Grandma Girl here, I'm in Yon Fog Fog, your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.

Today, we're going to talk about the earliest origins of American English

and about tricky phrasal verbs. With July 4th celebrations looming, it's a good time to consider how the American Revolution

affected the English language itself.

After all, Noah Webster didn't take the U out of color and flavor just for the heck of it.

He was making an important statement about the linguistic independence of a new nation.

But before we get to Webster's validation of a separate American language,

we have to go back a bit in time to understand how American English even developed into a different thing from British English.

And for that we need to go back to the beginning of colonial times.

When British settlers first arrived in the new world, many indigenous languages

were already spoken on its shores. Not only did early colonists encounter many of these

languages for the first time, but they also

encountered new places and new things, none of which had English names.

So to be able to have good colonial conversations about where they should live,

what plants to eat, and what critters to be on the lookout for,

they had to learn about them from the original inhabitants.

For instance, many place names in colonial America were based on the names given them by Native Americans.

In fact, more than half our modern states have names that are anglicized versions of Native American names. For instance, Massachusetts is derived from the Algonquin word, Masetu Esset, meaning something like Great Hills Place.

Connecticut comes from the native word Kinoctiquot, which translates roughly to a place along the river. Michigan comes from

Algonquin Michigan, which has been translated as Great Water or Big Lake.

And how about the great state of Texas? Well, one longstanding

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