We may soon have a linguistic version of President Trump’s 2025 “Gulf of America” stunt. There is a proposal within MAGA circles to rename our national language, American English, to “American”. This would be done in commemoration of America’s 250th birthday this summer.
The proposal is gaining traction on venues like Fox & Friends. The president may or may not be too busy (with minor complications like the Iran war) to give this idea full consideration before July.
This is a dumb idea, and characteristic of the anti-intellectualism rampant in populist circles. If carried to its logical implications, this would mean that any language spoken in more than one country would have to be renamed for political/nationalistic purposes.
No more Spanish in Mexico, Chile, and Guatemala. Henceforth, the Spanish spoken in these nations would be called “Mexican”, “Chilean”, and “Guatemalan”. No more German in Austria. No more Portuguese in Brazil.
American English descended from British English. Everyone seems to agree about that. And yes: American English is distinctive, as are the versions of English spoken in Australia and Canada.
At what point should a language be called something different, though? That’s easy: when it becomes mutually unintelligible with its source language.
English, German, and Dutch all share common roots. There is some crossover vocabulary. But an English speaker doesn’t automatically understand German or Dutch. These are different languages.
All of us can understand the English spoken in the UK, Canada, or Australia. Which is why they’re all the same language.
-ET