American English

American English or U.S. English is the form of the English language used mostly in the United States. It is the primary languages in the United States. According to the United States 1990 census, 97 percent of U.S. residents speak English "well" or "very well." Only 0.8% (8 people out of a thousand) speak no English at all, as compared with 3.6 percent in 1890. As of 2005, more than two-thirds of native speakers of English use American English. ==History== English was inherited from British colonization of the Americas. The first wave of English-speaking immigrants was settled in North America in the 17th century. In that century, there were also speakers in North America of the Dutch language, French language, German language, myriad Native American languages, Spanish language, Swedish language, and Finnish (language) languages. ==Phonology== In many ways, compared to British English, American English is conservative in its phonology. It is sometimes claimed that certain rural areas in North America speak "Elizabeth I of England English," and there may be some truth to this, but the standard American English of the upper Midwest has a sound profile much closer to 17th century English than contemporary speech in England. The conservatism of American English is largely the result of the fact that it represents a mixture of various dialects from the British Isles. Dialect in North America is most distinctive on the East Coast of the continent; this is largely because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of British English at a time when those varieties were undergoing changes. The interior of the country was settled by people who were no longer closely connected to England, as they had no access to the ocean during a time when journeys to Britain were always by sea. As such the inland speech is much more homogeneous than the East Coast speech, and did not imitate the changes in speech from England. Most North American speech is rhotic and non-rhotic accents, as English was everywhere in the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English, Scottish English, and West Country accent English. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter "R" is a retroflex semivowel rather than a trill or a tap. The loss of syllable-final ''r'' in North America is confined mostly to the accents of Boston accent, New York-New Jersey English and surrounding areas, and the coastal portions of the Southern American English. In England, lost 'r' was often changed into (schwa), giving rise to a new class of falling diphthongs. Furthermore, the 'er' sound of (stressed) ''fur'' or (unstressed) ''butter'', which is represented in International Phonetic Alphabet as stressed or unstressed is realized in American English as a monophthongal r-colored vowel. This does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech. Other British English changes in which most North American dialects do not participate include: * The shift of to (the so-called "broad A") before alone or preceded by . This is the difference between the British Received Pronunciation and American pronunciation of ''bath'' and ''dance''. In the United States, only linguistically conservative eastern-New-England speakers took up this innovation. * The shift of intervocalic to glottal stop , as in for ''bottle''. This change is not universal for British English (and in fact is not considered to be part of Received Pronunciation), but it does not occur in most North American dialects. Newfoundland English is a notable exception. On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound changes not found in Britain, at least not in standard varieties. Many of these are instances of phonemic differentiation and include: * The merger of and , making ''father'' and ''bother'' rhyme. This change is nearly universal in North American English, occurring almost everywhere except for parts of eastern New England, like the Boston accent. * The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut vowel in ''what'', ''was'', ''of'', ''from'', ''everybody'', ''nobody'', ''somebody'', ''anybody'', ''because'', and in some dialects ''want''. * The merger of and . This is the so-called cot-caught merger, where ''cot'' and ''caught'' are homophones. This change has occurred in eastern New England, in Pittsburgh English and surrounding areas, and from the Great Plains westward. * tense-lax neutralization before intervocalic . Which (if any) vowels are affected varies between dialects. * The merger of and after palatal consonant in some words, so that ''cure'', ''pure'', ''mature'' and ''sure'' rhyme with ''fir'' in some speech registers for some speakers. * Yod-dropping of after , , so that ''new'', ''duke'', ''Tuesday'', ''suit'', ''resume'', ''lute'' are pronounced , , , , , . * �-tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent. In some accents, particularly those from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to New York City, and can even contrast sometimes, as in ''Yes, I can'' vs. ''tin can'' . * Laxing of /e/, /i/ and /u/ to /E/, /I/ and /U/ before /r/, causing pronunciations like /pEr/, /pIr/ and /pjUr/ for ''pair'', ''peer'' and ''pure''. * The flapping of intervocalic and to alveolar tap before non-initial reduced vowels. The words ''ladder'' and ''latter'' are mostly or entirely homophonous, possibly distinguished only by the length of preceding vowel. For some speakers, the merger is incomplete and 't' before a reduced vowel is sometimes not tapped following or when it represents underlying 't'; thus ''greater'' and ''grader'', and ''unbitten'' and ''unbidden'' are distinguished. Others distinguish the sounds if they are preceded by the diphthongs or ; these speakers tend to pronounce ''writer'' with and ''rider'' with . This is called Canadian raising; it is general in Canadian English, and occurs in some northerly versions of American English as well. * The dropping of [t]s that occur between [n] and an unstressed vowel, making ''winter'' and ''winner'' sound the same. This does not occur when the ''t'' after the ''n'' belongs to a second stress syllable, as in ''entail''. * The pin-pen merger, by which is raised to before nasal consonants, making pairs like ''pen''/''pin'' homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English but is now widespread in the Midwest and West as well. Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include: * The horse-hoarse merger of the vowels and before 'r', making pairs like ''horse/hoarse'', ''corps/core'', ''for/four'', ''morning/mourning'' etc. homophones. * The h-cluster reductions making pairs like ''wine/whine'', ''wet/whet'', ''Wales/whales'', ''wear/where'' etc. homophones. Many older varieties of southern and western American English still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading. ==Differences in British English and American English== ''Main article'': American and British English differences American English has both spelling and grammatical differences from British English, some of which were made as part of an attempt to rationalize the English spelling used by British English at the time. Unlike many 20th century language reforms (for example, Turkey's alphabet shift, Norway's spelling reform) the American spelling changes were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary makers. The first American dictionary was written by Noah Webster in 1828. At the time America was a relatively new country and Webster's particular contribution was to show that the region spoke a different dialect from Britain, and so he wrote a dictionary with many spellings differing from the standard. Many of these changes were initiated unilaterally by Webster. Webster also argued for many "simplifications" to the idiomatic spelling of the period. Somewhat ironically, many, although not all, of his simplifications fell into common usage alongside the original versions, resulting in a situation even more confused than before. Many words are shortened and differ from other versions of English. Spellings such as ''center'' are used instead of ''centre'' in other versions of English. Conversely, American English sometimes favors words that are Morphology (linguistics) more complex, whereas British English uses clipped forms, such as AmE ''transportation'' and BrE ''transport'' or where the British form is a back-formation, such as AmE ''burglarize'' and BrE ''burgle'' (from ''burglar''). ===Loanwords not common in British English=== American English has further changed due to the influx of non-English speakers whose words sometimes enter American vernacular. Many words have entered American English from Spanish, Native American languages, and so on. For detailed differences in British English and American English see American and British English differences. Examples of common American English loanwords, not common in British English (many, however, would be recognized due to the influence of the American entertainment industry): ====From African languages==== ; gumbo : okra, or a stew thickened with okra ====From Dutch language==== ; cookie : a small baked cake (usually flat and crisp) made from sweetened dough (a biscuit in British English) ; stoop : a small platform in front of a house reached by a set of steps ; caboose : a car at the end of a train used for observing the train and braking the train in case it separated. ====From French language (''Some of these terms are exclusive to the state of Louisiana'')==== ; banquette : a raised sidewalk (usage is more regional) ; beignet : a puffy square pastry covered in powdered sugar ; boudin : a spicy link sausage ; caf� au lait : a mixture of half milk and half coffee (also sometimes used as slang for Mulatto descent) ; chowder : a thick seafood stew ; �touff�e : a spicy stew of vegetables and seafood (usage is more regional) ; jambalaya : rice cooked with herbs, spices, and ham, chicken, or seafood ; lagniappe : an extra or unexpected gift (usage is more regional) ; pain perdu : New Orleans-style French toast ; pirogue : a canoe made from a hollowed tree trunk (usage is more regional) ; zydeco : a native Louisiana style of music ====From Japanese language==== In addition to directly derived Japanese terms, Hawaiin pidgin also reflects the incorporation of the Japanese language. Beyond "surfer dude speak" (i.e. "da kine"), the Japanese-American population in Hawaii and the expats on the mainland (even to the 2nd generation LA) continue to prize and have adopted as their own some aspects of Polynesian influence (dance) and value/esteem the ability to speak Hawaiin pidgin. ; bonzai: plant (often a pine) that is deliberately miniaturized through specialized pruning. Can live over 100 years and not exceed 2 feet in height. ; da kine: the best (Hawaiin pidgin) ; Kudzu (''kuzu''): a woody, perennial vine ; hunky-dory : okay, fine (originally thought of as originating from ''Honcho-dori'', a major street in Yokohama, Kanagawa) ; origami: Traditional paper folding whose products represent animals: a thousand folded cranes is very lucky esp w/ gold paper & is still appreciated even within totally "Yankee" families. ; sashimi: very thinly sliced raw fish artistically presented upon a plate for consumption ; skosh: (''sukoshi'') : a small amount; a bit ; sushi: raw or specially prepared fish served on cold "formed" short grain rice. Often confused with ''sashimi''. ; wasabi: very hot green colored horseradish mustard. ====From Native American languages==== ; bayou : a swampy, slow-moving stream or outlet ; chinook : a strong wind blowing down off the mountains ; hickory ''(pawcohiccora)'' : a North American deciduous tree of the genus ''Carya'' ; high muckamuck (or mucky-muck, sometimes spelt [and usually pronounced] as simply "muckity-muck") : an important person (often sarcastically) ; mugwump : a political independent ; that neck of the woods ''(naiack)'' : an expression; from whence a person hails ; powwow : a gathering or meeting, esp. of Native Americans ; raccoon : ''Procyon lotor'', a North American mammal ; skunk : a small mammal (''Mephitis mephitis'') native to North America ; Squash (vegetable) ''(askutasquash)'' : a vegetable, similar to English marrow (vegetable) ; succotash : mixture of corn and other vegetables like peas, beans ; woodchuck (''wuchak'') : a marmot-like mammal ; moccasin: a shoe made of leather ====From Spanish language==== ; adobe : a mud-and-straw construction material used exclusively for bricks (originally an Arabic word, ''at-taub'', brick) ; arroyo : dry gulch or creek bed ; barrio : neighborhood, especially an ethnic (esp. Hispanic) ghetto ; buckaroo : cowboy (''vaquero'', cowboy) ; burrito : flour totilla folded around stuffing and heated. ; burro : donkey ; cojones : nerve or guts, literally testicles ; desperado : criminal (obsolete noun ''desperate'', hopeless) ; enchilada : corn tortillas rolled around a stuffing and baked w/ sauce (usually tomato based but mole [chocolate] sauce is also used esp in Mexico). The term "the whole enchilada" is akin to "the complete/real story". "The Big Enchilada" has been used as a term for both a local jefe (boss) and the city of Los Angeles Ca. ; frijoles : beans ; gringo : a disparaging term meaning ''white'', especially English-speaking (New World Spanish, foreigner hacienda : the principal dwelling on a ranch ; hombre : man ; jalopy : beat-up car (originally thought of as originating from Jalapa, Mexico) ; jefe : boss esp politically and/or financially connected w/ the "powers that be" ; mesa : flat topped mountain (''mesa'', table) ; no problemo : a pseudo-Spanish expansion of the phrase "no problem", often used in place of "you're welcome" as a response to "thank you". A literal Spanish translation of "no problem" would be ''no hay problema'' (''i.e.'', "there is no problem"); the actual Spanish response to ''gracias'' ("thank you") is ''de nada'' ("(it is) of nothing", ''i.e.'', "it was done without expectation of gratitude"). ; peccadillo : a small infraction, especially moral (''pecadillo'', a little sin) ; savvy : understand, knowledgeable (''sabe'', he/she/it knows, ''i.e.'', "is knowledgeable") ; tamale : ingredients such as meat, potatoes & onions are encapsulated within moist masa (itself likely a borrowing from the Hebrew language "matzah") for "corn flour", and then wrapped in corn husks and then steamed. A traditional Mexican Christmas delicacy. ====From Yiddish==== ''See main article: List of English words of Yiddish origin'' ====From Tagalog language==== ; Barangay : small political unit, sub-district ; Boondock (''bundok'') : rural area, backcountry ; Cogon (''kugon''): tall grass ==English words that arose in the U.S.== A number of words that arose in the United States have become common, to varying degrees, in English as it is spoken internationally. Although its origin is disputed, the most famous word is probably Okay, which is sometimes used in other languages as well. Other American introductions include "belittle," "gerrymander" (from Elbridge Gerry), "applesauce", "blizzard", "barbecue" (and other spelling permutations thereof), "teenager", and many more. ==English words obsolete outside the U.S.== A number of words that originated in the English of the British Isles are still in everyday use in North America, but are no longer used in most varieties of British English. The most conspicuous of these words are ''autumn'', the season; ''to quit'', as in "to cease an activity" (as opposed to "to leave a location" as still used in most other Anglophone countries); and ''gotten'' as a past participle of ''get''. Americans are likelier than Britons to name a stream whose breadth or volume is judged insufficient for it to be a ''river'' or a ''creek''. The word ''diaper'' goes back at least to William Shakespeare, and usage was maintained in the U.S. and Canada, but was replaced in the British Isles with ''nappy''. Some of these words are still used in various dialects of the British Isles, but not in formal standard British English. Many of these older words have cognates in Scots language. The subjunctive mood is livelier in North American English than it is in British English; it appears in some areas as a spoken usage, and is considered obligatory in more formal contexts in American English. British English has a strong tendency to replace subjunctives with auxiliary verb constructions. ==Regional differences== Written American English is fairly standardized across the country. However, there is some variation in the spoken language. There are several recognizable regional variations (such as New York-New Jersey English), particularly in pronunciation, but also in slang vocabulary. Most traditional sources cite General American English (occasionally referred to as ''Standard Midwestern'') as the unofficial standard accent and dialect of American English. However, many linguists claim California English has become the de facto standard since the 1960s or 1970s due to its central role in the American entertainment industry; others argue that the entertainment industry, despite being in California, uses Midwestern. Certain features which are frequent in speakers of California English, particularly the cot-caught merger, are not often considered as part of the standard. Regional dialects in North America are most strongly differentiated along the eastern seaboard. The distinctive speech of important cultural centers like Boston, Massachusetts (''see Boston accent''), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana imposed their marks on the surrounding areas. The Connecticut River is usually regarded as the southern/western extent of ''New England'' speech, while the Potomac River generally divides a group of Northern coastal dialects from the beginning of the Coastal Southern dialect area (distinguished from the ''Highland Southern'' or South Midland dialect treated below, although outsiders often mistakenly believe that the speech in these two areas is the same); in between these two rivers several local variations exist, chief among them the one that prevails in and around New York City and northern New Jersey. The sounds of American speech can be identified with a number of public figures. President John F. Kennedy spoke in the Boston accent, while President Jimmy Carter speaks with a Southern coastal accent. The North Midlands speech is familiar to those who have heard Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, while the South Midland speech was the speech of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. African American Vernacular English (AAVE, colloquially known as Ebonics) contains many distinctive forms. ===Eastern New England=== The accents of eastern New England, including those of Boston, Massachusetts (see Boston accent), New Hampshire, and Maine (also called Down East), are characterized by a number of phenomena that distinguish them from General American (GenAm). Traditionally, these accents (with the exception of Martha's Vineyard) are non-rhotic, but this feature is slowly losing ground, especially with the vowel . Further, most accents in this region have not phonemic differentiation the vowels of ''father'' and ''bother'', that is, the two do not rhyme, as they do in GenAm. In general, these accents undergo the cot-caught merger, making ''cot'' and ''caught'' homophonous as . They also have a dwindling group of words with broad A, such as ''past'', ''half'', ''aunt'', ''can't''. Among non-rhotic speakers, the broad A is identical to the sound usually spelled ''ar'', so that ''past''/''parsed'' and ''aunt''/''aren't'' can be homophonous pairs. The distinction between the vowels of ''horse'' and ''hoarse'' is maintained in traditional non-rhotic New England accents as (with the same vowel as ''cot'' and ''caught'') vs. . Words that have in Received Pronunciation (where V stands for any vowel), such as ''origin'', ''Florida'', ''horrible'', ''quarrel'', ''warren'', ''borrow'', ''tomorrow'', ''sorry'', ''sorrow'', all have in eastern New England, unlike GenAm where most have (except the last four in the list, which have in GenAm as well). The eastern New England accents have not undergone many of the vowel mergers before intervocalic found in General American. For example, many accents in this region preserve the distinction between (as in ''nearer'' ) and (as in ''mirror'' , as well as the distinction between (as in ''hurry'' ) and (as in ''furry'' . Like some other east-coast accents as well as African American Vernacular English, some accents of eastern New England merge and , making homophones of pairs like ''pour''/''poor'', ''more''/''moor'', ''tore''/''tour'', ''cores''/''Coors'' etc. ===New York City and northern New Jersey=== ''Main article: New York-New Jersey English'' As in Eastern New England, the accents of New York City and northern New Jersey are traditionally non-rhotic. But the vowels of ''cot'' ) and ''caught'' ) are distinct; the former is distinct from that of ''cart'' ) only by being short and monophthongal. The accent is well attested in American movies and television shows. Bugs Bunny and Groucho Marx both had a Brooklyn accent. The accent is often exaggerated, but it still does exist to some degree with many Brooklyn natives. A more contemporary version can be found on the popular television show ''The Sopranos'', which is set in Essex County, New Jersey. ===Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley=== The accent of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and nearby parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, is probably the original ancestor of General American. It is one of the few coastal accents that is rhotic, and one of the first to phonemic differentiation the historical of ''hoarse, mourning'' with the of ''horse, morning''. It also maintains the cot-caught merger, unlike New England and western Pennsylvania. Nevertheless there are differences between modern Philadelphia speech and General American, some of which will be outlined here. * "Water" is sometimes pronounced , that is, with the vowel of ''wood'' * As in New York-New Jersey English, but unlike General American, words like ''orange'', ''horrible'', etc., are pronounced with . See Tense-lax neutralization#\"Florida oranges\". * ''On'' is pronounced , so that, as in the South and Midland (and unlike New York and the North) it rhymes with ''dawn'' rather than ''don''. * The of ''goat'' and ''boat'' is fronted, so it is pronounced , as in the Midland and South. * The phoneme undergoes [[�-tensing|[�]-tensing]] in some words; fewer words have the tense in Philadelphia than in New York City. * As in New York City and Boston accent, there is a three-way distinction between tense-lax neutralization. A recent development is a merger of the vowel of ''merry'' with ''Murray''. * Canadian raising occurs for (''price'') but not for (''mouth'') * There is a split of (''face'') so at the end of a word (for example, ''day'') it sounds like it does in Australia, while in any other position (for example, ''date'') it is pronounced more like . Commonly confused words include ''eight'' and ''eat'', ''snake'' and ''sneak'', ''slave'' and ''sleeve''. * South Philadelphia has been known for r-dropping, even though it has never been a characteristic of the rest of the region. ''See also Baltimorese'' ===South=== ''Main article: Southern American English'' * monophthongization of as , for example, most dialects' "I" → "Ah" in the South. * (also some East Coast:) loss of non-prevocalic ''r''. * Coastal Southern speech is non-rhotic. * and merged before nasal consonants, for example "Wendy" becomes "Windy," "pen" becomes "pin," and so forth. * Unlike most American English, but like Commonwealth English, glides ([j], the ''y'' sound) are inserted before after the consonants . * In the Deep South, vowels tend to take the hard sound more often, for example, "on" and "own" are similar; "can't" and "ain't" and "glass" and "face" also might rhyme. * Verbs can have various meanings. For example, 'cut' the light off, or 'mash' the buttons ====New Orleans ==== While including such characteristics