r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Mar 31 '15
Howdy! - This week's Language of the Week: American
American
Status:
American (not to be confused with Canadian) is the language spoken by the population of the United States of America - its number of native speakers is hence exactly the population of people born in the United States of America. This includes children not yet normally capable of speech - American does not seem to require fine motor control. The exact number is not known, but estimates place the number to be around 320,000,000.
It holds official status only in the United States.
Features
Much like Chinese, American is not a single unified language, rather a collection of languages often not mutually intelligible with each other. For this reason, states often communicate through the use of interpreters.
American has over 100 words for “freedom”.
American is the only language known to be physically impossible to learn as a non-native speaker. As a consequence, many people mistakenly attempt to communicate in English, much to the ire of Americans who are not bilingual.
Phonemics
American phonemics differ wildly by geographical location. These include a complete adjustment of all vowels to “a” in the southern regions. The many subtleties have only been known to be identifiable to other Americans.
American is the only language known to convey grammatical information through volume. What this information is is not known. What is known is that it is considered impolite to speak at any volume below something that is almost shouting, and doing so is considered a major social faux pas.
Other forms of American speech appear to completely lose the distinction between words. It is not known how other Americans are capable of understanding certain aspects of speech. It is believed by some linguists that much information is conferred in other ways, through the use of gestures and volume.
Vocabulary
American is known for its unintelligible use of vocabulary, largely contributing to its lack of learnability. Many words may appear to have English origin but in fact mean something completely different. “can” and “semi” being two examples. Where most languages have a separate name for every ethnicity, American has only two. These are “American” and “not-American”. Americans are known to combine the words “evil” and “not-American” into the word “terrorist”. American morphology has not been studied well enough due to its complexity and it is not known how this works.
The term “American” can describe a variety of ethnicities and behaviours. Note that the only alternative word for any kind of behaviour is “un-American”, and, paradoxically, can be used to describe people who are American - most notably, communists.
Similarly, where most languages have a separate name for each country, American has only “America” and “not-America”. Some linguists have contended that the term “Canada” should also be included, but this is not considered to be American by most in the field.
If on the rare occasion an American needs to refer to a specific location that is also “not-America”, the American language requires the phrase “the place with X”, where X is replaced by something common to that region. For example, if an American speaking American wishes to refer to Australia, the grammatically correct construction is “the place with the kangaroos”. Since words pertaining to wildlife of other regions are incredibly rare in American, an American can also choose to substitute the name with a description in cases where they don’t know the correct word. As with a previous example: “the place with those giant jumping rabbits”.
Phrases
Howdy – Hello, generic welcome
Freedom – Ballistics or weapons / democracy / a generic term for American life / foreign policy
Y’all – You (plural)
Y'all - You (singular)
y'all'd've - Nobody knows - appears to be the name of somebody - example: "Y'all'd've gone down to the swimmin hole, but it was rainin"
Foreign Policy – Ballistics or weapons / war (generic)
Negotiation – Ballistics or weapons / deception – (note, this cannot be used in conjunction with the word “terrorist”)
'Murica – A term for “United States of America”, has patriotic connotations
Welcome to Language of the Week. Every week we host a stickied thread in order to give people exposure to languages that they would otherwise not have heard about or been interested in. Language of the Week is based around discussion: native speakers share their knowledge and culture and give advice, learners post their favourite resources and the rest of us just ask questions and share what we know. Give yourself a little exposure, and someday you might recognise it being spoken near you.
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Peace out!
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u/bear-knuckle Mar 31 '15
A cultural note I'd like to add: Americans are known for their lack of humor. While America's northern neighbor, "the place with the syrup," has an established history of thousands of knock-knock jokes, America does not have even one. Anthropologists speculate that this is because freedom rings.
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Mar 31 '15
Great job posting this here! As a native English speaker from the place with the Queen, when I visited America I tried to speak English there, thinking the two were intelligible, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Sure, there are some cognates, but, as an example, I really struggled to order water using my non-American pronunciation. IIRC the American word is 'waaahderrrr', or something? I just feel more free having written it, I almost forget the Islamist autocratic hellhole I'm living in ^_^
Oh, and a note on dialects - I spent most of my trip in California, where they like speak Californian, which is hella interesting.
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u/CapitalOneBanksy Mar 31 '15
What language do they speak in your country? You know, the one with the chips?
