California English | |
---|---|
Region | United States (California) |
Early forms | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog | None |
IETF | en-u-sd-usca |
California English (or Californian English) collectively refers to varieties of American English native to California. As California became one of the most ethnically diverse U.S. states, English speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds began to pick up different linguistic elements from one another and also developed new ones; the result is both divergence and convergence within Californian English. [1] However, linguists who studied English before and immediately after World War II tended to find few, if any, patterns unique to California, [2] [3] and even today most California English still exhibits a General or Western American accent.
A distinctive chain shift of vowel sounds, the California Vowel Shift, was first noted by linguists in the 1980s in southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area of northern California. [4] This helped to define an accent emerging primarily among youthful, white, urban, coastal speakers, and popularly associated with the valley girl and surfer dude youth subcultures. [5] [3] The possibility that this is, in fact, an age-specific variety of English is one hypothesis; [6] however, certain features of this accent are intensifying and spreading geographically. [7]
Other documented California English includes a "country" accent associated with rural and inland white Californians, which is also (to a lesser extent) affected by the California Vowel Shift; an older accent once spoken by Irish Americans in San Francisco; and distinctly Californian varieties of Chicano English mainly associated with Mexican Americans. Research has shown that Californians themselves perceive a linguistic boundary between northern and southern California, [8] particularly regarding the northern use of hella and southern (but now nationally widespread) use of dude , bro , and like . [9]
Varieties of English most popularly associated with California largely correlate with the major urban areas along the coast. Notable is the absence of a distinct /ɔ/ phoneme (the vowel sound of caught, stalk, clawed, etc.), which has completely merged with /ɑ/ (the vowel sound of cot, stock, clod, etc.), as in most of the Western United States. [10]
Front | Central | Back | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
unrounded | rounded | ||||||
lax | tense | lax | tense | lax | tense | tense | |
Close | i | u | |||||
Close-mid | ɪ | eɪ | ə , ʌ | ʊ | oʊ | ||
Open | ɛ | æ | ɑ | ||||
Diphthongs | aɪ ɔɪ aʊ |
A few phonological processes have been identified as being particular to urban and coastal California English. However, these vowel changes are by no means universal in Californian speech, and any single Californian's speech may only have some or none of the changes identified below. These sounds might also be found in the speech of some people from areas outside of California. [11]
One topic that has begun to receive much attention from scholars in recent decades has been the emergence of a vowel-based chain shift in California. The image in this section illustrates the California vowel shift on a vowel chart. The vowel space of the image is a cross-section (as if looking at the interior of a mouth from a side profile perspective); it is a rough approximation of the space in a human mouth where the tongue is located in articulating certain vowel sounds (the left is the front of the mouth closer to the teeth, the right side of the chart being the back of the mouth). As with other vowel shifts, several vowels may be seen moving in a chain shift around the mouth. As one vowel encroaches upon the space of another, the adjacent vowel in turn experiences a movement in order to maximize phonemic differentiation.
For convenience, California English will be compared with a "typical" General American English, abbreviated "GA". /ɪ/ is pulled towards [ɛ] (bit and miss are sounding more like how other dialects realize bet and mess), /ɛ/ is pulled towards [ æ ] (wreck and kettle are sounding more like rack and cattle), /æ/ is pulled towards [ ä ], and /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ merge (cot and stock are sounding more like caught and stalk): the cot-caught merger.
