Spread of English Beyond The British Isles

Spread of English beyond the
British Isles
English in North America
• 1584 – First English attempt at settlement
• 1607 – 2nd Expedition – established the colony of Jamestown in
Virginia.
• 1620 – ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ – group aboard the Mayflower – settled in
Plymouth, Massachusetts. The most successful colony in attracting
settlers – 25,000 Europeans in 20 years.
Colonization of the Southern areas
• Differed slightly from the North. In contrast to the northern
smallholdings, huge plantations and estates developed in the South.
• The South was settled by a high proportion of people from the South
and West England.
• Labor for the plantations were transported from Africa.
Explanation for the difference of British
English and American English
• Colonial Lag
• Dialect Variation
• Dialect Levelling
• Internal Differentiation
Colonial Lag
• The language of the colonial settlers is more conservative than that of
the country they left.
• Problem with the explanation is that there are some areas that
managed to have close cultural ties with England.
Dialect Variation
• Arose from contact with different indigenous languages.
• The language of precolonial languages on American English has been
surprisingly light because:
The language of a conquered people has little effect on that of the conquerors.
Dialect Levelling
• Occurs whenever a new community is formed, containing speakers of
many closely related language varieties.
• British English affected American speech because of its continued use
in America. That is why American speech tended to level out in the
direction of the educated usage of London and Southeast England,
even though the speech of the early settlers were nonstandard.
Internal Differentiation
• The different economy of the southern area, pulled its culture and
speech habits in a different direction from the north.
I seed – commonly used in the South
I seen – used in the North
As the local economies developed, and conflicts of economic interest
with England grew, the colonists became increasingly aware of the
linguistic difference.
Noah Webster
• In 1782, the colonies became independent of England.
• For Noah Webster, America in 1783 was no longer a colony, but it was
not yet a nation.
• National unity had to be worked for, and language was crucial to this.
• Webster argued that the golden age of language in England was past;
America’s was in the future.
• For him, American English would be based on the more ‘Saxon’
elements of the language, and spelling would reflect the
pronunciation of words more clearly.
Dr. Johnson
• Had a class-bound perspective of the American English.
• Had a fondness of showing in his dictionary, spellings that revealed a
word’s origins in Latin, Greek or French.
Webster saw the dialects of England as a legacy of its class system.

America, by contrast, would be classless and would create its own
language based on the usage of its independent ‘yeomen’.
The nationalist ideal of linguistic uniformity in American English was
not yet achieved. And internal differentiation have not diminished.
1860- American Civil War
Confrontation between forces of political centralization(North)
and those of regional autonomy(South) which ended in the victory of
the North.
Ever since, the South has been represented as a bastion of older,
agricultural and hierarchal values outside of mainstream America. Its
dialect has also been vigorously defended.
According to Cleanth Brooks, one of the most influential 20th Century
Literary Critic, asks whether the language of the South had any future:
Its most dangerous enemy is not education properly understood
but miseducation: foolishly incorrect theories of what constitutes good
English, insistence on spelling pronunciations, and the propagation of
bureaucratese, sociologese, and psychologese, which American
business, politics, and academies seem to exudeas a matter of course
(Brooks, 1985)
Another source of internal differentiation
• The sheer diversity of the American population since the late 18th
century.
• By the mid-19th century, settlers advanced as far west s Mississippi,
their numbers swelled by thousands of land-hungry Scot-Irish from
Ulster.
• Late 19th century, the west had been partly filled with millions of
immigrants from various parts of Europe.
• A levelled form of pronunciation is formed in these states, called
‘General American’.
• Newcomers became a melting pot of American Society.
By the 20th century…
• Observers saw this diversity as a threat to the nation.
• Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico reminded the states of
Texas and California, that the USA has no official ‘national’ language in
the legal sense.
• And despite civil rights legislation, the descendants of the slaves, still
feel less than full American citizens.
• Black English shares many features with the American English, but also with
many creoles.
• They stressed these reasons to claim a separate ‘African” identity though
language.
English in Australia
• The English Settlement in Australia started nearly two centuries later
than America.
• Penal colonies on the south-east coast of Australia were founded in
1788. many of the convicts, once freed, became smallholders.
• They gradually coined a vocabulary to name new colonial identities
and distinguish themselves from the precolonial Aboriginal
population:
• Currency – non- Aboriginal born in Australia
• Native – white Australian born in the country
• Sterling – British non-convict
• The convict population came mainly from London and the south-east
of England.
• Australian pronunciation is very close to Cockney. Except the initial
/h/ is sounded.
• It was not originally the case, but the /h/ was introduced as a result of
substantial settlement from Ireland.
English in West Africa
• Second type of colony, sparser colonial settlements maintained the
precolonial population in subjection.
• At the same time the penal colonies of Australia were established,
different kinds of settlement were set up in West Africa.
• Sierra Leone, where the first European slaving expedition occurred in
the 16th century, was settled by escaped and (after 1807) freed slaves.
• A little later, Liberia was established by USA for ex-slaves.
• The eventual outcome of this development was the common cause
between the black people from America and Africa.
• This commonality was aided by a shared language in the British
colonies: English.
Between 1880 and 1900…
• The entire continent of Africa was seized and shared among European
powers.
• However, in West Africa, there was no substantial settlement from
the British Isles.
• A small number received education in English from missionaries, and a larger
number using English-based pidgins, in addition to the languages they already
spoke.
During the 19th century…
• Colonies, such as Africa, wee given the role of producing raw
materials by the British.
• While the British was still the source of manufacturing.
• The precolonial population were not given any rights, despite the fact
that it had been granted to the working class.
• Justified by the contemporary theories of race.
• Colonial service was seen as a way of demonstrating ‘manliness’, a key
aspect of 19th century Englishness.
Ali Mazrui
• It was in the British colonies the Africans led the struggle for
independence.
• Partly because they felt solidarity with the black ex-slaves from USA, involved in their
own struggles for full citizenship.
• A movement known as pan-Negroism emerged, based on what was seen as
a shared ethnic identity.
• Which gave way to pan-Africanism, an anti-colonial struggle for blacks in
Africa alone.
• Ali Mazrui argues that the language of both these movements was English.
• Which led to the Africans in French colonies to feel somewhat excluded from them.
Why English?
• The fact that the African elite could enjoy higher education in
(English-speaking) North America as well as Britain meant that their
attitude was partly shaped by the issue in black emancipation.
• But in theory, the Africans in French colonies were considered
citizens of France.
• They also viewed the French language in affection.
• In the British colonies, attitudes towards English seem to have been
more pragmatic.
Edward Blyden
• A black man born in the Caribbean in 1832, and later a professor of
languages in Liberia.
• Argues that English was best suited to unify Africans because it ‘is a
composite language, not a product of any one people. It is made up
of contributions by Celts, Danes , Normans, Saxons, Greeks, and
Romans, gathering to itself elements… from the Ganges to the
Atlantic’
• Its very impurity and hybridity of English that makes it so useful.
• The diversity of the African society, symbolized by the huge numbers of
different languages spoken, is seen as a problem for a cause of
independence.
• Observers have explained this diversity as produced by ‘tribalism’.
• For promoters of independence, this tribalism needs to be replaced by a
different European concept: Nationalism.
• Learning English helps Africans to recreate their identities as members of a
nation rather than a tribe.
• It has sometimes been claimed that the British Colonialism has helped
Africans to ‘modernize’ themselves by introducing to them the English
language.

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Webster saw the dialects of England as a legacy of its class system.

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