Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your American English shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the American English offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of American English at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a American English? Wrong! If the American English is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about American English then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling American English? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about American English and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your American English wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your American English then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the American English site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about American English, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your American English, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

American English (AmE, AE, AmEng, USEng, en-US), also known as United States English or U.S. English, is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. It is estimated that approximately two thirds of first language of English live in the United States.

The use of English in the United States was inherited from British colonization of the Americas. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America in the 17th century. During that time, there were also speakers in North America of Dutch language, French language, German language, Norwegian language, Spanish language, Swedish language, Scots language, Welsh language, Irish language, Scottish Gaelic language, Finnish language, as well as numerous Native American languages.

Differences between British English and American English American English and British English (BrE) differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a lesser extent, grammar and orthography.The first large American dictionary, Webster's dictionary, 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 Britain.

Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and normally do not affect mutual intelligibility; these include, but are not limited to: different use of some verbal auxiliaries; formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns; different preferences for the past forms of a few verbs (e.g. learn, burn, sneak, dive, get); different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (e.g. AmE in school, BrE at school; and whether or not a definite article is used in a few cases (AmE to the hospital, BrE to hospital). 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.Algeo, John (2006). British or American English?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-37993-8.

Differences in orthography are also fairly trivial. Some of the forms that now serve to distinguish American from British spelling (color for colour, center for centre, traveler for traveller, etc.) were introduced by Noah Webster himself; others are due to spelling tendencies in Britain from the 17th century until the present day (e.g. -ise for -ize, programme for program, skilful for skillful, chequered for checkered, etc.), in some cases favored by the francophile tastes of 19th century Victorian England, which had little effect on AmE.Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, pp. 34 and 511.

The most noticeable differences between AmE and BrE are at the levels of pronunciation and vocabulary.

Phonology In many ways, compared to English English, North American EnglishNorth American English (Trudgill, p. 2) is a collective term used for the varieties of the English language that are spoken in the United States and Canada. is conservative in its phonology. Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast of the United States (for example, in Eastern New England and New York City), partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of English English at a time when those varieties were undergoing changesTrudgill, pp. 46-47.. Also, many speech communities on the East Coast have existed in their present locations longer than others. The interior of the United States, however, was settled by people from all regions of the existing U.S. and, as such, developed a far more generic linguistic pattern.

. African American Vernacular English-influenced non-rhotic pronunciations may be found among African American throughout the country.Labov, p. 48.Most North American speech is Rhotic and non-rhotic accents, as English was in most places in the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English, Scottish English, and West Country dialects English. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter r is a retroflex or Alveolar consonant approximant rather than a trill or a tap. The loss of syllable-final r in North America is confined mostly to the accents of Boston accent, New York-New Jersey English and surrounding areas, South Philadelphia, and the coastal portions of the Southern American English. Dropping of syllable-final r sometimes happens in natively rhotic dialects if r is located in unaccented syllables or words and the next syllable or word begins in a consonant. In England, the lost r was often changed into (schwa), giving rise to a new class of falling diphthongs. Furthermore, the er sound of f'ur or butt'er, is realized in AmE as a monophthongal r-colored vowel (stressed or unstressed as represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet). This does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech.

Some other British English changes in which most North American dialects do not participate:

• The shift of to (the so-called "broad A") before alone or preceded by a homorganic nasal. This is the difference between the British Received Pronunciation and American pronunciation of bath and dance. In the United States, only eastern New England speakers took up this modification, although even there it is becoming increasingly rare.
• The realization of intervocalic as a glottal stop (as in for bottle). This change is not universal for British English and is not considered to be a feature of Received Pronunciation. This is not a property of most North American dialects. Newfoundland English is a notable exception.

On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound changes not found in Britain, especially not in its standard varieties. Many of these are instances of phonemic differentiation and include:

• The Phonological history of the low back vowels#Father-bother merger, making father and bother rhyme. This change is nearly universal in North American English, occurring almost everywhere except for parts of eastern New England, hence the accent.
• The merger of and . This is the so-called Phonological history of the low back vowels#Cot-caught merger, where cot and caught are homophones. This change has occurred in eastern New England, in Pittsburgh English and surrounding areas, and from the Great Plains westward.
• For speakers who do not merge caught and cot: The replacement of the cot vowel with the caught vowel before voiceless fricatives (as in cloth, off) (which is found in some old-fashioned varieties of RP), as well as before (as in strong, long), usually in gone, often in on, and irregularly before (log, hog, dog, fog) (which is not found in British English at all).
• The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut vowel in most utterances of the words was, of, from, what, and in many utterances of the words everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody; the word because has either or ; want has normally , sometimes or .According to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. For speakers who merge caught and cot, is to be understood as the vowel they have in both caught and cot.

