English Sources of Some American Regional Words and Verb Forms

N THE THREE CENTURIES since the founding of the American colonies many changes have taken place in the regional and the social dissemination of words, both in England and on this side of the Atlantic. This is true even of expressions with a strong tradition within the family and the neighborhood. Nevertheless, things and activities in the home and on the farm are apt to keep their local names in rural communities, even when usage has been standardized in the written language and the national terms are learned by schooling and reading. Urbanization and the pendular movements of the population between the cities and the hinterland from the nineteenth century onward have greatly reduced the currency of regional expressions. In England this is true especially of the London area and of the industrial centers of the Midlands. In America

Linguistics · Verb · Lexicography and Language Studies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · History · Philosophy

• Good English without Idiom or Tone

  Paul K Longmore•The Journal of Interdisciplinary…•2007

  Add to list