LANGUAGE IN THE USA

U.S. REGIONAL DIALECTS

HANDOUT

Complete the following statements as you listen to the lecture on Regional Dialects in the
U.S.

1. Regional dialects are language varieties that are defined in terms of

_____________________ boundaries.
2. The study of regional dialects began in the U.S. around 1889 with the formation
of the A_______________ D_______________ S________________ .
3. Dialectal boundaries still present in the U.S. today are reflected in
______________________ ___________________ patterns.
4. Settlers from east central and ___________________ England settled in eastern
New England and the Virginia tidewater area.
5. The ____________________ from Ulster settled in parts of western New
England, New York and Appalachia.
6. The colonial cities of Boston, ___________________ , __________________ and
Charleston were early, important centers of trade and culture.
7. ____________________ westward reflected to a large extent the settlement
patterns of the Atlantic states.

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LANGUAGE IN THE USA

U.S. REGIONAL DIALECTS

Regional dialects are language varieties that are defined in terms of geographical
boundaries. The study of regional dialects began in the U.S. around 1889 with the
formation of the American Dialect Society. In 1929 work began to create a
comprehensive atlas known as the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada. The
Linguistics Atlases that have been compiled contain linguistic maps showing the
geographical distributions of various linguistic forms.

Regional Variation in the U.S.

The formation of U.S. regional dialects in part had its beginnings in England as speakers
from various regions of England crossed the Atlantic and settled the Eastern seaboard of
America. Dialectal boundaries still present today are reflected in these settlement
patterns. Settlers from east central and southeastern England settled in eastern New
England and the Virginia Tidewater area. From northern and western parts of England
came settlers to the New Jersey and Delaware areas. And Scots-Irish from Ulster settled
in parts of western New England, New York and Appalachia. In time, certain colonial
cities such Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston acquired prestige as centers of trade and
culture. As a result, the dialects spoken in these cities exerted influence on nearby
settlements.

Migration westward reflected to a large extent the settlement patterns of the Atlantic
states. Pioneers from western New England and upstate New York, moving west, settled
chiefly in the Great Lakes area; settlers from the Middle Atlantic region (Pennsylvania
and Maryland) went west to Ohio, West Virginia and the Mississippi Valley. Influence
from the Southern Atlantic colonies spread to the Gulf States. The lines are not clearly
drawn, however, because streams of migration often mingled.

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The spread of migration continued to the Rocky Mountain States, essentially following
previously established patterns, but with great mingling and, finally, reached the West
Coast, with even greater crossing of dialect lines.

Patterns of Anglo settlement and migration are only part of the story. Contact between
speakers of English and Native Americans in the 17th century contributed to dialectal
regions. The later arrival of other European immigrants resulted in some very distinct
dialect areas: French in New Orleans, German in Southern Pennsylvania and Spanish in
the Southwest. The arrival of African slaves along the southeast Atlantic seaboard had a
significant influence on southern varieties of English. Later immigration of African
Americans from the rural south to Northern cities also had a major impact on American
English dialects.

Finally, geographic barriers also played a role in the formation of regional dialects.
Tangier Island off the coast of Virginia has preserved a very distinct dialect, as have the
speakers of Gullah along the Sea Islands of South Carolina.

The First English(es) in America

The first successful English settlement in America was Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.
The British English of the time was very different from British English today; it is what
we now refer to as “Early Modern English” (Shakespeare and the Elizabethan era) as
opposed to “Modern English” (today) or “Middle English” (ca. 1100-1500, Chaucer’s
day) and “Old English” (ca. 600-1100). Not only was Early Modern English different
today’s British English, it was also not one single variety of English. Instead, a number
of different dialects existed within the British Isles. Dialect differences in earlier
varieties of British English had a profound effect on the development of dialects of the
United States, as people from different dialect groups in Britain tended to populate
different regions in the U.S.

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Contrary to popular perceptions, the speech of the Jamestown colonists more closely
resembled today’s American English than today’s standard British as British English has
undergone a number of changes that did not occur in American English. Along with
certain pronunciations, some words and word meanings that were brought by the first
colonists still exist in American English, even though British English no longer uses
them; e.g., mad = angry or crazy in Amer. Eng.; Brit. Eng, only crazy; fall= a season in
Amer. Eng. vs. only autumn in Brit. Eng.; gotten “has he gotten the mail yet?” in Amer.
Eng. is a relic form of the Brit. Eng. got.

