Do You Speak American . About the Broadcast. New York, 2005 Dear Viewer, Since moving to the United States over forty years ago, I began to speak more like Americans. Words, accents, language have always fascinated me. So it was thrilling twenty years ago to work on a TV series about the English language. In our television series The Story of English we traced the origins of our language and how it spread around the world. Sincerely, Robert MacNeil Print Table of Contents Program Description In the three-part series Do You Speak American?
To explore the question of what it means to speak American, MacNeil travels down the Eastern Seaboard from Maine to Philadelphia, where he turns west into Pennsylvania and Ohio. Viewing language from such a broad perspective reveals that speaking American means different things to different people and that, because of political and social issues surrounding language, there is no consensus on what speaking American is or should be. Do You Speak American? Back to Top Recommended Uses of Do You Speak American? North Carolina State University. Department of Linguistics. Center for Applied Linguistics. » Words of the Year American Dialect Society. SLANGUAGE A quick & easy way to pick up a language. PBS: Public Broadcasting Service.