American English
American English or U.S. English is the form of the English language used
mostly in the United States of America. It is the primary language used
in the United States. According to the 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. 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, French, German, myriad Native American, Spanish, Swedish, and
Finnish 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 "Elizabethan 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, as English was everywhere in the
17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English,
Scottish English, and West Country 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 eastern New England,
New York City and surrounding areas, and the coastal portions of the South.
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 IPA 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 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 palatals in some words, so that cure, pure,
mature and sure rhyme with fir in some speech registers for some
speakers.
Dropping of after , , so that new, duke, Tuesday, suit, resume, lute
are pronounced , , , , , .





ƭtensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent.
In some accents, particularly those from Philadelphia 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 ts 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 wine-whine merger 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
morphologically 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
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 (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 頡 u lait : a mixture of half milk and half coffee (also sometimes
used as slang for Mulatto descent)
chowder
a thick seafood stew
; 鴯 uff 饠: 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
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, Japan)
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 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 (askutasquash) : a vegetable, similar to English marrow
succotash
mixture of corn and other vegetables like peas, beans
; woodchuck (wuchak) : a marmot-like mammal
moccasin
a shoe made of leather
From Spanish
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 griego, Greek)
; 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 "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
Barangay
small political unit, sub-district
; boondocks (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 OK, 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 fall,
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 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.
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 (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 merged 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 RP (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 AAVE, 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 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 merge the historical of hoarse, mourning with the of horse,
morning. It also maintains the cot-caught contrast, 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 [ƭtensing|[漯 a>-tensing]] in some words;
fewer words have the tense in Philadelphia than in New York City.
As in New York City and Boston, there is a three-way distinction
between Mary, marry, and merry. 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 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
City and northern New Jersey, presumably arising from a similar mix of
immigrants. Parallels include the split of the historic short-a class into
tense and lax 漯 a> 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 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, Rochester,
Syracuse), parts of Michigan's Lower Peninsula (Detroit, Ann Arbor, etc.),
Cleveland, Chicago, Gary, 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
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, 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, 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"
St. Louis 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
榣 720;/, 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 = Yoo-Pee
For a stereotypical (if somewhat overdone) example of Minnesotan,
refer to the movie Fargo. 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 榣 720;n/ 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 syllabification of the /n/ itself, while
"can't" is normally pronounced .)
collapse of /�ith /d/ and /θ/ with /t/: to use a (hilarious)
anecdote from the family history of this author as an example:
o "Yozef? Are you done cleaning the barn?"
o "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 Island,
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 /�nd /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.
St. Louis 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
homophonous:
o bowl / bull
o foal / full
o foley / fully
o Folsom / fulsome
o mole / mull
o poll, pole / pull
o 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
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
o 1st and 2nd supplements of above.
Craig M. Carver. American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987. ISBN 0472100769