Chapter 11 Old World New World Summary and Analysis

English went through many changes as it advanced to North America. Settlers borrowed many words from Native American languages, Spanish, and French to describe places and objects in their new environment. In addition, they created new compound words and gave new meanings to old words. One of the most interesting of these new words is "O.K." which has several theories of origin. One theory is that it is the initials of some authority figure who stamped their initials on objects as a type of quality assurance. The second theory is that is comes from the name of a place. The third theory is that the intentional misspelling "oll correct" is abbreviated by some social wits of the 1800s.

The other major language issue in North America is the assimilation of immigrant groups...