American English Dialects
Why is American English different than British English?
What are there different American dialects?
What are the origins and characteristics of major US dialects?
Preliminary facts:
I. More English dialects are in Britain than in the rest of world put together: over 43 major English dialects in Britain alone
Age-Area Hypothesis: the area inhabited the longest has the most linguistic diversity
II. British English dialect genesis
1. Founder's effect - first Germanic settlers to Britain - the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, already spoke different dialects
2. North and West Britian had the most Celtic substrate
3. North Britain had the most direct Norse (Viking) influence.
4. South England had most direct Norman French influence.
5. Barriers to social mobility led to social stratification of dialects (example: Cockney English of London's working class vs.
"The King's English" and BBC's Received Pronunciation).
6. Language drift - British English has changed since colonial times:
petrol (gas), fag (cigarette), bloody (damn), etc.
III. General factors in American English dialect genesis
1. Founder's effect - 4 major migrations from different parts of Britian
2. Substrate influence (Dutch, French, African, Native American)
3. Dialect levelling and mixing produces "general American English in the west. Greatest number of dialects are in the US East, as predicted by the Age-Area Hypothesis
4. Shared innovations in American English not found in Britain
Four Major American Dialect AReas
1. New England
Founder's effect-Puritan Migrations (1629-40) from East Anglia
Main linguistic features
--pronunciation of [O] in caught, bought
--low front [a] instead of back[A] in far, father (the so-called nasal twang)
--No syllable-final [r], far ->"fah", Carter -> "Cahtah".
--Compensatory addition of [r] after a final schwa, as in Cuber (instead of Cuba). This trait developed after the colonial period.
--some lexical particularities: angleworm (earthworm), pail (bucket)
Influence on General American speech and modern American culture
--New England dialect spreads across the Northeast, Maine to Wisconsin.
--Many New England town, city and county names derive from East Anglia.
--Old testament first names are more common in New England than elsewhere: Nathanial, Nehemiah, Joshua, etc.; New England also has a large share of Hebrew town names (Salem, Concord)
--cuss from curse, originally a high class, [r]-less pronunciation
--conniption fit, scrimp, pesky, snicker.
--idioms: sharp as a meat ax, big as all outdoors, cool as a cucumber,
not know beans about ,Wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole,
--Many idioms associated with sailing:
to lower the boom on someone, three sheets to the wind (drunk),
take the wind out of one's sails,
cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.
No significant substrate effect in most of New England
2. Coastal South (Virginia to Florida)
Founder's effect-Cavalier Migrations (1642-1675) from South England
Main linguistic features
--drawl (lax vowels become long or diphthongalized):
house = ha:wse, eggs = ai:gz; flowers. [fla:ierz]
--lilt from African influence after colonial times
--loss of final d after another voiced consonant: an(d), tol(d)
--first syllable accented (rather than the second) in such words as: guitar, insurance, July, police, elope, etc.
--yall for you all
--bucket, not pail
Influence on General American--
--colorful idioms: Mad as a rooster in an empty henhouse,
Don't get crosslegged (Don't get mad.),
tearing up the peapatch (on a rampage),
kneewalkin' drunk,
He's three bricks shy of a load. (dumb, kinda crazy)
Other southernisms that made it into general American:
--snickerdoodles; tacky; varmint, from vermin, vittles > victuals.
--spitting image of > spirit and image of
3. New Jersey, Pennsylvania English
Founder's effect - Quaker migrations (1675-1725)
from the Midlands area of England (near Whales), also Holland and Germany
Main Linguistic Features
--Back rounded [Å] in words such as caught, saw.
Also, the pronunciation of [E] instead of [] in bad, and, sack, etc.
--Retention of the syllable final [r] in all places.
--addition of r between Å and S "Warshinton."
Contributions to American English:
--great number of euphemisms.
Speakers avoided words with sexual connotations (bull, cock, etc.),
Also avoided names of parts of the body: used rock forstone (Old Eng. fortesticle'); chicken breast/leg =white meat, dark meat.
