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American English

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The various Germanic tribes ( Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) who invaded Britain after 437 AD brought with them their own dialects of West Germanic. These formed the basis for the emergence of later dialect areas. The submergence of the various British Celtic languages (of which Welsh is the only modern survivor) also lead to innovations in British English. The Viking invasions resulted in more Norse influence in the north than in the south, thereby contributing another layer to the existing dialects. Likewise, the Norman French invaders influenced the south more than the north, which came to be more conservative linguistically. The Great Vowel Shift of the 1500's didn't affect northern English dialects, which came to be called Scots English. Because of the long history of dialect creation in the English speaking areas of Great Britain, there are more dialects of English in Britain than in America, Canada, and Australia combined. (Unfortunately, we don't have time to cover modern British English dialects in any detail.)

British colonization of other continents led to the establishment of various colonial, or overseas, dialects. These dialects developed because of the following factors: 1) the language spoken by emigrants who first established the colony was a particular variety of British English--the so-called founder's effect; 2) this may have mixed with some non-English language in the colony--the so-called substrate effect; 3) there may have been further mixing with other English dialects in the colony--the leveling effect of dialect mixing; 4) innovations in British English that did not occur in the more conservative overseas dialect, or conversely, innovation in the colonial dialect (for any of the three previous reasons) which did not occur in Britain.

The main dialect areas of the US can be traced to the four main migrations of English speaking people to America from the British Isles during the colonial period (1607-1775).

1. From 1629-1640 Puritan religious dissenters fleeing oppression from Charles I fled East Angliaand brought their distinctive twang (a sort of "flat sounding" nasal lengthening of vowels) to Massachusetts. The extreme conservatism and nostalgia for England helped maintain this dialect while the language of East Anglia changed (speech similar to New England can still be found in East Anglia. Today the 16 million or so descendants of the Puritans and many of their neighbors speak some form of this East Anglia derived speech.

Main features

--pronunciation of [O] in caught, bought

--low fronted [a] instead of back[A] in words such as far, father (the so-called nasal twang)

--Deletion of syllable final [r], as in far pronounced "fah", Carter pronounced "Cahtah".

--Compensatory addition of [r] after a final schwa, as in Cuber (instead of Cuba). This trait developed after the colonial period.

Influence on General American

--The New England dialect eventually influenced speech in many areas of the Northeast, from Main to Wisconsin, especially in the Chicago area.

--A large number of New England town, city and county names derive from East Anglia.

--Due to the influence of the Puritan Religion, Old testament first names are found in New England far more than anywhere else in the American colonies (Nathanial, Nehemiah, Joshua, etc.); New England also has a large share of Hebrew town names (Salem, Concord)

--gave us the word cuss from curse, originally a high class, [r]-less pronunciation

--gave us such words as conniption fit, scrimp, pesky, snicker.

Unlike many other American regional dialects, New England speech was not affected significantly by any non-English language.

New York English, as a special variety of general New England speech, developed after the British took possession of the Dutch colony of Nieuw Amsterdam in 1664, leading to the rapid conversion of Dutch speakers to English. Dutch left a strong phonetic substrate, however, which sets Brooklyn speech apart from other northern dialects.

Features shared with New England speech:

--final [r] is dropped: beer = bee-ah

-- caught, bought are pronounced with[O] rather than [A]

Main features deriving from the Dutch influence:

--interdentals become t,d. For instance, them, these, that become: dem, dese, dat (since Dutch has no interdentals)

--er => [schwa + y] thirty purple birds, thirty third street = uh in final position were =wuh

-- [oi] => [er] oil, oyster (a later compensatory development)

-- I want you to (do something)-> I want you should (do something)

In connection with New York, it might be apropos to mention one of the ethnic-based dialects that undoubtedly contributed to the uniqueness of the city's linguistic soundscape: the language of the European Jews who came to New York in large numbers beginning during the last century.

Most immigrant groups who came into the US after the colonial period--in the 19th and 20th centuries--did not establish permanent ethnic dialects of their own. (Instead, they conformed to whatever the local dialect was.) But one group contributed heavily to New York English. Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, most of whom spoke Yiddish, added their own additional flavor to New York phonology and vocabulary.

The Ashkenazi Jews in Central Europe spoke a dialect of German called Yiddish. The Sephardic Jews of Spain spoke Ladino, a medieval dialect of Spanish. Yiddish especially has influenced New York speech and also contributed words than Americans of all dialects may use and know:

--Standard American phrases originating in the Yiddish speaking community include: Get lost, What's up, I should worry, I should live so long, I need it like a hole in the head, You don't know from nothin', Pardon the expression, Enjoy.

--Rhyming slang: Deprecation is shown by means of partial reduplications such as Joe-schmo; or Oedipus-schmedipus, so long as he loves his mother.

Modern New York influence on General American, of course, is not confined to Yiddish origins. Even people who have never traveled to New York are familiar with this accent from watching TV. Recently, New York has given American English such terms as: Yuppie (young urban professional), and bag lady.

2. Let's move on to a very different dialect. From 1642-1675 the Royalists, also called Cavaliers, fled from the south and southwest England with their indentured servants and settled in Virginia when the English Civil War against Charles I began. They brought with them their south England drawl (a drawing out of the vowels); they also brought such phrases as aksed (instead of asked), and ain't (instead of isn't). Royalists later settled the Carolinas as well. Southern English speech laid the foundation for the development of American Tidewater speech, or Coastal Southern English.

A large number of features distinguish southern dialects as a group from their cousin dialects in the American north, as well as from modern British dialects in the south of England.

--loss of final t, d after another consonant: an(d), tol(d)

--first syllable accented (rather than the second) in such words as: guitar, insurance, July, police, elope, etc.

Influence on General American--

Other southernisms that made it into general American include

-- spitting image of > spirit and image of

-- fink, ratfink > Albert Fink, an unpleasant railroad detective after the Civil War.

What is the origin of certain features of Southern English that cannot be traced back to dialectal differences among the original immigrants from the British Isles?

