How We The People Built America English

To create a nation, you need a language. Other ingredients are also required: a territory, a flag, a government, a currency, a postal service and so on. But language is the crux. Without it, you have no conversation. Of course, new languages don’t emerge from a vacuum. They evolve slowly from other languages, acquiring their own character only after a long process of decantation. George Bernard Shaw once purportedly said that England and the U.S. are separated by a common language. That separation is what American English has achieved, not without pain, over a period spanning more than four centuries.