Find old American English articles here. We have great newspaper articles about the differences between British English and American English check them out today!
Vanity Fair correspondent L.L. Jones cracked open a copy of The American Language by H.L. Mencken:
At last a man has arrived who knows something about English prose style under American conditions…
The rest of his thoughts can be read in the attached review.
‘The Hope of American English” Read More »
E.B. Osborn of the London Morning Post reviewed H.L. Mencken’s book, The American Language
…Americans show superior imaginativeness and resourcefulness; for example, movie is better than cinema…The American language offers a far greater variety of synonyms than ours; transatlantic equivalents for drunk are Piffled, spifflicated, awry-eyed, tanked, snooted, stewed, ossified, slopped, fiddled, edged, loaded, het-up, frazzled, jugged and burned.
Read about the Canadian Preferences in English…
– from Amazon: A Decade-by-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century
American English is Better Than U.K. English… (Literary Digest, 1922) Read More »
Attached is small Yank Magazine article pertaining to a booklet titled, When You Meet an American that was distributed to assorted British girls by their government during the Second World War:
Try not to appear shocked at some of their expressions…if a lad from back home asks for a hot dog he actually means, ‘fried sausage in split rolls’…’Hi’ya baby!’ is legitimate.
British Attempts to Comprehend the American Lingo (Yank Magazine, 1943) Read More »
Heaven knows that the average American had it tough during 1931. The Great Depression was coming down hard on them – but the harshest blow came from our neighbor to the North who rejected our manner of spelling!
American Spelling Rejected by Canadians (Pathfinder Magazine, 1931) Read More »
When it came to the issue of assimilating immigrants on American shores and deporting Alien Slackers, few groups yelled louder than the editors at The American Legion Weekly. In this anonymous editorial the author gently advocates for the recognition of American English in all schools with heavy immigrant numbers.
Why not inform these aliens they are about to be taught the American language… [and] announce to the world that there is a new language? Why, even in Mexico they do not stand for calling their language the Spanish language. They insist it is the Mexican language… why not quit press-agenting John Bull and have our own language – the American language.
– from Amazon: A Decade-by-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century
American English and American Identity (American Legion Weekly, 1920) Read More »
Culture critic H.L. Mencken (1880 – 1956; author of The American Language reviewed American English
The fact is, of course, that American English is noticeably superior to British English in several important respects, and that not the least of these superiorities lies in the learned department of spelling. Here even the more intelligent Englishmen are against their own rules, and in favor of the American rules, and every year one notices a greater tendency among them to spell wagon with one g instead of two…The English -our ending, the main hallmark of English spelling, dies harder.
H.L. Mencken on American English (The Smart Set, 1921) Read More »
Having made a twenty year study of the English spoken in both Britain and the United States, Alois Brandl (1855 – 1940), chief Professor of English literature at the University of Berlin, found himself in an advantageous position that would allow him to make definitive conclusions about the evolution of the English language on American shores:
Mr. Brandl has been comparing English as it is spoken by Englishmen and English as it is spoken by Americans, and has come to the conclusion that the former is not a whit purer than the latter… the English of Americans was not only improving, but was already as good as that of our English cousins… He is very severe on the Cockney accent, and declares that the English of the ordinary educated American is quite on an equality with that of the ordinary educated Englishman…
Professor W.W. Skeat (1835 – 1912), chair of Anglo-Saxon Studies at Cambridge University, entirely agreed with the German savant and went on in greater detail along similar lines.
No mention was made as to what unit of measure was applied to reach their deductions.
A German Champion of American English (Literary Digest, 1908) Read More »
