"You Say Soda, I Say Pop: Dialect, Variants, and the Development of American English"
Read Drout's Lecture 13. This is a general discussion of the spread of English and variant forms of English.
(You should also read Van Gelderen, Chapter 9: "English Around the World", for a different and more detailed account of similar matters. We won't have time for a thorough discussion of this chapter, but you shold read it and bring it to class so we can deal with it as much as possible.)
Written HW: Make good notes on Drout, Lecture 13. Make sure to cover these points:
What did the British colonies around the world do to increase the varieties of English?
Make sure you know what "isoglosses" are.
What is the main feature that accounts for the different varieties of American English?
Email to me, NOT to your group.
NB: As always, bring your text to class with you.