Colonial Activities Influencing English Language

It is undoubtedly true that English is an international language and it is the most widespread language on earth. . It is spoken in many parts of the world, yet with various degrees of differences in grammar, pronunciation or vocabulary. How do these varieties arise? When we take a close look at the history in the last few centuries, it is certain that the varieties of English have a close relationship with the colonial activity in this period. Until the late sixteenth century English was not spoken anywhere outside the British Isles. The spread of English beyond the British Isles resulted from the spread of the English-speaking people through colonial activity. As English-speaking colonies were established, English came into contact with indigenous languages of the pre-colonial population. Very often speakers in these communities tend to incorporate many linguistic features from their first language when speaking the new one. Besides, there was diversity in the language used by the English-speaking settlers themselves. Dialect leveling often occurred. As a result, pidgins and creoles developed and new varieties of English emerged.

Different patterns of colonial activity and their effects on English According to David Graddol et al., there were three types of English colony, each of them having different effects on the development of English. In the first type, exemplified by America and Australia, substantial settlement by first-language speakers of English displaced the pre-colonial population. In the second, typified by Nigeria, sparser colonial settlements maintained the pre-colonial population in subjection and allowed a proportion of them access to learning English as a second, or additional, language. The third type, exemplified by the Caribbean islands of Barbados and Jamica. Here, a pre-colonial population was replaced by new labor from elsewhere, principally West Africa.

North America In 1607 the first British colony was established in Jamestown. Others followed, notably the “pilgrim fathers” of America settled in Plymouth in 1620. New colonies were being added until there were thirteen colonies in 1733. The pioneer settlers, primarily from the eastern part of England, were English speakers. There was great variety in the English spoken among them. Among the pre-colonial population, there was a rich linguistic mixture with perhaps as many as 500 different languages. However, the influence of pre-colonial languages on American English was slight, but not negligible. The first linguistic task for the colonists was to find names for concepts that did not exist in Britain. New words were needed for places, plants, landscapes and wildlife. Hence Indian words, particularly words from the Algonquian, were adopted and assimilated into colonial English. About 300 American Indian loanwords are still being used today, such as “caribou, hickory, hominy”, and ”moccasin”. However, these words had undergone radical change in the course of adoption into American speech. Since it was difficult for Europeans to pronounce these Indian words, some of the words were abbreviated or clipped. For example, “hominy” from “rockahominy”, ”squash” from “asquutasquash”, “hickory” from “pawcohiccora”. Others were changed by folk etymology in order to analyze a new word in terms of known words. For example, the Indian word “muskwessu” or ”muscassus” became “muskrat”, a musky-smelling rodent. Asides from this, there are also many expressions in American English which are derived from features of Indian life, such as “on the warpath”, ”happy hunting grounds”, “war paint” and “to bury the hatchet”.

In areas on the east coast, which maintained close cultural and trade links with England, speakers were influenced by British English and the /r/ was not pronounced in words like “cart” and “far”. While in more inland areas where connection with England was weak, the pronunciation of /r/ was a common practice. The largest single immigrant group in North America where the slaves brought from Africa. They were the sources of labor for the plantations in the southern areas of North America. Under the influence of African languages, a new form of English was spoken by the slaves there. A few words of African origin still remain today such as “gumbo” (a stew, soup), “hoodoo” (a curse or spell) and ”okra” (a kind of vegetables). As far as the influence of later immigrants is concerned, American English borrowed some words from Italian such as “pizza, pasta, spaghetti”, German such as “hamburger, delicatessen, lager, kindergarten, seminar, semester”, Japanese such as “hara-kiri, jujitsu”, and of Yiddish/Hebrew origin such as “kosher, kibitzer, schnozzle”. Other influences resulting from cultural contact were words borrowed from the French as in “bureau, prairie, pumpkin, rapids” and the Spanish as in “cockroach, Creole, mustang, patio, rode”. The present New York was once the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. Among words borrowed from Dutch are “boss, dumb, Santa Claus and waffle”. As a result, the English used in North America developed a character of its own and gained some features which make it different from British English.

Through colonial activity, English spread across the world in the past few centuries. English no longer existed as a monolithic language, rather, it evolved into new varieties with distinctive features in vocabulary, grammar or pronunciation.

These changes were shaped by the contact with other languages and the contact between the varieties of English used by the settlers. The way in which English arrived in a country and the demographic distribution of speakers of other languages were the determining factors in the formation of the new variety of English in these countries.