REGIONAL AND
SOCIAL DIALECTS
by Don L. F. Nilsen and
Alleen Pace Nilsen
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SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA:
NEW ENGLAND NAMES
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New England
Plymouth Rock
New York
New Jersey
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Boston Celtics (Irish)
New Amsterdam (Dutch)
Harlem
New York Knickerbockers
Dutch West Indies
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New England and New York
Compare New Jersey, New Amsterdam, New Orleans, Nova Scotia…
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EASTERN U.S. DIALECTS (Marckwardt and Dillard 280)
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SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA:
PENNSYLVANIA NAMES
• William Penn
• Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch)
• “thee” “thy,” “thine” and “thou”
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Philadelphia 76ers
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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA:
CONNECTIONS WITH ENGLAND, ETC.
• Jamestown, Virginia
• Williamsburg, Virginia
• The Slave Trade: Charleston, South Carolina;
Liverpool, England; and Sierra Leon, West Africa
• Pidgins and Creoles resulting from “Maritime
English”
• The development of black English as a pidgin
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Jamestown Virginia
Settled by King James
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Williamsburg, Virginia
Settled by William and Mary
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Virginia and West Virginia
Settled by Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin” Queen
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North & South Carolina
Settled by King Charles
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The Slave Trade: Charleston, South Carolina
Liverpool, England and West Africa
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SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA:
THE CUMBERLAND PASS
• Scottish and Irish settlements in the
South
• Irish story tellers (the Jack tales like
“Jack and the Beanstalk”)
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The Cumberland Pass
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NORTHERN, MIDLAND & SOUTHERN EXPANSION
WESTWARD (Shuy 294)
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San Francisco 49ers
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PHONOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES
• Greasy
• With
• spoon (noon)
• Creek
• Roof
• However, wash is not so much regional as rural.
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PHONOGICAL DISTINCTIONS
THAT ARE BECOMING LOST
• cot-caught
• witch-which
• mourning – morning
• However, pin-pen is remaining stable.
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NEW ENGLAND PHONOLOGY
• lot (New England)
• park the car; Cuba-r-is
• merry – marry – Mary
• calf (pass, path, dance)
• Brooklyn: dis, dat, dese, dose, dem
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The Southern Dialect
• “The South, because of its rural, isolated past,
boasts a diversity of dialects, from Appalachian
twangs in several states, to Elizabethan lilts in
Virginia, to Cajun accents in Louisiana, to Africaninfluenced Gullah accents on the coasts of Georgia
and South Carolina.”
• “One accent that has been all but wiped out is the
slow juleps-in-the-moonlight drawl favored by
Hollywood portrayals of the South. To find that socalled plantation accent in most parts of the region
nowadays requires a trip to the video store.”
(Collins & Wyatt [2009]: 333-334)
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The Plantation Drawl vs. Appalachian Speech
• “Even as the stereotypical southern accent
gets rarer, other speech patterns take its
place, and they’re not any less southern.”
• “The Upland South accent, a faster-paced
dialect native to the Appalachian mountains,
is said to be spreading just as fast as the
plantation drawl disappears.”
(Collins & Wyatt [2009]: 334)
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Walt Wolfram on Southern Speech
• Walt Wolfram says that “the vowel shift
where one-syllable words like “air”
come out in two syllables, “ay-ah” is
certainly vanishing.”
• “Other aspects—such as double-modal
constructions like ‘might could’—are
still pervasive.”
(Collins & Wyatt [2009]: 335)
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Roy Blount Jr. on Southern Speech
• Roy Blount Jr. said, “My father, who was a surely intelligent
man, would say ‘cain’t,’ He wouldn’t say ‘can’t.’ And, ‘There
ain’t no way, just there ain’t no way.’ You don’t want to say,
‘There isn’t any way.’ That just spoils the whole thing.”
• “I just think that there’s a certain eloquence in southern
vernacular that I wouldn’t want to lose touch with…you ought
to sound like where you come from.”
