زبان آمریکایی: تحقیقی در مورد توسعه زبان انگلیسی در ایالات متحده، ویرایش چهارم

H. L. Mencken published his fourth (and final) edition of his landmark work in April 1936. While it is a treatise on the development of American-English, it is also fascinating and exhibits Mencken's well-known wit and humor. The American Language, first published in 1919, is H. L. Mencken's book about the English language as spoken in the United States.Mencken was inspired by'the argot of the colored waiters'in Washington, as well as one of his favorite authors, Mark Twain, and his experiences on the streets of Baltimore. In 1902, Mencken remarked on the'queer words which go into the making of'United States.''The book was preceded by several columns in The Evening Sun. Mencken eventually asked'Why doesn't some painstaking pundit attempt a grammar of the American language... English, that is, as spoken by the great masses of the plain people of this fair land?'It would appear that he answered his own question.In the tradition of Noah Webster, who wrote the first American dictionary, Mencken wanted to defend'Americanisms'against a steady stream of English critics, who usually isolated Americanisms as borderline barbarous perversions of the mother tongue. Mencken assaulted the prescriptive grammar of these critics and American'schoolmarms', arguing, like Samuel Johnson in the preface to his dictionary, that language evolves independently of textbooks.The book discusses the beginnings of'American'variations from'English', the spread of these variations, American names and slang over the course of its 374 pages. According to Mencken, American English was more colorful, vivid, and creative than its British counterpart. Perhaps the first truly important book about the divergence of American English from its British roots, this survey of the language as it was spoken-and as it was changing-at the beginning of the 20th century comes via one of its most inveterate watchers, journalist, critic, and editor HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN (1880-1956).

In this replica of the 1921 "revised and enlarged" second edition, Mencken turns his keen ear on:

• the general character of American English
• loan-words and non-English influences
• expletives and forbidden words
• American slang
• the future of the language
• and much, much more.

Anyone fascinated by words will find this a thoroughly enthralling look at the most changeable language on the face of the planet.

The first American colonist had perforce to invent Americanisms, if only to describe the unfamiliar landscape and weather, flora and fauna confronting them. The classic work on the evolution of American English from British English, American Pronunciation, spelling, proper names, and slang.