our history and mythology ;

- Hundreds of names of plants , animals , and landscapes which have become a part of American daily speech .
How did Indian words for plants , animals , and landscapes begin to appear in American English ? It happened as soon as the colonists landed and began to ask the Indians “ What ’ s that ?”

Most answers were in Indian languages . Since the Indians hadn ’ t yet invented writing , and since each local tribe might have its own pronunciation of any given word , the colonists had difficulties in trying to spell and pronounce Indian words .
The most famous borrowed words are :
-“ Squash ” from Narragansett “ asquatasqhuas ” it means “ eaten raw ”,
- “ Woodchuck ” from Algonquian “ wejack ”, Chippewa “ otchig ” “ the fisher ”.

This is the best example of folk etymology , of pronouncing strange words to resemble familiar words .
- “ Oregon ” - from Algonquian “ beautiful water ”, now the USA state .
“ Tomahawk ” from Algonquian “ an axe weapon ”, now – a missile .
- “ Oklahoma ” from Choctaw “ red people ”, now a name of a state .
- “ Nebraska ” from Omaha “ a river in the flatness ”, now – a name of a state .
- “ Mississippi ” from Ojibwa “ a big river ”.

Alaska Natives, like the Inuit people, gave English some words too, like husky, kayak, igloo and anorak.

II. GRAMMATICAL AND LEXICAL - SEMANTIC FEATURES OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

In this chapter we are going to examine the grammatical features of American English and British English.

There are thousands of differences in detail between British and American English, and they make together enough difficulties.

LEXICAL DIFFERENCE

Let’s focus on a description of lexical differences of everyday language that could lead to a complete failure of communication.

The American lexicographer and educator Noah Webster had already published the first American English dictionary in 1806, discussing the necessity for an American language, because England was too far away to be used as a model. The passion for complete independence from all English authorities culminated in his ‘Compendious Dictionary of English Language’ in which he proposed the creation of an independent dialect to accommodate the written language to the spoken language.

Vocabulary differences give the right to treat the two varieties as two completely different languages. It is by the reason of numerous borrowing from the Spanish and Indian languages that was not in British English.

Therefore, it can be said that only a direct contact with the other language or a specific study on the differences can improve mutual intelligibility between the two varieties of English, admitting and respecting their differences.

GRAMMATICAL DIFFERENCES

We’ve read the book written by John Algeo “British or American English. A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns” and have found some g rammatical differences of American variant:

British normally uses the perfect in the environment of adverbs like already, ever, just and yet. American has a tendency to use the simple preterit in such cases, although the perfect is also acceptable.

“ I just returned the book” instead of “I’ve just returned the book”.

English has two main verb signals of future time: “will” or “shall” and “be going to”. In general, British favors “will” or “shall”, and American - “be going to”, notably in American conversation and fiction. “Shall” is rare in both varieties, but is more frequent in British than in American.

The passive voice has some distinctive uses in British English.

It was told me in confidence.

“ Have” or “have to” is not generally used as an operator, especially in American English.

“ I don’t have a clue” and “I haven’t a clue”.

To / in THE hospital instead of to/in hospital in British English.

On the weekend/ on weekend instead of at the weekend/at weekend.

On a street instead of in a street.

Past Participle of "got" is "gotten"

To burn, to spoil and other verbs, which can be regular or irregular in the British variant, in the American variant are always regular.

British English may use the in certain expressions of time where American English would have no determiner: all the afternoon/morning/evening - all afternoon/morning/evening ; in the night - a t night

When it comes to different spellings there isn’t really that much to say because in the near future the world will more or less agree on one uniform version.

British English has a tendency to keep the spelling of many words of French origin whereas Americans try to spell more closely to the way they pronounce words and they remove letters not needed, which makes sense to me. Here are some examples:

to practise (verb)

to practice (verb)

Again, these are to our opinion examples for the most important spelling differences between British and American English. Of course, there are more of them and the purpose of this article is not to elaborate on orthography but to raise your awareness of the subject so you can make your own observations and draw conclusions.

