How do Americans perceive the English language?

34 comments

1. A massive amount of Americans are of English descent. Most identify as American, or as other parts of their heritage instead of English-American.

   As a country we’re intimately linked to England. In school we study a good amount of English literature.

2. We didn’t ‘choose’ English. It just so happens the founders primarily spoke English as did the most influential people as the country developed. We were subjects of the crown until we decided we weren’t any more.

   I feel no particular pride or animosity toward it either way. I had no control over it, I’m just glad I speak it.

3. I think it’s a language that I speak, and that you’re misinformed and reading waaaay to much into everything else.

4. Why would anyone even care to think about such things? People don’t care if they relate with ancestors of English. We speak (among other languages) English, that’s it. There is no further thought most people have about such things.

   English was forced on my people so I don’t appreciate it, I just speak it because it’s convenient. I don’t hate it, but I also understand the history of erasing my people’s language in favor of English.

5. I don’t understand the question. It’s the primary language of our country. I don’t think I have any “perceptions” of it beyond that, and I’m not sure what perceptions one might have.

6. Do *you* appreciate the history of the language? From what I’ve seen, many people from the UK think they invented English which is obviously absurd.

7. I view English as my mother tongue

8. A large number of Americans have English ancestry. An even larger number have Irish ancestry.

   I’m not “proud” of being Anglophone, it’s just the language I speak. I certainly don’t feel any sense of shame in it. English has a really cool history. The revolution was a long time ago, the UK and US have been close allies for longer than anyone has been alive. British media is all over the US and *lots* of English literature is taught in schools

   Seems like it would have been pretty silly for the founding fathers to have chosen a different language? They started our government in the language they all knew. Nothing else would have made sense.

9. The American dialect of English is pretty unique compared to English spoken today in the UK. some of our words and pronunciations are more similar to how the language was originally spoken, like saying “herb” with no H sound. also (topical bc of the British Baking Show mess) Americans tend to do better with Spanish pronunciations and incorporate more Spanish words into our everyday language, especially when it comes to food (like cilantro and garbanzo bean).

   I’m pretty indifferent to speaking English, but I am grateful to be a native speaker in a language that holds a lot of influence and power in the world, especially because English is notoriously challenging to learn.

10. I was born in a hospital in North Carolina, and I was well into childhood before I met someone who spoke anything other than English. And that’s all I have to say about that.

11. I don’t relate to old or middle English tales much more than I do to ancient Greek ones. Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the Canterbury Tales are about all the exposure I remember from school to the language before Shakespeare.

    I don’t know if I would use the word appreciate for it, or any other language for that matter, beyond the sense that it’s quite helpful that the language I know best is the most useful one for international travel.

    Most people generally have some understanding of the history of the language – that it’s something of a mongrel because you have separate Germanic influences from the Norse and Anglo-Saxons followed by the influence of Norman French, with some Brittonic language incorporate at the roots. You also see the diversity it has in the more modern era as it spread throughout the former British empire without the kind of rigid control that French has to have an “official standard” version.

12. I’m not sure where you get the idea that very few Americans are of English descent. Being of English descent is extremely common in America. That was most of who occupied the original colonies. Obviously they spoke English, and so most in this country continue to speak English. It wasn’t really a deliberate choice, that’s just what they already spoke. There are many countries around the world that speak English, so I do not associate the language solely with actual England.

13. Historically, there have been more languages spoken in the US than any other country on earth. That happens when you have a greater amount of immigration than any other country.

    Personally, I never gave the fact that English was the dominant language much thought. I certainly didn’t tie it back to some kind of greater meaning. That said, I think many Americans feel a certain sense of historical connection with the UK. There’s a much deeper bond there than with the Netherlands, for example, even though the Dutch initially settled New Amsterdam. The puritans and their journey over are taught in many places as the kind of birth of the US. And, of course, we were under English “rule” until the Revolution.

    By now though, English is the dominant language of the western world. Whatever specific connection there was between the language and the history is pretty diluted by this point.

