Conclusion.

In one of his stories Oscar Wilde said that the English "have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."

Bernard Shaw, on the contrary, seemed to hold a different opinion on the point, but he expressed it in such an ambiguous way that, if one gives it some thought, the idea is rather the same as that of Wilde. Shaw said that America and England are two great nations separated by the same language.

Of course, both these statements were meant as jokes, but the insistence on a certain difference of the language used in the United States of America to the language spoken in. England is emphasized quite seriously.

Viewed linguistically, the problem may be put in this way: do the English and the Americans speak the same language or two different languages? Do the United States of America possess their own language?

The hypothesis of the so-called "American language" has had several champions and supporters, especially in the United States (H. L. Mencken. The American Language. N.-Y., 1957).

Yet, there are also other points of view. There are scholars who regard American English as one of the dialects of the English language. This theory can hardly be accepted because a dialect is usually opposed to the literary variety of the language whereas American English possesses a literary variety of its own. Other scholars label American English "a regional variety" of the English language.

Before accepting this point of view, though, it is necessary to find out whether or not American English, in its modern stage of development, possesses those characteristics which would support its status as an independent language.

A language is supposed to possess a vocabulary and a grammar system of its own. Let us try and see if American English can boast such. 

It is quite true that the vocabulary used by American speakers, has distinctive features of its own. More than that: there are whole groups of words which belong to American vocabulary exclusively and constitute its specific feature. These words are called Americanisms.

American English is marked by certain phonetic peculiarities. Yet, these consist in the way some words are pronounced and in the intonation patterns. The system of phonemes is the same as in British English, with the exception of the American retroflexive [r]-sound, and the labialized [h] in such words as what, why, white, wheel, etc.

All this brings us to the inevitable conclusion that the language spoken in the United States of America is, in all essential features, identical with that spoken in Great Britain. The grammar systems are fully identical. The American vocabulary is marked by certain peculiarities which are not sufficiently numerous or pronounced to justify the claims that there exists an independent American language. The language spoken in the United States can be regarded as a regional variety of English.

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1 Slashes (//) represent American English phonemes in broad transcription, brackets ([ ]) represent realization, and parentheses represent variables, or more abstract notions of a sound.

2 It is actually more complicated.

3 After the following section, this is referred to as (ay).

4 A push chain shift occurs when a phoneme encroaches on the vowel space of another and the latter moves to create/preserve a distinction, creating “a kind of domino effect” (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 2006).

5 It is “approximate” because the tense vowels of each pair lowers further than the original position of their lax counterparts.

6 www.youtube.com

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