• English-language vowel changes before historic r before intervocalic . Which vowels are affected varies between dialects. One such change is the laxing of , and to , and before , causing pronunciations like , and for pair, peer and pure. The resulting sound is often further reduced to , especially after palatal consonant, so that cure, pure, mature and sure rhyme with fir.
• English consonant cluster reductions#Yod-dropping after consonants so that new, duke, Tuesday, suit, resume, lute are pronounced , , , , , .
• Phonological history of English short A#æ-tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent; for example, for many speakers, is approximately realized as before nasal consonants. In some accents, particularly those from Philadelphia to New York City, and can even contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I 'can vs. tin 'can .
• The flapping of intervocalic and to alveolar tap before reduced vowels. 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 ; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with and rider with . This is a form of Canadian raising but, unlike more extreme forms of that process, does not affect .
• Both intervocalic and may be realized as or , making winter and winner homophones. This does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in entail.
• The Phonological history of the high front vowels#Pin-pen merger, by which is raised to before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English but is now found in parts of the Midwest and West as well.

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

• The English-language vowel changes before historic r#Horse-hoarse merger of the vowels and before 'r', making pairs like horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning etc. homophones.
• The Phonological history of English consonants#Wine-whine merger making pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where etc. homophones, in most cases eliminating , the voiceless labiovelar fricative. Many older varieties of southern and western AmE still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading.

Vocabulary North America has given the English lexicon many thousands of words, meanings, and phrases. Several thousand are now used in English as spoken internationally; others, however, died within a few years of their creation.

Creation of an American lexicon The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as the colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the Native American languages. Examples of such names are opossum, raccoon, squash (fruit), and moose (from Algonquian). Other Native American loanwords, such as wigwam or moccasin, describe artificial objects in common use among Native Americans. The languages of the other colonizing nations also added to the American vocabulary; for instance, cookie, cruller, and pit (of a fruit) from Dutch Language; levee, portage "carrying of boats or goods," and (probably) gopher (animal) from French language; barbecue, stevedore from Spanish language.

Among the earliest and most notable regular "English" additions to the American vocabulary, dating from the early days of colonization through the early 19th century, are terms describing the features of the North American landscape; for instance, run, branch, fork, snag, bluff, gulch, neck (of the woods), barrens, bottomland, notch, knob, riffle, rapids, watergap, cutoff, trail, tree line, and water divide. Already existing words such as stream, slough (wetland), sleet, and (in later use) Drainage basin, received new meanings that were unknown in England.Other noteworthy American toponyms are found among loanwords; for example, prairie, butte (French); bayou (Louisiana French); coulee (Canadian French, but used also in Louisiana with a different meaning); canyon, mesa, arroyo (creek) (Spanish); vlei, kill (body of water) (Dutch, Hudson Valley).

The word corn (disambiguation), used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the plant Zea mays, the most important crop in the U.S., originally named Indian corn by the earliest settlers; wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc. came to be collectively referred to as grain (or breadstuffs). Other notable farm related vocabulary additions were the new meanings assumed by barn (not only a building for hay and grain storage, but also for housing livestock) and team (not just the horses, but also the vehicle along with them), as well as, in various periods, the terms rangeland, corn crib, truck farm, grain elevator, sharecropping, and feedlot.

Ranch, later applied to a ranch house, derives from Mexican Spanish; most Spanish contributions came indeed after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West. Among these are, other than toponyms, chaps (from chaparreras), plaza, lasso, bronco, buckaroo; 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 18th 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 18th century; frame house, apartment, tenement house, shack, shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium, townhouse, split-level home, mobile home, multi-family in the 20th century), and parts thereof (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 American Civil War), repeater, lame duck (politics), and pork barrel. Some of these are internationally used (e.g. caucus, gerrymander, filibuster, exit poll).

The rise of capitalism, the development of industry, and material innovations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries were the source of a massive stock of distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms. Typical examples are the vocabulary of railroading (see further at rail terminology) 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 Car 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.A few of these are now chiefly found, or have been more productive, outside of the U.S.; for example, jump "to drive past a traffic signal," block meaning "building," and center "central point in a town" or "main area for a particular activity" (cf. Oxford English Dictionary). 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, power outage, blood bank). Already existing English words—such as General store, Retailing#Shops and stores, 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, game plan (American football); in the ballpark, out of left field, off base, hit and run, and English language idioms derived from baseball from baseball; gamblers coined bluff (poker), blue chip, ante, bottom dollar, raw deal, pass the buck, ace in the hole, freeze-out, showdown; miners coined bedrock, bonanza, peter out, pan out, and the verb prospect from the noun; and railroadmen are to be credited with make the grade (slope), sidetrack, head-on, and the verb railroad. A number of Americanisms describing material innovations remained largely confined to North America: elevator, ground (electricity), 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 19th and early 20th century immigration; notably, from Yiddish language (chutzpah, schmooze, and such idioms as need something like a hole in the head) and German language—hamburger and culinary terms like frankfurter/franks, liverwurst, sauerkraut, wiener, delicatessen; scram, kindergarten, gesundheit; The Maven's Word of the Day, Random House. Retrieved February 8, 2007. 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.Peter Trudgill (2004). New-Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes.

Finally, a large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from Okay and cool to nerd and 24/7), while others have not (have a nice day, sure, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Retrieved April 24, 2007.); 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, monkeywrenching, under the weather, jump bail, come clean, come again?, and will the real x please stand up?., , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Morphology AmE has always shown a marked tendency functional shift.Trudgill, p. 69. Examples of verbed nouns are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, expense, room, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, buffalo, weasel, express (mail), belly-ache, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, merchandise, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in "exit the lobby"), factor (in mathematics), gun "shoot," author (which disappeared in English around 1630 and was revived in the U.S. three centuries later) and, out of American material, proposition, graft (bribery), bad-mouth, vacation, major, backpack, backtracking, intern, ticket (traffic violations), hassle, blacktop, peer-review, dope, and Drug overdose.

