Splendiferous Speech

What does it mean to talk like an American? According to John Russell Bartlett's 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms, it means indulging in outlandish slang— splendiferous, scrumptious, higgeldy piggedly —and free-and-easy word creation— demoralize, lengthy, gerrymander. American English is more than just vocabulary, though. It's a picturesque way of talking that includes expressions like go the whole hog , and the wild boasts of frontiersman Davy Crockett, who claimed to be "half horse, half alliga