REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIALECTS

1. REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIALECTS by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen

2. SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA: NEW ENGLAND NAMES • New England • Plymouth Rock • New York • New Jersey • Cambridge, Massachusetts • Boston Celtics (Irish) • New Amsterdam (Dutch) • Harlem • New York Knickerbockers • Dutch West Indies

3. New England and New YorkCompare New Jersey, New Amsterdam, New Orleans, Nova Scotia…

4. EASTERN U.S. DIALECTS (Marckwardt and Dillard 280)

5. SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA: PENNSYLVANIA NAMES • William Penn • Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch) • “thee” “thy,” “thine” and “thou”

6. Philadelphia 76ers

7. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

8. 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

9. Jamestown VirginiaSettled by King James

10. Williamsburg, VirginiaSettled by William and Mary

11. Virginia and West VirginiaSettled by Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin” Queen

12. North & South CarolinaSettled by King Charles

13. The Slave Trade: Charleston, South CarolinaLiverpool, England and West Africa

14. SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA: THE CUMBERLAND PASS • Scottish and Irish settlements in the South • Irish story tellers (the Jack tales like “Jack and the Beanstalk”)

15. The Cumberland Pass

16. NORTHERN, MIDLAND & SOUTHERN EXPANSION WESTWARD (Shuy 294)

17. San Francisco 49ers

18. PHONOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES • Greasy • With • spoon (noon) • Creek • Roof • However, wash is not so much regional as rural.

19. PHONOGICAL DISTINCTIONS THAT ARE BECOMING LOST • cot-caught • witch-which • mourning – morning • However, pin-pen is remaining stable.

20. 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

21. 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 African-influenced 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 so-called plantation accent in most parts of the region nowadays requires a trip to the video store.” (Collins & Wyatt [2009]: 333-334)

22. 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)

23. 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)

24. 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)

25. 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

26. Three Southern Dialects: Deep South, Southernand Texas and Oklahoma

27. Las Colinas, Texas

28. Southern Grammar 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 Starnge Conjunctions: unless  without, lessen, thouten Starnge Adverbs: anywheres, nowheres

29. SOUTHERN VOCABULARY • chitlins and grits • to buy a pig in a poke • “Carry me Back to Old Virginie”

30. Yankee-Dixie Quiz: http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/yankee_dixie_quiz.html

31. 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)

32. Silicon Valley: Surfer Dude and Valley Girl Speech

33. CANADIAN PHONOLOGY • out and about the house • schedule • Canadian -eh

34. Canadian Dialect:

35. 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

36. 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

37. HUMOROUS EXAMPLES OF REGIONAL DIALECTS

38. 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.

39. Yiddish Influences

40. 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.”

42. Yankee-Dixie Quiz: http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/yankee_dixie_quiz.html

43. 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.

44. MINNESOTA & LAKE WOBEGON HUMOR • In Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking 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.

45. Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon

46. 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.

47. Turtle Bay, New York

48. SOUTHERN HUMOR • A radio comedian once remarked that the Mason-Dixon 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.

50. 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.”