American English

American English

CONTENTS

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………3

Chapter I. Historical background of American English…………………………………..6
Chapter II. Characteristic features of American English………………………………...12
2.1 . Phonology…………………………………………………………………………13
2.2 . Vocabulary…………………………………………………………………………17
2.3 . Grammar…………………………………………………………………………...23

Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………..27
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………30
Appendix 1
Appendix 2

Introduction
Every language allows different kinds of variations: geographical or territorial, perhaps the most obvious, stylistic, the difference between the written and the spoken form of the standard national language and others. It is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and some provinces of Canada. It is the official language of Wales, Scotland, in Gibraltar and on the island of Malta. Modern linguistics distinguishes territorial variants of a national language and local dialects. Variants of a language are regional varieties of a standard literary language characterized by some minor peculiarities in the sound system, vocabulary and grammar and by their own literary norms.
The variety of English spoken in the USA has received the name of
American English. The term variant or variety appears most appropriate for several reasons. American English cannot be called a dialect although it is a regional variety, because it has a literary normalized form called Standard American, whereas by definition given above a dialect has no literary form. Neither is it a separate language, as some American authors claimed, because it has neither grammar nor vocabulary of its own. From the lexical point of view one shall have to deal only with a heterogeneous set of Americanisms.
There are thousands of differences in detail between British and American English, and occasionally they crowd together enough to make some difficulty. If you read that “a

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