American English From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Major regional dialects of American English
ENE WNE NYC MID-ATLANTIC INLAND NORTHERN WPA NORTH CENTRAL WESTERN MIDLAND SOUTHERN Texas New Mexico California Appalachia Boston Rhode Island Pacific Northwest Chesapeake & Outer Banks Maine Ozarks New Orleans Upper Peninsula Philadelphia & Baltimore The map above shows the major regional dialects of American English plus more local varieties, as demarcated primarily by Labov et al.'s Atlas of North American English,^[14] as well as the related Telsur Project's regional maps. Any region may also contain speakers of "General American", a national mainstream umbrella accent. Furthermore, this map does not account for speakers of ethnic, cultural, or other not-strictly-regional varieties (such as African-American Vernacular English, Chicano English, Cajun English, etc.). All regional American English dialects, unless specifically stated otherwise, are rhotic, with the father–bother merger, Mary–marry–merry merger, and pre-nasal "short a" tensing.^[note 1]	Western [show]    North Central [show]    Inland Northern [show]    Midland [show]    WPA [show]    Southern [show]    Mid-Atlantic [show]    NYC [show]    ENE [show]

Below, eleven major American English accents are defined by their particular combinations of certain characteristics:

Accent name	Most populous urban center	strong /aʊ/ fronting	strong /oʊ/ fronting	strong /uː/ fronting	strong /ɑːr/ fronting	/æ/ split system	cot–caught merger	pin–pen merger
African American English		mixed	no	no	no	no	no/transitional	yes
Chicano English		no	no	mixed	no	no	yes	no
Inland Northern English	Chicago	no	no	no	yes	no	no	no
Mid-Atlantic English	Philadelphia	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	no	no
Midland English	Indianapolis	yes	yes	yes	no	no	transitional	mixed
New York City English	New York City	yes	no	no^[29]	no	yes	no	no
North-Central English	Minneapolis	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
Northern New England English	Boston	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
Southern English	San Antonio	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no/transitional	yes
Western English	Los Angeles	no	no	yes	no	no	yes	no
Western Pennsylvania English	Pittsburgh	yes	yes	yes	no	no	yes	mixed

East Coast[edit]

The red dots show every U.S. metropolitan area where over 50% non-rhotic speech has been documented among some of that area's local white speakers. Non-rhotic speech may be heard from black speakers throughout the whole country.^[30]

Traditionally, the "East Coast" comprises three or four major linguistically distinct regions, each of which possesses English varieties both distinct from each other as well as quite internally diverse: New England, the New York metropolitan area, the Mid-Atlantic states (centering on Philadelphia and Baltimore), and the Southern United States. The only r-dropping (or non-rhotic) regional accents of American English are all spoken along the East Coast, because these areas were in close historical contact with England and imitated prestigious varieties of English at a time when these were undergoing changes;^[31] in particular, the London prestige of non-rhoticity (or dropping the ⟨r⟩ sound, except before vowels) from the 17th century onwards, which is now widespread throughout most of England. Today, non-rhoticity is confined in the United States to the accents of eastern New England, the former plantation South, New York City, and African American Vernacular English (though the vowel-consonant cluster found in "bird", "work", "hurt", "learn", etc. usually retains its r pronunciation today, even in these non-rhotic accents). Other than these varieties, American accents are rhotic, pronouncing every instance of the ⟨r⟩ sound.

After the Civil War, the settlement of the western territories by migrants away from the Eastern U.S. led to dialect levelling and mixing (koineization), so that regional dialects are most strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard.

The Connecticut River is usually regarded as the western extent and Long Island Sound as the southern extent of marked New England speech: Eastern New England English—today marked by occasional or systematic r-dropping (or non-rhoticity),^[26] as well as the back tongue positioning of the /uː/ vowel (to [u]) and the /aʊ/ vowel (to [ɑʊ~äʊ]).^[27] The dialect has its roots in Puritans from East Anglia who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, .

The Potomac River generally divides the Northern and Midland coastal dialects from the geographic beginning of the Southern dialect areas; in between these two rivers several regional variations exist, chief among them being New York City English, which prevails in and around New York City (including Long Island and northeastern New Jersey), defined by variable non-rhoticity and a locally unique short-a vowel pronunciation split.

