Americanisms emerged due to Noah Webster's advocacy for establishing an "American standard" of English in the late 18th century. His dictionaries introduced spellings and pronunciations that differed from British English. Throughout the 19th century, thousands of new American vocabulary words were coined from sources like Spanish and Native American languages. Today, Americanisms in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation like "math" instead of "maths" and "regular" instead of "medium" are increasingly used globally, raising questions about what constitutes "good" or "correct" English between countries.

1. Americanisms
What they are, why they
emerged and what we think
about them

2. What are Americanisms?
 English words or phrases-or a feature of
grammar, spelling, or pronunciation-that
originated in the United States and/or are
used primarily by Americans.

3. Why did they emerge? - 1
 Noah Webster’s ‘Dissertations on the English
Language’ (1789)
 Stated that an “American standard” needed to
be established
 Spelling reform – but not too radical (“No
great change should be made at once”)

4. Why did they emerge? - 2
 Webster’s ‘A Compendious Dictionary of the
English Language’ (1806) contained 28,000
words
 Attack on Johnson’s dictionary, e.g. on its
difficult words, vulgarisms etc.
 Some were suspicious of recommended
spellings and pronunciations, e.g. why does
actor have no “u”, but flavour does?

5. Why did they emerge? - 3
 Throughout America in the 19th century,
thousands of new words were being coined
 But the new words weren’t reaching a wide
public

6. New American vocabulary
 19th century new vocab came from many
sources, e.g. Spanish and native
American words
 New vocab included: cattle town, chaps,
dude, lasso, ranch, range, roundup and
six shooter

7. Webster’s Blue-Backed Speller
 First published in 783 but had revisions, e.g.
in 1804 and 1806.
 1804 version contained proposals, e.g.
 Deleting ‘u’ from words ending in ‘-our’ e.g.
favor
 Deleting ‘k’ from words ending in ‘ick’ e.g.
music
 Replacing –re with –er, e.g. theater
 Replacing –ce with –se, e.g. defense
 Dropping the final ‘e’, e.g. examin, definit
 Dropping silent letters, e.g. fether

8. Examples today - 1
 24/7 instead of 24 hours, 7 days a week
 “We’re going to deplane soon” (i.e. getting off
an aircraft)
 “It is what it is.”
 “Transportation” – why not just transport?
 Birthdays – “turning” 21, 40 etc.
 “gotten”
 “take-out” – why not take-away?

9. Examples today - 2
 “my bad” after you make a mistake
 “Math” – instead of Maths
 “regular” instead of “medium”
 “Period” instead of full stop
 “Season” for a TV series
 “Issue” instead of “problem”
 “Turn that off already”

10. Examples today - 3
 “color” instead of “colour”, etc – wasting time
spell checking on Word.

11. • Are Americanisms taking over the
British language?
• Who decides what is “good” or
“correct” English when the way it
is spoken differs from country to
country?

12. An example I
found….

13. Video