of the Southern U.S. English as using "y'all" for second person plural, the New Orleans, Louisiana accent is so unlike the rest of the South and so similar to that of New York City that New Orleanians traveling in other parts of the USA are often mistaken for New Yorkers. Many pronunciations are surprisingly similar to that found in New York-New Jersey English and northern New Jersey, presumably arising from a similar mix of immigrants. Parallels include the �-tensing of the historic short-a class into tense and lax [�] versions, as well as pronunciation of "cot" and "caught" as and . The stereotypical New York r-dropping of "toity-toid street" (33rd Street) used to be a common New Orleans feature, though it has mostly receded today. Perhaps the most distinctive New Orleans accent is locally nicknamed "yat", from a traditional greeting "Where y'at" ("Where are you at?", meaning "How are you?"). One of the most detailed phonetic depictions of an extreme "yat" accent of the early 20th century is found in the speech of the character Krazy Kat in the comic strip of the same name by George Herriman. While such extreme "yat" accents are no longer so common in the city, they can still be found in parts of Mid-City and the 9th ward, as well as in St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans. The novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is generally considered the best depiction of New Orleans accents in literature. ====Central and South Florida==== The speech of Central and South Florida (everything South of and including Orlando) is noticeable for ''not'' being a typical southern accent, because a large proportion of the inhabitants of the area are either natives of the Northeast (and therefore speakers of accents like New York-New Jersey English) or else native Spanish language speakers (predominantly from Cuba.) The accents heard across this region, especially in older communities such as Aventura, Boca Raton, or West Palm Beach, are that of the typical New Yorker. In Miami alone, as of the 2000 Census, there are over 145 different languages spoken throughout many communities in Miami and its surrounding areas. Numerically, the strongest of these is Spanish. Most people visiting Miami for the first time complain that they couldn't communicate with the locals because they didn't speak English. There are even stories of going through a drive-through at a fast food restaurant and being greeted in Spanish, then French, and then English. This is especially notable on 8th street (or Calle Ocho) where almost everyone is a native Spanish speaker. This results in "Spanglish", a code-switching conglomeration of English and Spanish. "Escuche Maria, he said to meet him al taller, 'ta bien?" (Hey Maria, he said to meet him at the garage, okay?). In terms of speakers, the next highest minority languages are, in from greatest to least, Haitian Creole, Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian French, Russian, and Chinese. This makes Miami a very difficult place to pinpoint any certain "accent." Instead, it is a tossed salad of new vocabulary, weird sentence structure and relatively few native English speakers trying to communicate amongst themselves. Standard linguistic rules tend to be difficult to apply in a general sense here; thus, this analysis is mostly demographic in nature. === Inland North === A distinctive speech pattern was also generated by the separation of Canada from the United States, centered on the Great Lakes region. This is the ''Inland North'' dialect - the "standard Midwestern" speech that was the basis for General American in the mid-20th Century, though it has been recently modified by the northern cities vowel shift. This area consists of western New York State (Buffalo, New York, Rochester, New York, Syracuse, New York), parts of Michigan's Lower Peninsula (Detroit, Ann Arbor, etc.), Cleveland, Ohio, Chicago, Gary, Indiana, and Milwaukee. * By the Northern cities vowel shift, ''cad,'' ''cod,'' ''cawed,'' ''Ked,'' and ''cut'' are pronounced , [kad], , , and , respectively. * The starting point of (for example, ''mouse'', ''down'') is pronounced noticeably in the back of the mouth (), while (''mice'', ''dine'') is much further front: (). * The long-o of "bone" and "goat" is rounded and pronounced far back. * The word "on" rhymes with "don," not with "dawn." * Canadian raising is found in areas close to the Canadian border. ===Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania=== The Pittsburgh accent has a number of distinctive features. Please refer to that article for more information. ===The Midland=== West of the Appalachian Mountains begins the broad zone of what is generally called "Midland" speech. This is divided into two discrete subdivisions, the ''North Midland'' that begins north of the Ohio River valley area, and the ''South Midland'' speech; sometimes the former is designated simply ''Midland'' and the latter is reckoned as ''Highland Southern''. The North Midland speech continues to expand westward until it becomes the closely related speech of California English, although in the immediate San Francisco area the speech more closely resembles that of the mid-Atlantic region. 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 river, and peters out in West Texas. This is the dialect associated with truck drivers on the CB radio and country music. It is a version of the Midland speech that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms, most noticeably the loss of the diphthong , , which becomes , and the second person plural pronoun "you-all" or "y'all." Unlike Coastal Southern, however, South Midland is a rhotic dialect, pronouncing /r/ wherever it has historically occurred. This consists of the larger parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois which are not in the Inland North, as well as Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, where it begins to blend into the West, and even extends into the Southern parts of Michigan's lower peninsula. Some linguists call this the "North Midland" with the Southern highlands being the "South Midland." * In some rural areas, words like "roof" and "root" get the vowel of "book" and "hoof" * People who pronounce "don" and "dawn" differently pronounce "on" to rhyme with "dawn" and not "don" * Saint Louis, Missouri has a distinctive accent, see the section on it below. * South Indiana has a distinctive accent, locally known as the "Hoosier Twang" (a well-known speaker is actor Jim Nabors, who played Gomer Pyle on TV and has for many years sung "Back Home In Indiana" before the Indy 500 race). South Midlands speech, found in the area from Tennessee through Texas, is characterized by: * monophthongization of [ai] as , for example, most dialects' "I" → "Ah" in the South. * raising of initial vowel of ; the initial vowel is often lengthened and prolonged, yielding . * nasalization of vowels, esp. diphthongs, before . * raising of ; ''can't'' → ''cain't'', etc. * Unlike most American English, but like Commonwealth English, glides ([j], the ''y'' sound) are inserted before after the consonants . * South Midlands speech is rhotic. This is the principal feature that distinguishes South Midland speech from the non-rhotic coastal Southern varieties. === Midwest === ====North Central American English==== (Minnesota (esp. rural), Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota) * As in most North American accents, is merged with , so that ''father'' rhymes with ''bother''. * Canadian raising: see section on Canada. * "roof", "book", and "root" all use the same vowel ); "root" may be pronounced as rhyming with "scoot," however * Use of German/Scandinavian "ja", pronounced as either /yaː/ or /y�ː/, as an affirmative filler or emphatic; Standard U.S. English "yes" is used in formal settings to answer questions and to start an explanation. * Tendency towards a "sing-songy" intonation (the area's earliest European settlers were primarily Scandinavian, and this has influenced the local dialect). More recently, this has been reinforced by an influx of Asians, most of whom speak tonal languages. * Known as "Yooper" in Upper Pensinsula of Michigan [UP = Yoo-Pee] * For a stereotypical (if somewhat overdone) example of Minnesotan, refer to the movie Fargo (movie). For a more normative example, Garrison Keillor speaks with a typical urban Minnesota accent.(Note: most southern, even rural, Minnesota accents sound more like the northern Iowan accent. Thicker accents up in the northern areas are still much less defined than in Fargo.) * final /t/ is replaced in the speech of most individuals by , including after nasals, to the extent that a clearly enunciated "can" /k�ːn/ in otherwise rapid speech is likely to be confused with "can't." ("Can" is normally pronounced as /kən/, or even with the vowel reduced to a syllable of the /n/ itself, while "can't" is normally pronounced .) * collapse of /�/ with /d/ and /θ/ with /t/: to use a (hilarious) anecdote from the family history of this author as an example: **"Yozef? Are you done cleaning the barn?" **"No, but it's about two turds done." ::(Obviously, cleaning two turds out of a barn is not a very great feat, but the meaning here is "two thirds" (2/3), not "two turds", which indicates a far greater accomplishment...) ::This pronunciation can also be found in the name of popular songs, such as ''Da Turdy Point Buck'' (''The 30-point Buck''), a popular hunting season song by the Wisconsin band Bananas At Large. ::It is noteworthy that this phoneme collapse is far more prevalent in rural areas, especially outside Upper Michigan and northeastern Wisconsin. This characteristic is likely due to the large immigrant population (in most cases notably less than a century removed from "the old country"), comprised in great part of speakers of Germanic, Slavic and Finnic languages. One notable exception, giving weight to this theory, is that it is peculiarly absent on Washington%2C_Door_County%2C_Wisconsin, in Wisconsin, in the very heart of the prevalence of this trait. Washington Island is home to the most homogeneous Icelander (over 90% of the population) immigrant community in the U.S., and unlike most non-English Germanic languages, the Icelandic language differentiates rigorously between the phonemes /�/ and /d/ and between /θ/ and /t/. * W → V, particularly well → vell and what → vaht (Rarely found in people under 35.) * Perhaps to a greater degree than other parts of the United States, standard American English pronunciation is replacing the regional accent, probably because there is less cultural identity wrapped up in the language than elsewhere This regional variety has been much popularized, in somewhat satirical fashion, by the popular music group "Da Yoopers" (From "Yooper", a person from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan), singing such songs as ''Second Week Of Deer Camp'', ''Grandpa Got Run Over By A Beer Truck'' and ''Rusty Chevrolet''. ====Saint Louis, Missouri and vicinity==== *Some St. Louisans (probably born earlier than 1960) tend to merge the sound as in ''for'' with the sound of ''far''. Interstates 40 and 44, are thus ''farty'' and ''farty-far''. Similarly, "corn" is pronounced . This accent is otherwise a typical north Midland accent. *Some younger speakers are picking up the Northern cities vowel shift heard in Chicago, eastern Wisconsin, and much of Michigan and New York State. This vowel shift causes words like ''cat'' to become more like and ''talent'' to be more like or . *Since this is in the Midland, "on" rhymes with "dawn," and the Northern cities vowel shift makes this more noticeable here than in the rest of the Midland. *Some speakers, usually older generations, pronounce words like ''measure'' as , and ''wash'' as , for example, for ''Washington''. *Some speakers mispronounce ''mostaccioli'' as . This seems ironic, with the presence of The Hill. === West=== ====California==== :''Main article: California English'' Some characteristics of California English include: * Raising of the front vowels to before , so