Compound (linguistics)s coined in the U.S. are for instance foothill, flatlands, badlands, landslide (in all senses), overview (the noun), backdrop, teenager, brainstorm, bandwagon, hitchhike, smalltime, deadbeat, frontman, lowbrow and highbrow, hell-bent, foolproof, nitpick, about-face (later verbed), upfront (in all senses), fixer-upper, no-show; many of these are phrases used as adverbs or (often) hyphenated attributive adjectives: non-profit, for-profit, free-for-all, ready-to-wear, catchall, low-down, down-and-out, down and dirty, in-your-face, nip and tuck; many compound nouns and adjectives are open: happy hour, fall guy, capital gain, road trip, wheat pit, head start, plea bargain; some of these are colorful (empty nester, loan shark, Wikt:ambulance chaser, buzz saw, ghetto blaster, dust bunny), others are euphemistic (differently abled, human resources, physically challenged, affirmative action, correctional facility). Many compound nouns have the form verb plus preposition: add-on, stopover, lineup, shakedown, tryout, spinoff, rundown "summary," shootout, holdup, hideout, comeback, cookout, kickback, makeover, takeover, rollback "decrease," rip-off, come-on, shoo-in, fix-up, tie-in, tie-up "stoppage," stand-in. These essentially are nouned phrasal verbs; some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin (spell out, figure out, hold up, brace up, size up, rope in, back up/off/down/out, step down, miss out on, kick around, cash in, rain out, check in and check out (in all senses), fill in "inform," kick in "contribute," square off, sock in, sock away, factor in/out, come down with, give up on, lay off (from employment), run into and across "meet," stop by, pass up, put up (money), set up "frame," trade in, pick up on, pick up after, lose out. British author George Orwell (in English People, 1947, cited in OED s.v. lose) criticized an alleged "American tendency" to "burden every verb with a preposition that adds nothing to its meaning (win out, lose out, face up to, etc.)."

Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster), and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive.Trudgill, p. 69.

Some verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, itemize, editorialize, customize, notarize, weatherization, winterize, Miranda v. Arizona; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, evolute, curate, donate, emote, upholster, and enthuse).

Among syntactical constructions that arose in the U.S. are as of (with dates and times), outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, convince someone to..., not to be about to, and lack for.

Americanisms formed by alteration of existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, pry (as in "pry open," from prize), putter (verb), buddy, sundae, skeeter, sashay, and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in the U.S. are for example lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, grounded (of a child), punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "through train," or meaning "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky. American blends include motel, guesstimate, infomercial, and televangelist.

English words that survived in the United States A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that always have been in everyday use in the United States dropped out in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots. Terms such as fall ("autumn"), pavement (material) (to mean "road surface", where in Britain, as in Philadelphia, it is the equivalent of "sidewalk"), faucet, diaper, candy, skillet, eyeglasses, infant bed (for a baby), obligate, and raise a child are often regarded as Americanisms. Gotten (past participle of get) is often considered to be an Americanism, although there are some areas of Britain, such as Lancashire and Yorkshire, that still continue to use it and sometimes also use putten as the past partiple for put. Other words and meanings, to various extents, were brought back to Britain, especially in the second half of the 20th 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.

The mandative subjunctive mood (as in "the City Attorney suggested that the case not be closed") is livelier in AmE than it is in British English; it appears in some areas as a spoken usage, and is considered obligatory in more formal contexts.

The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American than British English.Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. . Retrieved March 23, 2007.

==Regional differences==

While written AmE is standardized across the country, there are several recognizable variations in the spoken language, both in pronunciation and in vernacular vocabulary. General American is the name given to any American accent that is relatively free of noticeable regional influences. It is not a standard accent in the way that Received Pronunciation is in England.

After the American Civil War, the settlement of the western territories by migrants from the Eastern U.S. led to dialect mixing and leveling, so that regional dialects are most strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard. The Connecticut River and Long Island Sound is usually regarded as the southern/western extent of New England speech, which has its roots in the speech of the Puritans from East Anglia who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Potomac River generally divides a group of Northern coastal dialects from the beginning of the Coastal Southern dialect area; in between these two rivers several local variations exist, chief among them the one that prevails in and around New York City and northern New Jersey, which developed on a Dutch substratum after the British conquered New Amsterdam. The main features of Coastal Southern speech can be traced to the speech of the English from the West Country who settled in Virginia after leaving England at the time of the English Civil War, and to the African American Vernacular English from the African Americans who were enslaved in the South.

Although no longer region-specific,Cf. Trudgill, p. 42. African American Vernacular English, which remains prevalent among African Americans, has a close relationship to Southern varieties of AmE and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans.

A distinctive speech pattern was also generated by the separation of Canada from the United States, centered on the Great Lakes region. This is the Inland Northern American English—the "standard Midwestern" speech that was the basis for General American in the mid-20th Century (although it has been recently modified by the northern cities vowel shift). Those not from this area frequently confuse it with the North Midland dialect treated below, referring to both collectively as "Midwestern."