The upper class southern dialects and the dialects of the coastal southern areas (where few native Americans remained) were influenced by the English spoken by West Africans. Most linguists today believe these features derive from the influence of the speech patterns of the Africans brought to the 13 colonies as slaves between 1619 and 1808, when the slave trade was prohibited. This would include the southern drawl. Let's take a look at the ethnic dialect that has come to be known as Black English.

Black English developed in the Southern states when speakers of dozens of West African languages were abruptly forced to abandon their native tongues and learn English. Slaves from different tribes couldn't communicate with one another--in fact, masters deliberately tried to separate slaves who could speak the same language. Since the Africans had to communicate with one another, as well as with the whites, a kind of compromise language evolved on the basis of English and a mixture of the original West African languages. Such a makeshift, compromize language, used as a second language by adults, is known as a pidgin. When a pidgin becomes the native language of the next generation, it becomes a creole--a full-fledged language. The African-English creole in the American colonies evolved into today's Black English.

Black English was most influenced by the speech of the southern whites.

Features carried over from early Southern English into Black English:

--loss of final consonants, especially sonorants: po(or), sto(re) like aristocratic southern English.

-- use of double negatives, ain't, as in early English.

--loss of ng: somethin', nothin', etc.

Black English, in turn, gradually influenced the speech of southern whites--especially the children of the aristocratic slave owners. Given the social prejudices of the Old South, this seems paradoxical. However, remember that throughout all the slave owning areas, black nannies helped raise white children, and the children of blacks and whites played freely together before the Civil War. Since language features acquired in early childhood tend to be kept throughout life, Southern English naturally became mixed with Black English.

Let's look more closely at how Black English developed on the basis of West African Dialects. Whenever a group of adults is forced to learn a second language, the language learned retains many features of the original native language. Thus, the English of black slaves retained many features that were African and not present in English at all. The children of the slaves learned this form of English as their native language. Thus, on the basis of language mixing, a new dialect, called a creole, was born. This process--at least in some small degree-- characterizes the English of all Americans whose parents spoke English as a second language. But in the case of African Americans, due to the social separation they lived under from the very start, the differences were stronger and more lasting.

Main features carried over from West African languages.

--No use of the linking verb ' to be' or generalization of one form for it.

--emphasis on aspect rather than tense: He workin' (right now) vs. He be workin'. This is found in many West African languages.

-- I done gone (from Wolof doon , the completive verb aspect particle + English 'done').

--Regularization of present tense verb conjugation: He don't, he know it.

A large number of West African words came into Standard American through the medium of Black English: bug (bugu = annoy), dig (degu/ understand), tote bag (tota = carry in Kikonga), hip (Wolof hepicat one who has his eyes wide open), voodoo (obosum, guardian spirit) mumbo jumbo (from name of a West African god), jazz (? Bantu from Arabic jazib one who allures), banjo (mbanza?), chigger (jigger/ bloodsucking mite), goober (nguba /Bantu), okra (nkruman/ Bantu), yam (njami/ Senegal), banana (Wolof). Also, the phrases: sweet talking, every which way; to bad-mouth, high-five are from Black English--seem to be either American innovations or loan translations from West African languages.

The speech of African Americans gradually became more like the speech of their southern white neighbors--a process called decreolization. (And the speech of the whites became slightly more like that of the blacks). However, in a few areas, the original African English creole was preserved more fully. There is one dialect of Black English still spoken on the Georgia coast, called Gullah, which is still spoken there by about 20,000 people; it is thought to represents the closest thing to the original creole.

After the Civil War, Black English continued to evolve and change, especially in the creation of new vocabulary. After the 1920's millions of blacks migrated to northern cities, where various varieties of Black English continue to develop.

There is one other notable southern English dialect. The Cajun French in Louisiana also adopted English with noticeable traces of their former language.

3. From 1675-1725 the Quakers, or Society of Friends, migrated from the north midlands of England and Wales to the Delaware valley. Their speechways--mixed with those of later German and Swedish immigrants--gave rise to the distinctive band of dialects spoken in parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

--Phonetic features include the pronunciation of a back rounded [Å] in words such as caught, saw.

Also, the pronunciation of [E] instead of [œ] in bad, and, sack, etc.

--Retention of the syllable final [r] in all places.

4. From 1718-1775 English speakers left North Britain and Northern Ireland and settled in the Appalachian backcountry. These people are called the " Scots-Irish." These were mostly Anglo-Saxons refugees of the Norman Conquest who had settled within the Celtic fringe of Britain. The true Scottish and Irish people were Celts who spoke Scots-Gaelic or its close relative Irish-Gaelic and most did not adopt English until the 18th or 19th century. The immigration of true Irish and Scottish peoples, beginning in the mid-1800's, had little permanent effect on American dialect formation.

One island of early Scotch-Irish English speech was left behind and preserved during the push west. This special, archaic variety of English is known as Appalachian English. It preserves many archaic features that date back to earlier stages in the development of English in Britain. Forms thought to be substandard today are actually the outmoded standard of yesterday. A good example is the use of double negatives such as ' not nobody.' Linguists have dubbed this variety of English as "American Old English" or "American Anglo Saxon". Other mountainous, relatively isolated areas of the American East show a similar preservation of archaic speech. Mario Pei, a popular writer on linguistics, said that "The speech of the Ozarks comes closer to Elizabethan English in many ways than the speech of modern London."

Main features--

--Retention of preposition in the progressive aspect: I'm a talking to you.

--propensity to use compound nouns: men-folk, man-child, kin folks

--Special distance words: This here, that there, that yonder.

-- bag called sack; dragonfly called mosquito hawk, green bean called a snap bean; pail called a bucket.

Some southern features from the poorer classes are shared with the dialects of the rural midwest since poor southerners helped colonize the midwest. Also, some features of Appalachian English are shared with the speech of poorer southern whites for the same reason.

