英語愛的作文怎麼寫
『壹』 用「愛」寫一遍英語作文
「Hello,beautiful girl.I love you!」 「Are you kiding with me?! YOU,GET OUT!」
好吧我是來搗亂的
『貳』 關於愛的作文用英語怎麼寫
Love makes the world go around.
to us human is what water to fish.Love shines the most beautiful light of humanity,we born in it,we live by it.Too often we take it as granted,but we should know love is a priceless gift we should cherish.But how to cherish the love?I have heard a saying :the quickest way to receive love is to give it; the fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly the best way to keep love is to give it wings.
It is important for us to learn to love as the first class in our life.Only when you know how to love than you will be a real man in this world.Love brings us warmth in the fearful coldness,love brings us bright when life gets hard and dark.Love brings us confidence toward life when we are tired out and want to give up.
Love deserves all the admiring words,and love is even beyond the life and death.That is what love is all about in my eyes.
『叄』 以愛為題寫一篇英語作文
我英語不好,我寫作不錯,我可以寫愛的文章,但是翻譯成英語就有勞各位了：
愛
人們常說：「愛是人類最寶貴的財富之一.」也有人說：「愛是上帝賜給我們最大的禮品,任何人一旦缺少了它們,就難以得到幸福.」那麼,愛究竟是什麼呢?
愛是什麼,我也無法描述,只知道它既無重量又無體積,既不是固體也不是液體,更不是氣體.它無法用時間、空間甚至金錢來衡量.
愛到底是什麼?我想：
愛是「慈母手中線,遊子身上衣」的那份真情.
愛是「但願人長久,千里共嬋娟」的那聲祝福.
愛是「獨在異鄉為異客,每逢佳期節倍思親」的那種情懷.
愛是「如果你正承受不幸,請你告訴我」的那種呼喚.
愛是「一枚小小的郵票,我在這頭,母親在那頭」的思念.
愛是成功時爸爸臉上的微笑,媽媽的鼓勵和嘉獎.
愛是失敗時爸爸額上皺紋,媽媽眼中的淚珠,兄弟姐妹的一雙雙支持的手.
愛是回家時爺爺臉上燦爛的笑容,奶奶抽屜里香甜的糖果.
愛是中秋節時從故鄉捎來的圓圓
愛是春節中四面八方發來的條條簡訊,以及朋友的由衷祝願.
這就是愛,既簡單又復雜.它簡單,卻讓你怎麼說也說不清楚；它復雜,卻又只是一種親朋之間的情誼.
缺少愛的人,如迷途的羔羊,似斷檣的航船——迷惘、無助.
缺少愛的人,如秋風過後的枯樹,似大雁南飛後的空巢——寂寞、冷清.
缺少愛的人,如戈壁上的幼株,缺乏雨露的滋潤和土壤的給予,終難成為大樹.
缺少愛的人,如折了翅膀的小鳥,似斷了牽線的風箏,再就難以飛上天空.
愛就是：行舟時的流水,攀登時的手腳,黑夜中的燈塔,脆弱時的肩膀……
愛是一筆寶貴的財富,我們都應該擁有它,珍惜它；愛是春天的使者,我們應該給它貼上青春的郵票,寄給所有的親朋好友以及需要的人.
『肆』 關於愛的英語作文怎麼寫
Love makes the world go around.
Love to us human is what water to fish.Love shines the most beautiful light of humanity,we born in it,we live by it.Too often we take it as granted,but we should know love is a priceless gift we should cherish.But how to cherish the love?I have heard a saying :the quickest way to receive love is to give it; the fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly the best way to keep love is to give it wings.
It is important for us to learn to love as the first class in our life.Only when you know how to love than you will be a real man in this world.Love brings us warmth in the fearful coldness,love brings us bright when life gets hard and dark.Love brings us confidence toward life when we are tired out and want to give up.
Love deserves all the admiring words,and love is even beyond the life and death.That is what love is all about in my eyes.
『伍』 英語作文怎麼寫的愛情
The Positive Meanings of Love
We'd like to share some of the positive meanings love has for us.
Love means that I know the person I love. I'm aware of the many sides of the other person — not just the beautiful side but also the limitations, inconsistencies and faults. I have an awareness of the other's feelings and thoughts, and I experience something of the core of that person. I can penetrate social masks and roles and see the other person on a deeper level.