• “There are still plenty of professions that thrive on a good
southern twang—from preachers to football coaches to a
certain breed of courtroom litigators.”
(Collins & Wyatt [2009]: 335)
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SOUTHERN PHONOLOGY
• Mrs.
hog (frog, dog, Deputy Dog)
• south  souf
during  doin, and going  gon
• help  hep
test  tes
• ring  rang
boy  boah
• car  cah
POlice
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Three Southern Dialects: Deep South, Southern
and Texas and Oklahoma
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Las Colinas, Texas
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SOUTHERN VOCABULARY
• chitlins and grits
• to buy a pig in a poke
• “Carry me Back to Old Virginie”
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CALIFORNIA VALLEY-GIRL &
SURFER-DUDE SPEECH
• Rising Inflections (like Australian English)
• Superfluous use of the word “like”
• Animated Body Language (like sticking a
finger down the throat)
• Specialized Vocabulary (like “dude”, esp.
relating to shopping malls, the beach, and
personality types)
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Silicon Valley: Surfer Dude
and Valley Girl Speech
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CANADIAN PHONOLOGY
• out and about the house
• schedule
• Canadian -eh
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Canadian Dialect:
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VOCABULARY DIFFERENCES
• What do you fry your eggs in?
• creeper, fryer, frying pan, fry pan, skillet, or spider
• What do you call a soft drink?
• pop, soda, soda pop, or tonic?
• What do you call a long sandwich containing salami
etc.?
• hero, submarine, hoagy, grinder or poorboy
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• What do you drink water out of?
• drinking fountain, cooler, bubbler or geyser
• How do you get something from one place to
another?
• take, carry, or tote
• What do you carry things in?
• a bag, a sack, or a poke
• How do you speculate?
• reckon, guess, figgure, figger, suspect,
imagine
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GRAMMAR DIFFERENCES
• Double Modals: might could
• Negative Modals: hadn’t ought
• Strange Past Participles: larnt
• Strange Possessive Pronouns: yourn, hisn, hern, ourn, theirn
• Strange Prepositions: a quarter before eight
• Strange Conjunctions: unless => without, lessen
• Strange Adverbs: anywheres, nowheres
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BRITISH-AMERICAN
PRONUNCIATION DIFFERENCES
• calf, bath, pass, aunt
• learn, fork, core, brother
• carry, very
• secretary, stationery, territory, dictionary, laboratory,
necessary, missionary
• either, neither, potato, tomato
• clerk, schedule
• captain, bottle (glottals [in Cockney])
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21 Accents by Amy Walker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k
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BRITISH-AMERICAN
VOCABULARY DIFFERENCES
• girl, cop, hood (of a car), trunk (of a
car), suspenders, apartment, bathroom,
elevator, truck, wig, gasoline, bar, line,
monkey wrench, television, flashlight,
subway
• bird, bobby, bonnet, boot, braces, flat,
loo, lift, lorry, peruque, petrol, pub,
queue, spanner, tele, torch, tube
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BRITISH-AMERICAN
STRESS DIFFERENCES
• Aluminum
• Applicable
• Formidable
• Kilometer
• Laboratory
• Secretary
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BRITISH-AMERICAN
SPELLING DIFFERENCES
• cheque
• centre, theatre
• colour, honour
• defence, offence
• labelled, travelled
• pyjamas
• tyre
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BRITISH EXPRESSIONS TO
WATCH OUT FOR
• fag or faggot (wood for the fireplace, or
cigarette)
• soliciter (lawyer)
• to knock someone up (wake someone
up in the morning, or visit someone)
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COCKNEY RHYMING SLANG
• apples and pears (stairs)
• Aristotle (bottle)
• pig’s ear (beer)
• Mother Hubbard (cupboard)
• plates and dishes (Mrs.)
