An American Language

Download or read book An American Language written by Rosina Lozano and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the most comprehensive book I’ve ever read about the use of Spanish in the U.S. Incredible research. Read it to understand our country. Spanish is, indeed, an American language."—Jorge Ramos An American Language is a tour de force that revolutionizes our understanding of U.S. history. It reveals the origins of Spanish as a language binding residents of the Southwest to the politics and culture of an expanding nation in the 1840s. As the West increasingly integrated into the United States over the following century, struggles over power, identity, and citizenship transformed the place of the Spanish language in the nation. An American Language is a history that reimagines what it means to be an American—with profound implications for our own time.

Download or read book Pennsylvania Dutch written by Mark L. Louden and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2016-02-15 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- CHAPTER 1. What Is Pennsylvania Dutch? -- CHAPTER 2. Early History of Pennsylvania Dutch -- CHAPTER 3. Pennsylvania Dutch, 1800-1860 -- CHAPTER 4. Profiles in Pennsylvania Dutch Literature -- CHAPTER 5. Pennsylvania Dutch in the Public Eye -- CHAPTER 6. Pennsylvania Dutch and the Amish and Mennonites -- CHAPTER 7. An American Story -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Download or read book American Language Supplement 1 written by H.L. Mencken and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2012-02-08 with total page 798 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the first truly important book about the divergence of American English from its British roots, this survey of the language as it was spoken-and as it was changing-at the beginning of the 20th century comes via one of its most inveterate watchers, journalist, critic, and editor HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN (1880-1956).In this replica of the 1921 "revised and enlarged" second edition, Mencken turns his keen ear on: • the general character of American English • loan-words and non-English influences • expletives and forbidden words • American slang • the future of the language • and much, much more. Anyone fascinated by words will find this a thoroughly enthralling look at the most changeable language on the face of the planet.

Download or read book True American written by Rosemary C. Salomone and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can schools meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population of newcomers? Do bilingual programs help children transition into American life, or do they keep them in a linguistic ghetto? Are immigrants who maintain their native language uninterested in being American, or are they committed to changing what it means to be American? In this ambitious book, Rosemary Salomone uses the heated debate over how best to educate immigrant children as a way to explore what national identity means in an age of globalization, transnationalism, and dual citizenship. She demolishes popular myths—that bilingualism impedes academic success, that English is under threat in contemporary America, that immigrants are reluctant to learn English, or that the ancestors of today’s assimilated Americans had all to gain and nothing to lose in abandoning their family language. She lucidly reveals the little-known legislative history of bilingual education, its dizzying range of meanings in different schools, districts, and states, and the difficulty in proving or disproving whether it works—or defining it as a legal right. In eye-opening comparisons, Salomone suggests that the simultaneous spread of English and the push toward multilingualism in western Europe offer economic and political advantages from which the U.S. could learn. She argues eloquently that multilingualism can and should be part of a meaningful education and responsible national citizenship in a globalized world.

Download or read book The Language of the American South written by Cleanth Brooks and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume Cleanth Brooks pays tribute to the language and literature of the American South. He writes of the language's unique syntax and its celebrated languorous rhythms; of the classical allusions and Addisonian locutions once favored by the gentry; and of the more earthbound eloquence, rooted in the dialect of England's southern lowlands, that is still heard in the speech of the region's plain folk. It is this rich spoken language, Brooks suggests, that has always been the life blood of southern writing. The strong tradition of storytelling in the South is reflected in the tales told by Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus and in the obsessive retellings that structure William Faulkner's novels and stories. But even more crucially, the language of the South--firmly rooted in the land but with a tendency to reach for the heavens above--has shaped the literary concerns and molded the complex visions to be found in the poetry of Robert Penn Warren and John Crowe Ransom; the stories of Flannery O'Connor, Peter Taylor, and Eudora Welty; and the novels of Warren, Allen Tate, and Walker Percy.

Download or read book 101 American Customs written by Joe Kohl and published by McGraw-Hill Education. This book was released on 1999-10-22 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is sold at garage sales? Why does no one get wet at a bridal shower? For non-native speakers, here's a humorous approach to understanding common American customs and the expressions related to them. Customs are explained, one to a page, with conversational examples and whimsical cartoons. Topics range from age-old traditions, such as shaking hands and bachelor parties, to more modern American practices--coupon clipping, TV dinners, and tailgate parties.

Download or read book Native American Language Ideologies written by Paul V. Kroskrity and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2009-04-15 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beliefs and feelings about language vary dramatically within and across Native American cultural groups and are an acknowledged part of the processes of language shift and language death. This volume samples the language ideologies of a wide range of Native American communities--from the Canadian Yukon to Guatemala--to show their role in sociocultural transformation. These studies take up such active issues as "insiderness" in Cherokee language ideologies, contradictions of space-time for the Northern Arapaho, language socialization and Paiute identity, and orthography choices and language renewal among the Kiowa. The authors--including members of indigenous speech communities who participate in language renewal efforts--discuss not only Native Americans' conscious language ideologies but also the often-revealing relationship between these beliefs and other more implicit realizations of language use as embedded in community practice. The chapters discuss the impact of contemporary language issues related to grammar, language use, the relation between language and social identity, and emergent language ideologies themselves in Native American speech communities. And although they portray obvious variation in attitudes toward language across communities, they also reveal commonalities--notably the emergent ideological process of iconization between a language and various national, ethnic, and tribal identities. As fewer Native Americans continue to speak their own language, this timely volume provides valuable grounded studies of language ideologies in action--those indigenous to Native communities as well as those imposed by outside institutions or language researchers. It considers the emergent interaction of indigenous and imported ideologies and the resulting effect on language beliefs, practices, and struggles in today's Indian Country as it demonstrates the practical implications of recognizing a multiplicity of indigenous language ideologies and their impact on heritage language maintenance and renewal.