Love means that I care about the welfare of the person I love. To the extent that it is genuine, my caring is not possessive, nor does it hold the other person back. On the contrary, my caring frees both of us. If I care about you, I'm concerned about your growth, and I hope you will become all that you can become. Consequently, I don't put up obstacles to what you do that enhances you as a person, even though it may result in my discomfort at times.
Love means having respect for the dignity of the person I love. If I love you, I can see you as a separate person, with your own values and thoughts and feelings, and I do not insist that you surrender your identity to match an image of what I expect you to be for me. I can allow and encourage you to stand alone and to be who you are, and I avoid treating you as an object or using you primarily to satisfy my own needs.
Love means having a responsibility toward the person I love. If I love you, I respond to most of your major needs as a person. This responsibility does not include my doing for you what you are capable of doing for yourself; nor does it mean that I run your life for you. It does mean acknowledging that what I am and what I do affects you, so that I am directly involved in your happiness and your suffering. A lover does have the capacity to hurt or ignore the loved one, and in this sense we see that love involves an acceptance of some responsibility for the impact my way of being has on you.
Love means making a commitment to the person I love. This commitment does not mean surrendering our total selves to each other; nor does it imply that the relationship is necessarily permanent. It does involve a willingness to stay with each other in times of pain, struggle, and despair, as well as in times of calm and enjoyment.
Love means trusting the person I love. If I love you, I trust that you will accept my caring and my love and that you won't deliberately hurt me. I trust that you will find me attractive, and that you won't abandon me; I trust the mutual nature of our love. If we trust each other, we are willing to be open to each other and reveal our true selves.
Love can tolerate imperfection. In a love relationship there are times when I am bored, times when I may feel like giving up, times of real strain, and times I feel I can't move forward. Authentic love does not imply enring happiness. I can stay ring rough times, however, because I can remember what we had together in the past, and I can picture what we will have together in our future if we care enough to face our problems and work them through. We agree with the idea that love is a spirit that changes life. Love is a way of life that is creative and that transforms. However, love is not reserved for a perfect world. Love is meant for our imperfect world where things go wrong. Love is meant to be a spirit that works in painful situations. Love is meant to bring meaning into life where nonsense appears to rule. In other words, love comes into an imperfect world to make it possible to live.
Love is open. If I love you, I encourage you to reach out and develop other relationships. Although our love for each other and our commitment to each other might prohibit certain actions on our parts, we are not totally and exclusively married to each other. It is a false love that cements one person to another in such a way that he or she is not given room to grow.
Love is selfish. I can only love you if I genuinely love, value, appreciate, and respect myself. If I am empty, then all I can give you is my emptiness. If I feel that I'm complete and worthwhile in myself, then I'm able to give to you out of my fullness. One of the best ways for me to give you love is by fully enjoying myself with you.
Love involves seeing the potential within the person we love. In my love for another, I view her or him as the person she or he can become, while still accepting who and what the person is now. By taking people as they are, we make them worse, but by treating them as if they already were what they ought to be, we help make them better.
To sum it up, mature love is union under the condition of preserving one's indiviality. In love, two beings become one and yet remain two.