Other vowel changes, whose relation with the shift is uncertain, are also emerging: except before /l/, /u/ is moving through [ ʉ ] towards [ y ] (rude and true are almost approaching reed and tree, but with rounded lips), and /oʊ/ is moving beyond [əʊ]. /ʊ/ is moving towards [ ʌ ] (so that, for example, book and could in the California dialect start to sound, to a GA speaker, more like buck and cud), /ʌ/ is moving through [ ɜ ], sometimes approaching [ ɛ ] (duck, crust, what, etc. are sounding like how U.S. Southerners pronounce them, or like how other Americans might pronounce deck, crest, wet, etc.). [16]
New vowel characteristics of the California shift are increasingly found among younger speakers. For example, while some characteristics such as the close central rounded vowel [ʉ] or close front rounded vowel [y] for /u/ are widespread in Californian speech, the same high degree of fronting for /oʊ/ is found predominantly among young speakers. [17]
The effects of the California vowel shift have been noted in varieties of Californian Spanish, particularly in the Bay Area. [18]
One dialect of English, mostly reported in California's rural interior, inland from the major coastal cities, [19] has been popularly described as a "country," "hillbilly," or "twang" variety. [20] [21] This California English variety is reminiscent of and presumably related to Southern or South Midland U.S. accents, [22] mostly correlated with white, outdoors-oriented speakers of the Central Valley. It has been studied even as far north as Trinity County but could possibly extend farther, [23] [20] and as far south as Kern County (metropolitan Bakersfield). Similar to the nonstandard accents of the South Midland and Southern United States, speakers of such towns as Redding and Merced have been found to use the word anymore in a positive sense and the verb was in place of the standard English plural verb were. [24] Related other features of note include the pin–pen merger, [22] [23] [25] [26] fill–feel merger, and full–fool merger. [20]
The Great Depression's westward Dust Bowl migrations of settlers into California from the Southern United States, namely from Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas, [23] is the presumable cause of this rural white accent's presence in California's Central Valley. [22] [27] Rural northern California was also settled by Oklahomans and Arkansans, though perhaps more recently in the 1970s and 1980s, due to the region's timber industry boom. [28] However, even in a single town, any given individual's identification with working and playing outdoors versus indoors appears to be a greater determiner of this accent than the authenticity of the individual's Southern heritage. [25] For example, this correlates with less educated rural men of northern California documented as raising /ɛ/ in a style similar to the Southern drawl. [23] Overall, among those who orient toward a more town lifestyle, features of the California Vowel Shift are more prominent, but not to the same extent as in urban coastal communities such as San Jose. [19] By contrast, among those who orient toward a more country lifestyle, the Southern features are more prominent, but some aspects of the California Vowel Shift remain present as well. [22] [25]
The Mission brogue is a disappearing accent spoken within San Francisco, mostly during the 20th century in the Mission District. It sounds distinctly like New York and possibly Boston accents, due to a large number of Irish Americans migrating from those two East Coast cities to the Mission District in the late 19th century. [29] It is today spoken only by some of the oldest Irish American and possibly Jewish residents of the city. From before the 1870s to the 1890s, Irish Americans were the largest share of migrants coming to San Francisco, [29] the majority arriving by way of Northeastern U.S. cities like New York and Boston, [30] [31] [29] thus bringing those cities' ways of speaking with them. [31] In San Francisco, the Mission District quickly became a predominantly Irish Catholic neighborhood, [32] [31] and its local dialect became associated with all of San Francisco as a way to contrast it with the rest of California. [32] Sounding like a "real San Franciscan" therefore once meant sounding "like a New Yorker", [32] the speakers said to "talk like Brooklynites". [29] Other names included the "south of the Slot" (referring to the cable car track running down Market Street) [32] or "south of Market" accent. [33]
Pronunciation features of this accent included:
Overall, starting in the later half of the 20th century, San Francisco has been undergoing dialect levelling towards the broader regional Western American English, [30] [34] for example: younger Mission District speakers now exhibit a full cot–caught merger, show the vowel shift of urban coastal Californians, and front the GOOSE and GOAT vowels. [35]
Certain varieties of Chicano English are also native to California, sometimes even being spoken by non-Latino Californians. [36] [37] One example is East Los Angeles Chicano English, which has been influenced by both Californian and African American Vernacular English. [38]
The coastal urban accent of California traces many of its features back to Valleyspeak: a social dialect arising in the 1980s among a particular white youthful demographic in the San Fernando Valley, including Los Angeles.
Boontling is a jargon or argot spoken in Boonville, California, with only about 100 speakers today. [39]
The popular image of a typical southern California speaker often conjures up images of the so-called Valley girls popularized by the 1982 hit song by Frank and Moon Zappa, or "surfer-dude" speech made famous by movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High . While many phrases found in these extreme versions of California English from the 1980s may now be considered passé, certain words such as awesome, totally, for sure, harsh, gnarly, and dude have remained popular in California and have spread to a national, even international, level.
A common example of a northern Californian [40] colloquialism is hella (from "(a) hell of a (lot of)", and the euphemistic alternative hecka) to mean "many", "much", "so" or "very". [41] It can be used with both count and mass nouns. For example: "I haven't seen you in hella long"; "There were hella people there"; or "This guacamole is hella good". The word can be casually used multiple times in multiple ways within a single sentence. Pop culture references to "hella" are common, as in the song "Hella Good" by the band No Doubt, which hails from southern California, and "Hella" by the band Skull Stomp, who come from northern California. [42]
California, like other Southwestern states, has borrowed many words from Spanish, especially for place names, food, and other cultural items, reflecting the linguistic heritage of the Californios as well as more recent immigration from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. High concentrations of various ethnic groups throughout the state have contributed to general familiarity with words describing (especially cultural) phenomena. For example, a high concentration of Asian Americans from various cultural backgrounds, especially in urban and suburban metropolitan areas in California, has led to the adoption of the word hapa (itself originally a Hawaiian borrowing of English "half" [43] ) to mean someone of mixed European/Islander or Asian/Islander heritage.