In the interior, the situation is very different. West of the Appalachian Mountains begins the broad zone of what is generally called "Midland" speech. This is divided into two discrete subdivisions, the North Midland that begins north of the Ohio River valley area, and the South Midland speech; sometimes the former is designated simply "Midland" and the latter is reckoned as "Highland Southern." The North Midland speech continues to expand westward until it becomes the closely related Western dialect which contains Pacific Northwest English as well as the well-known California English, although in the immediate San Francisco area some older speakers do not possess the cot-caught merger and thus retain the distinction between words such as cot and caught which reflects a historical Mid-Atlantic heritage. Mormon and Mexican settlers in the West influenced the development of Utah English.

The South Midland or Highland Southern dialect follows the Ohio River in a generally southwesterly direction, moves across Arkansas and Oklahoma west of the Mississippi river, and peters out in West Texas. It is a version of the Midland speech that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms (outsiders often mistakenly believe South Midland speech and coastal South speech to be the same).

The island state of Hawaii has a distinctive Hawaiian Pidgin.

Finally, dialect development in the United States has been notably influenced by the distinctive speech of such important cultural centers as Boston, Massachusetts, Chicago, Philadelphia, Charleston, South Carolina, New Orleans, and Detroit, which imposed their marks on the surrounding areas.

See also

• Dictionary of American Regional English
• International Phonetic Alphabet for English
• IPA chart for English
• Regional accents of English speakers

Bibliography General

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• Finegan, Edward. (2004). American English and its distinctiveness. In E. Finegan & J. R. Rickford (Eds.), Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century (pp. 18-38). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Finegan, Edward; & Rickford, John R. (Eds.). (2004). Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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• Glowka, Wayne; & Lance, Donald (Eds.). (1993). Language variation in North American English. New York: Modern Language Association.
• Kenyon, John S. (1950). American pronunciation (10th ed.). Ann Arbor: George Wahr.
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• (1921 edition online: www.bartleby.com/185/).
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History of American English

• Bailey, Richard W. (1991). Images of English: A cultural history of the language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
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• Kretzschmar, William A. (2002). American English: Melting pot or mixing bowl? In K. Lenz & R. Möhlig (Eds.), Of dyuersitie and change of language: Essays presented to Manfred Görlach on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday (pp. 224-239). Heidelberg: C. Winter.
• Mathews, Mitford. (1931). The beginnings of American English. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Read, Allen Walker. (2002). Milestones in the history of English in America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Regional variation

• Allen, Harold B. (1973-6). The linguistic atlas of the Upper Midwest (3 Vols). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Atwood, E. Bagby. (1953). A survey of verb forms in the eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Carver, Craig M. (1987). American regional dialects: A word geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10076-9
• Hans Kurath, et al. (1939-43). Linguistic atlas of New England (6 Vols). Providence: Brown University for the American Council of Learned Societies.
• Kurath, Hans. (1949). A word geography of the eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Kurath, Hans; & McDavid, Raven I., Jr. (1961). The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic states. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• McDavid, Raven I., Jr. (1979). Dialects in culture. W. Kretzschmar (Ed.). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
• McDavid, Raven I., Jr. (1980). Varieties of American English. A. Dil (Ed.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Metcalf, Allan. (2000). How we talk: American regional English today Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-04362-4
• Pederson, Lee; McDaniel, Susan L.; & Adams, Carol M. (eds.). (1986-92). Linguistic atlas of the gulf states (7 Vols). Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.

Social variation African American

• Bailey, Guy; Maynor, Natalie; & Cukor-Avila (Eds.). (1991). The emergence of Black English: Text and commentary. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Green, Lisa. (2002). African American English: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Labov, William. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Lanehart, Sonja L. (Ed.). (2001). Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American English. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Mufwene, Salikoko; Rickford, John R.; Bailey, Guy; & Baugh, John (Eds.). (1998). African American Vernacular English. London: Routledge.
• Rickford, John R. (1999). African American Vernacular English: Features, evolution, and educational implications. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Wolfram, Walt. (1969). A sociolinguistic description of Detroit negro speech. Urban linguistic series (No. 5). Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
• Wolfram, Walt; & Thomas, Erik. (2002). The development of African American English: Evidence from an isolated community. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

American Indian

• Leap, William L. (1993). American Indian English. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Latino American

• Bayley, Robert; & Santa Ana, Otto. (2004). Chicano English grammar. In B. Kortmann, E. W. Schneider, K. Burridge, R. Mesthrie, & C. Upton (Eds.), A handbook of varieties of English: Morphology and syntax (Vol. 2, pp. 167-183). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Fought, Carmen. (2003). Chicano English in context. New York: Palgrave Macmil American English (AmE, AE, AmEng, USEng, en-US), also known as United States English or U.S. English, is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. It is estimated that approximately two thirds of first language of English live in the United States.
  
  The use of English in the United States was inherited from British colonization of the Americas. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America in the 17th century. During that time, there were also speakers in North America of Dutch language, French language, German language, Norwegian language, Spanish language, Swedish language, Scots language, Welsh language, Irish language, Scottish Gaelic language, Finnish language, as well as numerous Native American languages.
  
  Differences between British English and American English American English and British English (BrE) differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a lesser extent, grammar and orthography.The first large American dictionary, Webster's dictionary, 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 Britain.
  
  Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and normally do not affect mutual intelligibility; these include, but are not limited to: different use of some verbal auxiliaries; formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns; different preferences for the past forms of a few verbs (e.g. learn, burn, sneak, dive, get); different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (e.g. AmE in school, BrE at school; and whether or not a definite article is used in a few cases (AmE to the hospital, BrE to hospital). 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.Algeo, John (2006). British or American English?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-37993-8.
  
  Differences in orthography are also fairly trivial. Some of the forms that now serve to distinguish American from British spelling (color for colour, center for centre, traveler for traveller, etc.) were introduced by Noah Webster himself; others are due to spelling tendencies in Britain from the 17th century until the present day (e.g. -ise for -ize, programme for program, skilful for skillful, chequered for checkered, etc.), in some cases favored by the francophile tastes of 19th century Victorian England, which had little effect on AmE.Peters, Pam (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62181-X, pp. 34 and 511.
  
  The most noticeable differences between AmE and BrE are at the levels of pronunciation and vocabulary.
  
  Phonology In many ways, compared to English English, North American EnglishNorth American English (Trudgill, p. 2) is a collective term used for the varieties of the English language that are spoken in the United States and Canada. is conservative in its phonology. Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast of the United States (for example, in Eastern New England and New York City), partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of English English at a time when those varieties were undergoing changesTrudgill, pp. 46-47.. Also, many speech communities on the East Coast have existed in their present locations longer than others. The interior of the United States, however, was settled by people from all regions of the existing U.S. and, as such, developed a far more generic linguistic pattern.
  
  . African American Vernacular English-influenced non-rhotic pronunciations may be found among African American throughout the country.Labov, p. 48.Most North American speech is Rhotic and non-rhotic accents, as English was in most places in the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English, Scottish English, and West Country dialects English. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter r is a retroflex or Alveolar consonant approximant rather than a trill or a tap. The loss of syllable-final r in North America is confined mostly to the accents of Boston accent, New York-New Jersey English and surrounding areas, South Philadelphia, and the coastal portions of the Southern American English. Dropping of syllable-final r sometimes happens in natively rhotic dialects if r is located in unaccented syllables or words and the next syllable or word begins in a consonant. In England, the lost r was often changed into (schwa), giving rise to a new class of falling diphthongs. Furthermore, the er sound of f'ur or butt'er, is realized in AmE as a monophthongal r-colored vowel (stressed or unstressed as represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet). This does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech.
  
  Some other British English changes in which most North American dialects do not participate:
  • The shift of to (the so-called "broad A") before alone or preceded by a homorganic nasal. This is the difference between the British Received Pronunciation and American pronunciation of bath and dance. In the United States, only eastern New England speakers took up this modification, although even there it is becoming increasingly rare.
  • The realization of intervocalic as a glottal stop (as in for bottle). This change is not universal for British English and is not considered to be a feature of Received Pronunciation. This is not a property of most North American dialects. Newfoundland English is a notable exception.
  
  
  On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound changes not found in Britain, especially not in its standard varieties. Many of these are instances of phonemic differentiation and include:
  • The Phonological history of the low back vowels#Father-bother merger, making father and bother rhyme. This change is nearly universal in North American English, occurring almost everywhere except for parts of eastern New England, hence the accent.
  • The merger of and . This is the so-called Phonological history of the low back vowels#Cot-caught merger, where cot and caught are homophones. This change has occurred in eastern New England, in Pittsburgh English and surrounding areas, and from the Great Plains westward.
  • For speakers who do not merge caught and cot: The replacement of the cot vowel with the caught vowel before voiceless fricatives (as in cloth, off) (which is found in some old-fashioned varieties of RP), as well as before (as in strong, long), usually in gone, often in on, and irregularly before (log, hog, dog, fog) (which is not found in British English at all).
  • The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut vowel in most utterances of the words was, of, from, what, and in many utterances of the words everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody; the word because has either or ; want has normally , sometimes or .According to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. For speakers who merge caught and cot, is to be understood as the vowel they have in both caught and cot.
  
  
  
  • English-language vowel changes before historic r before intervocalic . Which vowels are affected varies between dialects. One such change is the laxing of , and to , and before , causing pronunciations like , and for pair, peer and pure. The resulting sound is often further reduced to , especially after palatal consonant, so that cure, pure, mature and sure rhyme with fir.
  • English consonant cluster reductions#Yod-dropping after consonants so that new, duke, Tuesday, suit, resume, lute are pronounced , , , , , .
  • Phonological history of English short A#æ-tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent; for example, for many speakers, is approximately realized as before nasal consonants. In some accents, particularly those from Philadelphia to New York City, and can even contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I 'can vs. tin 'can .
  • The flapping of intervocalic and to alveolar tap before reduced vowels. 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 ; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with and rider with . This is a form of Canadian raising but, unlike more extreme forms of that process, does not affect .
  • Both intervocalic and may be realized as or , making winter and winner homophones. This does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in entail.
  • The Phonological history of the high front vowels#Pin-pen merger, by which is raised to before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English but is now found in parts of the Midwest and West as well.
  
