Henry Carter Hull

Welcome to the enthralling world of linguistics. If you’ve ever been curious how words like "awesomesauce"ever came to be, let alone made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, or if you’ve ever wondered why you say "firefly"and someone else calls the same insect a "lightning bug,"English in America: A Linguistic History is for you...There’s an incredibly rich and colorful history behind American English. A profoundly diverse assortment of cultures...

America has always been a land of immigrants, and American English has been shaped since its earliest days by contact among immigrants from all over the British Isles and from around the world. Consider how the languages of the many immigrants who poured into America in the 19th and early 20th centuries gave rise to distinctive ethnic dialects of American English, and how they left their mark on American English more generally.

Explore the indelible linguistic effects of the peoples of African descent who were brought to America as slaves, who went on to develop a richly expressive language variety that today is emulated by young people across the world—African American English. Contrary to common misunderstandings, this well-studied dialect is governed by intricate and consistent rules.

This film profiles Marie Wilcox, the last fluent speaker of the Native American language Wukchumni and the dictionary she created in an effort to keep her language alive.. Preserving the Wukchumni language has become Wilcox’s life. She has spent more than seven years working on the dictionary and through her work, Wilcox hopes the dictionary will support the revitalization of the Wukchumni language for future generations.