In 1958, essayist Clifton Fadiman pointed out that northern California is the only place (besides England and the area surrounding Ontario and the Canadian Prairies) where the word chesterfield is used as a synonym for sofa or couch. [44]
In the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Inland Empire, Coachella Valley and San Diego, freeways are often referred to either by name or by route number but with the addition of the definite article "the", such as "the 405 North", "the 99" or "the 605 (Freeway)". This usage has been parodied in the recurring Saturday Night Live sketch "The Californians". [45] In contrast, typical northern California usage omits the definite article. [46] [47] [48] When southern California freeways were built in the 1940s and early 1950s, local common usage was primarily the freeway name preceded by the definite article, such as "the Hollywood Freeway". [49] It took several decades for southern California locals to start to commonly refer to the freeways with the numerical designations, but usage of the definite article persisted. For example, it evolved to "the 605 Freeway" and then shortened to "the 605". [49]
American English (AmE), sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States; the de facto common language used in government, education and commerce; and an official language of most U.S. states. Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide.
Spoken English shows great variation across regions where it is the predominant language. The United Kingdom has a wide variety of accents, and no single "British accent" exists. This article provides an overview of the numerous identifiable variations in pronunciation. Such distinctions usually derive from the phonetic inventory of local dialects, as well as from broader differences in the Standard English of different primary-speaking populations.
A vowel shift is a systematic sound change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of a language.
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians. Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary and accent features, AAVE is employed by middle-class Black Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the non-standard accent. AAVE is widespread throughout the United States, but is not the native dialect of all African Americans, nor are all of its speakers African American.
Southern American English or Southern U.S. English is a regional dialect or collection of dialects of American English spoken throughout the Southern United States, though concentrated increasingly in more rural areas, and spoken primarily by White Southerners. In terms of accent, its most innovative forms include southern varieties of Appalachian English and certain varieties of Texan English. Popularly known in the United States as a Southern accent or simply Southern, Southern American English now comprises the largest American regional accent group by number of speakers. Formal, much more recent terms within American linguistics include "Southern White Vernacular English" and "Rural White Southern English".
Chicano English, or Mexican-American English, is a dialect of American English spoken primarily by Mexican Americans, particularly in the Southwestern United States ranging from Texas to California, as well as in Chicago. Chicano English is sometimes mistakenly conflated with Spanglish, which is a mixing of Spanish and English; however, Chicano English is a fully formed and native dialect of English, not a "learner English" or interlanguage. It is even the native dialect of some speakers who know little to no Spanish, or have no Mexican heritage.
An ethnolect is generally defined as a language variety that marks speakers as members of ethnic groups who originally used another language or distinctive variety. According to another definition, an ethnolect is any speech variety associated with a specific ethnic group. It may be a distinguishing mark of social identity, both within the group and for outsiders. The term combines the concepts of an ethnic group and dialect.
In the history of English phonology, there have been many diachronic sound changes affecting vowels, especially involving phonemic splits and mergers. A number of these changes are specific to vowels which occur before, especially in cases where the is at the end of a syllable.
North American English regional phonology is the study of variations in the pronunciation of spoken North American English —what are commonly known simply as "regional accents". Though studies of regional dialects can be based on multiple characteristics, often including characteristics that are phonemic, phonetic, lexical (vocabulary-based), and syntactic (grammar-based), this article focuses only on the former two items. North American English includes American English, which has several highly developed and distinct regional varieties, along with the closely related Canadian English, which is more homogeneous geographically. American English and Canadian English have more in common with each other than with varieties of English outside North America.
The cot–caught merger, also known as the LOT–THOUGHT merger or low back merger, is a sound change present in some dialects of English where speakers do not distinguish the vowel phonemes in words like cot versus caught. Cot and caught is an example of a minimal pair that is lost as a result of this sound change. The phonemes involved in the cot–caught merger, the low back vowels, are typically represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet as and or, in North America, as and. The merger is typical of most Canadian and Scottish English dialects as well as some Irish and U.S. English dialects.