14. Huge numbers of white Americans are of English/British descent. Many people with German, Scandinavian, or Eastern European surnames also have some British ancestors. And their families have been English-speaking for so long that it’s just a part of them. As far as Old and Middle English tales, no one really relates to it that much since it’s very far removed both in distance, time, and technological/social change for everyone. That said, whites may occasionally sense they are heirs to a general European tradition, but don’t distinguish much between Britain and the rest of Western/Northern Europe.

15. We don’t have the attitude toward the English language that the French have toward theirs. Our identity isn’t that closely wrapped up in it and we don’t think it’s especially beautiful. Americans might get pissy about people not speaking it (Spanish-speaking immigrants tend to get the brunt of this attitude) but that has more to do with a sense of grievance at being inconvenienced than anything else.

16. The premise of your assumption is flawed. The plurality of Americans are of European descent, and the plurality of them are of English heritage. It can be confusing though because so many of them choose to identify as some other heritage, such as German or Scottish. But, just as a twelfth-century resident of Kent would probably not identify as a Jute despite likely being genetically almost identical to his immigrant Danish ancestors, we Americans do not identify as “English” even if our familial/genetic composition remains the same as it did when our ancestor’s when they stepped off the Mayflower.

17. I can actually trace my paternal side of the family back to England(and France) well before what is now the United States was colonized and my last name is of Old English origin. My paternal side of the family comes from the Sheffield area as well. That being said, I am a mutt as I’ve got lots of Slovak, Czech, Polish, Welsh and German from my moms side.

    My moms Slavic side of the family immigrated to the US in the early 1900’s from Austria-Hungary but if anything, I can relate to my English heritage more so than my Slavic and German heritage. My moms mom told me that when she was growing up she never heard her grandpa(he immigrated to the US from what is now Kosice, Slovakia) speak Slovak, he always spoke English. Back then if you immigrated to the US from another country it was a given that you learn English, it’s not so much that way anymore. Even though some Americans can’t trace their heritage back to England, or even Europe, the English culture/heritageis still very much part of American culture whether we realize it or not.

18. Accident of history but I appreciate that it is what caught on as the default and I was raised speaking it instead of German, Czech, French, or Irish.

    It is a much more globally useful language than any of those others.

19. A huge number of Americans have English, Irish, or Scottish ancestry, but even for those who don’t I don’t think there’s any alienation or disengagement from the English language. Americans of all races and ethnicities study British authors in school.

    To the extent most Americans think of the language at all it’s probably less about its roots back in the British Isles and more simply gratitude that we are speakers of the de facto global language. Of course, we had a role in that status ourselves: the British Empire got the process started by disseminating the language across the globe, but the US’s superpower status in the 20th and 21st centuries helped cement it into what it is today.

    The world might have looked different had our national language tipped for whatever reason into something else – for example of the colonial era proposal to make German the national language had passed (which I believe is just an urban legend anyway). Language can be a powerful unifying force, and the history of the World Wars might have ended differently if we were the Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika.

    For the language itself the most annoying thing about it is probably the insanely erratic spelling system. Most native English speakers probably don’t even realize how unorthodox it is. It *would* be nice if English were more closely related to some other major world languages that we could pick up easily in the way that Spanish and Italian speakers can quickly understand one another. (Frisian ain’t cutting it!) But that’s just a quibble and overall I think we can be grateful that almost anywhere in the world we go we are never far from someone else who can understand us.

20. > Do/can you relate to Old and Middle English tales?

    If we take something like Beowulf, I’d say I can relate to the themes as much as someone from the UK.

    > Do you appreciate the history of the language?

    I think that generally the way any language evolves over time is interesting but I don’t find the history of the English language to be any more or less interesting than any other language.

    > Or is it simply an accident of history, and something useful you happen to have learnt?

    This is effectively how I view it. The vast majority of the country in which I reside (US) speaks English which is good. The fact that English is the most spoken (or second most spoken?) language in the world is extremely helpful.