that ''sang'' and ''sing'' are pronounced * Fronting of the back vowels to . The may trigger palatalization of a preceding consonant, so that a phrase like ''too cool'' is pronounced , a pronunciation jocularly spelled ''tew kewl'', especially on the Internet and in instant messenger services. * Particularly among young female speakers, high rise terminals in non-question sentences, and laryngealization or "creaky voice" of words in phrase-final position. * In Southern California, major highways are determined by the word ''the'': "the five" is Interstate 5, "the one oh one" is US Highway 101. In Northern California, highways are not determined with ''the'': I-5 is simply ''five'' and US-101 is ''one oh one''. (The Southern California terminology is prevalent further north in Portland, Oregon.) ====Utah==== The regional dialect of Utah is often jocularly referred to as "Utahnics". * The merger of and to before , making pairs like the following homophone: ** bowl / bull ** foal / full ** foley / fully ** Folsom / fulsome ** mole / mull ** poll, pole / pull ** polar / puller * diphthongization of : "egg" and "leg" pronounced "ayg" and "layg", "leisure" and "pleasure" pronounced "layzhur" and "playzhur." * in some cases, "ar" and "or" are reversed: "I was barn in a born" (I was born in a barn). *introduction of a "T" into certain words: "teacher" pronounced "teat-chur." *shortening of some words from several syllables to one or two: "coral" as "crall", "probably" to "probly" or "prolly." *the use of "fer" in certain expressions, such as "fer cute", meaning "cute" or "fer ignernt": "stupid." *due to the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, unique euphemisms: "oh my heck" and "gol." =====References===== *Rainey, Virginia, (2004) ''Insiders' Guide: Salt Lake City (4th ed.)'', The Globe Pequot Press, ISBN 0-7627-2836-1 *[http://www.wesclark.com/ubn/utahnics.html Article about "Utahnics"] ====Washington State==== * The Western Washington accent, notably the Puget Sound region, has more in common with the rest of the west coast, whereas more rural eastern parts of the state have accents closer to that of Idaho and Montana. * is often pronounced as : ''milk'' and ''pillow'' become and * Some speakers pronounce the vowel before a nasal as creating homophones of the pair ''pen''/''pin'' * For the most part, accents are very similar to General American. ====Hawaii==== See main article Hawaiian English. ==See also== *Regional accents of English speakers *Regional Vocabularies of American English *The Dictionary of American Regional English *International Phonetic Alphabet for English *IPA chart for English *Dialects: African American Vernacular English, Liberian English (a descendant of American English) ==Further reading== *The American Language 4th Edition, Corrected and Enlarged, H. L. Mencken, Random House, 1948, hardcover, ISBN 0394400755 *How We Talk: American Regional English Today, Allan Metcalf, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000, softcover, ISBN 0618043624 ** 1st and 2nd supplements of above. * Craig M. Carver. ''American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987. ISBN 0472100769 ==External links== *[http://www.pbs.org/speak/ Do You Speak American]: PBS special *[http://hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/index.html Dialect Survey] of the United States, by Bert Vaux et al., Harvard University. The answers to various questions about pronunciation, word use etc. can be seen in relationship to the regions where they are predominant. *[http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/home.html Phonological Atlas of North America] at the University of Pennsylvania *[http://students.csci.unt.edu/~kun Guide to Regional English Pronunciation] includes working versions of the Telsur Project maps from the Phonologial Atlas site *[http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/ The American�British British�American Dictionary] *[http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/ Speech Accent Archive] *[http://www.world-english.org/ World English Organization] * [http://canadianenglish1.narod.ru American Canadian British English Lexical Differences In One Table] * [http://australianenglish1.narod.ru Australian American British English Lexical Differences In One Table And More] American English Languages of the United States North American English simple:American English

American English

Talk:American English/Archive 1 - 2002-2004 == Broken characters == On IE6 under WinXP, a large portion of the special characters don't display properly. (They show up as empty boxes.) IE, "/�/ to /ɑ/" (the second doesn't show). Any thoughts? :You need a Unicode-supporting font, such as Code2000. --User:Evice 02:05, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC) == Hiram Falutin == I cannot find any references to a Hiram Falutin on the web, apart from a few that seem to have been copied from this Wikipedia article. In addition, the only definition for high-falutin on dictionary.com somes from "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language", and indicates that the origin of the word is unknown. Therefore I believe that the derivation given for high-falutin is a joke, and should be removed. Can anyone demonstrate otherwise? :Sounds like a joke to me, too. The American Heritage Dictionary calls it origin unknown, but speculates ''high-fluting''. --User:Fubar Obfusco 07:02, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC) :Yeah, it's nonsense. Get rid of it. User:RickKUser talk:RickK 07:07, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC) :And I though that was how it came about. Apparently ''Hiram Falutin'' was mentioned in a ''New York Times'' column I read some time ago, and I seemed to believe the story. Feel free to remove the reference. User:Poccil (User Talk:Poccil) 07:12, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC) == Phonology == In the Phonology section, this sentence bothers me: ''Its rhotic pronunciation was derived from Hiberno-English and Scottish English, as large numbers of Irish and Scottish settlers resided.'' The pronoun should be clarified as it's not entirely clear whether it refers to the rhotic change, or to one of the varieties of English which did or did not participate. Additionally, it makes little sense... the Irish and Scottish settlers resided ''where?'' I'm guessing that the original intent of the sentence was: "The rhotic trill's pronunciation was derived from Hiberno-English and Scottish English, as large numbers of Irish and Scottish settlers resided in England." If that's not the intent of the sentence, then I don't really know what it is. If that ''is'' the intent, I'm not sure why it's even included in the article, as it has little to do with the pronunciation in North America, and more to do with the pronunciation in the UK. Any thoughts? I'm in favor of dropping the sentence altogether. == Phonology == It does not make sense to say that a dialect of a language is "conservative in its phonology" (American English#Phonology). Every dialect changes in a different way, but it changes anyway. *It is true that some varieties change more rapidly than others, though. For example, speakers of Modern Icelandic can understand the sagas written a millennium ago, while no Modern English speaker could understand an Old English text without training. It makes sense that if one language can change more rapidly than another that the same would be true for dialects, that divergent dialects do not change at exactly the same rate and one variety resembles the proto-dialect more. — User:Livajo | User talk:Livajo 07:28, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) That's only true because ''written'' Icelandic has barely changed in a thousand years. Phonologically, Icelandic has undergone massive changes since the time of the sagas. --User:Angr 08:08, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Mergers, mergers, and more mergers == All these mergers in the Phonology section are getting out of hand. For one thing, there's no differentiation between mergers that are found in both British and American English and those that are unique to American English: Both British (mostly England, not Scotland) and American: *pour-poor (highly stigmatized in the U.S. but thoroughly normal in England) *whine-wine (increasingly popular in the U.S. and virtually complete in England) *horse-hoarse (virtually complete in both countries) *yod dropping (highly stigmatized in England but thoroughly normal in the U.S.) *higher-hire (both are in RP) *flower-flour (both are in RP and have probably always been homophones since they're etymologically identical) *employer-coir (both have in RP; incidentally is it really necessary to have ''three'' articles for the above mergers? Couldn't they have been covered in a single article?) *Ditto dial-tile, royal-roil, towel-owl (again, couldn't these have been a single article?) *mail centering, feel centering, gold centering, tool centering (ditto) *metal-mettle (are there any accents spoken today where these haven't merged?) *opossum-prism (ditto) *wooden-wouldn't (have these ''ever'' been distinct in the history of English?) *meter-metre (ditto) American only: *father-bother *cot-caught *Mary-marry-merry *Sirius-serious *furry-hurry *pan tensing *squirrel-girl *glottaling of T before syllabic N (found in England only in accents that glottal T more generally) *winter weakening *wing tensing *bang raising *intervocalic t/d merger (some amount of intervocalic T voicing is also found in London, Northern Ireland, and Australia, though it isn't clear whether there's an actual merger so that ''latter'' and ''ladder'' are homophones, as they are in North America) --User:Angr 07:58, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==Spelling reform== Having personally lost a city wide spelling bee over plough/plow (my elementary school used an Australian grammar series, American grammar books having already gone to hell) I still hold a grudge against Noah Webster. And its not anecdotal. Is there a page yet for spelling reform? There are certainly lots of 'em. This entry is going to shift to more substantive issues (17th century English as the base for American dialects, etc.) when a dialectician gets ahold of it, but I'm not up to that. --MichaelTinkler ==Consolidation== Someone please consolidate this with the English language/American English subpage entry. ==Slovene and German loanwords== Interesting readings about borowings in the American English. One small question. As there are a lot of Slovenes in the States, did American English borrowed any words from Slovene language? I am missing any borrowings from German language, too. I know some by heart - but I know just they are from English language (''flak'', ''Einsatz'', ...), because I had never learned American English in deep. -- User:XJamRastafire 18:58 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT) ::Never heard of ''Einsatz''. That's supposedly and American English word? -- User:Zoe :::Could we cut the width of this table, too? It runs over the left-hand margins. -- User:Zoe :::: I had an edit conflict. So here's my text: Sorry I meant ''Ansatz''. This word is not in Wikipedia. See for an example at http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/VariationOfParameters.html. I am not good at German grammar at all. My native language has a lot of borrowings from it. For example ''sus'' derived from ''Schu�'', meaning ''shot''. -- User:XJamRastafire 19:15 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT) :::::I don't know the word Ansatz, either. You sure it's an American English word? You don't mean ersatz, do you? -- User:Zoe :::::"Ansatz" is not in my general-purpose dictionaries, though it's entirely possible that it has some obscure mathematical usage. --User:Brion VIBBER :::::To Zoe (edit conflict+) :::::We slightly do not understand each other :-). I didn't wrote that ''Ansatz'' is an American English word. I just wrote that I saw it sometimes in English articles, specially at