愛的真諦
我們想把我們對愛情的一些積極看法跟大家分享。
愛就意味著了解所愛的人。能夠認識到這個人多個方面——不僅僅是美好的一面，還有他的局限，他的矛盾之處和他的缺點。要看到對方的情感、思想，感覺他的內心，要能夠透過他在社交場合的表現和他的社會角色而看到他內心的深處。
愛就意味著關心所愛之人的幸福。事實上，愛不是佔有，也不是束縛。相反，兩人都在愛中得到自由。關心一個人就是關心他的成長，希望他可以成為最好的他。因此，我不會為他的個人發展設置障礙，即使這樣有時使我難受。
愛就意味著尊重所愛之人。愛一個人，就是將其卸任一個獨立的人，有自己的價值觀、思想和感情。我不會為自己而堅持要他放棄個性變成我所希望的他。我能允許，也鼓勵他我行我素，成為他自己。我不會視他為物，或利用他主要來滿足自己的需要。
愛就意味著對所愛之人負責。愛一個人，就要對他作為獨立個體的需求做出回應。這種負責並不包括替他做他可以自己做到的事，也不是操縱他的生活。這種負責是承認我的所作所為會影響到他，他的歡樂痛苦都與我直接相關。相愛者確有傷害或忽略所愛的人的能力。從這個意義上說，我們認為，愛就要為自己的行為對對方產生的影響承擔某種責任。
愛就意味著對所愛之人做出承諾。這種承諾並非意味著把自己完全交給對方，也並不是說這一關系必然是天長地久，這種承諾否認在平靜愉快時，還是困苦掙扎、失意絕望時，都願意廝守相伴。
愛就意味著信賴所愛之人。愛一個人，就要相信他會接受我的關心，接受我的愛，相信他不會故意傷害我；相信他會認為平靜愉快有吸引力，相信他不會拋棄我；相信愛是相互的。如果我們彼此信賴，我們就願彼此坦誠相待，敞開心扉。
愛能夠容忍不完美。愛人之間也會有時感到厭倦，有時想放棄，有時感到壓力，有時感到無法前進。真正的愛並不意味著永遠的幸福。但是，在困難時期我能堅守，因為我仍記得我們共同度過的日子，我也能想像如果我們願意麵對我們之間的問題、渡過難關、我們將共同擁有什麼樣的未來。我們一致認為愛是一種能改變人生的精神。愛是一種生活方式，它具有創造和改變的力量。但是愛並不是為完善世界而存在的，愛本來就是我們這個不完美、有缺陷的世界而存在的。愛應該是一種能緩解痛苦的精神力量。愛應該給我們這無聊的生活帶來意義。換言之，是愛使我們能夠在這不完美的世界上生活下去。
愛是包容的。愛一個人，就要鼓勵他與他人建立聯系。盡管對彼此的愛與承諾不允許我們有某些行為，這種結合也不是全然排他的。兩個人密不可分，再無個人發展的餘地，這樣的愛是不真實、不明智的。
愛又是自私的。只有真正自愛自重、自賞自尊，才能接受別人。如果自己空虛，那麼我能給所愛之人的也只是空虛。如果認為自己是充實的、出色的，那麼我就能以自己的充實為所愛之人增光，給對方以愛的最好方法之一就是與所愛之人一起充分體驗自己。
愛就要看到所愛之人身上的內在潛力。愛一個人，在接受今日的他的同時，還要了看作明天他會成為的人。視人靜止不變，則令其退步，而視其進步發展、如同他的潛力已經發揮，則助其進步。
總而言之，成熟的愛就是在保持個體獨立條件下的雙方結合。在愛情中，兩個人變成了一個人同時還保持著兩個獨立的個體。
『陸』 用愛這個字寫英語作文小學四年級的
I Love My Mother s Milk I have a good mother,I love her and she loves me.She is not beautiful,but she is God in my deepest heart.I can t remember the days when my dear mother gave her great love to me ,but I will never forget every cups of milk that she brings for me while I am tired.Yes,it is very delicious.I think there is nothing can be better than my mother smilk.It is her great love.I love my mother s milk.
『柒』 寫一篇關於愛情的英語作文
In the beginning, love is always sweet.As time is slipping away, boredom, be used to, abandonment, loneliness, despair and cold smile will come graally.
Once being eager to stay with someone forever, later, we would felicitate
ourselves on leaving him/her.
During those transient days, we thought we loved him/her deeply.Then, we got to know it is not love but a lie by which we comfort
ourselves.
(開始的開始總是甜蜜的。後來就有了厭倦、習慣、背棄、寂寞、絕望和冷笑。曾經渴望與一個人長相廝守，後來，多麼慶幸自己離開了？曾幾何時，在一段短暫的時光里，我們以為自己深深的愛著的一個人。後來，我們才知道，那不是愛，那隻是對自己說謊。)
It is turned out that those who you thought you could not lose, actually, it
is not very hard to forget them. You drained up your tears, there will be another one pleasing you.
You had plunged yourself into a depression, finally, you found those who do not love you are not worthy of your sadness.
Recalling those unhappy things, is it a comedy? When your wrong love
stops its steps, a brand-new world will be shown to you.
All sadness will become history.
(你以為不可失去的人，原來並非不可失去。你流幹了眼淚，自有另一個人逗你歡笑。你傷心欲絕，然後發現不愛你的人，根本不值得你為之傷心。今天回首，何嘗不是一個喜劇？情盡時，自有另一番新境界，所有的悲哀也不過是歷史。)
For love, imagination is often more beautiful than reality. The same with meeting, also with separation.