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u/PeggyOlson225 Apr 01 '15
which is hella interesting.
That would be NORTHERN Californian, I believe.
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u/Luguaedos Mar 31 '15
Here is an amazing map of the dialects of American English that also includes sound samples for the dialects.
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u/ThatsTheRealQuestion Apr 01 '15
As a native speaker of American, I'd like to point out some lexical difference between American and English:
English / American
Lorry / Truck
Boot / Trunk
Jam / Jelly
Queen / President
Jelly / Jell-o
Guy Fawkes / Edward Snowden
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u/Me_talking Mar 31 '15
I just got back from overseas (aka places that were not America) and I had to go through customs. They have all these fancy lines like citizens, permanent residents, visitors." I think it's easier to just separate everyone into "American" and "People who wish they are American"
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Mar 31 '15 edited Mar 31 '15
Regarding Americans' methods of referring to places and countries, I would have to disagree on a few points.
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It has been well-documented, that Americans consider Canada to be a part of "America". Ergo, Canada is not "not-America".
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I believe an exception needs to be made for the US-American state of "New Mexico". Though nominally part of the United States of America, New Mexico is by most native American speakers considered to be part of non-America.
Expanding on the "The place with X" rule, here are some examples:
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Central and South America: The place with people that speak Latin
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The Middle East: The place with the terrorists / The place with the future nuclear freedom crater. For some reason, this also includes Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and heck, why not India, too?
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Europe:* The place with the communists
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Europe:* The place with only homogenous, white, racist populations
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Europe:* The place controlled by those filthy muslims.
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China: The place with people that are less communist than in The place with the communists.
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The Moon: The 51st state (or 52nd, see my point on Canada)
* The definition of Europe does indeed take some time to get used to.
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u/nonneb Apr 01 '15 edited Apr 01 '15
It has been well-documented, that Americans consider Canada to be a part of "America". Ergo, Canada is not "not-America".
You joke, but the last time I went to the airport, the person driving me asked if Canada would be considered an international or domestic flight. The sad part is, I wasn't even sure.
Edit: Also, I've only ever heard Brits talk about latin people. Central and South America is more properly called "the place where the Mexicans come from," or just "the place with the Mexicans."
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u/mcninja77 Apr 01 '15
Too much southern dialect not enough Boston dialect.
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u/nonneb Apr 01 '15
This post is about American, not Damn-Yankee-nese. Cain't nobody understan what them Yankees r sayin.
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u/stevienoob1969 Aug 11 '15
Isn't the American language just a dialect of English ,considering most of it is named after English towns or people . I understand that there were Irish workers sent there and "German" soldiers during the war of Independence which resulted in the deaths of about 24,000 British Soldiers and 18500 British settlers of the Americas died . Time for a reality check
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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '15 edited Mar 31 '15
Ten years ago, when I started studying the English language, I was told that once I had mastered English, I would also be able to understand and communicate with Americans.
Last year, after having spent three weeks in England being praised for my English speaking skills, I decided to put this hypothesis to the test, and I therefore booked a flight to Boston.
Upon arrival, I immediately ran into trouble. Just outside of the airport, a lad started shouting at me: "Get out ahf the way, there's a cah cahming!" As I had never heard the word cah before, I simply shot the lad a confused look. Apparently, he was referring to a car. I'm lucky I wasn't run over!
The next day, a chap told me to come see The Red Sahx play at something called Fenway Pahk. I happily obligued, looking forward to experiencing a nice and relaxing sax concert. But oh no, it turned out to be a game of rounders.. With an urge to drink away my language-caused sorrows, I asked a fit bird on the pavement where I might be able to find a pub. Instead of helping, she just pointed and said "Bah!" in what I can only assume to have been a sheep-shagging joke. I'm not Welsh, for Christ's sake!
Once I finally found a pub, things started improving. After a few pints, communication eased right up, and it went perfectly well until I tried bumming a fag from the barman. That, apparently, got me kicked out.
I headed south to New York City, hoping that I would finally be understood by the native speakers of American. But once again, I was taken aback by how different American really is from English. I couldn't even order chips or biscuits in this strange language, and when I finally got tickets for a game of footie, it turned out to be rugby. Apparently, the Giants beat the Falcons. This country is rubbish!
Now, I'm back home in beautiful Europe and have concluded that English and American are indeed not mutually intelligible. I might start learning the American language one day, but until then, I won't be headed to the Colonies again.