Reddit mentions of Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States

If you are interested in this sort of thing, I recommend going to your local ibrary and finding The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. He's funny and has an engaging style (plus it isn't very long). He's one of my favorite nonfiction authors.

Bryson also wrote a companion book called Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States. I haven't read that one yet, but just based on the author, it's probably something worth checking out.

Tough to decide between the two, but it's the same author and they're tied together so I'll just go with it: Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States and The Mother Tongue - English And How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. As a lover of language and its history, it's really interesting to see the links between usage in Britain and America.

I didn't know of Bryson before randomly buying these (damn, do I love book stores) and plan on buying more of his in the future when my reading list has been pared down a bit. (I've since learned he's very well-known and my outdoors-loving, recovering alcoholic dad read a Bryson book about getting sober and hiking the Appalachians a few years back.) His writing is very engaging and incredibly funny. I've read a lot of other linguistic books that weren't nearly as "fun" to read as these. Highly recommended.

oooh my goodness, read Made in America by Bill Bryson. Handles this exact question, and in the voice of Bill Bryson: funny, interesting, witty.

Of course I'm biased because this is what I love to do for a living (teach about language), but I also find myself learning about language in my free time.

Here are my "Greatest Hits" of language people, programs, blogs, and readings, in no particular order (despite the fact that I've numbered them):

1. Geoff Nunberg's segment on NPR's Fresh Air. Link to the Geoff Nunberg archive on NPR
   
   
2. The "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine. I like the current columnist, Ben Zimmer, but I'm partial to William Safire. Here's a link to Safire's "How to Read a Column"
   
   
3. There are a number of good language blogs. It's probably "cheating" to put them all in one item, but here goes:
   
   

• Johnson, the language blog at The Economist
  
  
• Language Log
  
  
• Languagehat
  
  

4. Books:
   
   

• Bill Bryson: The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way and Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
  
  
• Expletive Deleted by Ruth Wajnryb
  
  

5. Random stuff: I like George Carlin's many humorous takes on language and Margaret Atwood's fiction and Dr. Seuss's many made-up and lovely sounding words.
   
   And I subscribe to /r/logophilia, which often has many amusing words, like pulchritudinous, an ugly word that means something beautiful.
   
   EDIT: And it's great to get a book on usage. I like Garner's Modern American Usage, but here's a list from Diana Hacker at Bedford of other good usage guides

This is a tricky task. Many movies don't even bother to try and sound authentic, other than to remove references to words that obviously didn't exist back then. Even then, they're far from perfect in removing modern words. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard the word "scrounge" (which came out of WWI) in movies set long before WW1. Most people won't notice those little linguistic mistakes and won't really matter.

We don't have sound recordings for most of recorded history. The International Phonetic Alphabet didn't get started in the late nineteenth century, and wasn't very widely used at first, so even books that discuss pronunciation usually did it by reference to other common words - some of which are pronounced differently now. What we do know of historical language comes mostly from documents, and at many points in history, written and spoken language were different. For example, in the US in the eighteenth century, the conventions for written language were very formal and involved the use of a lot of flowery language and formal expressions (e.g. "I am your most humble and obedient servant" as a valediction). Oral communication in daily use was generally less formal and flowery than written language, though in certain situations (e.g. lawyers speaking in court), the spoken language would be closer to written documents. Written records also tend to show us how the wealthy and educated used language, which isn't always indicative of how everyday people spoke as they went about their lives.

Hell, even once we started having audio recordings, those recordings didn't always reflect the way people actually spoke. For example, nobody really spoke the way people spoke on early radio and television. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

The reality is that nobody knows for sure how people spoke prior to the twentieth century, and certainly you can't rely on your average movie-goer knowing how people spoke back then.

We have a better idea about how words were used and have changed meaning over the years but, again, most viewers won't know that the meaning has changed and you run the risk of confusing people if you're too authentic. It's not like you can have margin notes in a movie. :)

There are a few resources around the web that can help you get a feel for the language changes, like:

https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/C18Guide.pdf

http://mentalfloss.com/article/29761/when-did-americans-lose-their-british-accents

https://www.theclassroom.com/how-to-speak-18th-century-english-12083381.html

One common mistake made is to make nineteenth century Americans sound British. According to second link above, the reality is that the British people used to sound more like Americans, not the other way around. At least one person has argued that the best example we have of what eighteenth century rural Americans sounded like is Yosemite Sam, believe it or not. I don't remember for sure where I read that, but I think it may have been Bill Bryson in https://www.amazon.com/Made-America-Informal-History-Language/dp/0380713810/ref=sr_1_4 . NB: I am not a linguist, and am only passing on stuff I've seen or read... and my memory is far from perfect. :)

Assuming you don't have access to a linguistic historian, your best bet is probably to find some other movies or shows from the time period your screenplay is set in, and look at how they wrote dialogue. Some possible suggestions: Deadwood, True Grit (Coen Bros version), Gangs of New York, etc. Note, none of these are historically accurate. The swearing in Deadwood is very accurate, and True Grit used a convention of minimizing contractions, even though contractions were widely used then in spoken language.

You want to sound authentic, not be authentic. :)

This book is quite good too:

http://www.amazon.com/Made-America-Informal-History-Language/dp/0380713810/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322271843&sr=8-1

Written by Bill Bryson who has written many books about the USA.

I strongly recommend reading Made in America by Bill Bryson. In theory it is about the history of American English but in practise it is also American history and as with all Bill Bryson books is very funny in addition to being informative. It covers this whole naming situation, including amusing efforts at regulating spelling. The post office did (eventually!) manage to enforce that there couldn't be duplicate names within a state.

A short history of nearly everything is also a rollicking good read.

Oh man, I have to get back to reading Made in America. A great book for anyone interested in etymology!

This book by Bill Bryson goes over a lot of Colonial American language, much of it informal sayings that have evolved over time. I read it a long time ago, but I remember being interesting. I would look to get it from a library because I don't think it's exactly what you're looking for, but it may provide you with some of what you are looking for.

Mind your Ps and Qs originates from British pub slang. "Mind your pints and quarts" was the bartender's way of telling patrons to mind their own business and behave. Over the years, it shortened to "mind your Ps and Qs." Came over to America with the colonists.

Source ( http://www.amazon.com/Made-America-Informal-History-Language/dp/0380713810)