Pacific Northwest English is a variety of North American English spoken in the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon, sometimes also including Idaho and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Due to the internal diversity within Pacific Northwest English, current studies remain inconclusive about whether it is best regarded as a dialect of its own, separate from Western American English or even California English or Standard Canadian English, with which it shares its major phonological features. The dialect region contains a highly diverse and mobile population, which is reflected in the historical and continuing development of the variety.
New England English is, collectively, the various distinct dialects and varieties of American English originating in the New England area. Most of eastern and central New England once spoke the "Yankee dialect", some of whose accent features still remain in Eastern New England today, such as "R-dropping". Accordingly, one linguistic division of New England is into Eastern versus Western New England English, as defined in the 1939 Linguistic Atlas of New England and the 2006 Atlas of North American English (ANAE). The ANAE further argues for a division between Northern versus Southern New England English, especially on the basis of the cot–caught merger and fronting. The ANAE also categorizes the strongest differentiated New England accents into four combinations of the above dichotomies, simply defined as follows:
The Low-Back-Merger Shift is a chain shift of vowel sounds found in several dialects of North American English, beginning in the last quarter of the 20th century and most significantly involving the low back merger accompanied by the lowering and backing of the front lax vowels:, , and.
Inland Northern (American) English, also known in American linguistics as the Inland North or Great Lakes dialect, is an American English dialect spoken primarily by White Americans in a geographic band reaching from the major urban areas of Upstate New York westward along the Erie Canal and through much of the U.S. Great Lakes region. The most distinctive Inland Northern accents are spoken in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. The dialect can be heard as far west as eastern Iowa and even among certain demographics in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. Some of its features have also infiltrated a geographic corridor from Chicago southwest along historic Route 66 into St. Louis, Missouri; today, the corridor shows a mixture of both Inland North and Midland American accents. Linguists often characterize the western Great Lakes region's dialect separately as North-Central American English.
Western American English is a variety of American English that largely unites the entire Western United States as a single dialect region, including the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. It also generally encompasses Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, some of whose speakers are classified additionally under Pacific Northwest English.
Midland American English is a regional dialect or super-dialect of American English, geographically lying between the traditionally-defined Northern and Southern United States. The boundaries of Midland American English are not entirely clear, being revised and reduced by linguists due to definitional changes and several Midland sub-regions undergoing rapid and diverging pronunciation shifts since the early-middle 20th century onwards.
Northern American English or Northern U.S. English is a class of historically related American English dialects, spoken by predominantly white Americans, in much of the Great Lakes region and some of the Northeast region within the United States. The North as a superdialect region is best documented by the 2006 Atlas of North American English (ANAE) in the greater metropolitan areas of Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Western and Central New York, Northwestern New Jersey, Northeastern Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio, Northern Indiana, Northern Illinois, Northeastern Nebraska, and Eastern South Dakota, plus among certain demographics or areas within Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont, and New York's Hudson Valley. The ANAE describes that the North, at its core, consists of the Inland Northern dialect and Southwestern New England dialect.
The sound system of New York City English is popularly known as a New York accent. The New York metropolitan accent is one of the most recognizable accents of the United States, largely due to its popular stereotypes and portrayal in radio, film, and television. Several other common names exist for the accent that associate it with more specific locations in the New York City area, such as Bronx accent, Brooklyn accent, Queens accent, Long Island accent, North Jersey accent, etc.; however, no research has demonstrated significant linguistic differences between these locations.
Standard Canadian English is the largely homogeneous variety of Canadian English that is spoken particularly across Ontario and Western Canada, as well as throughout Canada among urban middle-class speakers from English-speaking families, excluding the regional dialects of Atlantic Canadian English. Canadian English has a mostly uniform phonology and much less dialectal diversity than neighbouring American English. In particular, Standard Canadian English is defined by the cot–caught merger to and an accompanying chain shift of vowel sounds, which is called the Canadian Shift. A subset of the dialect geographically at its central core, excluding British Columbia to the west and everything east of Montreal, has been called Inland Canadian English. It is further defined by both of the phenomena that are known as Canadian raising : the production of and with back starting points in the mouth and the production of with a front starting point and very little glide that is almost in the Canadian Prairies.
Western New England English refers to the varieties of New England English native to Vermont, Connecticut, and the western half of Massachusetts; New York State's Hudson Valley also aligns to this classification. Sound patterns historically associated with Western New England English include the features of rhoticity, the horse–hoarse merger, and the father–bother merger, none of which are features traditionally shared in neighboring Eastern New England English. The status of the cot–caught merger in Western New England is inconsistent, being complete in the north of this dialect region (Vermont), but incomplete or absent in the south, with a "cot–caught approximation" in the middle area.
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