1066 - The Story of American English

The Story of American English

“Colonial Lag” Theory

This theory assumes that colony is somehow inherently more linguistically conservative than its mother country

According to this theory, some isolated American rural dialects, especially in Appalachian “hillbilly” territory, had actually managed to preserve Elizabethan English

They allegedly show closeness to the language of Shakespeare, Chaucer, and their contemporaries which British English had lost

They had preserved usages that were either provincial or obsolete in Britain, for example:

gotten

I guess “suppose”

flapjack

beef (for the animal)

loan “lend”

mad “angry”

homely “plain-featured”

fall “autumn”

the use of an a- prefix (as in a-running)

The view about “colonial lag” is a considerable oversimplification and a popular myth

It is true that people who have arrived in a new territory remember their roots, and often incorporate a dialectal dimension into what they write

At the same time, they are looking towards a new future for themselves, and their language begins to be shaped by fresh forces and circumstances

On the one hand, there was a huge amount of continuity and the common core of the language was still there

American and British had been diverging from the moment the first English-speaking settlers arrived in North America

By the time of American independence, all American dialects had changed significantly over the two centuries of settlement

There were variations in American English which were unknown in Britain, and variations in British English which were unknown in America

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