American English Essay

Several European immigrants are reported to have arrived in America during the 19th century and early 20th century. Notably, the first wave of these European immigrants is believed to have begun in the late 1820s largely sustained by the unrest in Britain. This wave of migration went on for almost a decade highly attracted by the dreams of creating a model utopian American society. This is in turn closely associated to some extent with the development of the American English. European immigrants immensely contributed to the development of American life and more specifically American English. Today, American English has become an omnipresent phenomenon in every aspect of the American society. British English, the main source of American English

For this reason, English-speaking people constituted majority of the settlers who brought in the deferent dialects spoken in different parts of Britain (Bueltmann et al., 2014). These varieties of the early British English had a substantial impact on the emergence of the various dialects across America. For instance, some words that are regarded as American were actually the lower speech words in the British English at the time. In addition, these settlers spoke English very similar to the one spoken in America today. This implies that they contributed in terms of

However, in addition to the many accretions from the British English, many other contributions have their roots traced back to the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Germany immigrants during the 19th and 20th centuries. Notably, from German with words such as hamburger, Frankfurter, wiener, scram, kindergarten, sauerkraut, and liverwurst and Yiddish with words like schmooze, and chutzpah. Spanish and French immigrants could also have had some influence on the development of American English. Words such as canyon, stampede, vigilante, and ranch are good examples of Spanish words that illustrate the influence of the European immigrations (Belladelli & Cagliero,