21. We didn’t invent the English language, we just perfected it.

22. >Do you appreciate the history of the language?

    Honestly what I appreciate more is how the history of the United States shaped the language in such a short time. English as we know it had primarily been a Germanic language that took a whole host of loan words from French, the “melting pot” in America expanded the language significantly here are some very common words that an Englishman around 1776 would have no clue about if you brought them to today

    Taco

    Mesa

    Alligator

    Guitar

    Mosquito

    Vigilante

    Bagel

    Hurricane

    Skunk

    Pecan

23. I don’t put much thought into it. I speak English because of historical reasons (had things gone differently in 1588, maybe I’d be speaking Spanish). I feel fortunate as an English speaker because it is an internationally used language and therefore makes my life easier. But sometimes I think if I spoke a language in a different language family, maybe I’d be multilingual.

    Beyond that, I don’t love/hate English nor do I feel a sense of pride as a speaker.

24. Most of my ancestors came to the US from Non-English speaking countries I think of English as my native language because it is the primary language I speak and its the one I think in. I would feel the same if I grew up speaking French, even though I have no French ancestry.

25. It’s not something I think about.

26. I may be attached to my accent or my specific dialect and I do find it interesting how it split into different dialects, but the history of why certain places speak English is rather dark. There was a conscious effort to wipe out the culture/language of the Native Americans in some cases and some places sought to eliminate certain tribes. Before the world wars, many communities grew up speaking German at home but many stopped during the world wars.

    I personally have English ancestry, but at least one of my ancestors fought in our war for independence. I am glad that English is my native language because I hear that it’s not a very easy language to acquire as a secondary language.

27. You may as well ask me my take on oxygen.

    I mean, yeah, it’s important, and there’s some fascinating history there, and it’s interesting the things you can do with it–but for the most part I don’t think about it at all.

28. > Or is it simply an accident of history, and something useful you happen to have learnt

    Kinda this.

    We don’t think of English as an exotic foreign tongue, or a tool of oppression imposed on us by oppressive colonizers, or a skill we learn for economic and personal advancement. English in America is the everyday language of day-to-day life, business, education, and entertainment. It’s everywhere and we use it all the time for everything. It’s the only language most of us can speak well, and the only language many of us can speak at all. Most of the time, we give it as much thought as we do drinking water or breathing oxygen.

    Ever since Noah Webster, English in the US has been something we think of as our own. We don’t consult Oxford for advice on coining phrases any more than Congress asks King Charles for royal assent. English is the language of America. People are of course aware of its origins in, ya know, *England*, but few aside from linguists and literature nerds really care much about it.

29. You definitely have a false premise here. You’re suggesting we chose English, but that largely wasn’t the case.

    1. Despite the number of immigrants, the influential people during the revolutionary and formulative years of our country spoke English. They spoke English because most (but not all) of them were from families of English origin. They spoke English because we were _English_ colonies. Many of them also spoke French, but their native language was English and the language they did business in was English.
    1. Most immigrants who come here make it a point to assimilate into American culture. For a LOT of immigrants, that means switching to English which is the majority language. The first generation born here usually learns the native language as either their first or second language, second generation might learn it as a secondary, and third generation rarely learns it
    1. Most people here are 3rd generation Americans or even further. My most recent immigrant ancestor came here in the 1890s, most of them pre-1860s. So we have zero connection with our native cultures nowadays. We’re American. We’re not German or Polish or Irish or English or French in anything except a “where did your ancestors come from?” manner.
    1. The majority of Americans were born here and taught English as our first language. Why would we feel _anything_ about it? It’s like implying you should resent your parents for picking brown hair for you.
    1. And we flat out don’t have a national language in the first place. We can speak whatever the hell we want.

    Sometimes, like right now, I feel like the English hate the English more than we ever did and that’s bizarre.

