How American English has evolved since the country’s founding

“Entrée” once referred to the first main dish in a formal multi-course dinner, but as dining in the United States became simpler, it shifted to mean the main course. In Europe, however, it still typically refers to an appetizer. “Cider,” which traces back to a Hebrew word for liquor, refers only to alcoholic drinks in British English, but the popularity of non-alcoholic versions—particularly during Prohibition—means that is no longer the case in the U.S. Meanwhile, words like “cattywampus” (askew) and “hornswoggle” (to swindle) have fallen out of use entirely.

These semantic facts come courtesy of linguist Gareth Roberts in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences, who studies language evolution, change, and variation. In honor of the 250th anniversary of America, Penn Today talked to Roberts about the cultural evolution of language since the country’s founding.

“What people should be thinking about is language changing all the time. There are all sorts of reasons why this happens,” Roberts says. There’s already person-to-person variation because people’s heads, mouths, and teeth come in different shapes and sizes, he notes, but then there’s the social dimension: what the people around you sound like and what you want to sound like.

Dropping (or not) the ‘r’

American English speakers pronounce the letter ‘r’ everywhere it occurs in the spelling, while English speakers from England and Wales only pronounce it before a vowel; they are known as rhotic and non-rhotic speakers, respectively. But how this distinction came to be is complicated.

Roberts explains that when English speakers from Britain started colonizing America, most were rhotic, but, in parallel, English and Welsh grew increasingly non-rhotic. In the 18th century, this trend spread to eastern and southern regions of America that had strong ties to Britain. Think of Bostonians saying, “Park your car in Harvard Yard” or the New York accent of Bernie Sanders.

“For a long time, because these were the centers of power, these became the prestige accents in America,” Roberts says. Up through the first half of the 20th century, non-rhoticity could be seen in the transatlantic accent of radio and the Golden Age of Hollywood.

But amid migration to growing suburbs in the Midwest, what Americans considered prestigious shifted. Roberts also cites another factor pushing people toward a more Western, suburban accent: racist attitudes toward immigrants settling in East Coast cities.

Additionally, he says, the prestige of England in the eyes of many Americans diminished around World War II, as the United States emerged from the war in better shape than Britain.

Migrating voices

Migration also played a role in how different regional dialects developed within the U.S.; one example is the Great Migration of Black Americans north between 1910 and 1970.

Due to segregation, “African American speakers in one city may speak more like African American speakers in other cities than like white speakers in the same city,” Roberts says.

There are also overlapping features between African-American English and Southern American English, including non-rhoticity. Another feature of Southern American English is the pin-pen merger, meaning the vowels in these words are pronounced the same.

Interestingly, Roberts says, migration patterns have led to the pin-pen merger appearing in the Central Valley of California. Separate from this merger is a shift in Californian English, with ‘ih’ becoming more like ‘eh.’ As an example, Roberts points to how Alexis Rose says “David” in the TV series “Schitt’s Creek.”

Some features of certain East Coast accents, such as those in New York and Philadelphia, come from contact with Italian and Jewish immigrants.

While linguists can trace where language has changed and what factors contributed, Roberts says a mystery remains: “Why did this happen in this place at this time? Why is it that these speakers do this thing, which is entirely reasonable and expected, but other speakers and other places don’t?”