--ain't, use of double negatives--older "correct" version of English, avoided by the upper classes, who chose the innovative single negatives preferred by the British upper classes.

--ng = n: somethin, nothin, (also found in Scotch-Irish dialects of middle English: Celtic languages had no ng)

The "Scots-Irish" dialect of southern English mingled with Cherokee and other Native American languages in a band running from western North Carolina to Oklahoma and East Texas, giving rise to the so-called backwoods, or highlands, southern dialect, which is more faster and high-pitched than tidewater southern and more nasal than Appalachian English. Some of the phonological features of the backwoods southern dialects undoubtedly come from Cherokee and other Native American languages. The south was the only area in the East where Native Americans mixed significantly with the whites. This occurred mostly with the poorer whites on the frontier. Substrate features include: nasality, tensing of vowels [e] instead of [E] rather than diphthongization as in Tidewater Southern English.

Influence on General American--

-- highly expressive idioms: He can lick his weight in wildcats. Faster 'n greased lightning, can't hold a candle to, sharp as a tack, madder 'n a wet hen, tuckered out.

5. Remember that dialects based primarily on geography are called areal dialects. One of the main researchers of areal dialects of the United States was Hans Kurath, author of the Dialect Atlas of America He found that there are four main dialect areas in the Eastern us: New England (including New York), Middle Atlantic, Backwoods, and Southern Tidewater; The three main dialectal divisions can further be subdivided into at least 27 subdialects. The original eastern dialects tended to become more leveled and to merge farther west.

General American-- After the Civil War the rapid and extensive move West of settlers from all dialect areas of the eastern US led to a leveling of eastern dialectal features and the creation of a more General American, or Middle American dialect. People who are said to speak "without an accent" are actually speaking with this leveled-out form of speech that developed from the mid-Atlantic stretching westward through the Ohio valley. Most features of Standard American developed from a levelled mixture of dialects mostly from the poorer classes along the middle Atlantic seaboard who immigrated west after the American Revolution to find a better life.

Main features:

1) retention of [r] in all places

2) pronunciation of [ae] in many words. Cf. British 'class' 'aunt'. Gives American English a flat sound to British ears.

Origins--Derived from the speech of settlers moving west of the original 13 colonies into the Ohio valley and beyond. These people were of Scotch-Irish origin rather than upper class English, which explains the differences between Middle American and New England. The post-vocalic [r], which dropped out in the speech of the upper British classes, was retained in the English of the Scotch Irish and other originally Celtic speaking peoples of Britain. Competition between immigrants from Germany and the lower classes of the British isles in the push westward tended to level many of the differences peculiar to one or another smaller group of people. (The Pennsylvania Dutch are actually "Deutsch", in other words Germans.) The Middle American dialect area contributed the most to speech in western states and forms the basis of the speech usually considered as standard American today. There were, however, certain features that remained isolated and unique to one or another of the Middle American dialect group. This was especially true on the mid-Atlantic seaboard. Maryland adds [r] after [a] before another cons: [Warshington].

Now, this western, "leveled" English is itself showing signs of dialect genesis. The history of American English and of English is far from over.

What does the future hold for American dialects? Will they evolve into separate languages? Due to the levelling influence of mass communication and travel, probably not. In fact, dialectal divergence in the US seems to be slowing down. John Steinbeck, in his 1962 novel, Travels with Charley, in which he describes how he traveled by camper all over the US with a French poodle named Charley, expressed fear that American dialects would disappear because of the influence of mass communication. Most dialectologists, however, believe that dialects are here to stay, since they are acquired from parents at an early age. Thus the well established regional dialects of American English are not disappearing. In fact, the western, "leveled" English is itself showing signs of dialect genesis. So the history of American English and of English is far from over.

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Linguistics 201: The Dialects of American English

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The various Germanic tribes ( Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) who invaded Britain after 437 AD brought with them their own dialects of West Germanic. These formed the basis for the emergence of later dialect areas. The submergence of the various British Celtic languages (of which Welsh is the only modern survivor) also lead to innovations in British English.

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American English

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Dialect Map of American English

Not all people who speak a language speak it the same way. A language can be subdivided into any number of dialects which each vary in some way from the parent language. The term, accent, is often incorrectly used in its place, but an accent refers only to the way words are pronounced, while a dialect has its own grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and common expressions as well as pronunciation rules that make it unique from other dialects of the same language. Another term, idiolect, refers to the manner of speaking of an individual person. No two people's idiolects are exactly the same, but people who are part of the same group will have enough verbal elements in common to be said to be using the same dialect.

Three things are needed for a new dialect to develop: a group of people living in close proximity to each other; this group living in isolation (either geographically or socially) from other groups; and the passage of time. Given enough time, a dialect may evolve to the point that it becomes a different language from the one it started as. English began existence as a Germanic dialect called Anglo Saxon that was brought to England by invaders from Germany. The Anglo Saxon peoples in England were now geographically isolated from their cousins in Germany which allowed the dialects to evolve in different directions. Other invaders would also influence the development of English with their languages until the modern English we speak today has become so different from the modern German spoken in Germany that a speaker of one cannot understand a speaker of the other. Thus English and German are considered to be two distinct, though related, languages. The other modern languages in this family are Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic.

This issue of mutual understandability is what in theory is used to determine what is a dialect and what is a language, but in reality there are social and political issues involved too. The government of a country might declare that all the languages spoken in that country are actually dialects of one language in order to create the illusion of polital unity, while the government of another country might declare that the dialect spoken by its people is actually a unique language from other countries that speak dialects of the same language in order to create a sense of national pride. History is full of governments that have tried to impose a single language on all of its people with varying results: sometimes the minority languages go entirely extinct, sometimes they are reduced to surviving only as dialects of the majority language, and sometimes new languages are unintentionally created by a blending of the two languages.

