By Sebastian Ramirez Maya

And Radharani Torres V.

America is ruining the English language

What do you think?

Francis Moore: In 1735 Description of the town of Savannah “It is about a mile and a quarter in circumference; it stands upon the flat of a hill, the bank of the river (which they in barbarous English call Bluff) is steep.” Earlier English had no name for this sort of river bank because they hardly existed in England.

Some opinions in favor

Prince of Wales: In 1995 the Prince was reported by The Times as complaining to the British Council audience that American English is “very corrupting“ “people tend to invent all sorts of nouns and verbs and make words that shouldn’t be” (Bluff)

Edwin Neman: In 1974 Linguist prophet who sees the language style for his fellow Americans as deadly. He vaticinated in a book called Strictly speaking, which was subtitled Will America be the Death of English? In it too he objected to the invention of all sorts of nouns and verbs and words that shouldn’t be.

•One way that Americans are ruining English is by changing it. Many of us, like Francis Moore and Prince Charles, regard what is foreign to us as

barbarous and corrupt. The assumption is that anything new is American and thus objectionable on

double grounds.

Change in language is, However, inevitable, just as it is in all other aspects of reality.

But a language or anything else that does not change is dead.

The idea of thinking that a language wouldn’t change is a chimera (an illusion)

Judgments of what is beautiful or ugly, valuable or useless, barbarous or elegant, corrupting or improving are highly personal and idiosyncratic ones.

Particular changes will be, in the eyes of the observer or another, improvements or degenerations.

There are no objective criteria for judging worth in language, no linguistic Tables of the Law.

No one is required to like all

or any particular changes.Both British English and

American English have changed and go on changing today.

So many languages influenced in the evolution of the English language, from Anglo-Frisian, Germanic, Indo-European and maybe Nostratic or Proto-World.

History of the English Language

The language changed or evolved from:

1. old English (450-1100 A.D.) 2. Middle English (1100- 1500

A.D.) 3. Early Modern English. (1500-

1800 A.D.)4. Late Modern English (1800-

Today) From the evolution of English

its self we can see that no language is “pure”, all language has had it’s influence by other languages creating changes in it.

British and American English started to become different when English speakers first set foot on American soil because the colonists found new things to talk about and also because they ceased to talk regularly with the people back home.

American and British evolved in different ways from a common sixteenth- century ancestral standard.

Why or how did British and American English get to be so different?

American Retain the rhotic

sound. Retain the “flat –a”

(cat)Retain the old use of

the verb “guess” to mean think, or suppose.

Lost the rhotic soundReplaced it with the

“broad a” (father)Retain the old use of

reckon.Distinguish

difference between a ‘t- sound’ and a ‘d-sound’ (atom-adam)

American Vs. British conservatism

British

British speakers have also been extraordinarily fertile in expanding the range of use for tag questions:

1. informational: ‘you don’t wear glasses do you?’

2. Inclusive: ‘is a nice day isn’t it?’3. Emphasizing: ‘I made a bad mistake didn’t

I?’4. Peremptory: ‘is the tea ready?’ ‘ the water

has to boil doesn’t it?’5. Antagonistic: ‘ I telephoned you this

morning but you didn’t answer’ ‘I was in the bath wasn’t I?’

British people, however, tend to be more aware of American innovations than American are Of British ones. This is probably because of the linguistic sensitivity on the part of the British, or a more insular anxiety and hence irritation about influences from abroad.

Here we can see what we call language loyalty in how the British don’t want influences from other languages.

Perhaps American do innovate more; after all there are 4 to 5 times as many English speakers in the United States as in the United Kingdom.

Not to mention the 38 million (2007) of people that immigrate to the U.S. in comparison with the 4.9 million people that immigrate to the U.K.

Therefore making the influence of other

languages greater, persuading the evolution of the language.

English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age. The reason of this is obvious, because the increasing population in America, and their Universal Connection and correspondence with all nations will, aided by the influence of England in the world, whether great or small, force their language into general use.

The state of affairs were foreseen by John Adams who in1780 wrote:

So is America ruining the English language? Certainly, if you believe that extending the language to new uses and new speakers ruins it. Certainly if you believe that change is ruin. Certainly, if what John Adams foresaw was ruination.

In contrast, we came up with the conclusion that it is important to allow the language to evolve, but we should also have some boundaries. If the English language allows so many code switching that later on will become into borrowing, and after that a Pidgin even to the point of it becoming a Creole, the language would loose it’s essence, its identity. Yet again isn’t every language a creolization?

Conclusions

Thank you for your attention