South[edit]

The main features of Southern American English can be traced to the speech of the English from the West Country and Southern England who settled in Virginia after leaving England at the time of the English Civil War. Most older Southern speech along the Eastern seaboard was non-rhotic, though, today, all local Southern dialects are strongly rhotic, defined most recognizably by the /aɪ/ vowel losing its gliding quality and approaching [aː~äː], the initiating event for the Southern Vowel Shift, which includes a "Southern drawl" that makes short front vowels into gliding vowels.^[22]

Midwest[edit]

A distinctive speech pattern also appears near the border between Canada and the United States, centered on the Great Lakes region (but only on the American side). Linguists call this region the "Inland North", as defined by its local vowel shift—occurring in the same region whose "standard Midwestern" speech was the basis for General American in the mid-20th century (though prior to this recent vowel shift). Those not from this area frequently confuse it with the North Midland dialect treated below, referring to both, plus areas to the immediate west of the Great Lakes region, all collectively as "the Midwest": a common but vaguely delineated term for what is now the central or north-central United States. The so-called '"Minnesotan" dialect is also prevalent in the cultural Upper Midwest, and is characterized by influences from the German and Scandinavian settlers of the region (like "yah" for yes, pronounced similarly to "ja" in German, Norwegian and Swedish). In parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio, another dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch English is also spoken.

Midland[edit]

Between the traditional American "North" and "South" is what linguists have long called the "Midland." This geographically overlaps with some states situated in the lower Midwest. West of the Appalachian Mountains begins the broad zone of modern-day "Midland" speech. This has often been divided into two discrete subdivisions, the "North Midland" that begins north of the Ohio River valley area, and the "South Midland" speech, which to the American ear has a slight trace of the "Southern accent" (especially due to some degree of /aɪ/ glide weakening). Sometimes the former region is designated simply "Midland" and the latter is labelled as "Highland Southern". The South Midland or Highland Southern dialect follows the Ohio River in a generally southwesterly direction, moves across Arkansas and Oklahoma west of the Mississippi, and peters out in West Texas. It is a version of the Midland speech that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms.

Modern Midland speech also has no obvious presence or absence of the cot–caught merger. Historically, Pennsylvania was the home of the Midland dialect, however, this state of early English-speaking settlers has now largely split off into new dialect regions, with distinct Philadelphia and Pittsburgh dialects documented since the latter half of the twentieth century.

West[edit]

A generalized Midland speech continues westward until becoming a somewhat internally diverse Western American English that unites the entire western half of the country. This Western dialect is mostly unified by the cot–caught merger and a conservatively backed pronunciation of the long oh sound in goat, toe, show, etc., but a fronted pronunciation of the long oo sound in goose, lose, tune, etc. Western speech itself contains such advanced sub-types as Pacific Northwest English and California English (with the Chicano English accent also being a sub-type primarily of the Western accent), although, in the immediate San Francisco area, some older speakers do not possess the normal Californian cot–caught merger, which reflects a historical Mid-Atlantic heritage.^{[citation needed]}

The island state of Hawaii, though primarily English-speaking, is also home to a creole language known commonly as Hawaiian Pidgin, and native Hawaiians may even speak English with a Pidgin accent.

Other varieties[edit]

Although no longer region-specific,^[32] African American Vernacular English, which remains prevalent particularly among working- and middle-class African Americans, has a close relationship to Southern varieties of American English and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans, including in areas such as hip hop culture. The same aforementioned socioeconomic groups, but among Hispanic and Latino Americans, have also developed native-speaker varieties of English. The best-studied Latino Englishes are Chicano English, spoken in the West and Midwest, and New York Latino English, spoken in the New York metropolitan area. Additionally, ethnic varieties such as Yeshiva English and "Yinglish" are spoken by some American Jews, and Cajun Vernacular English by some Cajuns in southern Louisiana.

Phonology[edit]

See also: North American English regional phonology

Compared with English as spoken in England, North American English^[33] is more homogeneous, and any North American accent that exhibits a majority of the most common phonological features is known as "General American." This section mostly refers to such widespread or mainstream pronunciation features that characterize American English.