This brings us to three other language terms that are worth mentioning here. When two or more groups of people who speak different languages need to communicate with each other on a regular basis and do not want to actually learn each others' language (such as when the European merchants started trading with other peoples around the world), they may develop what is called a pidgin language. This is a simplified language that usually has as few words as possible in its vocabulary (taking some from both languages) and has been stripped of any fancier grammatical rules like the use of multiple verb conjugations and tenses - a kind of"Me Tarzan, you Jane" way of talking. A pidgin is nobody's native language and is used only in business settings. In fact, the word"pidgin" may be derived from the way Chinese merchants mispronounced the English word"business." However, in some cases, the children in one of these areas might grow up learning the pidgin as their first language. When this happens, the pidgin can grow in complexity into a creole language with a larger set of grammatical rules and a much larger vocabulary that share elements of all the languages that went into creating it.

Finally, jargon is a specialized vocabulary used by people within a particular discipline such as medical jargon for doctors, legal jargon for lawyers, or academic jargon for college professors. While jargon words occasionally filter up into a mainstream dialect, they are usually used only by experts and only when they are discussing their particular field. Critics argue, with some justification, that jargon needlessly complicates a statement that could be expressed in a more clear manner. Users of it argue, also with justification, that it is a more precise manner of speaking, although many examples can be found (especially in politics and business) where it has been used intentionally to obscure the fact that the speaker is trying to avoid being precise.

The modern development of communications technology may possibly slow down the evolution of dialects and languages. For the first time in history, a single dialect (sometimes called Network Standard) can be broadcast over an entire country, so very few people are actually living in geographic isolation anymore. However, the existence of racism, poverty, and class distinctions cause some groups to remain socially isolated from the mainstream of a culture, giving rise to social dialects like Black English (Ebonics) spoken by some African Americans in urban areas. There was recently a great deal of political controversy (ignoring the linguistic facts) over whether Ebonics should be considered a unique language, a "legitimate" dialect of English, or "illegimate" gutterspeak. Also, teenagers enjoy creating their own dialects that they can use to quickly determine who is or is not part of the "in crowd" and as a "secret language" in front of their parents. These dialects tend to go in and out of fashion very quickly; by the time an expression has filtered up to the mainstream dialect adults understand, the teenagers have moved on to something else. Even the Internet has given birth to what might be called a new social dialect (derived from hacker jargon) containing words like IMHO, IIRC, and ROTFLMAO.

Contrary to what your teachers probably tried to tell you, there is no such thing as "correct English." Any manner of speaking that is following the rules of a dialect is equally "correct." Words like ain't are "real" words in some dialects and perfectly acceptable to use. However, people are judged by the way they speak, and dialects carry different levels of social prestige with them based on the prejudices within a society. Generally, the southern dialects of American English carry a lower prestige, at least among northerners who will assume that a person speaking a southern dialect is less intelligent and less educated than they are. Some educated southerners even feel this way and will "correct" their speech to meet northern standards. The New York City dialect carries the lowest prestige of all (Received Standard, a dialect of British English used by the BBC and the royal family, carries the highest prestige - even among Americans). For this reason, schools try to rid children of the local dialects they learned from their family and friends in favor of a more prestigious one. (Of course, some sentences like, "Me are a educated person," would be incorrect in every dialect.)

References:
Success with words: a guide to the American language / Reader's Digest; prepared in association with Peter Davies; David Rattray, project editor. Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest Association, 1988.

The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language / David Crystal. Cambridge, England : Cambridge University Press, 2000. (emphasizes British English but also covers American)

What is a dialect? - The Sci.Lang FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions About Linguistics / Michael Covington and Mark Rosenfelder. Mark Rosenfelder's Metaverse, March 3, 2002. < http://www.zompist.com/lang9.html#12>

Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English / Michael B. Montgomery and Joseph S. Hall. Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, 2004.

Hoi toide on the Outer Banks : the story of the Ocracoke brogue / Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

The Oxford companion to the English language / Tom McArthur, editor; Feri McArthur, managing editor. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. (for additional information on Cajun English)

A lexicon of New Orleans terminology and speech / Chuck Taggart. The Gumbo Pages, accessed May 7, 2001. < http://www.gumbopages.com/yatspeak.html>

For Further Information:
American dialect links (courtesy of Evolution Publishing's American Dialects Page)

Dialect Survey Maps (maps out locations where different pronunciations of particular words are used and where different expressions are used for the same concept)

Do you speak American? (extensive website to accompany the PBS documentary)

IDEA: International Dialects of English Archive (audio files of each dialect)

The great pop vs. soda controversy / Alan McConchie. (maps out locations where different terms for carbonated beverages are used)

The Septic's Companion (The English-to-American Dictionary) / Chris Rae. (translates words from British English into American English)

Robert Delaney, last updated April 15, 2013

American dialects come in many flavors. The map and list below show the major (and a few minor) geographic dialects and subdialects of English spoken in the United States. Many of these may be further subdivided into local subdialects that are not shown here. Obviously, the borders between dialect regions are not well defined lines, as a map like this would imply, but a gradual transition extending on both sides of the line. Also, as we enter the 21st century, many of the features described below have become much less prevalent than they were during the first half of the 20th century.

Northern Dialects:

Many of the Northern dialects can trace their roots to this dialect which was spread westward by the New England settlers as they migrated west. It carries a high prestige due to Boston's early economic and cultural importance and the presence of Harvard University. A famous speaker is Katherine Hepburn. They sometimes call doughnuts New England
cymbals, simballs, and boil cakes.

(1) New England, Eastern
This is one of the most distinctive of all the American dialects. R's are often dropped, but an extra R is added to words that end with a vowel. A is pronounced AH so that we get "Pahk the cah in Hahvuhd yahd" and"Pepperidge Fahm remembuhs."

(2) Boston Urban
Like many big cities, Boston has its own dialects that are governed more by social factors like class and ethnicity than by geographic location. Greater Boston Area is the most widely spoken and is very similar to Eastern New England. Brahmin is spoken by the upper aristocratic class like Mr. Howell on Gilligan's Island. Central City Area is what most of us think of as being the "Boston Accent." In the last few years, Saturday Night Live has featured this dialect among a group of rowdy teenagers who like to videotape themselves. Also think of Cliff on Cheers, the only character on this Boston-based show to actually speak a Boston dialect.