30. I’m not sure where you got the info that most Americans are not of English ancestry. In the 1980 census, more than 26% of Americans reported that their ancestry was English, making it the largest single group. Almost all of the founding fathers were of English ancestry. Further, many Americans in the same census reported having British ancestry (Irish, Scot, or Welsh, or mixed British). Link: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/1983/dec/pc80-s1-10.pdf

    Although Francophone and Hispanic settlers were also prevalent from the 16th-18th centuries, the majority of Americans in the colonial period were British. Waves of immigrants from other parts of the world did not come in large numbers until the late 19th century. By that time, English had been solidified as the predominant language, so those immigrants mostly learned English in order to assimilate.

    Source: I have a degree in Anglo-American history and immigration in the colonial period.

    Edit: link to 1980 census added.

31. I don’t really care about the language at all honestly. It’s just not something I think about.

32. You’re under the mistaken impression that 1) the early Americans had some sort of beef with all things British and that the Revolutionary War was a blanket rejection of Britain and everything about it, and 2) that Americans equate the use of language with allegiance to everything associated with a particular country/culture.

    And you’re wrong on both counts. The war was a rejection of the form of government that was in place at the time and Americans are (perhaps uniquely) capable of making distinctions between a nation, its people, its culture and its leadership.

    And as you may be beginning to comprehend, to Americans, the English language is simply one of many versions of a tool/skill that humans use to communicate with each other. Most of the early Americans already used this version of the tool and continued to do so after the war because they already knew how to do it that way, not as some weird cultural homage.

    I’ve honestly spent more time wiping my own ass today than I’ve spent thinking about this topic over the course of my entire life.

33. We invented English as much as you did. It’s always a false premise when people, “We’re English, we invented it.” First, I’ll echo what someone said earlier. The language that evolved into modern English was imported. It came from the continent. It was imposed on England, through war or the power of numbers. How do you feel about speaking a conqueror’s language? Or are you saying you were one of the conquerors and you’re from Denmark or Northern Germany? However that came to be, language is never invented, except for Esperanto and Klingon and the like. Language evolves through historical forces. lt evolves in many places.

    So let’s take America and my second, and main, point. We can trace our use of English back just as far as you can. We have been speaking it the exact same length of time you have. We inherited it in exactly the same way from exactly the same people that you did. There is no discontinuity in our history of speaking English. We can trace our use directly back, ancestor to ancestor, to the Anglo-Saxons, just like you can. There is no fundamental difference. We got it from them and you got it from them. We didn’t get it from you, we both evolved with it at the same time as it developed. We are simply one later branch, and you are another. We outnumber you three to one. By the argument, you could say we are the main branch of English on the planet.

    To echo another answer again, you seem to be using the premise that we had a language lottery at the beginning of the country and rolled the dice to pick a language to start speaking from scratch. But it did not work that way. We didn’t “pick” the language of the oppressor. There was no language of the oppressor. That’s a twentieth century concept. The lingua franca was English on all sides. The English government, the rebellious colonists and the loyalist colonists all primarily spoke English in public discourse. All the important Revolutionary War documents and famous phrases are in English.

    – We hold these truths to be self-evident…
    – Give me liberty or give me death!
    – My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.

    None of these are translations. They were all written and spoken in English. The concepts being followed in the independence arguments were based heavily on the writings of John Locke and other philosophers.

    The use of English in the US was simply the continuation of life as it already existed. There was nothing remarkable about it. It was the language of government, the language of revolution and the language of commerce. English colonies spoke English. No big surprise.

    So we don’t have any angst about the language we “picked” or the “language of the oppressor”. We didn’t pick it, it was our language already. The documents we used to declare independence were solely in English. It was quite simply the language of the people and people naturally continued to use it in all spheres of life — and overwhelmingly continue to do so to this day. And that use goes directly back to the age of the Anglo-Saxons (and it doesn’t go through 21st century Britain and doesn’t need to). Our independent political history started in 1776. Our language history did not.

34. I feel like you’re reading too much into this. We speak English because it’s a universal language. That’s what we were taught. We don’t think anything of it. We have more important things to think about. Case closed.