The English language was brought to America by the English colonists in the

seventeenth century and there was met with enrichment due to the waves of immigrants who
followed. There have been three major periods of immigration in America. The first period
documented is between the 17th and the 18th centuries, between the settlement of the first
settlers in Jamestown and the signing of the constitution after the War of Independence. During
this period, four million immigrants came to New England, the vast majority being from Britain.
The second period lasted until the civil war in 1860, and during that time the thirteen initial
colonies extended beyond the Apalachian Mountains, eventually expanding to the west coast
of the Pacific Ocean. During this time, about one and a half million immigrants came from
Ireland, due to the very poor potato harvest in 1845, and around half a million immigrants from
Germany as well, after the break of the revolution in 1848. During the third period, which held
until the World War II, America encountered waves of immigrants coming from Scandinavian
countries and southern and eastern Europe (especially Italy).
First of all, one must remember the first expedition from England to the New World
(now America) which was planned and implemented in 1584 by Walter Raleigh. More exactly,
on March 25, 1584, 49 years ago, by the blessing of Queen Elizabeth I, Walter Raleigh was
granted a charter and the authority to set up an English colony. The colonisation process,
however, was an unfortunate failure. Due to the exploration spirit of the colonisers, namely
Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow who were the commanders of the two ships sent to explore
the New Lands, the connection between the natives and the colonisers was damaged. In 1585,
more ships returned to the new colony, now named Virginia in the honour of the Virgin
Queen. Walter Raleigh had extensive plans for the colony he recruited families and envisioned
a city that was to be built inside the colony. However, instead of the colonists to focus on
enacting a set of basic, firm rules of co-living with the natives and start the process of cultural,
social and later political integration, they started exploring the lands near the colony which
upset the Indians and started a silent riot. In 1590, a ship with supplies arrived in North Carolina
(the colony) but found not even one member of the English colonisers. Their disappearance
remains a mystery even to these days and is still being discussed and debated in the academic
institutions.
The first stable English settlement in North America was established in 1607, in
Jamestown, Virginia. In 1620, English pilgrims debarked in Massachusetts Bay and founded
the Plymouth Colony, the first permanent English settlement in New England. The colonists
belonged to the Puritan community, forming the Massachusetts Gulf Company in 1628. Other
religious colonies were founded in Rhode Island (1636), the colony being based on the principle
of religious tolerance; Connecticut (1639), based on congregationalist religious beliefs, and
Maryland (1634), dominated by Roman Catholics. These colonies were close to the shore, never
penetrating the continental lands, and in fact, they were strongly attached to England, more than
other colonies. However, because the distances made impossible the direct government of
England, the governors of the colonies were commissioned to form assemblies chosen amongst
the colonists. Plymouth Colony started gaining a lot of terrain due to the mixed group of
immigrants, ranging from different ages, beliefs, habits and social and occupational
backgrounds. Later, these immigrants were referred as the Pilgrim Fathers due to their
continuous search for land where they could establish a religious empire on their own making:
free of the persecutions they were acquaintance with in England. Because of this vision, many
immigrants joined the settlement and by 1640 around 25.000 immigrants were already settled
in the region.
 Important to note in what regards the evolution of the English language, the two
colonies, Virginia and Plymouth had different linguistic backgrounds. In Virginia, many
immigrants had roots in Englands West Country such as Somerset or Gloucestershire, thus
bringing with them the respective accents from their native cities: the r strongly pronounced
after vowels or the Zummerszet voicing of s sounds. Even in our present days, reminiscences
of the past accents still remain strong in some isolated locations in the region. In antithesis, the
colonists in Plymouth were rooted in the east of England, in regions such as Lincolnshire,
Nottinghamshire, Essex, Kent or London. It is only clear that the eastern accents were very
different to the south accents: the r lacked after the vowels, compared to the accent in Virginia
where the r was strongly pronounced after vowels. Immigrant movements preceding the
massive ones in the two settlements preserved the distinction of dialects. One cannot determine
a firm basis and evolution of the dialects after these mass population movements and thus a
consolidated dialect would never emerge. Up until these days there are many distinct dialects
but the strong difference between the north, midland and the south is strongly visible.
To continue, the seventeenth century saw a new wave of immigrants who brought with
them a mixture of linguistic backgrounds in the region. A notable example to support this can
be seen in the todays province of Pennsylvania. The province of Pennsylvania, also known as
the Pennsylvania Colony, was a British colony, founded on March 4, 1681 by William Penn,
with the approval of British King Charles II. Today is located in the territory of the US state of
Pennsylvania. The colony was dominated by the Penn family until the American Revolution.
After that, the colony was one of the thirteen colonies which uprised against the British colonial
power and declared independence on July 4, 1776. Since then, Pennsylvania has been known
as the Quaker, a name given as a symbol of gratitude towards the famous Quaker William Penn
who founded the Pennsylvania State Constitution - the first of the US constitutions to grant and
guarantee the freedom of the conscience. The constitution of Pennsylvania was written and
thought as a counteract to the inequities to which they were subjected by the British Empire.
Due to the freedoms granted by this province, it was only natural for it to see peaks of
immigrants in the years that followed. In this regard, people with different linguistic
background were now living and coexisting together which led to a salient disjuncture between
regional dialects that started to fade away gradually.