(5) New York City
Unlike Boston and other urban dialects, New York City stands by itself and bears little resemblence to the other dialects in this region. It is also the most disliked and parodied of any American dialect (even among New Yorkers), possibly because many Americans tend dislike large cities. When an R comes after a vowel, it is often dropped. IR becomes OI, but OI becomes IR, and TH becomes D as in "Dey sell tirlets on doity-doid street" and fugedaboudit (forget about it). This pronounciation is particularly associated with Brooklyn but exists to some extent throughout the city. The thickness of a speaker's dialect is directly related to their social class, but these features have been fading within all classes over recent decades. Famous speakers are Rosie Perez, Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, Archie Bunker, Bugs Bunny, and (if you're old enough to remember) the Bowery Boys.

(8) San Francisco Urban
Unlike the rest of California, which in the early twentieth century saw an influx of people from the South and other parts of the West, San Francisco continued to be settled by people from the Northeast and Northern Midwest, and elements of their dialects (North Midland, Upper Midwestern, Inland Northern) can be found. Mission dialect, spoken by Irish Catholics in a specific part of the city is very much like the New York City dialect.

(9) Upper Midwestern
Originally settled by people from New England and New York State who brought those dialects, this area was also influenced by Southerners coming up the Mississippi River as well as the speech patterns of the German and Scandinavian immigrants and the Canadian English dialects from over the border. It's sometimes referred to as a "Midwestern twang." They call jelly doughnuts bismarks. Minnewegian (Minnesota / Norwegian), a subdialect spoken in the northernmost part of this region was spoofed in the movies Fargo and Drop Dead Gorgeous.

(10) Chicago Urban
Influenced by the Midland and Southern dialects. Often spoken by the late John Belushi (Chicago's Second City comedy theater supplied many Saturday Night Live actors). SNL used to spoof it in the"Da Bears, Da Bulls" sketches. They call any sweet roll doughnuts.

Western Dialects:
Compared with the Eastern United States, the Western regions were settled too recently for very distinctive dialects to have time to develop or to be studied in detail. Many words originally came from Spanish, cowboy jargon, and even some from the languages of the Native Americans: adobe, beer bust, belly up, boneyard, bronco, buckaroo, bunkhouse, cahoots, corral, greenhorn, hightail, hoosegow, lasso, mustang, maverick, roundup, wingding.

(14) Pacific Northwest
Influenced by settlers from the Midwest and New England as well as immigrants from England, Germany, Scandinavia, and Canada. Much earlier, a pidgin called Chinook Jargon was developed between the languages of the Native American tribes of this area. It would later also be used and influenced by the European settlers who wished to communicate with them. A few words from Chinook Jargon like high muckamuck (important person) are still used in this dialect today. (Note that, in this case, the word "jargon" has a different meaning from the one discussed above)

(not shown) Alaska
Developed out of the Northern, Midland, and Western dialects. Also influenced by the native languages of the Alutes, Innuit, and Chinook Jargon. Some words that originated here are: bush (remote area), cabin fever, mush (to travel by dog sled), parka, stateside.

(15) Pacific Southwest
The first English speakers arrived here from New York, Ohio, Missouri, New England, and other parts of the Northeast and Midwest in the 1840s, bringing the Northern and North Midland dialects with them. Words originally used by the gold miners of this period are still used today: pay dirt (valuable discovery), pan out (to succeed), and goner (doomed person). The early twentieth century saw an influx of people from the South and other parts of the West. The people here are particularly fond of creating new slang and expressions, and, since Hollywood is located here, these quickly get spread to the rest of the country and the world (the influence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was examined in Verbatim : part one, part two). During the late 1970s and early 1980s, an extreme exaggeration of this dialect that came to be known as "Valley Girl" or "Surfer Dude" was popular among teenagers and much parodied in the media with phrases like"gag me with a spoon" and "barf me back to the stone age." Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Whoopie Goldberg in her one women show are two famous examples.

(16) Southwestern
By the time this area became part of the United States, there had already been as many as ten generations of Spanish speaking people living here, so the Mexican dialect of Spanish had an important influence on this area that became a melting pot for dialects from all over the USA. Some local words are: caballero, cantina, frijoles, madre, mesa, nana, padre, patio, plaza, ramada, tortilla.

(not shown) Hawaii
The original language of the Native Hawaiians is part of the Polynesian family. English speakers arrived in 1778, but many other settlers also came from China, Portugal, Japan, Korea, Spain, and the Philippines to influence the modern dialect. Hawaiian Creole developed from a pidgin English spoken on the sugar plantations with workers from Hawaii and many other countries. Some words are: look-see, no can, number one (the best), plenty (very). It isn't widely spoken anymore. Nonstandard Hawaiian English developed from Hawaiian Creole and is spoken mostly by teenagers. Standard Hawaiian English is part of the Western dialect family but shows less influence from the early New England dialect than any other American dialect. It has many words borowed from the original Hawaiian as well as some from the other Asian languages mentioned above: aloha, hula, kahuna, lei, luau, muumuu, poi, ukulele.

(12) Pennsylvania German-English
This was strongly influenced by Pennsylvania Dutch, a dialect of German spoken by people in this area (in this context, "Dutch" is actually a mispronunciation of the German word, "Deutsch," which means "German"). Its grammar allows sentences like"Smear your sister with jam on a slice of bread" and"Throw your father out the window his hat." They call doughnuts fasnacht, and they also invented dunking - from the German"dunken" (to dip).

