Курсовая работа: Characteristic features of American English

city delivery service, free city delivery, free delivery, 1863.

mailman soon became a common word after 1863, when he was employed and paid by the post office for free delivery. By the 1880s mailmen delivered as many as five times a day in commer­cial areas of New York and other major cities.

postal money order, 1864, originally created so Union soldiers could send money home safely during the Civil War.

postal card, post card, 1871, when the U.S. Post Office first issued a plain penny one, called a penny post card by 1873 (post cards had first been used by the Austrian post office in I860).

branch post office, 1871.

mail box, 1872, two years after it was patented. Since the late 1850s people had been calling primitive types letter boxes, street letter boxes, and street boxes, but these were usually the brightly painted receiving boxes for independent carriers and express agencies. The patented U.S. mailbox did a lot to give the U.S. Post Office Department control of the business. They were also often called letter drops in the 1890s.

After having been discussed for several years, free delivery was extended to rural areas in 1896. Free rural delivery brought newspapers, magazines, and mail-order catalogs to farm families, breaking their isolation and "urbanizing" the outlook of rural America.

Rural Free Delivery, RFD, 1892; used in discussions four years

before it went into effect. mail order business, 1875; mail order catalog, 1883; mail order house, 1906. The mail order business mushroomed after RFD was

introduced; Sears Roebuck entered the mail order business in1895.

And last, but not least, people have been playing and giggling about the kissing game post office since 1851, just four years after they began "kissing" those new lick-and-stick adhesive stamps. [10. p.535 ]

2.6. Indians

The word Indian comes from the most celebrated mistake in history. When Columbus discovered the Western Hemisphere he thought he had reached the Indies of Asia; hence the Caribbean Islands were called the West Indies and their inhabitants Indi­ ans. The word then spread to include all the aboriginal peoples of the Americas. [9. p.195 ]

The Indian words Americans still use include: (1) thousands of place names; (2) scores of words about Indians used in our history and mythology; and (3) hundreds of names of plants, animals, and landscapes which have become part of American everyday speech. [9. p.196 ]

The words Americans use in talking about Indians include some real Indian words plus others from our conceptions and misconcep­tions of Indians, words from American history and from American fiction:

brave (the French word for an Indian warrior), has had wide American use since 1819. Before then we usually used the term Indian warrior.

firewater, 1817 is the earliest recorded use of this "Indian talk" word for whiskey. It may be a translation of the Algonquian scoutiouabou, "fire water."

Honest Indian?, "is it true?" 1851; Honest Injun "on my honor," 1892, originally sarcastic use, because Indians were considered dishonest.

Indian country, 1664; Indian land, 1658; Indian territory, 1677; Indian Territory, 1828, the territory, now Oklahoma, set aside by the government for the Five Civilized Tribes.

Indian nation, a tribe, 1622. Tribe is a 13th century English word, used to refer to the tribes of Israel and to Roman tribes long before it was used to refer to aboriginal groups in Africa and the Americas. The earliest settlers usually spoke of an Indian nation rather than an Indian tribe.

paleface, 1822. James Fenimore Cooper put this term for White man into the mouths of his Indian characters. He probably in­vented it.

papoose (Algonquian for baby, child). Colonists were calling Indian babies this by 1633.

peace pipe, 1760; earlier it was called a pipe of peace, 1705. This long, decorated ceremonial pipe was first called a calumet, in 1678 (via Canadian French from French calumeau, reed, any plant with straw suitable for a pipe stem). Calumet is also a place name for a river, county, village, etc., in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan, indicating places where such reeds grew. [9. p.197 ]

Indian words for plants, animals, and landscapes began to appear in American language as soon as the colonists landed and began to ask the Indians "What's that?" Most answers were in Algon­quian, the most widespread family of Indian languages, spoken by most Indians of the eastern half of the U.S. Since the Indians hadn't yet invented writing, and since each local tribe might have its own pronunciation of any given word, the colonists had a hard time trying to spell and pronounce Indian words. Often they shortened the Indian word or phrase (as quatas quash became "squash"), tried to pronounce the parts of the word like familiar English words (a process called folk etymology, mak­ing wejack or otchig into "woodchuck"), or took a whole Indian sentence or clause and made one word out of it. Virginia's Cap­tain John Smith introduced many such words into English, be­ginning with his written description of Virginia in 1608. If you had been in Jamestown, Plymouth, or on the Kentucky fron­tier, or had crossed the prairie in a covered wagon, you would have heard your fellow Americans using a good many Indian words. Today about 130 Algonquian words, mainly for plants and animals, are still in use, plus a sprinkling of words from other Indian language families. [9. p.201 ]

The most frequently heard include:

bayou (via French from Choctaw bayuk, stream, creek), 1766

caribou (via Canadian French from Micmae khalibu or some­thing that sounded like maccaribpoo, "he who paws the snow"), 1610.

catalpa tree (Creek kutuhlpa, "winged head," referring to the flowers), 1730; shortened to catalpa, 1785.

hickory (Algonquian pawcohiccora, a dish of pounded hickory nuts and water), as pocketxhicory , pokahickory, 1618, modern spell­ing, 1670. Hickory nut, 1670. Hickory switch, 1734, for whip­ping children, later called a hickory stick. Hickory was used to mean firm, unyielding by 1800, giving us such nicknames as "Old Hickory" for Andrew Jackson and such terms as hickory cloth and hickory shirt in the 1840s, referring to a strong cotton fabric. By 1848 hickory also meant a hickory walking stick and by 1900 was used to mean a baseball bat.