Magnifying glasses do not always make matters clear. There has been much talk about American English in terms ancestral. Researchers have analyzed speech and “derived” sounds with particularity worthy of ■Pygmalion:
I’ll take it down first in ■Bell’s Visible Speech; then in ■Broad Romic; and then we’ll get… the phonograph.
Individual speech and language
I have never pondered over any possibility to become my grandfather. Anyway, my grandfathers or grandmothers did not speak English.
My father spoke some English, but he said he had an accent. If I wanted a grammar book or dictionary, he would buy it for me, same for note books or other stationery, but he would not teach me. I could pick the language up on my own, he said; I was little enough, a kindergartner. That was right though he was a historian. He helped me buy my beloved Webster Unabridged.
Language standard
Back to deriving American English entire, ■Zoltan Kovecses says:
The main idea of the approach is that the origins of American English are somehow contained in the various regional dialects of British English.
Ben Trawick-Smith would include American English with “a larger continuum of Southern England-derived dialects”. The idea is yet debatable. Today, he says, we might think about the British as “talking American” as well. Feel welcome to read, ■When did Americans stop “talking British”?
American English today
Importantly, if we do not clarify we mean the American English of the 1900s, or 1800s, we give the impression the talk is about the present-day American. This shape for the language originated in the USA. We always tell language origins by the countries or lands of emergence.
My theory is, there is spontaneity to accompany reason in man, and American was taking shape already with the Declaration and Constitution.
We can see the honor; the definite article takes on a cognitive form, as in citizens of a state rather than the citizens always, a phrase-governed use.
The Modal verb shall becomes a scope for legally provisioning, not prescribing:
The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the State where the said crimes shall have been committed.
Feel welcome to my notes on modern American English and the US Constitution.
■USA Charters of Freedom