(17) South Midland
This area, dominated by the Appalachian Mountains and the Ozark Mountains, was originally settled by the Pennsylvania Dutch moving south from the North Midland areas and the Scotch-Irish moving west from Virginia. A TH at the end of words or syllables is sometimes pronounced F, and the word ARE is often left out of sentences as they are in Black English. An A is usually placed at the beginning of verb that ends with ING, and the G is dropped; an O at the end of a word becomes ER. ("They a-celebratin' his birfday by a-goin' to see 'Old Yeller' in the theatah"). A T is frequently added to words that end with an S sound. Some words are: bodacious, heap, right smart (large amount), set a spell, and smidgin. American English has retained more elements of the Elizabethan English spoken in the time of Shakespeare than modern British English has, and this region has retained the most. Some Elizabethan words that are now less common in England are: bub, cross-purposes, fall (autumn), flapjack, greenhorn, guess (suppose), homely, homespun, jeans, loophole, molasses, peek, ragamuffin, reckon, sorry (inferior), trash, well (healthy).

(18) Ozark
Made famous by the Beverly Hillbillies, this isolated area was settled by people from the southern Appalachian region and developed a particularly colorful manner of speaking.

(19) Southern Appalachian
Linguists are still studying the specific differences with South Midland, but most of the research has concentrated on the many archaic words that are still alive in its vocabulary rather than on its grammar and usage. A popular myth is that there are still a few remote regions here that speak an unchanged form of Elizabethan English, but it isn't true.

(25) Smoky Mountain English
One such region that is notable for the many archaic features in its pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar is the Smoky Mountains, a small, thirty by sixty mile area located on the border between North Carolina and Tennessee (the size is exaggerated on the maps). However, while it has preserved a great many elements that once were - but no longer are - used in Britain, it has also developed a large number of unique features of its own. "They" is used in the place of "there"; subject-verb agreement can differ; and plural nouns may not end with an "s" ("They's ten mile from here to the school"). An "-est" can be placed at the end of a word instead of "most" at the beginning ( workingest, completest). Irregular verbs may be treated as regular verbs and vice versa, or they may be treated as irregular in a different way from more general dialects ( arrove, blowed, costed). Like many of the other dialects discussed on this page, the decrease in isolation caused by the increases in mobility and literacy has caused Smoky Mountain to be much less spoken today than it was at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some local words are withouten (unless) and whenevern (as soon as).

(red) General Southern
This dialect region (along with South Midland) matches the borders of the Confederate states that seceded during the "Confederate War" and is still a culturally distinct region of the United States. Since it was largely an agricultural area, people tended to move around less than they did in the north, and as a result, the subdialects are much less uniform than those of the General Northern regions and have much more clearly defined boundaries. Other languages that had an important influence on it are French (since the western region was originally French territory) and the African languages spoken by the people brought over as slaves. People tend to speak slower here than in the north creating the famous southern "drawl." I is pronounced AH, and OO is pronounced YOO, as in "Ah'm dyoo home at fahv o'clock." An OW in words like loud is pronounced with a slided double sound AOO (combining the vowel sounds in "hat" and "boot"). Some local words are: boogerman, funky (bad smelling), jump the broomstick (get married), kinfolks, mammy, muleheaded, overseer, tote, y'all.

Southern
As the northern dialects were originally dominated by Boston, the southern dialects were heavily influenced by Charleston, Richmond, and Savannah. They tend to drop Rs the way New Englanders do, but they don't add extra Rs. Some words are: big daddy (grandfather), big mamma (grandmother), Confederate War (Civil War), cooter (turtle), fixing to (going to), goober (peanut), hey (hello), mouth harp (harmonica), on account of (because).

(20) Virginia Piedmont
When an R comes after a vowel, it becomes UH, and AW becomes the slided sound, AH-AW. Thus, four dogs becomes fo-uh dah-awgs. Some local words are: hoppergrass (grasshopper), old-field colt (illegitimate child), school breaks up (school lets out), weskit (vest).

(21) Coastal Southern
Very closely resembles Virginia Piedmont but has preserved more elements from the colonial era dialect than any other region of the United States outside Eastern New England. Some local words are: catty-corner (diagonal), dope (soda, Coca-Cola), fussbox (fussy person), kernal (pit), savannah (grassland), Sunday child (illegitimate child). They call doughnuts cookies.

(26) Ocracoke
Named for the island off the coast of North Carolina where it is spoken, this dialect is also called Hoi Toide (because of the way its speakers pronounce the long I sound in words like"high" and "tide") and Outer Banks English to include the coastal regions of North Carolina and Virginia where it is also sometimes heard. OW becomes a long A so that"town" becomes "tain". Unlike other Southerners who tend to drop their Rs, Hoi Toiders actually emphasize their Rs. Overall it tends to resemble the Scottish and Irish dialects and is another area that is often incorrectly believed to be speaking an unchanged form of Elizabethan English. Some local words are mommuck (to bother) and quamished (nauseous).

(22) Gullah
Sometimes called Geechee, this creole language is spoken by some African Americans on the coastal areas and coastal islands of Georgia and South Carolina and was featured in the novel on which the musical, Porgy and Bess, was based. It combines English with several West African languages: Mende, Yoruba, Wolof, Kongo, Twi, Vai, Temne, Ibo, Ewe, Fula, Umbundu, Hausa, Bambara, Fante, and more. The name comes either from the Gola tribe in Liberia or the Ngola tribe in Angola. The grammar and pronunciation are too complicated to go into here, but some words are: bad mouth (curse), guba (peanut - from which we get the English word goober), gumbo (okra), juju (magic), juke (disorderly, wicked), peruse (to walk leisurely), samba (to dance), yam (sweet potato).

(23) Gulf Southern
This area was settled by English speakers moving west from Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas, as well as French speaking settlers spreading out from Louisiana, especially the Acadians (see "Cajuns" below). Some words are: armoire (wardrobe), bayou (small stream), bisque (rich soup), civit cat (skunk), flitters (pancakes), gallery (porch), hydrant (faucet), neutral ground (median strip), pecan patty (praline).