  
  Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include:
  • The English-language vowel changes before historic r#Horse-hoarse merger of the vowels and before 'r', making pairs like horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning etc. homophones.
  • The Phonological history of English consonants#Wine-whine merger making pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where etc. homophones, in most cases eliminating , the voiceless labiovelar fricative. Many older varieties of southern and western AmE still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading.
  
  
  Vocabulary North America has given the English lexicon many thousands of words, meanings, and phrases. Several thousand are now used in English as spoken internationally; others, however, died within a few years of their creation.
  
  Creation of an American lexicon The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as the colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the Native American languages. Examples of such names are opossum, raccoon, squash (fruit), and moose (from Algonquian). Other Native American loanwords, such as wigwam or moccasin, describe artificial objects in common use among Native Americans. The languages of the other colonizing nations also added to the American vocabulary; for instance, cookie, cruller, and pit (of a fruit) from Dutch Language; levee, portage "carrying of boats or goods," and (probably) gopher (animal) from French language; barbecue, stevedore from Spanish language.
  
  Among the earliest and most notable regular "English" additions to the American vocabulary, dating from the early days of colonization through the early 19th century, are terms describing the features of the North American landscape; for instance, run, branch, fork, snag, bluff, gulch, neck (of the woods), barrens, bottomland, notch, knob, riffle, rapids, watergap, cutoff, trail, tree line, and water divide. Already existing words such as stream, slough (wetland), sleet, and (in later use) Drainage basin, received new meanings that were unknown in England.Other noteworthy American toponyms are found among loanwords; for example, prairie, butte (French); bayou (Louisiana French); coulee (Canadian French, but used also in Louisiana with a different meaning); canyon, mesa, arroyo (creek) (Spanish); vlei, kill (body of water) (Dutch, Hudson Valley).
  
  The word corn (disambiguation), used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the plant Zea mays, the most important crop in the U.S., originally named Indian corn by the earliest settlers; wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc. came to be collectively referred to as grain (or breadstuffs). Other notable farm related vocabulary additions were the new meanings assumed by barn (not only a building for hay and grain storage, but also for housing livestock) and team (not just the horses, but also the vehicle along with them), as well as, in various periods, the terms rangeland, corn crib, truck farm, grain elevator, sharecropping, and feedlot.
  
  Ranch, later applied to a ranch house, derives from Mexican Spanish; most Spanish contributions came indeed after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West. Among these are, other than toponyms, chaps (from chaparreras), plaza, lasso, bronco, buckaroo; 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 18th 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 18th century; frame house, apartment, tenement house, shack, shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium, townhouse, split-level home, mobile home, multi-family in the 20th century), and parts thereof (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 American Civil War), repeater, lame duck (politics), and pork barrel. Some of these are internationally used (e.g. caucus, gerrymander, filibuster, exit poll).
  
  The rise of capitalism, the development of industry, and material innovations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries were the source of a massive stock of distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms. Typical examples are the vocabulary of railroading (see further at rail terminology) 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 Car 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.A few of these are now chiefly found, or have been more productive, outside of the U.S.; for example, jump "to drive past a traffic signal," block meaning "building," and center "central point in a town" or "main area for a particular activity" (cf. Oxford English Dictionary). 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, power outage, blood bank). Already existing English words—such as General store, Retailing#Shops and stores, 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, game plan (American football); in the ballpark, out of left field, off base, hit and run, and English language idioms derived from baseball from baseball; gamblers coined bluff (poker), blue chip, ante, bottom dollar, raw deal, pass the buck, ace in the hole, freeze-out, showdown; miners coined bedrock, bonanza, peter out, pan out, and the verb prospect from the noun; and railroadmen are to be credited with make the grade (slope), sidetrack, head-on, and the verb railroad. A number of Americanisms describing material innovations remained largely confined to North America: elevator, ground (electricity), 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 19th and early 20th century immigration; notably, from Yiddish language (chutzpah, schmooze, and such idioms as need something like a hole in the head) and German language—hamburger and culinary terms like frankfurter/franks, liverwurst, sauerkraut, wiener, delicatessen; scram, kindergarten, gesundheit; The Maven's Word of the Day, Random House. Retrieved February 8, 2007. 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.Peter Trudgill (2004). New-Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes.
  
  Finally, a large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from Okay and cool to nerd and 24/7), while others have not (have a nice day, sure, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Retrieved April 24, 2007.); 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, monkeywrenching, under the weather, jump bail, come clean, come again?, and will the real x please stand up?., , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
  
  Morphology AmE has always shown a marked tendency functional shift.Trudgill, p. 69. Examples of verbed nouns are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, expense, room, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, buffalo, weasel, express (mail), belly-ache, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, merchandise, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in "exit the lobby"), factor (in mathematics), gun "shoot," author (which disappeared in English around 1630 and was revived in the U.S. three centuries later) and, out of American material, proposition, graft (bribery), bad-mouth, vacation, major, backpack, backtracking, intern, ticket (traffic violations), hassle, blacktop, peer-review, dope, and Drug overdose.
  