Most of the early colonists in the Jamestown (Tidewater Virginia) area came from
southeastern English (London area). So, they spoke an English dialect that was close to
the emerging London standard. The fact that Tidewater Virginia was long associated
with “proper” British speck led to one of its defining characteristics: “r-lessness” (= the
loss of postvocalic ‘r’ before a consonant) in words such as cart and work. Although
dialects of English were mostly r-pronouncing, the southeastern dialect was commonly r-
less. As this dialect gained prestige and r-lessness became a marker of the prestigious
standard, colonists in Tidewater Virginia were constructing a prosperous plantation
economy. The aristocrats, mostly descended from southeastern dialect speakers—r-less
—maintained close contact with London and its standard dialect speakers and, so, r-
lessness was established in lowland Virginia. The situation was very different in the
areas west of the Tidewater and for most varieties of American English which are r-ful,
not r-less. The English speakers who settled in the uplands of Virginia 100 years after
Jamestown was founded were from Britain’s r-pronouncing dialect regions or
descendants of the same. In particular, the Scots-Irish from Ulster had a tremendous
impact on American English. Another reason for r-fulness in upland Virginia speech was
language contact as huge numbers of Scots-Irish settlers brought their r-ful speech into
contact with r-less speech, with the result that r-ful speech became dominant. Moreover,
upland speakers did not maintain close contact with London, as they tended to establish
small farms, not large plantations.

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As in Tidewater Virginia, speakers of southeastern British dialect were prevalent in
eastern New England, beginning with the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in
1620. As such, eastern New England also was an r-less dialect area.

Some of the chief differences between traditional New England and western New
England speech derive from cultural differences that characterized the two areas from the
beginning. Early residents of eastern New England were fishermen; thus their dialect
was full of nautical terms that came from the speech of the western counties of England,
inhabited by a seagoing people. Other areas where fishing was important share these
dialectal features. Moving away from the coast, inland, dialects have a preponderance of
farming terms. The traditional speech of rural New York State, for example, also
contains many farming terms. It differs from that of western New England due to the
influence of Dutch and German speakers.

A second, early linguistic center was Philadelphia, founded by the Quakers in the 1680s.
The Quaker movement was organized in North England and the northern Midlands, areas
whose dialects were very different from the southeastern speech habits of the settlers in
New England. Also present in Philadelphia were settlers from Wales and Germany.
Almost immediately, the German settlers began moving into Pennsylvania where they
developed their distinct culture and language: Pennsylvania Dutch.

One of the most important groups to settle in early Philadelphia was the Scots-Irish. In
1724 thousands of Scots-Irish arrived in Delaware and then moved northward into
Pennsylvania, New York and New England. Numerous subsequent waves of Scots-Irish
immigration occurred throughout the 18th century and persisted well into the 20th century.
The English spoken by the Scots-Irish in the early 1770s was a rather archaic form.
Among other characteristics, Scots-Irish was strongly r-ful. It is estimated that
approximately 250,000 Scots-Irish had immigrated to American by 1776 and that one in
seven colonists was Scots-Irish at the time. They and their descendants would spread
throughout the Mid-Atlantic and the highlands of the American South, bringing with

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them well-known features of Southern American English, such as the use of you all for
the plural you.
(Handout – Appalachian English)

A third important cultural and trade center was Charleston, South Carolina, established in
1670. From the beginning, Charleston was a much more heterogeneous dialect area than
Richmond. Its original settlers were English, Irish and Welsh, followed by the
Huguenots from France, Dutch from Holland and New Amsterdam, Baptists from
Massachusetts, Quakers from Louisiana and Irish Catholics. In addition to these settlers,
Africans, imported as slaves to work on South Carolina’s rice plantations, added to the
dialect mix. Very quickly, Charleston’s booming economy led to its becoming the
largest mainland importer of African slaves. As early as 1708 its population was half
Black, half white; by 1724 there were three times as many Blacks as whites in the
population.

The influence of Charleston speech, both white and black, spread throughout the
lowlands of South Carolina and into Georgia. Settlement halted fro a time at the
Ogeechee River, the borderline between white and Native American territory. Florida
was not as heavily influenced by Charleston in the colonial years as the rest of the Lower
south since it was under Spanish rule until the early 1800s and wasn’t settled by English
speakers until relatively late. For the most part, the English that radiated out of
Charleston was r-less, like the plantation speech of the tidewater Virginia settlement.

One final important settlement in early regional dialect history was New Orleans. Begun
in 1717 by the French, it took several years to convince settlers to inhabit the swampy,
humid area. The earliest settlers were French, along with some Germans. Slaves from
Africa and the West Indies were also among the early inhabitants. Blacks in New
Orleans developed their own language, based on French; it was the ancestor of today’s
“Louisiana creole.” In 1765 the Acadians (or ‘Cajuns), a people of French descent who
had been deported from the Canadian settlement of Acadia (currently Nova Scotia and

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New Brunswick), arrived in New Orleans bringing a very different and more archaic
form of French speech. It survives today as Cajun.