(24) Louisiana
There's a lot going on down here. There are even some people in southern Louisiana who might be able to speak more than one of the dialects and languages below. Cajun French (the Cajuns were originally French settlers in Acadia, Canada - now called Nova Scotia - who were kicked out when the British took over; in 1765, they arrived in New Orleans which was still French territory) carries the highest prestige of the French dialects here and has preserved a number of elements from the older French of the 1600s. It has also borrowed some words from the Spanish who once controlled this area. There are many local variations of it, but they would all be mutually understandable with each other as well as - with some effort - the standard French in France. Cajun English borrows vocabulary and grammar from French and gives us the famous pronunciations"un-YON" (onion) and "I ga-RON-tee" as well as the phrase"Let de good times role!", but movies about cajuns usually get the rest wrong. A famous authentic speaker is humorist Justin Wilson, who had a cooking show on PBS, with his catch phrase,"How y'all are? I'm glad for you to see me." There is another dialect of English spoken in New Orleans that is informally, and some would say pejoratively, called Yat (from the greeting, "Where y'at"), that resembles the New York City (particularly Brooklyn) dialect ( more info). Provincial French was the upper class dialect of the pre-Cajun French settlers and closely resembles Standard French but isn't widely spoken anymore since this group no longer exists as a separate social class. Louisiana French Creole blends French with the languages of the West Africans who were brought here as slaves. It is quite different from both the Louisiana and standard dialects of French but is very similar to the other creoles that developed between African and French on various Caribbean Islands. A few married couples may speak Creole to each other, Cajun French with other people, and English to their children.

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American Dialects : Dialect map of American English

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Dialect Map of American English Not all people who speak a language speak it the same way. A language can be subdivided into any number of dialects which each vary in some way from the parent language.

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American English

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American English

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Coastal/Lowland Southern English

This is the "classic southern" accent that you typically see in films about Civil War or Plantation life. In contemporary times, the accent is arguably dying out.
Prominent Features:

Non-rhotic. Unlike most non-rhotic dialects however, there is often no linking r between a final r and a vowel sound. So, for example, "better idea" would be pronounced "bettuh idea"

Vowel breaking. This means that in words with short vowels like cat and dress, these vowels can turn into diphthongs (or even triphthongs). So cat can become IPA kæjət for example (i.e. "ka-jut").

The diphthong in words like ride and lime tends to be pronounced as a monopthong: i.e. IPA ɹa:d and la:m. Note that in lowland southern accents, unlike the inland south, this is still usually a diphthong before unvoiced consonants.

All vowels tend to be pronounced longer than in northern American accents.

The vowel in words like thought and long tends to be a diphthong, traditionally IPA ɔo. (That is, caught in this dialect sounds nearly like "coat" as it is pronounced in General American accents).

-Dialect Blog

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Research Guides: Dialect Guide - American Dialects: Southern Dialects

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This guide gives a general introduction to a sample variety of American dialects. On each page, there will be a description of the unique aspects of the dialect, sound clip examples, and suggestions to resources within the Point Park library.

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Sample of American English in the education domain.

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How a wound heals itself - Sarthak Sinha

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Konglish - What It Is and What It Isn't (Presentation, IAWE 2014)

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The word Konglish is a blending of the words Korean and English and as such suggests a blend or mix of the two respective languages. Numerous analogue terms exist for other language pairs, for example Chinglish (Chinese and English), Japlish

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Konglish

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Lexical Borrowing in Korea: "Konglish" - Language Contact

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A more interesting case of lexical borrowing would be the Japanese and Sino-Japanese words - many of the words that entered the Korean language during the Japanese occupation from 1910-1945. In this sphere of loanwords, many English words were also introduced into Korea via the Japanese, although a various case of clipping and change in meaning can be seen.

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Konglish

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Ran Park is a graphic designer from Ulsan, a coastal city in South Korea. Not long ago, she visited her home country after five years of studying in London and Los Angeles, and noticed something strange: the local language had changed. "People had started using English words as if they were Korean," she says. Local fruit vendors sold "바나나," pronounced "banana." Electronics stores had posted advertisements for "컴퓨터," pronounced "keomp-yut-eo," or "computer." The words looked Korean, but they sounded distinctly English.

Park's observations inspired her latest art project, a zine filled with artfully smudged definitions of English words that have burrowed their way into the Korean language. She calls it "Lost in Konglish," after the macaronic form of English sweeping through South Korea.

Konglish follows few strict rules. It includes loanwords like camera (written as "카메라," pronounced like "camera"), and ice cream (once again, written as "아이스크림," but said like, "ice cream"). Not all terms copy English exactly; nail polish (매니큐어), for example, is pronounced like "manicure." Konglish also encompasses mistranslations, as well as fabricated phrases that incorporate English words but aren't easily understood by English-speakers. The Korean translation for "cell phone," for instance, is "hand phone."

But Konglish does follow the rules of the highly phonetic Korean alphabet. Known in South Korea as "Hangul," the language's phonemic and syllabic characteristics, and even the shape one's tongue makes when pronouncing specific sounds, are encoded into the structure of the written characters, themselves. If that strikes you as exceptionally cool, it's because it is; linguists love the Hangul alphabet for how it marries the form and function of its letters. It is a simultaneously beautiful and practical system.

It also accommodates, and morphs around, other languages-particularly English, the cultural cachet of which is evident in the rise of Konglish throughout South Korea. In Seoul, luxury apartments go by names like "Luxtige" (a portmanteau of "luxury" and "prestige"), or "Forestige." According to The Korea Herald, these Konglish names help promote a "premium brand image." When the City of Seoul selected a new promotional slogan, "I.Seoul.U," Koreans mocked it on social media, saying it didn't make sense in English. Park, too, acknowledges the ascendency of the English language in her home country: "It is really important for going out and getting a job," she says.

But Park is also skeptical of English's increasing influence on the Korean language. For one thing, she says, pseudo-anglicisms often lack the descriptiveness of native words. (In North Korea, for example, people don't call donuts "donuts"; they instead use a term that translates loosely to "a ring of bread.") "People haven't really realized that there's a phenomenon, that we are losing our own language," she says.