math pages (see the link above). And I just asked for another borrowings to the American English (e.g. German, and specially for Slovene). I know common English, let us say for a 70-80 %, but I must say that this culture is still so different than mine. So that is why it is quite a big curiosity for non-native-English reader to get such useful (''why not usefull'' - these are those 20-30 % of ignorance) informations and vice versa for English reader from different cultures and languages. And the Wikipedia is a good place for this!!!! Any futher help is very much appreciated. Best regard. :::::To Brion :::::Yes, Americans would know better than anyone. I am looking here of course for those with no obscure usages. Check the above link, too for instance. And by heart I think I saw it on many places. -- User:XJamRastafire 15:59 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT) Here are some English ''Ansatz'' obscure usages from the Google: * http://neon.df.ufscar.br/~quantum/ansatz/ansatz.htm * http://www.physics.sunysb.edu/itp/symmetries-99/scans/talk13/talk13.html * http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/15/sample/1531/S0217979201008123.html (See the authors-one German and one Russian :-)) * www.iisc.ernet.in/pramana/march2000/p5152.pdf * http://www.cisco.com/global/DE/unified_channels/cpn_home.shtml * http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/lep2/report/qcdgen/node31.html :* ''and many more...'' For my opinion - interesting, (but it can be wiped out eventually from here in some near future - it is here just for an information). We all learn every single day... Uph, I guess I'll have to write a Wikipedian article about the ''Ansatz'', but first I have to clarify with a little help... -- User:XJamRastafire 16:18 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT) In the article Problem solving ''Ansatz'' is simply translated to ''an approach''. I would better tranlsate it as more general term ''an equation'' or ''a formula''. But I have no slightest idea what it means in fact. -- User:XJamRastafire 16:27 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT) ==Japanese loanwords removed== From Japanese {| border=1 width=70% |- | width=25% | kamikaze | suicide attack. Japanese for Divine Wind |- | width=25% | karate || Japanese for the Unarmed Way |- | width=25% | origami || paper crafts |- | width=25% | tycoon | wealthy and powerful businessperson. Japanese for big monarch |- | width=25% | tsunami || tidal wave |- | width=25% | sake || a Japanese liqour |} I've removed this table because this article is supposed to be about ''American'' English, whereas all of the above terms are used also in British English. --User:Zundark 09:28 Jan 6, 2003 (UTC) : {| border=1 width=70% |- | kosher | correct, proper, ("That's not kosher" is similar to "That's not cricket".) |- | width=25% | patio || an outdoor paved area of a house |- | incommunicado || lack of communication |- | width=25% | OK | 'yes' or 'you are correct'. A word now used by many languages. |- | colspan=2 | Its origin is not clear - for more information, read the "Ask Oxford" article at http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=4&q=http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwordorigins/ok&e=42. |} :Likewise I dumped the above as being very common in the UK. I wondered about "fiesta" and "cookie" too, but I think they're not that common. Honestly who thought us Britons don't use "kosher" or "ok"? ::The way ''OK'' was included was a little odd, I agree, but ''OK'' originated in the United States, and furthermore, its origin is well known and has been since approximately 1965. But I don't like working on articles with tables in them and usually avoid them, so it is up to someone else to fix this. (If I worked on the article, the tables would go.) The story on ''OK'' is, briefly, that there was a word game popular in the United States in the early 19th century of misspelling phrases and using only the initials -- not unlike the transformations of Cockney rhyming slang -- in which "O.K." stood for "oll korrect". This origin was obscured by the subsequent combination of the phrase with the nickname of Martin Van Buren in the campaign slogan "Old Kinderhook is O.K." and the proliferation of many, many a folk etymology in later years. The research by A. W. Read tracing the origin as stated here is accepted by both the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and ''Webster's III''. ''OK'' is, perhaps, the best known of all Americanisms and certainly belongs in the article on American English as well as in an article of its own, which I have just half written. (Why the "Ask Oxford" article is less positive on this is a mystery since their own, more authoritative ''OED'' presents it, but "Ask Oxford" is a good source for all the folk etymologies.) User:Ortolan88 ::: OK. There could perhaps be a table of words of US origin put in this article. User:Bagpuss : I have removed all of the words that were aparantly derived from Hindi. These words are commonly used in British English and not peculiar to American English. User:AreJay 05:59, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC) ==loanwords comemntary== I think it should be noted that not all of the loanwords are common in all parts of the United States. In my section of the Midwest at least many of these borrowings, especially the Yiddish ones and Spanish ones not dealing with food, have not yet become standard vocabulary. ---- A couple of the loanwords currently listed are, in my opinion, placed under the wrong headings. "Gumbo" is ultimately of African origin, but it entered English via Louisiana French. The same goes for "bayou" -- it comes from Louisiana French, which took it from Choctaw. In short, if English gets a word from French, it should be irrelevant where the French got it from. After all, we're not listing "adobe" as an Arabic loanword. User:BrianSmithson 19:54 20 May 2003 (UTC) Surely this page is incorrectly titled? The subject is clearly USA English, as opposed to Canadian English, Mexican English etc. markb : "American" in this context means "United States of America". This is nothing new and it's also the standard name (used both commonly, dictionaries, and so forth). Mexico has Spanish as its primary language and Canada has Canadian English. North American English is both Canadian and American. User:Daniel Quinlan 19:56 24 Jul 2003 (UTC) Removed the following as all are firmly established in British English *Gung ho, *Cookie (used in Brit English but more specific), *Praline, *Honcho (Head Honcho being used in Brit English) *Tycoon *Teepee *Fiesta (see comment on Siesta below) *Siesta (Brits have been going to Spain on holiday for decades and may have known this before) *Pronto User:Dainamo I think all of these may have been used in American English first---especially words taken from Spanish and Native American languages for obvious reasons. Britons havent had the exposure to Spanish that Americans have had for a substantially longer period of time. MikeMcG ==Webster POV== This page seems a bit disparaging of Webster, perhaps written from the perspective of someone who doesn't like his spelling reforms. The article should be more neutral about Webster, perhaps mentioning that Webster did simplify the spelling of many words in American English and a good number of those reforms have stuck. User:Daniel Quinlan 19:56 24 Jul 2003 (UTC) ==American English an oxymoron?== North Americans are always going to win this argument as it's a North American website. :''This isn't an argument between North Americans and Brits. It's an argument between you and the rest of the world.'' The point is, English was the language spoke by the peoples of England. Further languages based on this have evolved. This is the key, they are no longer English. You can't have 'American English' (Somthing of or belonging to England, belonging to America), aside from the fact they fought the British Empire for independance, they invented a new language. THIS IS NOT A DIALECT. It is a new language, originally derived from English. English itself is derived of other languages, but we don't refer to it as "English Greek", or such. It is therefore incorrect to refer to this as 'American English' language. :''Is the same true of Scottish English, Welsh English, Irish English, Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English, and Indian English? Are those "new languages" according to your way of thinking too? Incidentally, English is not derived from Greek.'' The new language is American. :''Unsigned comments above were added at 16:55, 20 Jun 2005, by User:80.177.116.191. Comments in italics added at 19:03, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC) by User:Angr/User_talk:Angr.'' Why is "American English" supposed to be an oxymoron --- or at least more so than, say, ''Australian English'', ''Latin American Spanish'' or ''Quebecois French?'' Perhaps a better word for American English would be ''majority English''. After all, most English speakers worldwide speak and write a variety from North America. This comment strikes me as non-NPOV, and an attempt to portray some social-class-bound ''insular'' dialect as normative, an attitude which ever has been and remains a jaw-dropping pretension. -- User:Ihcoyc 11:47 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) : Most? Since when? ::Population of the USA: around 280 millions. Canada adds 85% of 31 millions. Population of the UK is 58 millions, add 19 millions for Australia, 8m for New Zealand and maybe 4m for the native English speaking population of South Africa. No matter how you slice the pie, the center of gravity for the English language is in North America and not in any of the outlying islands. -- User:Ihcoyc 13:40 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) In India English is the language in which most university courses are taught. It is also the language used in most areas of administration, and they have many English language newspapers. Out of a total population of 1 billion potential speakers, some 40 million plus Indians speak British English there. The situation is similar in countries like Pakistan, Ghana, Nigeria and Singapore etc. etc. When English is taught as a foreign language in Europe and elsewhere it is very often taught as British English through organizations like the British Council. :When I was in Sweden in the mid-1970s, the saying there was that people over 35 had learned British English in school, and that people under 30 learned American English. -- User:Ihcoyc 15:10 25 Jul 2003 (UTC) User:Ihcoyc is correct, at least regarding number of speakers. There are 341 million first language speakers of English, 210 million of those are in the United States (228 million in North America). There are 508 million including second language speakers, and 240 million of those are in the United States (260 million in North America). I'm not even accounting for some English usage being American rather than British (or another Commonwealth country) in origin outside of North America. It is also worrisome that some Wikipedia editors feel obliged to move pages and alter spelling on the basis that Commonwealth English is not only more correct, but is also more common than either American English or North American English. (My United States figures are actually a bit low since they date from 1984 and most of the other figures are from the late 1990s.) I believe the US probably has the most influence on the English language today, although only partially due to the influence of numbers. More of the influence is through movies, television, books, the internet, and other media. More immediately, I think Wikipedia would benefit from a clearer definition and analysis of the various types of English, including different orthographies. My figures are primarily from http://www.ethnologue.com/ User:Daniel Quinlan 08:21, Aug 3, 2003 (UTC) :The main thing that concerns me is when British English is taken as a familiar norm in descriptions of other languages. I've seen