British and American English are the reference norms for English as spoken, written, and taught in the rest of the world. For instance, the English-speaking members of the Commonwealth often closely follow British English forms while many new American English forms quickly become familiar outside of the United States.

PRONUNCIATION

The phonetic variations of British and American English have served to differentiate one accent from another. By no means have we suggested that there only two varieties of British and American pronunciation form. There are variations of different accents spoken in the British Isles and in the USA.

The greatest difference between British and American is in the intonation that accompanies sentences. Other pronunciation differences exist in stress patterns and in consonant and vowel articulation and distribution. The major difference in American and English pronunciation is in voice timbre. Americans speak with less variety of tone than the English. American voice timbre seems harsh or tinny to the English, theirs gurgling or throaty to Americans.

English conclusion: Americans speak shrilly, monotonously, and like a schoolboy reciting. American conclusion: the English speak too low, theatrically, and swallow their syllables.

The more precise differences include:

Americans pronounce[æ] in such words as ask, brass, can't, dance, fast, grass, half, last, and path as a short, flat [æ]; the English pronounce it more as the broad [a:] in father. American shorter, flatter [a] is just a continuation of the way first colonists from Southern England pronounced it; the English dropped this pronunciation in the 18th century and began to use the broad [a:] (this same change took place in parts of New England and the South, giving some Americans the pronunciation of aunt as [ænt] and vase as [væz] .

And some more examples of pronunciation:

- ate: Americans say [eit]; [et] is an accepted English pronunciation.

- been: Americans say [bin]; the English say [bi:n].

- either, neither: most Americans say [eðer], [neðer]; [aiðə], [naiðə]" is the English pronunciation.

- issue, Americans say [iʃju]; the English say "[isju:].

- nephew, Americans say [nefju:]; the English say [nevju:].

- schedule, Americans say [skedjul]; the English say [ʃedju:l].

2.2. AMERICAN ENGLISH IN THE WORLD

This dialect is rather popular in the world because of its dominance in the fields of cinema, music, technology. The difference between the American and British literary norm is not systematic. Current Americanisms penetrate into Standard English. Cinema and TV are probably the most important channels for the passage of Americanisms into the language of Britain and other languages as well: the Germans adopted the word teenager and the French speak of automatisation. The influence of American publicity is also a vehicle of Americanisms. This is how the British term wireless is replaced by the American radio. The jargon of American film-advertising makes its way into British usage; i.e. of all time (in "the greatest film of all time"). The phrase is now firmly established as standard vocabulary and applied to subjects other than films. The personal visits of writers and scholars to the USA and all forms of other personal contacts bring back Americanisms.

Cooperation between the USA and the other countries increases from day to day. American English integrates in every side of our life. The USA presents us its culture through movies, music, advertisement, business. All this aspects are reflected in the language. Language is the mirror of the culture. American English has its own special peculiarities, which distinguish it from other variants of the English language. It has its own historical, cultural background which is of certain interest for linguists and speakers of English in the whole world.

In this paper we researched the unique features of American English. We tried to find and explain the etymology of some American English words.

So it was found out that North America has given the English vocabulary thousands of words, word combinations and phrases. Several thousand are now used in English; others, however, died within a few years after their creation. The process of creation new lexical items started as soon as the colonists borrowed names for strange animals, plants, and other objects from the Native American languages. The early settlers also borrowed many names from French and Spanish.

Some people think that if English becomes the official language of the United States that will help keep states and people together. Others think that the American official language is unnecessary. They argue that a common language does not always lead to social harmony.

Working on this paper on American English is extremely beneficial; it has expanded our knowledge greatly. We got a more well - rounded education in linguistics now. The work also helped us to expand our knowledge of the history.

It is not true that British English is more traditional or that American English is simplified.

In our opinion, American English is easier and it is also more convenient. We just want to tell everyone who is thinking of learning English that you don’t have to divide it into several parts.

The practical value of the given work is following :

This work paper includes a short vocabulary of American English words and phrases. It can be used in the English classes when studying the American History.

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