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Cockney Rhyming Slang:
More Recent Examples:
Give us a butchers
= butchers hook
= look
Blowing a raspberry
= raspberry tart
= fart (Bronx Cheer)
Use your loaf
= loaf of bread
= head
That ruined my barnet
= Barnet Fair
= hair
I’ll just do my bird quietly = bird lime
= time (prison sentence)
All right, me old china?
= mate (friend)
Merchant
= china plate
= Merchant Banker = Wanker
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Linguistic Archetypes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyyT2jmVPAk
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SOCIALLY–VARIABLE
LINGUISTIC RULES
• Minimal Pairs
• Word Lists
• Reading Style
• Careful Speech
• Casual Speech
(William Labov’s Observation)
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FIVE DEGREES OF FORMALITY
• Frozen: Prissy Text Book
• Formal: Most Text Books
• Consultative: Conversations among Strangers or
Large Groups
• Casual: Conversations among Close Friends
• Intimate: Conversations among Family Members or
Lovers
Martin Joos The Five Clocks:
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HUMOROUS
EXAMPLES
OF
REGIONAL
DIALECTS
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BORSHT BELT HUMOR
• The Borsht Belt was a chain of hotels in
the mountains near New York.
• These hotels provided entertainment
from their guests, most of whom were
Jewish vacationers from New York City.
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Yiddish Influences
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DOWN-EAST YANKEE HUMOR
• This humor is taciturn and reluctant.
• There is a story about Calvin Coolidge. He was
seated next to a woman at an official White House
function. She leaned toward him and confided that
someone had bet her that she couldn’t make him say
three words.
• He responded, “You lose.”
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Yankee-Dixie Quiz:
http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/yankee_dixie_quiz.html
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• While southern and western humor is
filled with grammatical errors, New
England humor is shown through the
use of archaic or old-fashioned words
like “clumb,” “tonk,” or “holp.”
• They make the character sound quaint
rather than ignorant.
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MINNESOTA & LAKE WOBEGON HUMOR
• In Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, “all the
women are strong, all the men are goodlooking and all the children are above
average.”
• Tourists in the upper Midwest can find the
Paul Bunyan Logging Camp. They can find
his mail box, and can climb the ladder to
drop in their letters.
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Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon
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• As they travel the roads in Minnesota
tourists will also find a huge ear of corn
mounted on a water tower, a Jolly
Green Giant, an oversized snowman, a
huge Uncle Sam, and the “World’s
Biggest Revolver.”
• Each state of the upper Midwest has its
own share of roadside attractions.
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Turtle Bay, New York
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SOUTHERN HUMOR
• A radio comedian once remarked that the MasonDixon line is the dividing line between you-all and
youse-guys.
• People from Alabama feel particularly picked on
because they have become the butt of jokes made
by talk show hosts, disc jockeys, newspaper
cartoonists, columnists and such TV personalities as
Conan O’Brien, Bill Maher, and Jon Stewart.
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• Wayne Flynt, a history professor at
Alabama’s Auburn University explained
that this is because of Alabama’s trying
to “invent a world consistent with our
ideals, and it’s a world that doesn’t
exist anymore. We’re trying to squeeze
rural values into an urban world.”
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WESTERN FRONTIER HUMOR
• The frontier humor of the American West or of
Australia tends to be exaggerated:
• He is so stingy that he sits in the shade of the
hackberry tree to save the shade of the porch.
• His feet are so big that he has to put his pants on
over his head.
• His teeth stick out so far that he can eat a pumpkin
through a rail fence.
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• When Slue-Foot Sue married Pecos Bill, Sue
insisted on riding his horse, Widow-Maker.
• Widow-Maker bucked her off and she
bounced so high on her spring bustle that
she orbited the moon and they had to throw
jerky to her to keep her from starving to
death.
• When Pecos Bill died, they marked his grave
site with, “Here lies Pecos Bill. He always
lied and always will. He once lied loud. He
now lies still.”
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• Joe Barnes was sired by a yoke of cattle, suckled by
a she-bear and had three sets of teeth and gums for
another set.