We thought we would have a deep love toward somebody. Incoming days will let you know in fact it just is very shallow, very shallow.
The most deep and heaviest love must grow up with days.
(愛情總是想像比現實美麗，相逢如是，告別亦如是。我們以為愛得很深、很深，來日歲月，會讓你知道，它不過很淺、很淺。最深最重的愛，必須和時日一起成長。)
With love, two strangers can suddenly be familiar with each other that they sleep on the same bed.
However, this two similar people,
While breaking up, say,
「I think you are more and more strange to me」
It is love that has two strangers become acquaintances, then turning the two acquaintances into strangers again.
Love is such kind of game which makes two strangers become lovers, then return them into the original situation.
(因為愛情的緣故，兩個陌生人可以突然熟絡到睡在同一張床上。然而，相同的兩個人，在分手時卻說，我覺得你越來越陌生。愛情將兩個人由陌生變成熟悉，又由熟悉變成陌生。愛情正是一個將一對陌生人變成情侶，又將一對情侶變成陌生人的游戲。)
I believe, love can change you,
Which is the advantage of youth as well as its sorrow.
What has men changed perhaps comes from God』s love or the mercy of Budda, but they are never changed by women.
The prodigal are the most unsuitable person for getting married,
meanwhile, the most suitable one for marriage as well.
It is not women who change the prodigal, she just appear in the very time when the prodigal want to be changed.
(相信愛情可以令一個人改變，是年輕的好處，也是年輕的悲哀。浪子永遠是浪子。令男人改變的，也許是上帝的愛或者佛祖的慈悲，但絕對不會是女人。最不宜結婚的是浪子，最適宜結婚的也是浪子。往往不是女人改變一個浪子，而是女人在浪子想改變的時候剛好出現。)
『捌』 寫一篇題目為《Love》的英語作文，可以寫父母對我的愛，也可以寫朋友之間的愛
英語散文:母愛的真諦-永遠不後悔
Time is running out for my friend. While we are sitting at lunch she casually mentions she and her husband are thinking of starting a family. "We're taking a survey,"she says, half-joking. "Do you think I should have a baby?"
"It will change your life," I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral. "I know,"she says, "no more sleeping in on weekends, no more spontaneous holidays..."
But that's not what I mean at all. I look at my friend, trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes. I want to tell her that the physical wounds of child bearing will heal, but becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will be vulnerable forever.
I consider warning her that she will never again read a newspaper without thinking: "What if that had been MY child?" That every plane crash, every house fire will haunt her. That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die. I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will rece her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub.
I feel I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might arrange for child care, but one day she will be going into an important business meeting, and she will think her baby's sweet smell. She will have to use every ounce of discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her child is all right.
I want my friend to know that every decision will no longer be routine. That a five-year-old boy's desire to go to the men's room rather than the women's at a restaurant will become a major dilemma. The issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that a child molester may be lurking in the lavatory. However decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself constantly as a mother.
Looking at my attractive friend, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the added weight of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself. That her own life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. She would give it up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years—not to accomplish her own dreams—but to watch her children accomplish theirs.
I want to describe to my friend the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to hit a ball. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog for the first time. I want her to taste the joy that is so real it hurts.
My friend's look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes. "You'll never regret it," I say finally. Then, squeezing my friend's hand, I offer a prayer for her and me and all of the mere mortal women who stumble their way into this holiest of callings.
