America’s Language: A to DEW

As a national language, American English is a distinctive variety of English without distinctive regional origins. Its distinctiveness encompasses speech-areas as diverse as Eastern New England and Tidewater Virginia, which, however different in their vocabulary, idiom, and pronunciation, rarely differ in the form and spirit of their logographic expression. Its distinctiveness is a perpetual irritation to the Englishman. It flaws his complacency simply because he can put no finger upon the exact point of linguistic difference; he would prefer and more easily understand a French-speaking United States. Its distinctiveness also puzzles the American himself, although his reaction usually follows a contrary direction. The ridiculous and interminable controversy over Americanisms, the charges and countercharges of “corruption” or “effeteness” hurled across the Atlantic for well over a hundred years, the barrier of distrust and disillusionment between two friendly nations—these are inevitable consequences of a linguistic misunderstanding.

In its literate, written form, American English is a pruned and regimented language. But so, for that matter, is the equivalent British English. Wherever distinction may lie, it is not here. Both owe their present form to the effects of authoritarianism working upon bourgeois credulity. Both have succumbed to a vicious purism that is no older than the Industrial Revolution.