  Compound (linguistics)s coined in the U.S. are for instance foothill, flatlands, badlands, landslide (in all senses), overview (the noun), backdrop, teenager, brainstorm, bandwagon, hitchhike, smalltime, deadbeat, frontman, lowbrow and highbrow, hell-bent, foolproof, nitpick, about-face (later verbed), upfront (in all senses), fixer-upper, no-show; many of these are phrases used as adverbs or (often) hyphenated attributive adjectives: non-profit, for-profit, free-for-all, ready-to-wear, catchall, low-down, down-and-out, down and dirty, in-your-face, nip and tuck; many compound nouns and adjectives are open: happy hour, fall guy, capital gain, road trip, wheat pit, head start, plea bargain; some of these are colorful (empty nester, loan shark, Wikt:ambulance chaser, buzz saw, ghetto blaster, dust bunny), others are euphemistic (differently abled, human resources, physically challenged, affirmative action, correctional facility). Many compound nouns have the form verb plus preposition: add-on, stopover, lineup, shakedown, tryout, spinoff, rundown "summary," shootout, holdup, hideout, comeback, cookout, kickback, makeover, takeover, rollback "decrease," rip-off, come-on, shoo-in, fix-up, tie-in, tie-up "stoppage," stand-in. These essentially are nouned phrasal verbs; some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin (spell out, figure out, hold up, brace up, size up, rope in, back up/off/down/out, step down, miss out on, kick around, cash in, rain out, check in and check out (in all senses), fill in "inform," kick in "contribute," square off, sock in, sock away, factor in/out, come down with, give up on, lay off (from employment), run into and across "meet," stop by, pass up, put up (money), set up "frame," trade in, pick up on, pick up after, lose out. British author George Orwell (in English People, 1947, cited in OED s.v. lose) criticized an alleged "American tendency" to "burden every verb with a preposition that adds nothing to its meaning (win out, lose out, face up to, etc.)."
  
  Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster), and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive.Trudgill, p. 69.
  
  Some verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, itemize, editorialize, customize, notarize, weatherization, winterize, Miranda v. Arizona; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, evolute, curate, donate, emote, upholster, and enthuse).
  
  Among syntactical constructions that arose in the U.S. are as of (with dates and times), outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, convince someone to..., not to be about to, and lack for.
  
  Americanisms formed by alteration of existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, pry (as in "pry open," from prize), putter (verb), buddy, sundae, skeeter, sashay, and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in the U.S. are for example lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, grounded (of a child), punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "through train," or meaning "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky. American blends include motel, guesstimate, infomercial, and televangelist.
  
  English words that survived in the United States A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that always have been in everyday use in the United States dropped out in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots. Terms such as fall ("autumn"), pavement (material) (to mean "road surface", where in Britain, as in Philadelphia, it is the equivalent of "sidewalk"), faucet, diaper, candy, skillet, eyeglasses, infant bed (for a baby), obligate, and raise a child are often regarded as Americanisms. Gotten (past participle of get) is often considered to be an Americanism, although there are some areas of Britain, such as Lancashire and Yorkshire, that still continue to use it and sometimes also use putten as the past partiple for put. Other words and meanings, to various extents, were brought back to Britain, especially in the second half of the 20th 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.
  
  The mandative subjunctive mood (as in "the City Attorney suggested that the case not be closed") is livelier in AmE than it is in British English; it appears in some areas as a spoken usage, and is considered obligatory in more formal contexts.
  
  The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American than British English.Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. . Retrieved March 23, 2007.
  
  ==Regional differences==
  
  While written AmE is standardized across the country, there are several recognizable variations in the spoken language, both in pronunciation and in vernacular vocabulary. General American is the name given to any American accent that is relatively free of noticeable regional influences. It is not a standard accent in the way that Received Pronunciation is in England.
  
  After the American Civil War, the settlement of the western territories by migrants from the Eastern U.S. led to dialect mixing and leveling, so that regional dialects are most strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard. The Connecticut River and Long Island Sound is usually regarded as the southern/western extent of New England speech, which has its roots in the speech of the Puritans from East Anglia who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Potomac River generally divides a group of Northern coastal dialects from the beginning of the Coastal Southern dialect area; in between these two rivers several local variations exist, chief among them the one that prevails in and around New York City and northern New Jersey, which developed on a Dutch substratum after the British conquered New Amsterdam. The main features of Coastal Southern speech can be traced to the speech of the English from the West Country who settled in Virginia after leaving England at the time of the English Civil War, and to the African American Vernacular English from the African Americans who were enslaved in the South.
  
  Although no longer region-specific,Cf. Trudgill, p. 42. African American Vernacular English, which remains prevalent among African Americans, has a close relationship to Southern varieties of AmE and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans.
  
  A distinctive speech pattern was also generated by the separation of Canada from the United States, centered on the Great Lakes region. This is the Inland Northern American English—the "standard Midwestern" speech that was the basis for General American in the mid-20th Century (although it has been recently modified by the northern cities vowel shift). Those not from this area frequently confuse it with the North Midland dialect treated below, referring to both collectively as "Midwestern."
  
  In the interior, the situation is very different. West of the Appalachian Mountains begins the broad zone of what is generally called "Midland" speech. This is divided into two discrete subdivisions, the North Midland that begins north of the Ohio River valley area, and the South Midland speech; sometimes the former is designated simply "Midland" and the latter is reckoned as "Highland Southern." The North Midland speech continues to expand westward until it becomes the closely related Western dialect which contains Pacific Northwest English as well as the well-known California English, although in the immediate San Francisco area some older speakers do not possess the cot-caught merger and thus retain the distinction between words such as cot and caught which reflects a historical Mid-Atlantic heritage. Mormon and Mexican settlers in the West influenced the development of Utah English.
  
