By — Lorna Baldwin Lorna Baldwin By — Sarah Clune Hartman Sarah Clune Hartman By — Sam Lane Sam Lane By — Judy Woodruff Judy Woodruff Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-american-english-evolved-from-its-british-roots Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Audio How did American English become so distinctly American? On her “In Pursuit of Happiness” podcast, Judy Woodruff sat down with linguists Anne Curzan and Valerie Fridland. They look at how Americans from the very beginning reshaped the English language by changing pronunciations and spellings, creating new words and evolving dialects. Listen to this Segment Watch Watch the Full Episode PBS NewsHour from Aug 06, 2026 By — Lorna Baldwin Lorna Baldwin Lorna Baldwin is an Emmy and Peabody award winning producer at the PBS NewsHour. In her two decades at the NewsHour, Baldwin has crisscrossed the US reporting on issues ranging from the water crisis in Flint, Michigan to tsunami preparedness in the Pacific Northwest to the politics of poverty on the campaign trail in North Carolina. Farther afield, Baldwin reported on the problem of sea turtle nest poaching in Costa Rica, the distinctive architecture of Rotterdam, the Netherlands and world renowned landscape artist, Piet Oudolf. @lornabaldwin By — Sarah Clune Hartman Sarah Clune Hartman By — Sam Lane Sam Lane Sam Lane is reporter/producer in PBS NewsHour's segment unit. @lanesam By — Judy Woodruff Judy Woodruff Judy Woodruff is a senior correspondent and the former anchor and managing editor of the PBS News Hour. She has covered politics and other news for five decades at NBC, CNN and PBS. @judywoodruff