In his new anthology, “The People’s Tongue: Americans and the English Language,” Ilan Stavans has collected perspectives from 74 writers throughout American history to create what he calls a “love letter” to the rich diversity of his adopted language.
In his new anthology, “The People’s Tongue: Americans and the English Language,” editor Ilan Stavans has collected perspectives from 74 writers throughout American history to create what he calls both a “thank you” and a “love letter” to the rich diversity of his adopted language. The result is a lively and enlightening book that reveals American English to be as controversial, contested, and complicated as the nation it serves.
As the book reveals, the story of American English is one of constant change. In colonial America, it was an amorphous thing, without much consensus on spelling or grammar. Anne Winthrop’s letter to her husband, written just before the pair immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, epitomizes the lack of standardization: “Those sweete and comfortable wordes… are wonte to flowe most aboundantlye from youre lounge hart.
Nevertheless, as the newcomers assimilated, they brought with them words and sayings from their native tongues that, today, seem as American as apple pie. And by the end of the century, native dialects, such as African American Vernacular English and Spanglish, began to be seen not as corruptions but rather as innovations, largely thanks to their increasing visibility in pop culture.
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