  The South Midland or Highland Southern dialect follows the Ohio River in a generally southwesterly direction, moves across Arkansas and Oklahoma west of the Mississippi river, and peters out in West Texas. It is a version of the Midland speech that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms (outsiders often mistakenly believe South Midland speech and coastal South speech to be the same).
  
  The island state of Hawaii has a distinctive Hawaiian Pidgin.
  
  Finally, dialect development in the United States has been notably influenced by the distinctive speech of such important cultural centers as Boston, Massachusetts, Chicago, Philadelphia, Charleston, South Carolina, New Orleans, and Detroit, which imposed their marks on the surrounding areas.
  
  See also
  • Dictionary of American Regional English
  • International Phonetic Alphabet for English
  • IPA chart for English
  • Regional accents of English speakers
  
  
  Bibliography General
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  • MacNeil, Robert; & Cran, William. (2005). Do you speak American?: A companion to the PBS television series. New York: Nan A. Talese, Doubleday.
  • (1921 edition online: www.bartleby.com/185/).
  • Schneider, Edgar (Ed.). (1996). Focus on the USA. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  • Schneider, Edgar W.; Kortmann, Bernd; Burridge, Kate; Mesthrie, Rajend; & Upton, Clive (Eds.). (2004). A handbook of varieties of English: Phonology (Vol. 1). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Thomas, Erik R. (2001). An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. Publication of American Dialect Society (No. 85). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Thompson, Charles K. (1958). An introduction to the phonetics of American English (2nd ed.). New York: The Ronald Press Co.
  • Trudgill, Peter and Jean Hannah. (2002). International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English, 4th ed. London: Arnold. ISBN 0-340-80834-9.
  • Wolfram, Walt; & Schilling-Estes, Natalie. (1998). American English: Dialects and variation. Malden, MA: Basil Blackwell.
  
  
  History of American English
  • Bailey, Richard W. (1991). Images of English: A cultural history of the language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  • Bailey, Richard W. (2004). American English: Its origins and history. In E. Finegan & J. R. Rickford (Eds.), Language in the USA: Themes for the twenty-first century (pp. 3-17). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bryson, Bill. (1994). Made in America: An informal history of the English language in the United States. New York: William Morrow.
  • Finegan, Edward. (2006). English in North America. In R. Hogg & D. Denison (Eds.), A history of the English language (pp. 384-419). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kretzschmar, William A. (2002). American English: Melting pot or mixing bowl? In K. Lenz & R. Möhlig (Eds.), Of dyuersitie and change of language: Essays presented to Manfred Görlach on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday (pp. 224-239). Heidelberg: C. Winter.
  • Mathews, Mitford. (1931). The beginnings of American English. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Read, Allen Walker. (2002). Milestones in the history of English in America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  
  
  Regional variation
  • Allen, Harold B. (1973-6). The linguistic atlas of the Upper Midwest (3 Vols). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Atwood, E. Bagby. (1953). A survey of verb forms in the eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  • Carver, Craig M. (1987). American regional dialects: A word geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10076-9
  • Hans Kurath, et al. (1939-43). Linguistic atlas of New England (6 Vols). Providence: Brown University for the American Council of Learned Societies.
  • Kurath, Hans. (1949). A word geography of the eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  • Kurath, Hans; & McDavid, Raven I., Jr. (1961). The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic states. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
  • McDavid, Raven I., Jr. (1979). Dialects in culture. W. Kretzschmar (Ed.). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
  • McDavid, Raven I., Jr. (1980). Varieties of American English. A. Dil (Ed.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Metcalf, Allan. (2000). How we talk: American regional English today Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-04362-4
  • Pederson, Lee; McDaniel, Susan L.; & Adams, Carol M. (eds.). (1986-92). Linguistic atlas of the gulf states (7 Vols). Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.
  
  
  Social variation African American
  • Bailey, Guy; Maynor, Natalie; & Cukor-Avila (Eds.). (1991). The emergence of Black English: Text and commentary. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  • Green, Lisa. (2002). African American English: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Labov, William. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
  • Lanehart, Sonja L. (Ed.). (2001). Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American English. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  • Mufwene, Salikoko; Rickford, John R.; Bailey, Guy; & Baugh, John (Eds.). (1998). African American Vernacular English. London: Routledge.
  • Rickford, John R. (1999). African American Vernacular English: Features, evolution, and educational implications. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Wolfram, Walt. (1969). A sociolinguistic description of Detroit negro speech. Urban linguistic series (No. 5). Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
  • Wolfram, Walt; & Thomas, Erik. (2002). The development of African American English: Evidence from an isolated community. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
  
  
  American Indian
  • Leap, William L. (1993). American Indian English. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
  
  
  Latino American
  • Bayley, Robert; & Santa Ana, Otto. (2004). Chicano English grammar. In B. Kortmann, E. W. Schneider, K. Burridge, R. Mesthrie, & C. Upton (Eds.), A handbook of varieties of English: Morphology and syntax (Vol. 2, pp. 167-183). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Fought, Carmen. (2003). Chicano English in context. New York: Palgrave Macmil
    
    

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