Speaking American: A History Of English In The United States, by Richard W. Bailey

It has often been considered a disadvantage that the United States has had no unified language institute in the manner of many European languages to seek to police the language and enforce a particular sort of received dialect upon its speakers in the manner of many European nations. Yet the author of this book seems to present a view of a decentralized United States that, for a wide variety of reasons, tends to switch where its most dominant dialects are during the course of social change as being a good thing, as allowing American English to be responsible to the growth of the language and the assimilation of new peoples who bring their own flavors to the goulash that is American English. This book is a brief regional study of American English, but it studies regions in two ways, looking at specific loci of American English as well as during specific time periods when those areas where important in adding to the blend of vocabulary and roots of American English, contributing to the whole that is the way that Americans speak the language.

This book is less than 200 pages and is divided into ten chapters, the first being an introduction to the subject and the second being an epilogue that promises more unpredictable change in the future. In between are eight chapters that look at different places and times that were immensely influential in shaping American English. The author begins in the Chesapeake Bay area before 1650, looking at the complexities of figuring out what dialect of English influenced the early settlers there the most in the face of the horrific deaths, while also looking at words taken from the natives around them (2). This is followed by a discussion of the early colonial Boston dialect and its changes through time (3), focused mainly on the period between 1650 and 1700. After that the author shifts attention to Charleston (4) and the influence of the transatlantic slave trade on American English, which includes words like okra and goober (peanut). The author then shifts to Philadelphia, whose influence came largely from Germans (5), but which ended when Philadelphia suffered a terrible epidemic and lost its capital status to Washington DC (not discussed as a major source of American language here). The author’s discussion of the complexities of French and Creole grammar in New Orleans from 1800 to 1850 is similarly marked by the author’s sadness at the area’s decline in importance after the Civil War (6). This is followed by discussions of New York (7) and Chicago (8) that focus on the importance of trade, immigration, and criminal speech, which also proves to be an important part of Los Angeles’ own linguistic influence (9) in the period from 1950 to 2000 (along with valley girl talk, surfing, and the aerospace industry). 

Although there are clearly a lot of regional differences with regards to the sources of words and expressions in English, it is fascinating to note the patterns that the author finds within the course of American English as well. For one, the author notes the enduring popularity of crime argot in the vocabulary of American English, in that succeeding generations of criminals of one kind or another in places as diverse as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles of various ethnic origins have contributed to various gangster language. Similarly, the author notes that technology has been an enduring source of specifically American words over time. It is also intriguing to note that a great many words have very humble origins, and that some words appear to have indigenous sources that are hard to untangle because those languages did not survive well in the face of post-contact experience, leaving the Delaware and Mobilian (and Chinook) pidgin languages to be a neglected source of a rich American vocabulary. Though the book could easily have been longer and neglects some important aspects of American speech (like the Great Vowel Shift that is taking place in Midwestern American English), there is a lot to enjoy here, with the book’s chapters being like impressionistic sketches of a diverse scene.