pronunciation guides that say to pronounce ''Goethe'' as "Gertie," for example. Reference to the variety of broad A and O sounds in British English are other frequent sources of confusion; most North Americans don't even hear the sounds as separate phonemes. Since the introduction of the IPA this sort of thing is seen less often, but there's still a lot of it in older reference books; and older reference books have a way of being perpetuated here. :Some writers on British English treat American English with profound condescension. This annoys especially when you realize that the prestige dialect of British English is strongly bound to social class --- you had to have gone to a handful of the "right" boarding schools to get it exactly right --- and a dialect spoken by a much smaller percentage of the population of the British Isles than Standard American is in North America. There's a passage in Fowler's ''The King's English'' that mocks American place names like ''Indianapolis'' and ''Memphis'', as if ''Bognor Regis'' or ''Stow-on-the-Wold'' were superior in euphony or dignity. This tradition is not wholly dead among the prescriptive usage writers, and I think that some North Americans are still cowed by it. -- User:Ihcoyc 13:58, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC) ::"Proper" British English is not simply the preserve of the public school elite - whilst it may be true that those from the public schools may be more likely to use RP in their everyday speech, most across the nation know how to use the correct form and do so for official documents etc., even if they revert to their local dialect for normal usage. Even though I was comprehensive-schooled (in Scotland nonetheless) I still know how to correctly use the English Language and so do those around me. This appears to be in contrast with the situation in the USA. User:217.43.185.226 10:34, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC) Oh the superiority of everything American! Hah! Considering the linguistic inabilities of your president, the hilarity of watching winners of Oscars trying to construct sentences and the sheer inability of an astonishing number of American students to communicate in any even moderately articulate manner (which is why a number of European universities in the last five years have been forced to start summer courses for visiting American students with special 'basic english' grinds explaining such things as use of verbs, definite and indefinite articles, how to use the past tense!!!) America can hardly brag about its skill or knowledge of english. The lame excuse about comparing population numbers is a nonsense. American english (well at least the lliterate variety) is found on the American continent. The result of the world uses British english or a nativised version of British english, in which some aspects of American english may make an appearance. In no sense can American english claim the right to be ''the'' international brand of english and it is a particularly ludicrous form of arrogance to think it can, based on the fact that there are more people in America that in Britain, Ireland, Australia. But the worst form of 'so called' english has got to be MTV english, which consists of nothing more than a string of empty-headed, poorly constructed cliches with all the substance of a quarter pounder and fries. :-) User:Jtdirl 14:41, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC) I'm not sure of the point of this discussion. Whoever added "oxymoron" to this article was obviously aiming tickle a few ribs with some humour. I am given to understand from the couple of business trips I've made to Sweden that they very sensibly take courses in Business English (which leans towards British English as much of Sweden's business is centred on the EU) and Technical English (which leans towards American English for spellings like 'program' and 'color' extensively used in software). Whatever the figures say (and I dispute the validity of your source Daniel which quotes only 11 million speakers of English in India from a 1960s survey) there's no denying that a significant number of people prefer to read and write in British English. It's just the same with American English of course; only the vast majority of British English speakers don't live in the state of technical bliss that is the USA. On Wikipedia we quite rightly have a policy at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV#Americo-centric_point_of_view decrying Americo-centrism in view of the fact that this is an international encyclopaedia. It's a shame that attempts to roll-back Americo-centrism as sometimes paranoiacally(sic) seen anti-Americanism by certain individuals. Let the status quo survive. User:Mintguy 15:13, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC) :The two points I actually sought to make was that calling American English an "oxymoron" struck me as a violation of NPOV; and that assuming easy familiarity with the phonemic structure of British English is not a good idea in explaining the pronunciation of non-English words. I do admit to being somewhat ornery about the Brits presuming to judge "Americanisms," and the supposed pre-eminence and universality of the Boarding school dialect. I went to grade school in Canada, and learned a subset of the British spellings myself. I'm not on a tear to remove them. :I cheerfully agree that Dubya is no Churchill. -- User:Ihcoyc 19:05, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC) You are a bit behind the times as regards english dialects. The days when Oxbridge english was viewed as the correct version have long long since gone. Right now, a BBC programme is on using scouse (a dialect I hate, BTW. It sounds to me like a cat chewing a wasp.) But BBC Four seems to require it. 'Proper english', ie, Oxbridge, has been out of fashion for decades, with Estuary English, Scouse etc far more popular. BTW 2 (sounds like a TV station that!:-) I came across a US student's history essay that has down in my university's history as one of the worst attempt at communication ever witnessed. (You'll enjoy this!) Writing about the Irish Easter Rising, an American woman (allegedly a history major, though I find it hard to believe!) wrote: :''It is like the Irish don't like the english and their rules. So they like rebel in Easter. Patrik (sic) Pierce (sic) leads the rebells (sic) and they take a big post office in Oconnel (sic) street, and they gang up on the British. And they tell them like 'no queen here'. But the english don't like it and send in their soldiers from the first world war in France or somewhere to stop them. And the english like arrest Pierce and devillera (sic) and lock them in a big prisom (sic) but the Irish keep rebelling and rebelling and get their new republic with devillera as president and Michael Collin's (sic) becomes his right hand man. And then they fight a war of independents. And the Irish throws the english out and then have a civil war, where Collin's is killed at Bale na Bla (sic) and Northern Ireland joins england and the queen.'' AAAAAGH! And that is only ''one'' paragraph. The strange thing was that the woman could not understand when she got a fail mark for the paper! She said she had never failed anything before in her life. The question on all our lips was, how could she have possibly ''passed'' a single exam in her life, let alone make it to college? But she was the worst. Nobody else has ever quite hit that level of awfulness, though every year some try and come close! :-) User:Jtdirl 20:03, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC) :One doesn't want to belabor a point or anything, and perhaps this effusion should be passed over in silence; but would you mind explaining just what in the bloody Hell that has to do with the article that this page supposedly exists to improve? User:Dandrake 02:03, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC) I expexct she'll get a job as a Hollywood screenwriter. User:Andy G 20:29, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC) :Anti-intellectualism (zeech! that page needs a real article) is a major feature of the culture of the USA. One of the many ways this trait manifests is in a certain impatience with usage norms. Reading is a solitary vice to most Americans, and it gives you no fresh air and exercise. There are indeed many US high schools who would look at that paper and see that the student had learned where the event took place, who the combatants were, and kept in mind enough proper nouns to make small talk about the Uprising. And that would in the minds of many teachers be enough. Spelling and grammar is another department. :Now if you want to hear ugly English, let me send you to Tennessee. The speech of that state, especially in the female mouth, sounds like a cat being tortured. ::You haven't heard an Ozark dialect then. Then again there are both Western and Eastern accents within the Dialects. I'm always shocked by a lot of these studies on phonology and dialects within the US... When they get to MO, Southern Il, and Arkansas they don't tend to do enough studies, especially as the demographic centor of the US is in MO. I can't find the article, or perhaps it was this one, but there was one a few days ago which listed the differences in the Saint Louis Metro Area from Midwestern English. The blurb wasn't quite right but it was right in the fact that the Peoples inside Saint Louis City and in parts of the county talk different than lets say 30 miles away in Franklin and Jeffereson counties and that the dialect is unique to St. Louis. It was wrong becuase it grouped accents in the saint louis area which are actually in deep Franklin Counties and Jeff Counties. The accent in Tennessee is actually pleasent compared to that of your typical Ozarkian. :But most of this seems to be leaving behind the main business of embellishing the article on American English. -- User:Ihcoyc 01:01, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC) ==Loan words from British English== I've removed the table of loan-words from English. American English ''is'' a form of English, so there can't be loan-words from itself. If it was meant to represent loan-words from ''British'' English, then that's wrong too; such words as ''draperies, rooster, skillet'' just don't exist in current British English. To say they come from an earlier from of British English is hardly an argument, since the great majority of American English does derive from an earlier form of British English! What the table was listing was differences between American and British usage - not loan-words - so I've moved the relevant entries from that table to List_of_American_English_words_not_used_in_British_English. User:Spellbinder 14:25, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC) ==Phonics== :''The northern cities ... extending west through Cleveland, Ohio ... have undergone a shift ... where the vowels in the words ''stuck'', ''stalk'', ''stock'', and ''stack'' have shifted from [ʌ], [ɔ], [ɑ], [æ] (SAMPA [V], [O], [A], [}]) to [ɔ], [ɑ], [a], [eæ] (SAMPA [O], [A], [a], [e}]). '' Does this truly happen? I live in Cleveland, and I pronounce ''stuck'', ''stalk'', ''stock'', and ''stack'' as /stVk/, /stOk/, /stAck/ and /st{k/, and as far as I know, everyone I know that lives here pronounces them the same. User:GusGus 03:51, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC) :The northern cities shift is not universal in these areas and varies in the degree of the shift, but see [http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Northeast/ncshift/ncshift.html] and [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch11/Ch11.html]. Also, the fact that you live in Cleveland may color your impression of these vowels. They may well be more different from the IPA spec than you imagine. User:Nohat 06:53, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC) == American English#Loanwords not common in British English == I am confused why the definition of hacienda 'a type of ranch house' replaced 'principal house on a ranch'.
