The Book I Chose

Marlon Rodriguez

The Book I chose

Is American a Language?

America is a nation built by immigrants. Because it was originally colonized by European settlers (mainly from England) English is the country’s main language.  American English is rather intriguing to me for many different reasons. The main one being that there are standards of “proper English” that are taught in schools which I tend to disagree with. I disagree with it because the nation within itself has many different versions of spoken English such as southern English or Midwestern English that’s very different from eastern English. Many people refer to the different versions as mere accents but I feel that they are all very different and unique in their own way. For this reason the book I chose to do my research paper on is “Do you speak American?” by Robert MacNeil and William Cran.

The title of the book is very intriguing because the authors chose to use the word “American” instead of English. I read the blurp in a website about the book and it seems as though it touches on a lot of the questions I’ve always had about America’s native language. I hope by reading this book I can learn many things about what English is, was and how it evolves or maybe even if it devolves. I’m very excited to start this book and I hope it is not disappointing.