4. Appalachian English
Founder's effect - Scots-Irish migrations (1715-1775), mostly English people from Britain's Celtic fringe (North England, Northern Ireland), some real Celts, too)
Main linguistic features
--pronouns: hit (it), youns, (ye ones--Chaucer), (possessives) hisn, hern, yorn, theirn them used as an adjective in place of their; them boys.
--Retention of preposition in progressive aspect: I'm a talking to you.
--propensity to use compounds: men-folk, man-child, kin folks
--more interchange of parts of speech:
It pleasures me, That was mighty fetchin' of you, She prettied herself up,
I'll muscle it up (lift it up), He bigged her (made her pregnant);
He daddied that child.
--Many colorful idioms. Slow as Christmas (slow in coming about),
slick as a peeled onion (sly), His backbone's rubbin' his belly. (very hungry).
--fixin to, pert near, afeared, beholden (indebted), took sick, upped an, mess of --Rhyming euphemisms for expletives: swan, swanny = swear, land sakes alive, golly, dad blamed.
--Special deictic words: This here, that there, that yonder.
--bag called sack; dragonfly called mosquito hawk, green bean called a snap bean; pail called a bucket.
--High-pitched nasal twang in Upland South (Tennessee to Texas, not in Appalachians) - may be due to Cherokee/Choktaw substrate.
Influence on General American
--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.
--Some words widely assumed to be of Appalachian origin are not:
moonshine coined in England, 'hooch' is Native American.
--Words like redneck, cracker, hoosier were brought from North England; originally, they were not insulting.
The derogatory term Hillbilly was coined only in early 1900's.
Each major dialect of US English has many subdialects (4 major dialect areas contain nearly 30 subdialects)
General American - influence of dialects mixing in the Western US.
Main linguistic features:
1) retention of [r] in all places
2) [ae] in many words. Cf. British 'class' 'aunt'.
3) [aU] in house, out, etc.
4) vocab: stringbean (snapbean in the South), earthworm (angleworm),
creek (not brook)
MAJOR DIALECTS WITH NON-ENGLISH SUBSTRATE
New York English - Variety of New England with special Dutch substrate.
After 1664 - Dutch-speaking Niew Amsterdam becomes English New York
Features shared with New England speech:
--final [r] is dropped: beer = bee-ah
--caught, bought are pronounced with [O] rather than [A]
Main Dutch substrate features:
--T, D -> t, d: them, these, that -> dem, dese, dat (Dutch has no interdentals)
--er => [Oi] 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)
Most later migrations to New York left little effect on New York English
Exception: Yiddish (form of German spoken by East European Jews)
--many new words, often ironic or sarcastic: schmaltz, chutzpah, schlemiel, schlimazel, klutz , kvetch, yenta, schmuck, schnoz
--new phonotactic rule - word initial sh+consonant is okay: schnook (dope).
--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: Joe-schmo
Oedipus-schmedipus, so long as he loves his mother.
Black English (1620 to present)
- West African substrate in Southern English
Features 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
--loss of ng: somethin', nothin', etc.
Main features from West Africa
--No use of linking verb 'to be' or generalization of one form for it.
--emphasis on aspect not tense:
He workin' (right now) vs. He be workin' (in general)
He been workin' (has been working) He BEEN workin' (long long time)
--I done gone (from Wolof doon , completive aspect particle + English 'done').
--Regularization of present tense verb conjugation: He don't, he know it.
--in initial position D -> d: dis, dey;
in medial position D -> v: brother > brovva.
final voiceless T -> f with =wif
Influence on English
--African vocabulary: 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).
--phrases from Black English: sweet talking, every which way;
to bad-mouth, high-five
There are many forms of Black English, not just one
All major forms of Black English show African substrate in what is essentially Southern English
Black English probably is decreolized creole
Gullah - the original creole persists in Coastal Georgia.
Cajun (Louisiana) - French substrate in English
(Acacians move to Louisiana after 1707)
BACKWOODS SOUTHERN (TENNESSEE TO TEXAS)
Origins
Appalachian (Scots-Irish) with Native American substrate (probably Cherokee, Choctaw)
Linguistic features
High-pitched nasal twang
all stressed vowels tensed