[http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hacienda Dictionary.com/hacienda] has: #A large estate or plantation in Spanish-speaking countries. #The house of the owner of such an estate. [http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=hacienda&x=23&y=16 Merriam-Webster Online] has: # : a large estate especially in a Spanish-speaking country : PLANTATION # : the main dwelling of a hacienda Are these American dictionaries incorrect? User:Paediauser talk:Paediauser:Paedia 15:17, 2004 May 24 (UTC) I'm confused by this too. The first definition of 'hacienda' isn't distinct from 'estate' as used by Americans, so I figured not to include it. A house is a hacienda because of its function as the main house, not because of any sort of architectural features implied by 'a type of ranch house'. The dictionaries jibe with how I've heard and seen the word used. --User:Atemperman 22:59, 29 May 2004 (UTC) ==Cape== I wish to question the inclusion of cape with the meaning ''headland'' as being American English. Even if derived from a native american language, it seems to have entered both American and Brtish English quickly and equally. Witness: Cape Town, Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope, Cape Province (all 17th-18th century, some possibly earlier). And 18th century English explorers named many capes in Australia and New Zealand - the majority of headlands in NZ being named cape. -- User:Dramatic 00:17, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC) ==Loanwords, again== I have removed the following "Loanwords not common in British English", because they are common in British English: *Cape (this may be similar to an American Indian word, but is derived from Latin and pre-dates the discovery of the new world) *Toboggan *Squash *Barbecue *Hammock *Tycoon User:PhilHibbs 16:14, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC) == Words that have dropped out of common usage in British English? == I know there are a lot of phrases that the English think of as "Americanisms", that are in fact phrases that have merely fallen out of use over here, but were maintained in the US. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I think this would be a worthwhile addition to this page. I certainly came here hoping to find some. User:PhilHibbs 16:16, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC) :The two most conspicuous ones I can think of are ''fall'', the season; and ''gotten'' as a past participle for ''get''. Do they speak of ''bluffs'' or ''creeks'' in the UK? User:Ihcoyc 16:30, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC) ::Bluffs yes, creeks not so often. If I saw a sentence with creek in it I would think it about 75% likely to be of US origin. I would't say that it has gone entirely out of use. User:PhilHibbs 12:50, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC) ==Removed claim== I took out this content: :A key area where American English has grown (on both sides of the Atlantic), is in the world of business and commerce, where use of the rhetorical euphemism is common. One example would be the phrase "are you comfortable with that". This phrase will typically be used by a business manager introducing a change which may, or may not, be welcome. A negative answer is neither expected nor, indeed, invited. However, the question is, at least on the face of it, conciliatory. :However, it was the British composers Gilbert and Sullivan who felt it necessary to point out that their ideal officer in HMS Pinafore "almost always said 'If you please.'". because there didn't seem to be any evidence and it seems like an awfully vague assertion. Also, it only really applies to the "corporate-ese" variety of American English. It just seemed out of place here. If anyone could show a reasonable justification for why it should be put back, I'd be glad to entertain it. User:Nohat 06:13, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC) ==IPA vs SAMPA== Can we (meaning "I") get rid of the SAMPA annotations? The beginning of the article has a box telling the reader that IPA is going to be used, and links to an article providing assistance if eir browser is having trouble with it. IPA is really the only standard we need for phonetic notation — it appears in every dictionary I've seen, it's all we use in the linguistics community, and it's very well-defined. The SAMPA annotations are cumbersome, not as well-understood or commonly used, and pointless in the dawning age of Unicode. The doubling of pronunciations in IPA and SAMPA makes for very unattractive clutter in my opinion. Maybe there's something I'm overlooking here, but I really don't think we need SAMPA in this article (or in many others). Comments? User:Jeeves 05:25, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC) == Scope of American English == It needs to be made clear whether American English is being used to refer to US, North American or true American English. If the article is only supposed to refer to US English, it also needs to mention the existence of other English dialects in America like Canadian, Carribean, &c English with links to their articles. Or else, there needs to be a seperate article, English of the Americas, prominently linked to from here (or this needs moving to US English to make room for such an article here). -User:Joeblakesley 07:58, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC) : I agree. "U.S. English" is unambiguous, and is obviously what this article is about. "''American'' English" can mean a few different things in a universal context, as could "North American English". ''—User:Mzajac 21:52, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)'' : The article is fine where it is, I believe. "US English" could also refer to the movement to promote "English only" in the United States. You should take a poll and garner consensus before making such a move as this. User:Poccil_(User_Talk:Poccil,_User:Poccil/Automation.js)">User:Poccil|User:Poccil (User Talk:Poccil, User:Poccil/Automation.js) 03:32, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC) ::The objection to the use of the adjective "American" to describe things of the United States of America is well-understood and widely recognized. However, it also has to be recognized that this is an ''objection to the common use'' -- it is not a misunderstanding of what the common use is, or an ambiguity that confuses people. ::People who wish that the word were not used this way are not ''confused'' by its use. They ''object'' to it, much as many Trotskyists object to the use of the term "socialism" to describe the economics of the Stalinist Soviet Union. ''This objection and the reasons for it should be recognized, described, and respected.'' ::However, we also have to write Wikipedia articles in some language or another. And so we need to distinguish between ''ambiguous usages that confuse people,'' which should be avoided where possible and clarified where not; and ''common usages to which some people object.'' The latter we simply ''cannot'' avoid entirely, without turning Wikipedia into a hodgepodge of periphrasis. Wikipedia has to be written in common language, so that people can understand it ... despite the fact that for many common expressions there are people who are offended by them. ::"American English" is an unambiguous name for the subject matter. US English is the name of a rather controversial political advocacy group for the exclusion of other languages from American public life. The top Google hit for the expression "US English", by the way, is that group: http://www.us-english.org/ That might make "US English" a rather ''more'' ambiguous expression, oddly enough -- Wikipedia should have an article about the group, and what should that article be called? --User:Fubar Obfusco 04:45, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC) :::I agree with the current title. "American" is commonly understood to indicate the United States. User:Maurreen 04:52, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC) :: Firstly, please don't pedantically expound on what ''I'm'' objecting to. It comes off as rude, especially when you're wrong. :: "American English" is obviously ''not'' unambiguous, as you'd see if you'd read this talk page. Some people writing here are assuming the article covers Canadian English, which it doesn't. A good example of "''ambiguous usages that confuse people.''" Why do you think there's a disambiguation page at America and a whole disambiguation article at American? :: I've never heard of the "U.S. English" advocacy group, and no Wikipedian has found it significant enough to write about. This can be handled using the standard disambiguation methods. The organization can be at U.S. English (organization), and the language at U.S. English, or if you really think someone will confuse one with the other, at U.S. English language. :: ''—User:Mzajac 22:44, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)'' :::To a linguist, "American English" means only English as spoken in the United States, unambiguously and precisely. English spoken in North America is "North American English". English spoken in both North and South America (which isn't really a meaningful grouping from a linguistic perspective) is "Pan-American English" or "English as spoken in the Americas". There is nothing ambiguous about "American English". The fact that some people may be confused by that doesn't make it ambiguous, it just means they're not familiar with how the terminology is used. That's why it says in the first sentence that American English means English spoken in the United States—to clarify for those people who might be confused. The proposed alternative, "U.S. English" has the disadvantage of not being the normal term used by experts in the field in addition to being the name of a controversial organization. The ambiguity cased by the name "American English", which only affects those people who think that American primarily refers to the continents, is much less significant than the ambiguity caused by "U.S. English". On balance, "American English" should be preferred. User:Nohat 00:57, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC) == Broken characters == On IE6 under WinXP, a large portion of the special characters don't display properly. (They show up as empty boxes.) IE, "/�/ to /ɑ/" (the second doesn't show). Any thoughts? :You need a Unicode-supporting font, such as Code2000. --User:Evice 02:05, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC) ::I'm kind of (read: ''very'') late on saying this, but I think I'm wrong�I think it's because some of the characters lack the template. I'll have to get to that.... --User:Evice 11:38, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC) == Hiram Falutin == I cannot find any references to a Hiram Falutin on the web, apart from a few that seem to have been copied from this Wikipedia article. In addition, the only definition for high-falutin on dictionary.com somes from "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language", and indicates that the origin of the word is unknown. Therefore I believe that the derivation given for high-falutin is a joke, and should be removed. Can anyone demonstrate otherwise? :Sounds like a joke to me, too. The American Heritage Dictionary calls it origin unknown, but speculates ''high-fluting''. --User:Fubar Obfusco 07:02, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC) :Yeah, it's nonsense. Get rid of it. User:RickKUser talk:RickK 07:07, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC) :And I though that was how it came about. Apparently ''Hiram Falutin'' was mentioned in a ''New York Times'' column I read some time ago, and I seemed to believe the story. Feel free to remove the reference. User:Poccil (User Talk:Poccil) 07:12, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC) == Phonology == In the Phonology section, this sentence bothers me: ''Its rhotic pronunciation was derived from Hiberno-English and Scottish English, as large numbers of Irish and Scottish settlers resided.'' The pronoun should be clarified as it's not entirely clear whether it refers to the rhotic change, or to one of the varieties of English which did or did not participate. Additionally, it makes little sense... the Irish and Scottish settlers resided ''where?'' I'm guessing that the original intent of the sentence was: "The rhotic trill's pronunciation was derived from Hiberno-English and Scottish English, as large numbers of Irish and Scottish settlers resided in England." If that's not the intent of the sentence, then I don't really know what it is. If that ''is'' the intent, I'm not sure why it's even included in the article, as it has little to do with the pronunciation in North America, and more to do with the pronunciation in the UK. Any thoughts? I'm in favor of dropping the sentence altogether. == Phonology == It does not make sense to say that a dialect of a language is "conservative in its phonology" (American English#Phonology). Every dialect changes in a different way, but it changes anyway. *It is true that some varieties change more rapidly than others, though. For example, speakers of Modern Icelandic can understand the sagas written a millennium ago, while no Modern English speaker could understand an Old English text without training. It makes sense that if one language can change more rapidly than another that the same would be true for dialects, that divergent dialects do not change at exactly the same rate and one variety resembles the proto-dialect more. — User:Livajo | User talk:Livajo 07:28, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC) That's only true because ''written'' Icelandic has barely changed in a thousand years. Phonologically, Icelandic has undergone massive changes since the time of the sagas. --User:Angr 08:08, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Mergers, mergers, and more mergers == All these mergers in the Phonology section are getting out of hand. For one thing, there's no