The different conditions found by settlers

The chief linguistic result of this multilingual setting was a large number of loanwords, which added to the many new words that were introduced as a consequence of the first period of settlement. When settlers arrived in the enormous country, they encountered physical conditions that there were often radically different from anything that they had witnessed before. The physical geography of the country was different, and they needed words to refer to the geographic features they met.

Of course Native Americans had lived in America for hundreds of years before the settlers, and obviously had words in their own languages for their items they encountered in their everyday life, but which were new for the immigrants. This was particularly in the case of names for places, rivers and other topographical features.

The settlers´ options were: 

1. To borrow words from other languages. Words borrowed from French like “prairie” denote geographical features. From the Native American languages names for places and rivers, and for fauna, as skunk.

2. To make up completely new words. Sometimes they made new descriptive combinations: Bullfrog, eggplant, etc.

3. To extend existing terms from English. The colonists extended the meaning of familiar terms from Britain to cover new species of plants and animal encountered in America. Thus oak now refers to a different kind of tree from the British oak. 

	New words and phrases in American English
From Indian languages	Chipmunk, hickory, moccasin, moose, opossum, papoose, pemmican, pow-wow, raccoon, skunk, totem, wigwam
From Dutch	Boss, caboose, coleslaw, cookie, snoop
From French	Bayou, butte, cache, caribou, cant, crevasse, levee, poker, praline.
From German	And how, cookbook, delicatessen, dumb, frankfurter, kindergarten, nix, no way, phooey, pretzel, sauerkraut, spiel
From Italian	Capo, doing the dirty work, espresso, godfather, mafia, pasta, pizza, spaghetti, zucchini
From Spanish	Bonanza,cafeteria, canyon, coyote, lasso, loco (mad), marijuana, mustang, plaza, ranch, rodeo, stampede, tacos, tomado, vamoose
From Yiddish	Gonif, kosher (authentic), mazuma, mensch, nosh, schmooze (gossip), schmuck (a stupid), scram