A History of English Language

The english language in america
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countries into which a language is carried are cut off from contact with the old we may
find them more tenacious of old habits of speech.
Yet it is open to doubt whether the English language in America can really be
considered more conservative than the English of England. 14 It is but a figure of speech
when we speak of transplanting a language. Language is only an activity of people, and it
is the people who are transplanted to a new country. Language is but the expression of
the people who use it, and should reflect the nature and the experiences of the speakers.
Now we generally do not think of the pioneer who pulls up roots and tries the experiment
of life in a new world as more conservative than the person who stays at home.
Moreover, the novel conditions of the new environment and the many new experiences
that the language is called upon to express are inducements to change rather than factors
tending to conserve the language unaltered. We may well ask ourselves, therefore,
whether the archaic features we have noted in the language of America are evidence of a
conservative tendency or are survivals that can be otherwise accounted for—whether, in
short, American English is more conservative than the English of England. And here we
must ask ourselves what form of American English we are considering and with what we
are going to compare it in England—with the received standard that grew up in the
southern parts of the island or with the form of the language spoken in the north. If we
compare the English spoken in America outside of New England and the South with the
received standard of England, it will undoubtedly appear conservative, but it is not
noticeably so as compared with the speech of the northern half of England. On the other
hand, the language of New England and in some features that of the South have
undergone many of the changes in pronunciation that characterize the received standard
of England. We must be equally careful in speaking of archaic survivals in the American
vocabulary. Illustrations of these are often drawn from the rural speech of
14
This doubt has been well expressed by Frank E.Bryant, “On the Conservatism of Language in a
New Country,” PMLA, 22 (1907), 277–90, and supported with additional arguments by George
P.Krapp, “Is American English Archaic?” Southwest Review, 12 (1927), 292–303, and by Manfred
Görlach, “Colonial Lag? The Alleged Conservative Character of American English and Other
‘Colonial’ Varieties,” English World-Wide, 8 (1987), 41–60.