The American Language

An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States

By: H. L. Mencken

Narrated by: Rebecca H. Lee

American author, scholar, and satirist H.L. Mencken wrote The American Language in 1919, intending to defend American speech from prescriptivist critics. "America itself is unutterably vulgar. But vulgarity, after all, means no more than a yielding to natural impulses in the face of conventional inhibitions, and that yielding to natural impulses is at the heart of all healthy language-making."

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Public Domain (P)2021 Rebecca H. Lee

American Language

Excellent and very well read. This is a classic and deserves to have someone like this reader interpreting it.

Interesting book.

If you are interested in words and phrases and the differences between British and American English, you will enjoy this book. The book is over 100 years old, but it did not seem terribly antiquated to me. As regards the narration, the reader used many pronunciations that I have never heard of before. Perhaps she knows more about it than I do???

The book is enjoyable, the narration poor.

Though the book is quite an informative guide to the study of the American language, yet there manifest a good number of mispronounced words, along with a dull and monotone style of narration.