• Nimrod Wildfire was a touch of the airthquake. He
had the prettiest sister, the fattest horse, and the
ugliest dog in the district.
• Wirt Staples has a shadow that can wilt grass,
breath that can poison mosquitoes, and a yell that
can break windows.
• Mike Fink was a Salt River roarer, a ring-tailed
squealer, half wild horse and half cock-eyed
alligator and the rest crooked snags and red-hot
snappin’ turtle.
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WESTERN COUNTRY HUMOR
• Country humor is associated with the “Corn
Belt,” and is therefore sometimes called
“corny.”
• In The Henry Holt Encyclopedia of Word and
Phrase Origins, Robert Hendrickson said,
“Corn came to be known as what farmers
feed pigs and comedians feed farmers.”
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The Western Dialect
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• Jim Garry of Big Horn, Wyoming says that
farmers and ranchers are subject to three
uncontrollable forces: the weather, the bank,
and the government.
• Therefore, their humor tends to be fatalistic,
even though the details change from region
to region. It could be based on blizzards,
floods or droughts.
• Garry tells about a guy smiling as he walks
away from a bank. The guy says, “I’ve won!
There’s no way I’ll live long enough to have
to pay this note off.”
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Western Dialect and Western Humor
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• Marvin Koller described rural humor as
“down-to-earth” as when a small Oklahoma
town each summer sponsors a “cow chip”
throwing contest, and a rural Ohio town has a
“chicken-flying” contest to measure how far a
hen will fly when released from her coop. In
Vermillion, Ohio there is a “wooly bear”
festival to celebrate the amount of “fur” or
“fuzz” on brown and black caterpillars.
• This last festival is designed to predict
whether the coming winter will be severe or
mild.
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• In the 1940s, country singer and comedian Judy
Canova was Republic Studio’s top female star.
Her show foreshadowed Hee Haw and she wore
clod-hopper shoes and carried a cardboard
suitcase. Her hair was braided into pigtails.
• During the 1950s, there was the National Barn
Dance featuring Homer and Jethro. Homer
played a guitar and Jethro a mandolin, and they
would crack jokes and then say, “Oooh, that’s
corny!”
• This phrase later became part of an advertising
campaign for cornflakes.
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• Cousin Minnie Pearl was a favorite on Hee
Haw. She told corny jokes, wore a straw hat
with a price tag hanging down, and greeted
the audience with, “How-deeee! I’m just so
proud to be here!”
• Hee Haw, and The Grand Ole Opry in
Nashville, Tennessee were the roots of
today’s country music industry. Earlier, the
Old Southwest had been settled by Scottish
and Irish immigrants who had come through
the Cumberland Pass and settled in the
Ozarks.
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• A nasal twang that imitates the sound of a guitar has
long been a feature of country and Western singing,
and CB radio. There has also long been a tradition
of “moonshine” humor, as can be seen in these
book titles by Lewis Grizzard:
• The Shoes I Bought and Paid For are Walking Out on
Me
• My Daddy was a Pistol, and I’m a Son of a Gun
• If You Want to Keep the Beer Real Cold, Put it Next
to My Ex-Wife’s Heart
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• Drop-Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of Life
• Don’t Cry Down My Back, Baby, You Might Rust My
Spurs
• My Wife Ran Off with My Best Friend, and I Miss Him
• She Stepped on my Heart and Stomped that Sucker
Flat
• Jeff Foxworthy and other redneck comedians on the
Comedy Channel continue this tradition
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Portland, Oregon and Salt Lake City, Utah
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• Between 1910 and 1920, one-third of all Americans
lived on farms, but by the late 1990s fewer than 2
percent did.
• In a 1997 Wall Street Journal article, Cynthia
Crossen wrote, “The record shows the evolution of a
people from innocent, hopeful, rural and God-fearing
to plugged-in, ironic, inward-looking and dripping
with ennui.”
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Star Wars Dialect:
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REGIONAL & SOCIAL DIALECTS WEB SITE:
American Dialect Society:
http://americandialect.org/
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