The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

by Melvyn Bragg

War brought other colonies under British rule. New Amsterdam was taken and became New York in 1664. New Sweden became New Delaware. Dutch terms remain in Breukelen (Brooklyn) and Haarlem, and in “waffle,” “coleslaw,” “landscape” (as it had done back in England), “caboose,” “sleigh,” “boss” (to become very important as a way in which slaves and servants could address their employers or owners without calling them “master”), “snoop” and “spook.” There was rivalry with the French of course. Why should that incessant enmity be given up just because they had moved thousands of miles west and to a continent which had room enough for France and England tens of times over? When the New World old-style war ended in 1763, England was given the rights to all the territory between the coast and the Mississippi and took a hold to the north in Canada. Meanwhile, the word-flow from French continued. “Toboggan” and “caribou” came from native to French to English, as did “bayou,” “butte” and “crevasse,” describing landscape features. There was the “depot,” and “cents” and “dimes” were kept in a “cache.” There would be words from French New Orleans — “praline” and “gopher.” “Chowder” from the Breton, and “picayune,” a small coin, came to mean anything small. Borrowings from the Spanish were on a very big scale — Spanish is still the biggest feeder into American English: “barbecue,” “chocolate,” “stampede,” “tornado” and “plaza.”