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[...]... natural history of the American people is the essential gift of the mother tongue With all speakers of the English language Americans share the results of 1,500 years of linguistic development, and English had itself evolved for a full millennium before the first American words were spoken in Virginia Furthermore, as a member of the Germanic language group of the Indo-European language family, English shares... although of Welsh ancestry, emerged from the London merchant class The language habits of all those speakers contributed to the shaping of the urban pattern and to the development of vigorous conversational speech THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN ENGLISH The fluid structure of Early Modern English underlies the formation of American English Although the Great Vowel Shift had assigned new values to the long... dialects of English Conversation was also possible between the English and their Viking conquerors, the Norwegians and the Danes, many of whom settled primarily in what are now the northeast counties and took up peaceful ways with English wives The fact that cultural interaction extended through most of the Old English period (449–1066) is evidenced in the greatest literary monument of the Anglo-Saxons, their... English shares an ultimate heritage with most of the modern languages of Europe and Asia and with the official languages of every government in North and South America The essential features of the Germanic languages are these: (1) a thoroughgoing modification of the consonant system, especially the so-called First Germanic Consonant Shift, which distinguishes the system from all other Indo-European consonant... jazz of Count Basie and the Chicago jazz of Bud Freeman, or the middle Georgia rock of the Allman Brothers and the southern California rock of the Beach Boys All of these are as regionally distinctive as are the voices of the musicians Wherever clear-cut boundaries of culture can be reconstructed on the basis of historical information from archaeology, music, graphic arts, or the social sciences, dialect... (artifacts of survival), and fine arts (artifacts of the creative imagination and of spiritual expression) From the earliest days on its first frontiers, American English carried forward the messages of the culture and the experience of the past As it did its work, the national language established an identity and expressed native ideas in an American voice This Dictionary records that American voice... where they had settled earlier, as the regional dialects of England were broadly reorganized In the process, Middlesex became the preeminent focal area, and from its center arose the London Standard, the most influential social variety the English language has ever known Several dialects of 14th-century England were the immediate ancestors of the London Standard, but it drew most from the speech of the. .. Mulcaster defended the use of English and explained the implications of his work: For the account of our tongue, both in pen and speech, no man will doubt therof who is able to judge what those things be which make any tongue to be of account; which things I take to be three: the autority of the people which speak it, the matter and argument wherein the speech dealeth, the manifold use for which the speech... functional aspects of human communication: the engagement of thought, the use of signs, and the transmission of ideas from one mind to another Today the English language makes conversation possible among 350 million native speakers who share its system of symbolic behavior This number includes speakers of American, Australian, British, Canadian, Irish, New Zealand, and Scots English as members of the most influential... that great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and industry which began long since in the East; they will finish the great circle The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power of the differ- ent climates they inhabit The American ought therefore to love . element of meaning, and provides antonyms when applicable. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition , like the First, is the product of significant advances in the. . If language is a reflection of the ethos of the generation speaking it, then the new entries and meanings in this Edition have much to say about us and our time. The great majority of the new. physics, and astronomy. The goal of the Third Edition is to provide the user with comprehension and appreciation of the language in a readable manner. Keeping the needs of the con- temporary user