Studies on historical usage of English in both the United States and the United Kingdom suggest that spoken American English did not simply deviate away from period British English, but retained certain now-archaic features contemporary British English has since lost.^[34] One of these is the rhoticity common in most American accents, because in the 17th century, when English was brought to the Americas, most English in England was also rhotic. The preservation of rhoticity has been further supported by the influences of Hiberno-English, West Country English and Scottish English.^[35] In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter ⟨r⟩ is a postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠] or retroflex approximant [ɻ] rather than a trill or tap (as often heard, for example, in the English accents of Scotland or India). A unique "bunched tongue" variant of the approximant r sound is also associated with the United States, and seems particularly noticeable in the Midwest and South.^[36]

Many British accents have evolved in other ways compared to which General American English has remained relatively more conservative, for example, regarding the typical southern British features of a trap–bath split, fronting of /oʊ/, and H-dropping. The innovation of /t/ glottaling, which does occur before a consonant (including a syllabic coronalnasal consonant, like in the words button or satin) and word-finally in General American, additionally occurs variably between vowels in British English. On the other hand, General American is more innovative than the dialects of England, or English elsewhere in the world, in a number of its own ways:

• 
  The merger of /ɑ/ and /ɒ/, making father and bother rhyme. This change is in a transitional or completed stage nearly universally in North American English. Exceptions are in northeastern New England English, such as the Boston accent, New York City English, Philadelphia English, Baltimore English, and many Southern dialects, such as the Yat dialect.^[37][38]
  
• 
  About half of all Americans merge of the vowels /ɑ/ and /ɔ/. This is the so-called cot–caught merger, where words like cot and caught are homophones. This change has occurred most firmly in eastern New England (Boston area), Greater Pittsburgh, and the whole western half of the country.^[39]
  
• 
  For speakers who do not merge caught and cot, the lot–cloth split has taken hold. Therefore, the cot vowel has been replaced by the caught vowel in many cases before voiceless fricatives (as in cloth, off), which is also found in some varieties of British English, as well as before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long), usually in gone, often in on, and irregularly before /ɡ/ (log, hog, dog, fog).
  
• 
  The strut vowel, rather than the lot or thought vowel, is used in the function words was, of, from, what, everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody, and, for some speakers, because and want, when stressed. ^{[40][41][42][43]}
  
• 
  Vowel mergers before intervocalic /ɹ/: Which vowels are affected varies between dialects, but the Mary–marry–merry, serious–Sirius, and hurry–furry mergers are found in many American English dialects. Americans vary slightly in their pronunciations of R-colored vowels—such as those in /ɛəɹ/ and /ɪəɹ/—sometimes monophthongizing towards [ɛɹ] and [ɪɹ] or tensing towards [eɪɹ] and [i(ə)ɹ] respectively, causing pronunciations like [pʰeɪɹ] for pair/pear and [pʰiəɹ] for peer/pier.^[44] Also, /jʊər/ is often reduced to [jɚ], so that cure, pure, and mature may all end with the sound [ɚ], thus rhyming with blur and sir. The word sure is also part of this rhyming set as it is commonly pronounced [ʃɚ].
  
• 
  Dropping of /j/ is much more extensive than in most of England. In most North American accents, /j/ is dropped after all alveolar and interdental consonants (i.e. everywhere except after /p/, /b/, /f/, /h/, /k/, and /m/) so that new, duke, Tuesday, presume are pronounced [nu], [duk], [ˈtʰuzdeɪ], [pʰɹɪˈzum].
  
• 
  /æ/ tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent. With most American speakers, for whom the phoneme /æ/ operates under a somewhat continuous system, /æ/ has both a tense and a lax allophone (with a kind of "continuum" of possible sounds between those two extremes, rather than a definitive split). In these accents, /æ/ is overall realized before nasal stops as more tense (approximately [eə̯]), while other environments are more lax (approximately the standard [æ]); for example, note the vowel sound in [mæs] for mass, but [meə̯n] for man). In some American accents, though, specifically those from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City, [æ] and [eə̯] are entirely separate (or "split") phonemes, for example, in planet [pʰɫænɪ̈t̚] vs. plan it [pʰɫeənɪ̈t̚]. This is often called the Mid-Atlantic split-a system. Note that these vowels move in the opposite direction in the mouth compared to the backed British "broad A"; this phenomenon has been noted as related to the increasingly rare phenomenon of older speakers of the eastern New England (Boston) area for whom /æ/ changes to /ɑ/ before /f/, /s/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, /v/ alone or when preceded by a homorganic nasal.
  