時光任苒，朋友已經老大不小了。我們坐在一起吃飯的時候，她漫不經心地提到她和她的丈夫正考慮要小孩。「我們正在做一項調查，」她半開玩笑地說。「你覺得我應該要個小孩嗎？」
「他將改變你的生活。」我小心翼翼地說道，盡量使語氣保持客觀。「這我知道。」她答道，「周末睡不成懶覺，再也不能隨心所欲休假了……」
但我說的絕非這些。我注視著朋友，試圖整理一下自己的思緒。我想讓她知道她永遠不可能在分娩課上學到的東西。我想讓她知道：分娩的有形傷疤可以癒合，但是做母親的情感傷痕卻永遠如新，她會因此變得十分脆弱。
我想告誡她：做了母親後，每當她看報紙時就會情不自禁地聯想：「如果那件事情發生在我的孩子身上將會怎樣啊！」每一次飛機失事、每一場住宅火災都會讓她提心吊膽。看到那些忍飢挨餓的孩子們的照片時，她會思索：世界上還有什麼比眼睜睜地看著自己的孩子餓死更慘的事情呢？我打量著她精修細剪的指甲和時尚前衛的衣服，心裡想到：不管她打扮多麼考究，做了母親後，她會變得像護崽的母熊那樣原始而不修邊幅。
我覺得自己應該提醒她，不管她在工作上投入了多少年，一旦做了母親，工作就會脫離常規。她自然可以安排他人照顧孩子，但說不定哪天她要去參加一個非常重要的商務會議，卻忍不住想起寶寶身上散發的甜甜乳香。她不得不拚命克制自己，才不致於為了看看孩子是否安然無羔而中途回家。
我想告訴朋友，有了孩子後，她將再也不能按照慣例做出決定。在餐館，5歲的兒子想進男廁而不願進女廁將成為擺在她眼前的一大難題：她將在兩個選擇之間權衡一番：尊重孩子的獨立和性別意識，還是讓他進男廁所冒險被潛在的兒童性騷擾者侵害？任憑她在辦公室多麼果斷，作為母親，她仍經常事後後悔自己當時的決定。
注視著我的這位漂亮的朋友，我想讓她明確地知道，她最終會恢復到懷孕前的體重，但是她對自己的感覺已然不同。她現在視為如此重要的生命將隨著孩子的誕生而變得不那麼寶貴。為了救自己的孩子，她時刻願意獻出自己的生命。但她也開始希望多活一些年頭，不是為了實現自己的夢想，而是為了看著孩子們美夢成真。
我想向朋友形容自己看到孩子學會擊球時的喜悅之情。我想讓她留意寶寶第一次觸摸狗的絨毛時的捧腹大笑。我想讓她品嘗快樂，盡管這快樂真實得令人心痛。
朋友的表情讓我意識到自己已經是熱淚盈眶。「你永遠不會後悔，」我最後說。然後緊緊地握住朋友的手，為她、為自己、也為每一位艱難跋涉、准備響應母親職業神聖的召喚的平凡女性獻上自己的祈禱
『玖』 用英語來寫《我愛英語》這篇作文二百字左右
By JOHN McWHORTER
Published: January 20, 2012
There has always been disagreement on these American shores as to just what the 「」 English is. The status of Parisian French or Tuscan Italian has long been unassailable. Yet in the early 1940s, fusty Chicagoans were writing to The Chicago Tribune declaring Midwestern speech America』s 「purest,」 while New York radio announcers were speaking in plummy Londonesque, complete with rolled r』s. Down in Charleston, S.C., the elite』s sense of the best English involved peculiar archaisms like 「cam」 for 「calm」 and 「gyardin」 for 「garden.」
SPEAKING AMERICAN
A History of English in the United States
By Richard W. Bailey
207 pp. Oxford University Press. $27.95.
In 「Speaking American,」 a history of American English, Richard W. Bailey argues that geography is largely behind our fluid evaluations of what constitutes 「proper」 English. Early Americans were often moving westward, and the East Coast, unlike European cities, birthed no dominant urban standard. The story of American English is one of eternal rises and falls in reputation, and Bailey, the author of several books on English, traces our assorted ways of speaking across the country, concentrating on a different area for each 50-year period, starting in Chesapeake Bay and ending in Los Angeles.
We are struck by the oddness of speech in earlier America. A Bostonian visiting Philadelphia in 1818 noted that his burgherly hostess casually pronounced 「dictionary」 as 「disconary」 and 「again」 as 「agin.」 William Cullen Bryant of Massachusetts, visiting New York City around 1820, wrote not about the 「New Yawkese」 we would expect, but about locutions, now vanished, like 「sich」 for 「such」 and 「guv」 for 「gave.」 Even some aspects of older writing might throw us. Perusing The Chicago Tribune of the 1930s, we would surely marvel at spellings like 「crum,」 「heven」 and 「iland,」 which the paper included in its house style in the ultimately futile hope of streamlining English』s spelling system.
A challenge for a book like Bailey』s, however, is the sparseness of evidence on earlier forms of American English. The human voice was unrecorded before the late 19th century, and until the late 20th recordings of casual speech, especially of ordinary people, were rare. Meanwhile, written evidence of local, as opposed to standard, language has tended to be cursory and of shaky accuracy.
