The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

by Melvyn Bragg

What gave English primacy over the other languages of Britain besides that sense of mission was the force of numbers and the sense of occupation. What gave it a stronger presence than the other European languages, French and Spanish in particular, came through the ploughshare. On the whole the Spanish had sent armies and priests and taken gold. The French sent fur trappers and looked for trade. The English came to settle and that finally ensured that it was the language of Tyndale and Shakespeare which would be heard in the mid eighteenth century from the Atlantic coast to the Appalachian Mountains. As English spread, it began to chafe at the bonds and then to cut loose from the language spoken in England. In some cases meaning had shifted. The English “shop” became the American “store.” “Lumber” was rubbish in London; on the east coast it was and is “cut timber.” An English “biscuit” was an American “cracker.” An American “pond” could be as big as an English “lake”; an American “rock” could be as small as an English “pebble.” In America a piece of land became a “lot,” named after the method of drawing lots to determine which new owner received which new territory.