One is often surprised as to the insular nature of some of the population of America who seem to know very little of world events and history and came across yet another example of this when I came upon this question on Quora from what I assume to be an American.

Why are British people trying gaslight me into thinking the United Kingdom invented English when they obviously didn’t? They speak British, Americans speak English.

I was unsure if this was an American’s idea of a joke but felt I should respond just in case this was a genuine quest for knowledge and did so as follows; I have to beg to differ with your statement, for the British speak English that’s why it’s called the English language, whilst there are ever more regional and cultural accents and ways of speaking the language it is still called English, especially by those people in the United Kingdom who are English.

From a modicum of research, I have ascertained that the British first arrived in North America in 1585, when Sir Walter Raleigh established the Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island, unfortunately the settlement was short-lived and the colonists disappeared mysteriously, although I imagine it wouldn’t be rocket science to work out how they vanished.

In 1606 King James I of England granted a charter to the Virginia Company of London to colonize the American coast anywhere between parallels 34° and 41° north and another charter to the Plymouth Company to settle between 38° and 45° north and in 1607 the Virginia Company crossed the ocean and established Jamestown.

Some years later the Pilgrim Fathers who were a group of English Puritans sailed to North America on the Mayflower in 1620 and established Plymouth Colony, which is now in Massachusetts.

Now, when all these British people landed in America and established colonies, they would have all arrived speaking English and they went on to produce offspring who also spoke English, for they certainly didn’t take up the language of the native American Indians or the predominant language in America today would be Navajo or Cherokee.

Therefore, by a process of deduction we have arrived at the conclusion that the language predominantly spoken in America by 78% of the population is English, albeit with an American accent. The same language as that spoken in the United Kingdom and generally referred to as American English. As for your assumption as to who invented the English language, I think you’ll find the clue is in the name given to it and by historical fact.