For example, the story of New York speech, despite the rich documentation of the city over all, is frustratingly dim. On the one hand, an 1853 observer identified New York』s English as 「purer」 than that found in most other places. Yet at the same time chronicles of street life were describing a jolly vernacular that has given us words like 「bus,」 「tramp」 and 「whiff.」 Perhaps that 1853 observer was referring only to the speech of the better-off. But then just 16 years later, a novel describes a lad of prosperous upbringing as having a 「strong New York accent,」 while a book of 1856 warning against 「grammatical embarrassment」 identifies 「voiolent」 and 「afeard」 as pronunciations even upwardly mobile New Yorkers were given to. So what was that about 「pure」?
Possibly as a way of compensating for the vagaries and skimpiness of the available evidence, Bailey devotes much of his story to the languages English has shared America with. It is indeed surprising how tolerant early Americans were of linguistic diversity. In 1903 one University of Chicago scholar wrote proudly that his city was host to 125,000 speakers of Polish, 100,000 of Swedish, 90,000 of Czech, 50,000 of Norwegian, 35,000 of Dutch, and 20,000 of Danish.
What earlier Americans considered more dangerous to the social fabric than diversity were perceived abuses within English itself. Prosecutable hate speech in 17th-century Massachusetts included calling people 「dogs,」 「rogues」 and even 「queens」 (though the last referred to prostitution); magistrates took serious umbrage at being labeled 「poopes」 (「dolts」). Only later did xenophobic attitudes toward other languages come to prevail, sometimes with startling result. In the early years of the 20th century, California laws against fellatio and cunnilingus were vacated on the grounds that since the words were absent from dictionaries, they were not English and thus violations of the requirement that statutes be written in English.
Ultimately, however, issues like this take up too much space in a book supposedly about the development of English itself. Much of the chapter on Philadelphia is about the city』s use of German in the 18th century. It』s interesting to learn that Benjamin Franklin was as irritated about the prevalence of German as many today are about that of Spanish, but the chapter is concerned less with language than straight history — and the history of a language that, after all, isn』t English. In the Chicago chapter, Bailey mentions the dialect literature of Finley Peter Dunne and George Ade but gives us barely a look at what was in it, despite the fact that these were invaluable glimpses of otherwise rarely recorded speech.
Especially unsatisfying is how little we learn about the development of Southern English and its synergistic relationship with black English. Bailey gives a hint of the lay of the land in an impolite but indicative remark about Southern child rearing, made by a British traveler in 1746: 「They suffer them too much to prowl amongst the young Negroes, which insensibly causes them to imbibe their Manners and broken Speech.」 In fact, Southern English and the old plantation economy overlap almost perfectly: white and black Southerners taught one another how to talk. There is now a literature on the subject, barely described in the book.
On black English, Bailey is also too uncritical of a 1962 survey that documented black Chicagoans as talking like their white neighbors except for scattered vowel differences (as in 「pin」 for 「pen」). People speak differently for interviewers than they do among themselves, and modern linguists have techniques for eliciting people』s casual language that did not exist in 1962. Surely the rich and distinct — and by no means 「broken」 — English of today』s black people in Chicago did not arise only in the 1970s.
Elsewhere, Bailey ventures peculiar conclusions that may be traceable to his having died last year, before he had the chance to polish his text. (The book』s editors say they have elected to leave untouched some cases of 「potential ambiguity.」) If, as Bailey notes, only a handful of New Orleans』s expressions reach beyond Arkansas, then exactly how was it that New Orleans was nationally influential as the place 「where the great cleansing of American English took place」?
And was 17th-century America really 「unlike almost any other community in the world」 because it was 「a cluster of various ways of speaking」? This judgment would seem to neglect the dozens of colonized regions worldwide at the time, when legions of new languages and dialects had already developed and were continuing to evolve. Of the many ways America has been unique, the sheer existence of roiling linguistic diversity has not been one of them.
The history of American English has been presented in more detailed and precise fashion elsewhere — by J. L. Dillard, and even, for the 19th century, by Bailey himself, in his underread 「Nineteenth-Century English.」 Still, his handy tour is useful in imprinting a lesson sadly obscure to too many: as Bailey puts it, 「Those who seek stability in English seldom find it; those who wish for uniformity become laughingstocks.」
John McWhorter』s latest book is 「What Language Is (and What It Isn』t and What It Could Be).」