The eighteenth century was marked by a vast number of immigrants coming from the
Northern Ireland. The Irish population starting migrating to America even since 1600, however,
starting with the 1720s, the Irish immigrants marked a new peak: 50.000 Irish and Scots-Irish
settlers came to America. In 1776, the year that marked the first step to Americas
independence, it was stipulated that one in seven colonies was populated in majority with Scots-
Irish. The regular opinion on these inhabitants was that of them being seen as frontier people.
The exploring spirit of these settlers lead to the further exploration of the south and the west.
Other colonies followed after Plymouth was founded: New Hampshire (1623),
Massachusetts Bay (1630), Connecticut (1634) and Rhode Island (1636). After 1630, the entire
Massachusetts Bay was colonized by the Great Migration of the Puritans. The founding fathers
attempted from the very beginning to live in peace with the natives and until the colonies were
not so extended in matters of population, they succeeded in doing so. In time, however, the
colonists started to constantly expand their territory and began to intervene repeatedly in the
battles of the American Indians. The British Government attributes the development of the
region to corporate institutions or individuals by open letters or colonization books. Thus,
Maryland (1634) and Carolina (1663) split in North Carolina and South Carolina emerge in
1729. The first black people are brought to North America in 1619, and they were treated as a
cheaper workforce compared to the apprentices (who were largely poor European immigrants).
After 1619, when a Dutch vessel brought 20 Africans to the British colony of Jamestown,
Virginia, slavery spread to American colonies to help produce profitable tobacco crops.
Although it is impossible to estimate the exact figures, some historians have estimated that 6-7
million slaves were imported into the New World in the eighteenth century, depraving the
African continent by the healthiest and most capable men and women. Slavery was practiced
along the American colonies of the 17th and 18th centuries, African-American slaves helping
to build the economic foundations of the new nation. The Dutch were less concerned with
colonization. They settled in the New York we know today, establishing in 1624 the New
Netherlands colony with its capital in New Amsterdam. But when the British conquered the
Dutch region in 1664, Charles III assigned the region to his brother Jacob, duke of New York,
and the territory is renamed New York. The duke sells the New Jersey region to a private person.
Part of this land was acquired in 1674 by William Penn, the leader of the Black Soldiers of
Blue. Penn attaches Pennsylvania and Delaware (1682) to New Jersey. In 1733, the last private
colony, called Georgia, was founded in honour of King George of England. After the
beginnings marked by poverty, New England states bloom at the end of the seventeenth century.
The first American universities are founded: Harvard (1636), Yale (1701) and Princeton (1746).
In the Franco-Indian War (1754-1763), the New England colonies remain loyal to the British
Empire. However, their economic power increased their confidence in their own forces, and
their ties to the motherland have diminished with every new generation of colonists born in
America. To pay for the debt recorded after the struggle with France in North America, King
George III of the United Kingdom is trying to increase its finances by raising taxes in the
thirtheen English colonies. The Colonies instead demanded to be represented by their own
delegates in the British Parliament, but London was not prepared for this event. The Colonies
were also restricted in other areas. The high import taxes for all UK goods were considered
offensive and lead to boycotts of great proportions that will be succeeded by the American
Revolution. Following these events, in 1790, the Union consisted of the 13 states that had been
the thirteen original colonies that had risen against Great Britain in 1775-1776. In the same
year, there was conducted a census that revealed a population of 4 million in the country, most
of the inhabitants living around the Atlantic coast. One century later, the population increased
to the sparkling number of 50 million inhabitants. The accent that emerged following these
events is now heard from Virgina to southern California and it is commonly correlated with the
present-day American oral language.
The nineteenth century was marked by a massive wave of immigrants from all over the
world, all coming to the land of promise, America. These immigrant waves were a result of the
poverty and famine in Europe. The Irish immigrated in massive numbers due to the potato
famine in Ireland, in 1840. Following failed revolution from 1848, many Germans and Italians
migrated to America. The year 1848 is known in universal history as a year of great national
turmoil in several states of Europe. Beginning in France, the revolution has spread rapidly in
other countries as well and has embraced several forms: from the struggle for national unity
and political rights to social liberation.
 The leading role in the Revolution of 1848 was attributed to the bourgeoisie that raised
the European peoples into battle. The causes of the Revolution are complex: economic (created
by the defeat of the progress of the capitalist economy by the absolutist regime, the food crisis,
amplified by the drought between 1847-1848 and the excessive rise in prices), socio-political
(the dissatisfaction of the bourgeoisie, workers and peasants due to the return to absolutism),
and last but not least, national (the desire for independence of all states and the need to unite
the crumbled ones). As the years passed by, also Central European Jews came to the new lands
of America, in desperate attempts to escape the pogroms in the 1880s.
The first two decades of the twentieth century saw an enormous wave of immigrants:
three quarters of a million of immigrants, in average, per year. 75 million of people were
inhabiting America in 1900, and their number doubled in 1950. Naturally, in the process of
integration, the immigrants started speaking English. The census conducted in 1990 revealed
that the number of people over five year of age who spoke English as their native language
grew to 198 million, meaning 86% of the population of America. 2000 marked 215 million
English speakers. Some historians and philanthropists alike argue that America managed to
maintain its position of emerging super-power through the unity of the English language. It is
hard to imagine the length of culture diversification in America and thus the large number of
languages that arrived with the coming of the immigrants, yet, the English language managed
to unite the people and give them access to common shared opportunities. Consistently,
minority ethnic groups started to express concern in regards to the preservation of their cultural
and linguistic heritage, concern that even today is expressed by descendants of the Amerindian
tribes.