[show]

  /æ/ tensing in North American English

• 
  Flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before unstressed vowels (as in butter [ˈbʌɾəɹ], party [ˈpʰɑɹɾi]) and syllabic /l/ (bottle [ˈbɑɾəɫ]), as well as at the end of a word or morpheme before any vowel (what else [wʌˈɾɛɫs], whatever [wʌˈɾɛvəɹ]). Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding are pronounced the same, except with the stressed /aɪ/ (see below).
  
• 
  Canadian raising of /aɪ/: many speakers split the sound /aɪ/ based on its presence before either a voiceless or voiced consonant, so that in writer it is pronounced [ʌɪ] but in rider it is pronounced [äɪ] (because [t] is a voiceless consonant while [d] is voiced). This is a form of Canadian raising but, unlike more extreme forms of that process, does not affect /aʊ/. In many areas and idiolects, a distinction between what elsewhere become homophones through this process is maintained by vowel lengthening in the vowel preceding the formerly voiced consonant, e.g., [ˈɹʌɪɾɚ] for "writer" as opposed to [ˈɹäɪɾɚ] for "rider".
  
  • 
    Many speakers in the Inland North, North Central American English, and Philadelphia dialect areas raise /aɪ/ before voiced consonants in certain words as well, particularly [d], [g] and [n]. Hence, words like tiny, spider, cider, tiger, dinosaur, cyber-, beside, idle (but sometimes not idol), and fire may contain a raised nucleus. The use of [ʌɪ] rather than [aɪ] in such words is unpredictable from phonetic environment alone, though it may have to do with their acoustic similarity to other words that do contain [ʌɪ] before a voiceless consonant, per the traditional Canadian-raising system. Hence, some researchers have argued that there has been a phonemic split in these dialects; the distribution of the two sounds is becoming more unpredictable among younger speakers.^[48]
    
• 
  T glottalization is common when /t/ is in the final position of a syllable or word (get, fretful: [ɡɛʔ], [ˈfɹɛʔfəɫ]), though this is always superseded by the aforementioned rules of flapping
  
• 
  L-velarization: England's typical distinction between a "clear L" (i.e. [l]) and a "dark L" (i.e. [ɫ] or sometimes even [ʟ]) is much less noticeable in nearly all dialects of American English; it may even be altogether absent.^[49] Instead, most U.S. speakers pronounce all "L" sounds with a tendency to be "dark", meaning with some degree of velarization.^[50] The only notable exceptions to this are in some Spanish-influenced U.S. English varieties (such as East Coast Latino English, which typically shows a clear "L" in syllable onsets) and in older, moribund Southern speech of the U.S., where "L" is clear in an intervocalic environment between front vowels.^[51]
  
• 
  Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may commonly be realized as [ɾ̃] or simply [n], making winter and winner homophones in fast or non-careful speech.
  
• 
  The pin–pen merger occurs in certain areas, by which [ɛ] is raised to [ɪ] before nasal stops, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in, and is mostly associated with, Southern American English but is now also sometimes found in parts of the Midwest and West as well, especially in people with roots in the mountainous areas of the Southeastern United States.
  
• 
  The vowel /ɪ/ in unstressed syllables generally merges with /ə/ (weak-vowel merger), so roses is pronounced like Rosa's.
  

Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include:

• 
  Horse–hoarse merger, making the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/ before 'r' homophones, with homophonous pairs like horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning, war/wore, etc. homophones.
  
• 
  Wine–whine merger, making pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where, etc. homophones, in most cases eliminating /ʍ/, the voiceless labiovelar fricative. Many older varieties of southern and western American English still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading.
  

Vocabulary[edit]

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North America has given the English lexicon many thousands of words, meanings, and phrases. Several thousand are now used in English as spoken internationally.