| "England/and America are two countries separated by the same
language," wrote George Bernard Shaw in 1942.) Is this true today? Do
Americans speak a different kind of English from the British? If so, why?
And why do they speak English at all?
2 Since 1585 America was settled, not always voluntarily, by people of
many cultures. American English developed from the languages used by
these different people. The first English settlers immediately discovered
75.4
animals, birds and plants that were new to them, and which ( 1 )
names in English. Sometimes the settlers used English words (for example,
blackbird for a bird that looked similar to the English blackbird).
Sometimes they (2) new words from other English words, for example
backwoods (a forest with few people and bluegrass (a kind of grass with