Regional Dialect History – Lexicon

By the time of the Revolutionary War all of today’s most distinctive dialects had already
been established. The speech areas of the Atlantic States are divided into the North, the
Midland, and the South. In addition to changes resulting from different British dialect
backgrounds, we have also briefly alluded to the effects of various ‘foreign’ languages on
American English: French in the New Orleans area, Spanish in Florida, German in
Pennsylvania and New York State, and West African and Caribbean languages in the
Lower South. Another source of influence were the Native American languages spoken
by the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas.

Language and dialect contact were not the only factors for the creation of American
English. Early immigrants encountered many new objects, plants, animals and natural
phenomena for which they had no names. Some names they borrowed from other
languages, particularly Native American (raccoon, hominy, bayou), others they innovated
from English (seaboard, underbrush, backwoods). Other words had their meanings
extended to refer to new things; e.g., creek which originally meant a ‘small saltwater
inlet’ came to mean any small stream, in particular a freshwater stream. Some
innovations were made quite consciously by early Americans precisely to distinguish
themselves from the British. Thomas Jefferson was famous for coining new words;
Benjamin Franklin was an ardent advocate of spelling reform; and Noah Webster
established for Americans the spellings color, wagon, fiber and tire for the British
colour, wagon, fibre and tyre.

American English Extended

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The initial dialect boundaries of the East Coast played a large role in determining the
dialect landscape of the interior of the U.S. For the most part, settlers tended to move
directly westward. As the frontier expanded, American English changed with each new
environment.

In the early 1800s there were so many obstacles to travel that the easiest way to the West
was along the great Mississippi (mici sibi from Chippewa ‘big river’). The Mississippi is
2340 miles long and has 250 tributaries. It is more than a geographical feature; it was a
way of life.; It carried farmers, settlers and merchants. It prompted the development of
the steamboat or paddle steamer. It was a cargo route for cotton, sugar, tobacco and
slaves. The first Mississippi river steamboat appeared in 1832 and by 1835 New Orleans
rivaled New York City both as a port and as a banking center.

The language of the river entered American English. (Handout – The Westward
Movement)

In 1848 gold fever hit and the Gold Rush began. The 49ers (city people who went West
to find gold, get rich quick and hurry home) wrote about their experiences in numerous
books, diaries and letters. Unlike most pioneers, they were the only frontiersman to have
the education and inclination to describe what they saw and heard. Thus, the Gold Rush
was a literary and public event with wide popular appear. Gold Rush words continue to
be a part of Americans’ everyday speech. (Handout – The Westward Movement)

The Chisholm Trail.

The Railroad.

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Early Immigrants (Germans, French, Italians, Jews)

The vast majority of immigrants to the U.S. from French and German speaking parts of
Europe and French Canada spoke a nonstandard dialect. Estimates for 1790 indicate
about 17600 persons with French surnames and almost ten times as many (176400) with
German surnames in the United States.

The Germans were highly concentrated in southeastern Pennsylvania where they made up
26% of the population of the area. As stated earlier, there were very few French
immigrants from France in colonial or early republican times. The acquisition of
Louisiana in 1803 raised the numbers somewhat. Most French spoken in Louisiana is
either “Cajun” (a dialect imported from Canada after 1755) or Louisiana “Creole” (a
descendant of plantation pidgin and creole French used by Black slaves and whites in the
French Caribbean islands).

Before World War I, the Germans were a popular element in U.S. society, respected for
their contributions to science and philosophy. In the hysteria surrounding 1917-18,
however, all bilingual German schools were abolished and many German Americans
changed their names: KnoebelNoble, ShoenShane, SteinStone. German
American foods, too, underwent name changes: sauerkraut became liberty cabbage and
frankfurters became hot dogs.

The Italians, who followed the Germans, were a different social class and status. They
tended to be poor, illiterate peasants from Southern Italy. Between 1865-1920 more than
5 million Italians came, mainly to cities in the Northeast. The influence of Italian on
American English is largely limited to food words (spaghetti, cannoli, lasagne).
However, vocabulary related to Mafia had an inordinate influence (godfather, the family,
capo).

East and Central European Jewish immigrants numbered about 3 millions in the period
from 1880-1910. Many settled in the Lower East Side of New York City, working in the
garment trade. Excluded form many avenues of advancement, many American Jews
moved into the entertainment and media business: newspapers, magazines, vaudeville,
radio, film and television. The impact of Yiddish comes mainly through the media, from
both performers and executives (chutzpah, schlep, shtik, kosher, shlemiel, schmooz,
schmuck, yenta and, interestingly with a morphological prefix: schm, “actor-schmactor”).

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INCLUDED REFERENCES

Gilbert, Glenn G. (1981, 1998). “French and German: A comparative study.” In

Ferguson, Charles & Shirley Brice Heath. (Eds.) Language in the USA. Cambridge:
Cambridge U. P. 257-72.

McCrum, Robert, Cran, William & Robert MacNeil. (1992).”Pioneers! O Pioneers!” In

The Story of English. New York: Penguin Group. 225-261.

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