To that end, she designed "Lost in Konglish" to become less and less legible as you flip through it. She also created graphics of new letterforms that fuse the shape of Korean Hangul letters with English ones. The artful distortions and smudges grow more intense, until the text becomes indecipherable. "It becomes more chaotic, because the phenomenon is more serious," she says. "There is communication missing."

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The Rise of Konglish, the Korean-English Hybrid That's Both Beautiful and Perilous

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Ran Park is a graphic designer from Ulsan, a coastal city in South Korea. Not long ago, she visited her home country after five years of studying in London and Los Angeles, and noticed something strange: the local language had changed. "People had started using English words as if they were Korean," she says.

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Have you ever heard a word that sounded like an English word, but found yourself scratching your head in confusion? In this post, we will explore a list of words that are used often by native Korean speakers.

The Korean language consists of these three main components: pure Korean words, Sino-Korean words, and loanwords. Loanwords have and . are Korean words that are derived from another language because there is no equivalent or substitute words for them in the Korean language. These are some examples of : (banana), (mannequin), and (New York). (Konglish) is a portmanteau of the words, Korean and English. words are derived from the English language, but the meaning or pronunciation has been altered. They sound like English words, so many foreigners who study Korean are often puzzled by or have to think hard about them to figure out their actual meanings.

In this post, I would like to introduce a list of words that you will often hear from native Korean speakers.

When you hear the above words from Korean speakers next time, I hope you won't have to scratch your head anymore. Although these might sound awkward at first, words are very useful to learn when you study Korean. In order to become familiar with their pronunciation and meaning of these words, please refer to the following list and audio recording at the bottom of this post.
***Related Vocabulary***

안녕하세요? My name is Kyung-Hwa, and I am a native of South Korea. I am accustomed to both English and Korean languages and cultures. I greatly appreciate and love both of them. I am passionate about learning different languages, and I have studied English, Japanese, and Spanish. In my spare time, I take joy in singing, playing the piano, and reading books. I also enjoy traveling around the world, meeting people, and embracing new cultures and languages...

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Have you ever heard a word that sounded like an English word, but found yourself scratching your head in confusion? In this post, we will explore a list of words that are used often by native Korean speakers. The Korean language consists of these three main components: pure Korean words, Sino-Korean words, and loanwords.

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Japanese English

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There's no denying that social media has transformed the way we interact with each other. From sharing our thoughts and photos to planning a night out, most people tend to organise their social lives, or at least have it significantly influence them, through some form of technology-based engagement. But, has this shift away from more physical interaction actually affected the way we speak and write English?

Speed freaks: the increasing rate of communication
What social media has done is enable us to communicate with a much larger number of people on a global scale in a way that we only really used to be able to do on a local level. This is great when it means we're keeping friendships alive over great distances, but it's also increasing the demands placed on an individual to keep a much larger number of relationships going simultaneously. For example, the average number of friends a person has on Facebook in the UK is around 300 - even if you're only actually really friends with, say, 10% of that number that's still 30 friendships to be maintaining.

The result? An ever-increasing speed of communication. Facebook lets you communicate quickly, effectively and, most importantly, efficiently because written exchanges are concise and shared between all the friends you are connected with, meaning you only need to write them once. On Twitter there's a 140 character limit, so even if you're not against the clock you are quite literally forced to make the statement brief.
LOL! OMG! TTYL!
The use of acronyms (an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word) are now commonplace substitutes to whole sentences; LOL (laugh out loud), OMG (Oh my God), TTYL (talk to you later) are just a few that demonstrate how social media speeds things up by lessening the need to write longer phrases and reduces space.
🙂 or 😉
Emoticons (a representation of a facial expression such as a smile or frown, formed by various combinations of keyboard characters) and used to convey what the user is feeling or to express the intended tone without actually having to write it. You could argue that this is a lazy form of writing, but social media isn't a process of creative writing (at least not in the traditional sense), it's a fast and convenient way of interacting with an audience.
The impact of this on speech in the real world
Language is an evolving thing. It's naive to think that the language of social media isn't having an effect on the way we use English in day-to-day life. It's more appropriate to consider just how much of an effect it's having on the way we communicate.

A whole host of words originating from social media and the wider Internet have become so commonplace that they've now slipped into popular usage, and we don't even realize it. Just a few interesting words that have their origins in technology are blogosphere (the collective word for personal websites called blogs), troll (someone who creates conflict online by starting arguments or upsetting people) and buzzword (a word or phrase that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context). Even some acronyms have made the transition into everyday speech as words, 'lol' for example.

Another curious phenomenon we've seen in recent years is the reappropriation of existing words and words based on brands to refer primarily to their social media context. Reappropriation is the cultural process by which a group claims words that were previously used in a certain way and gives them a new meaning. In this way the people who engage with social media are quite literally creating new words and giving new meanings to existing words.

'Friended' and 'unfriended' are two examples of words that have been given a new meaning due to their usage online. The word 'friend' and 'befriend' is from Old English originating in the 13th Century, but it has been given an entirely new meaning thanks to Facebook (the process of adding or removing someone from your circle of friends). 'Like' and 'viral' are other popular examples of words that have had their meaning reappropriated by social media.

There are even instances of online brands becoming so powerful that words have crept into the English language based on them. 'Google' is the world's leading search engine and it has become so universal in its usage that the phrase 'Google it' has virtually replaced the phrase 'search for it' in common speech. There are examples of this lifted directly from social media too; 'tweet it' refers to writing a message using Twitter, but has essentially come to mean 'share it'.

So, has social media changed the way we speak and write English? Yes, undeniably.

Just think, ten years ago, if someone you'd just met asked you to "be their friend" or "Instagram" a photo of their lunch you'd have scratched your head and wondered if in fact they were feeling alright.

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Has social media changed the way we speak and write English?

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There's no denying that social media has transformed the way we interact with each other. But has this actually affected the way we speak and write English?

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Malaysian English