American English

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Duisburg-Essen (Englische Sprachwissenschaft), course: Hauptseminar: Language, Meaning and Use, language: English, abstract: The USA is one of the largest western countries. Its population amount to approximately 250 million people. Thus, American English is spoken by an immense number of people in the world. It is estimated that nearly 2/3 of all native English speakers use any dialect of American English. American English, as an independent variety, differs from British English and even weakens its hegemony. More and more, American language, culture, and business become an integral part of European society. Therefore, it is very interesting to investigate the significant characteristics of this language. To give the reader some background information there is a brief overview of the history of the English language in the USA at the beginning of the study. After that the term American English is explained and analyzed. Further, different linguistic features, among them pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary, are described and compared to British English. In addition, sociolinguistic characteristics, such as regional and social dialects, are illustrated. As a result a conclusion follows.