Can you speak American?

A wide-ranging account of American English, Richard Bailey’s Speaking American investigates the history and continuing evolution of our language from the sixteenth century to the present. When did English become American? What distinctive qualities made it American? What role have America’s democratizing impulses, and its vibrantly heterogeneous speakers, played in shaping our language and separating it from the mother tongue? Bailey asked himself these questions, now it’s time to ask yourself how well you really know your American English. We’ve composed a quiz for some Friday fun. Can you speak American? –Alice & Justyna

What’s “the blab of the pave”?

a. A description of the talk of Okies and others moving west during the Great Depression, typically used by urbanites in a derogatory way
b. A popular expression for how young “delinquents” talked in Northern California during the 1950s
c. Walt Whitman’s description of the way New Yorkers speak
d. A description of the way cement settles in intense heat used in the South, particularly around New Orleans

Which great event determined whether Shakespeare should be performed in American or British English in the US?

a. American. The Astor Place Riot in New York in 1849, which pitted actor Edwin Forrest (American) against actor William Charles Macready (English).
b. English. 1823 legislation, for which aristocratic Carolinians educated in England lobbied, that Shakespeare’s plays be performed “in the manner in which they were written.”
c. American. Competing theaters set each other alight during the Great Chicago Fire, but the Wicker Park neighborhood rallied to save the Liberty Theater, then staging an American English production of Hamlet.
d. English. Following the introduction of sound in the 1920s, MGM’s British English movie production of Romeo & Juliet out-earned its American English competitors, so all studios switched to English actors for future Shakespeare productions.

Which of the following is true?

a. Alaska cotton is a species of grass growing in the Alaskan wetlands.
b. Alaska candy is strips of smoked salmon.
c. An Alaska divorce is liberating oneself from marriage by murdering the spouse.
d. Baked Alaska is a dessert in which a quickly baked meringue encases a blob of frozen ice cream.

Where does the word “buckaroo” come from?

a. Slang for ranch hands on the American frontier who were initially paid a dollar (“a buck”) to work for a rancher
b. Name given to young men at the stage of their equine apprenticeship when they would handle young male horses in the Colonial South
c. Buckra, meaning someone with power or knowledge in the Efik language of West Africa, which passed into American English via Barbados Creole
d. An invention of screenwriter and dime novelist John Grey for the silent western “Canyon of Fools”

What is “bisket”?

a. A Boston expression for unleavened bread made from flour, salt, and water
b. A Yiddish expression for dough, sometimes found in New York English
c. A Chinook expression for a day when it doesn’t rain during the winter months
d. An alternate spelling of “biscuit” found in rural Alabama and Mississippi

In the 1980s, the song “Valley Girl” about the singer’s teenage daughter and her affinity for Valspeak (a word blend of “San Fernando Valley” and “speak”), unintentionally lead to an enormous popularity for this style of English. Which singer composed the song?

a. Brian Wilson
b. Tom Waits
c. Frank Zappa
d. John Phillips

In the 1960s, California became associated with the New Age movement in spirituality and various ego-centered psychological therapies. These efforts produced which term that became widely known beyond California?

a. bipolar disorder
b. ego-trip
c. get it together
d. all of the above

Between 1892 and 1928, millions of Europeans entered New York through the immigration facility on Ellis Island. As a result, their cultures (and languages) had an immense impact on the city. Which language was most influential in transforming New York?

a. Polish
b. Yiddish
c. French
d. Italian

Which important factor made New Orleans the foundation of English for the Louisiana Purchase?

a. A high influx of English speakers purchasing cheap territory
b. Thomas Jefferson deemed English the official language after purchasing it from the French
c. The introduction of the steamboat in the Mississippi waterway
d. None of the above

AND NOW THE ANSWERS…


What’s “the blab of the pave”?
Walt Whitman’s description of the way New Yorkers speak

Which great event determined whether Shakespeare should be performed in American or British English in the US?
American. The Astor Place Riot in New York in 1849, which pitted actor Edwin Forrest (American) against actor William Charles Macready (English).

Which of the following is true?
All are correct: Alaska cotton is a species of grass growing in the Alaskan wetlands. Alaska candy is strips of smoked salmon. An Alaska divorce is liberating oneself from marriage by murdering the spouse. Baked Alaska is a dessert in which a quickly baked meringue encases a blob of frozen ice cream.

Where does the word “buckaroo” come from?
Buckra, meaning someone with power or knowledge in the Efik language of West Africa, which passed into American English via Barbados Creole

What is “bisket”?
A Boston expression for unleavened bread made from flour, salt, and water

In the 1980s, the song “Valley Girl” about the singer’s teenage daughter and her affinity for Valspeak (a blend of “San Fernando Valley” and “speak”), unintentionally lead to an enormous popularity for this kind of English. Which singer composed the song?
Frank Zappa

In the 1960s, California became associated with the New Age movement in spirituality and various ego-centered psychological therapies. These efforts produced which term that became widely known beyond California?
All of the above: bipolar Disorder, ego-trip, and get it together

Between 1892 and 1928, millions of Europeans entered New York through the immigration facility on Ellis Island. As a result, their cultures (and languages) had an immense impact on the city. Which language was most influential in transforming New York?
Yiddish

Which important factor made New Orleans the foundation of English for the Louisiana Purchase?
The introduction of the steamboat in the Mississippi waterway

Richard W. Bailey was the author of Speaking American: A History of English in the United States, Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language, Nineteenth-Century English, and Rogue Scholar: The Sinister Life and Celebrated Death of Edward H. Rulloff. Bailey served in the course of his career as the President of the American Dialect Society and of the Dictionary Society of North America, and the associate editor for The Oxford Companion to the English Language. A long-time faculty member at the University of Michigan, he retired as Fred Newton Scott Collegiate Professor of English.

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