American English

Welcome to our American English page.

Our American English campaign started in July 2010 and we are looking for bloggers and writers to contribute posts about the English from and in this region.

This page will contain a growing list of resources regarding American English; how American English has influenced international English and how English is spoken in the United States.

Please contact us if you would like to contribute.

Our blog posts on American English

Dudes and dudettas, it’s American-English month!
I once shared an office with two Britons and an American. We all started work at more or less the same time and were all just getting to know each other. One day my new American friend took me aside and said: ‘Do you understand what those two are saying when they speak?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘But maybe that’s because I am more used to the British accent.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘It’s not their accent it’s that they don’t seem to say what they mean.’

The trickiest word in American
If you could hear my accent, you’d spot in a jiffy that my native variety is British English. But stop, come back, because I can tell you about THE most important word to get your head around if you’re communicating with Americans. I know this because I’ve lived in the US for more than a decade now, and it’s still the word that I have to think about – every time.

Wicked! The flavors of Boston English
Boston vocabulary and idioms are equally juicy. [...] They also go up places, with the same missing prepositional to. Ask a Bostonian about his dear old ahntie Mabel, and he might tell you she’s up Mt. Auburn, under a tree, at which point you’d express your condolences, Mt. Auburn being a beautiful old Cambridge cemetery.

An official language for the United States?
Last month, the Texas Republican Party added this statement to its 2010 party platform: “We support adoption of American English as the official language of Texas and of the United States.” Many people, both inside and outside the country, may be surprised that the United States has no official language.

Border town lingo: a fusion of two neighboring cultures
This environment of linguistic pluralism in which I grew up gave me a deeper understanding of both languages and both cultures. It also demonstrated to me on a personal level that borders between countries are merely imposed political and physical structures. Borders cannot stop the rejoicing of two languages made one.

Collecting our nouns
A collective noun is a singular noun that refers to a group of individuals, animals, or objects, such as faculty, team, colony, staff, herd, and group. This is one of those points on which British and American English do not agree.

Are you a maven of the blogosphere?
Most online linguistic innovation originates in the USA – for obvious reasons. The USA is the epicentre of the web – by far the biggest and most influential producer and consumers of web content. As a result new words and phrases tend to draw on American cultural references.

Mavens and memes – the answers
Maven comes from the Yiddish word meaning ‘expert’ or ’someone knowledgeable in a particular subject’. The word has been popularised by Malcolm Gladwell to describe individuals who influence large numbers of people. A good example is Gladwell himself though he unconvincingly denies this.

A Brit’s take on American English
The US is a hazardous place for Brits. Since moving to Philadelphia, I’ve inadvertently commented on my hostess’s homely (=ugly) home; I’ve offended my gay neighbours by mentioning their fairy (=holiday) lights and I’ve even described the deceased at a funeral as having a wicked (=nasty – but not in Boston, where I might have been understood) sense of humour.

“D’oh!” and more: The Simpsons and its effects on American English
On the eve of its twenty-second season, The Simpsons deserves praise, not just for what it has done for television (you’re welcome, South Park and Family Guy fans), but it has also had an enormous effect on American popular culture and the English spoken in the United States.

You say ’soda’, I say ‘pop’: a Midwestern observation of language
As a child growing up in Minnesota, I often said yah, you betcha and uff da. I drank pop and ate hot dishes. When I moved to Florida, I quickly learned that what I called a shopping cart was a buggy and that some people referred to all carbonated beverages as Coke*. I also learned that most Americans refer to a hot dish as a casserole.