Speech Memorabilia

America is undoubtedly a melting pot, but for melting doesn't mean homogenization. Episode four of The Story of English explained the origins of Black English, while episode five showed how "American English" came to be. The former says that Africans contributed to English, while the latter states that the immigration of Germans, Italians and Jews, among others, "enriched American speech" (part VII, 1:18). This British production, which has identified all types of British speech as equally significant, oversimplifies dialects in America and refers to a specific American tongue. There is certainly an Italian way of speaking that is very different to that of African Americans, but neither can be referred to as the country's language. American speech has infinite versions and accents that may vary in frequency, but never can they be more correct. Languages grow to adapt to new situations in life and as the US is one of the most populated countries, it has had a lot of scenarios in which more ways of expressing oneself is needed. English has grown as it accommodates immigrants and people adapt to new technology and lifestyles.

As I watched the shows, I could see that a lot of the things that influenced what episode six defines as "American language" are still going on in different ways. The show mentioned that forty-niners (who were called like that even though the gold rush began in 1848) brought in new phrases to English, like referring to a good business as a gold mine, because new situations brought in new words into people's everyday lives (part III, 3:00).  Nowadays language is adopting new words that the technology rush is creating. In this moment I'm blogging, making me a blogger, different from tweeters who prefer microblogging. Bloggers write about all types of subjects; there are eco-bloggers, mummy bloggers and blogonistas. Everything is bloggable in the blogosphere. As people's lives change, language must progress for people to be able to express their ideas and communicate. In the present, if English didn't accommodate technology, it would die because people wouldn't be able to communicate what influences most of everyday life.

A dynamic language is also necessary for supporting people's identity's. Cowboys (or cowmans or cowhands) aspire to be called "hands" (part IV, 3:00), showing how new lifestyles expand language as new identities are formed. The hacker community has created new words that describe the types of technology people there are. 4chan refers to people as "newfags," "oldfags," "Amerifags," "moralfags," all terms that refer to different types of users. It might have started as offensive but as people discovered a necessity to use those words they just became normal 4chan slang.
As for cultural identity, episode six shows the life around Little Italy and how Italian filtrated into English in that environment. The American melting pot isn't only made up of white Europeans--immigrants from all ethnicities, cultures and regions of the world arrive to the US and contribute to its society. Italians aren't massively arriving to the US, but Persians (or Iranians), among many others, do continue to migrate. People are starting to recognize formally the persian neighborhood of Los Angeles as Tehrangeles, showing how America continues to accommodate new cultures and languages. "American English" has a lot of words from Persian, like "assassin," "alfalfa," or "bronze." English probably adopted these words from a long time ago, but it shows that all types of immigration have affected the language.


As the evolution of English in the US shows, language changes as people's lives change. When new cultural aspects begin to influence, language must change to allow its speakers to progress. If a language didn't progress and stayed in the way people communicated in the past, people wouldn't be able to engage in modern life and either they would use another language and have a static culture. By listening to American English you can see that it has taken in words from many cultures and historical situations.