differentiation between mergers that are found in both British and American English and those that are unique to American English: Both British (mostly England, not Scotland) and American: *pour-poor (highly stigmatized in the U.S. but thoroughly normal in England) *whine-wine (increasingly popular in the U.S. and virtually complete in England) *horse-hoarse (virtually complete in both countries) *yod dropping (highly stigmatized in England but thoroughly normal in the U.S.) *higher-hire (both are in RP) *flower-flour (both are in RP and have probably always been homophones since they're etymologically identical) *employer-coir (both have in RP; incidentally is it really necessary to have ''three'' articles for the above mergers? Couldn't they have been covered in a single article?) *Ditto dial-tile, royal-roil, towel-owl (again, couldn't these have been a single article?) *mail centering, feel centering, gold centering, tool centering (ditto) *metal-mettle (are there any accents spoken today where these haven't merged?) *opossum-prism (ditto) *wooden-wouldn't (have these ''ever'' been distinct in the history of English?) *meter-metre (ditto) American only: *father-bother *cot-caught *Mary-marry-merry *Sirius-serious *furry-hurry *pan tensing *squirrel-girl *glottaling of T before syllabic N (found in England only in accents that glottal T more generally) *winter weakening *wing tensing *bang raising *intervocalic t/d merger (some amount of intervocalic T voicing is also found in London, Northern Ireland, and Australia, though it isn't clear whether there's an actual merger so that ''latter'' and ''ladder'' are homophones, as they are in North America) --User:Angr 07:58, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC) :"opossum-prism" I've never heard of this one. For me, ''opossum'' is and ''prism'' is . "wooden-wouldn't" I've never heard of this one, either. For me ''wooden'' is and ''wouldn't'' is . "meter-metre" Have these ever been pronounced differently? (I pronounce them both as , by the way.) "glottaling of T before syllabic N" Seems normal to me. I pronounce ''Latin'' as . --User:Evice 03:35, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC) == Spelling == Any opinions on whether the British/Canadian spelling will become common in the United States several years from now?? Please feel free to give several external links talking about this. User:Georgia guy 18:42, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

''From Wikipedia:Requested moves:'' * Object. ''Grey'' is not an exclusively Canadian spelling, and while largely a British usage, it was the original spelling, and ''Gray'' is just an American variant. While UK-influenced English predominantly uses ''Grey'', American usage is roughly split between both ''Gray'' and ''Grey.'' As an aside, the ''Dictionary Society of North America'' recently released reports on the growing usage and increased popularity of British English spellings in the United States...blaming the phenomenon in part for the large number of UK-expatriate editors who take publishing jobs in the United States and influence the language in the editing and production. Etymologically, it comes from the Middle English ''grei'' and further back from the Old English ''graeg''. The disambiguation at Gray is fine as it is, and given the variety of topics covered (people, physics, color) all the more necessary. LASTLY, we have a policy around here about not bickering between American English and British English usage, please read Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), which establishes the policy stating ''American spellings need not be respelled to British standards nor vice-versa'' and states that alternate spellings may require redirects...which is done appropriately here. —User:ExplorerCDT 06:30, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

:This isn't even true. Both spellings ''grey'' and ''gray'' are equally old, both first attested in the 14th century; even in Old English there was variation between ''grǣġ'' and ''grēġ''. --User:Angr 18:49, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Relationship to other dialects == The relationships to Canadian English, Liberian English Philippine English and International English should be explored. Also, African American Vernacular English deserves considerably more discussion. I will try to work on this later. == Youse for You in northern midwest == The use of "youse" rather than "you", if it has ever been a hallmark of northern midwestern speech, is long since gone. It is regarded by speakers in at least Wisconsin and Minnesota, as a hallmark of New Jersey (esp.) speech. The use of "You all", sometimes (although not commonly enough to qualify as a "hallmark pronuncition") as a plural form (ONLY, unlike the common use for singular and plural in "the south") is actually fairly common, but "youse" is used only sarcastically. User:TShilo12 ^{User talk:TShilo12} 07:14, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC) :Tiny nitpick - "You all" is NEVER used for a singular person in the South as far as I can tell. People would look at you strangely if you said something of that nature. I think that's just an invention of the media. User:Danthemankhan 22:04, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC) ::My point, specifically, was that "you all" is used (quite often, in fact...almost as often as "you guys" (regardless of gender)) as a second-person plural pronoun in the upper midwest, and that "youse" ''never'' is, except to make fun of people from Nyoo Joyzee (another sarcastic pronunciation, since New Jersey is pronounced ). When I made my statement about "the south", it was meant to refer, not to "you all", but rather to "y'all", or ''ez zei sei ne saut'', "yaowl", which I have heard often used to refer to people in the 2nd person, regardless of number. User:TShilo12 ^{User talk:TShilo12} 23:58, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC) :::Having grown up in Texas, I can say no one there ever uses ''y'all'' in the singular, except possibly recent arrivals from the North who want to blend in but haven't figured out that ''y'all'' is exclusively plural. I can't speak for the rest of the South, however. (There is, however, the confusing phenomenon of someone saying "How y'all doin'?" to a single person, meaning "How are you and your family doing?", but possibly construed by a nonlocal as an instance of singular ''y'all''.) --User:Angr/User_talk:Angr 05:01, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::::My experience in this area is, admitedly, limited to upland south carolina, where what bit of my family as there is in "the south" resides. In Greenville, South Carolina, at the very least, there is constant confusion of number with "y'all". None of this, however, has anything whatsoever to do with my deletion of the claim that upper midwesterners use "youse" as a plural for the 2nd person. User:TShilo12 ^{User talk:TShilo12} 12:09, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC) == Are these traits for southern Illinois speech very well known? == None of the page described anything like the speech around here: *The mentioned ''roof''/''root''/''book'' merger does not usually occur (they are , , and , respectively). *The use of ''out'' to mean "off" when referring to a light is common, as in "Turn the light out," otherwise the standard ''off'' is used, as in "The plate fell off the table" or "Turn the computer off." *The ''pin''/''pen'' merger occurs. *Some people sound somewhat like people in the southern part of the United States (although almost everyone has rhotic speech), though most people have accents more like that of "standard" American English. *[[�-tensing|[�]-tensing]] occurs. * sounds in contractions often become ; for example, ''doesn't'' sounds like "dudn't." *''Something'' often sounds like "sunt'm" instead of the standard . I can't think of any odd features right now, but I'll add some if I can think of any others. --User:Evice 18:51, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC) :Most of these sound like characteristics of Southern American English, which I have often heard extends into southern Illinois and southern Indiana. Most of the south is rhotic nowadays (see the map at Rhotic and non-rhotic accents) and the pin-pen merger has spread well beyond the south anyway (see the map at Phonemic differentiation.) --User:Angr/User_talk:Angr 19:20, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::I see. I forgot to mention that the distinction between and is also quite common, too. Oddly, though, I don't use ''out'' to mean "off," merge the and sounds in contractions (I forgot to mention that ''hasn't'' is an exception to the / merger, which is good since ''hadn't'' is already a word), or pronounce ''something'' the way most people do (I use the latter pronunciation listed above), and I never use the sound for the ''wh'' digraph. Does anyone know if any of these traits are disappearing, at least in the southern Midwest? Are there any books I could check out that discuss regional dialects of English? --User:Evice 04:49, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC) :There's a map for the wh/w merger at Phonemic differentiation too. Keeping them distinct is definitely disappearing. The best book for regional accents of English I know of is ''Accents of English'' (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982) by John C. Wells, but unfortunately it doesn't cover American English in much detail. --User:Angr/User_talk:Angr 08:29, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC) == use of "skosh" == I've heard this term used more than once (in Wisconsin and Minnesota), although I don't know if it's from japanese. I've also heard it pronounced "sk�tsh" (not to be confused with "sk�tsh", for "slide (your bum)", as in "scootch over"). User:TShilo12 ^{User talk:TShilo12} 22:08, May 8, 2005 (UTC) :I'm extremely suspicious of a phrasal degree adjective like this being borrowed into English from Japanese (or borrowed into any language for that matter). Those types of words tend to be a closed class, changing very little over the generations. What you're hearing perhaps has a different meaning or etymology. Also, I don't think the Japanese population in the USA would be sufficient to instigate generic borrowings. If you could give some authentic examples though, it could be really interesting... User:Jeeves 23:25, 8 May 2005 (UTC) ::For the record, I'm not the original author, in fact, I didn't know that was in the article until it was deleted. I was simply commenting in response to the deletion "note" left by the person who deleted it from the article. I won't pretend to speak Japanese, so I'm unsure what "sukoshi" means, precisely, in Japanese, but I can tell you that it's used here to mean "a smidgin" or "a li'l bit". As for what you mean by "authentic examples", I'm unsure...it sounds like you're possibly calling me a liar for saying "I've heard this term more than once". I have made no claims regarding the etymology nor widespread use of this term. As for the likelihood that a term could have gained acceptance and widespread usage in light of a small immigrant Japanese population, that's possibly the most bogus argument I've ever heard. The Filipino population in the US is not that big, but everyone knows what the "boondocks" are. The Malay population is not impressively large, but everyone knows what an orangutan is. I could continue with such words as "amok", "pariah", "curry", "batik", "atoll" (ooh, the Maldive immigrant community is just HUGE!), etc. What makes this argument even less impressive is that the Japanese form a significant, if not majority, of the population of Hawaii, the native language of which has, for all the insignificance of its mainland immigrant population, given AmE the words "hula", "luau", "Pele" (not the soccer player), "poi", and "aloha", among others. User:TShilo12 ^{User talk:TShilo12} 02:21, May 9, 2005 (UTC) ::On a related note, I think perhaps "sushi" should be included in the article, especially in light of its almost-exclusive usage in the speech of most AmE speakers to mean what is called in Japanese "sashimi". User:TShilo12 ^{User talk:TShilo12} 02:22, May 9, 2005 (UTC) :::I'm not sure how you got the impression that I was "calling you a liar", but I wasn't at all. I was just thirsty for more information as I'm a linguistics student, I've never heard of this phenomenon before, and I would be interested in analyzing it. I'm sorry you find my "argument" to be "less than impressive", but you should consider statistical realities: heavy lateral borrowing, to such an extent that a language gains words in a closed class, has generally occurred when an immigrant population was quite large, or when a country was invaded (British Aisles by Normans, China by Mongols, etc). I'm not saying that this is the only way a language could pick up a new closed-class word, but that it's unlikely. French is a major donor to the English language, yet no one uses ''tr`s'' to mean "very" or ''beaucoup'' to mean "much", except to show deliberate affectation. Not to be nitpicking or anything, but ''orangutan'' and ''boondocks'' are not really the same kind of borrowing as ''sukoshi'' would be. Obviously ''ape'' and ''a little bit'' belong to very different lexical classes. I feel like I'm lecturing here, but most borrowings from Japanese into English are nouns, and interestingly, all the words you mention are also nouns, many of which are related to local phenomena (hula, atoll, etc). We see the same thing with ''sushi'' , ''tsunami'', ''karate'', ''honcho'' (emphasizing role of hierarchy in Japanese business). My point is that I'm highly skeptical that any dialect of English has actually absorbed ''sukoshi'' as a completely assimilated equivalent for ''a little bit''. Do children use it? Are English syntactic rules applied to it? Do we see this borrowing spreading out from a geographic area where it occurred? Can we find it in recent literature