The American Language cover art

The American Language

An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The American Language

By: H. L. Mencken
Narrated by: Rebecca H. Lee
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £18.99

Buy Now for £18.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

American author, scholar, and satirist H.L. Mencken wrote The American Language in 1919, intending to defend American speech from prescriptivist critics. "America itself is unutterably vulgar. But vulgarity, after all, means no more than a yielding to natural impulses in the face of conventional inhibitions, and that yielding to natural impulses is at the heart of all healthy language-making."

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Public Domain (P)2021 Rebecca H. Lee
Linguistics Social Sciences United States World Literature English Language Development

Listeners also enjoyed...

Wordwatching cover art
Darkest England cover art
Craic Baby cover art
The Boats of the Glen Carrig cover art
First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process cover art
Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us cover art
Quote... Unquote cover art
Yiddish cover art
How Dead Languages Work cover art
The Adventure of English cover art
A Room of One's Own cover art
Made in America cover art
Lost English cover art
Politics and the English Language: And Other Essays cover art
Alphabetical cover art
Around the World in 80 Words cover art
No reviews yet