Regional and Social Dialects

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Regional and Social Dialects

• by Don L. F. Nilsen and
• Alleen Pace Nilsen

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Explain what each of these names tells you about
the immigrants and colonization.

• New England
• Plymouth Rock
• New York
• New Jersey
• Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Boston Celtics (Irish)
• New Amsterdam (Dutch)
• Harlem (originally settled by the Dutch)
• New York Knickerbockers
• Dutch West Indies

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New England and New YorkCompare New Jersey, New
Amsterdam, New Orleans, Nova Scotia
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EASTERN U.S. DIALECTS (Marckwardt and Dillard)
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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 AMERICACONNECTIONS 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 VirginiaSettled by King James
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Williamsburg, VirginiaSettled by William and Mary
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Virginia and West VirginiaSettled by Queen
Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen
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North South CarolinaSettled by King Charles
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The Slave Trade Charleston, South
CarolinaLiverpool, 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
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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

• Because many people in the South are rural and
  isolated, there are many different dialects
  Appalachian twangs in several states, Elizabethan
  lilts in Virginia, Cajun accents in Louisiana and
  African-influenced Gullah accents on the coasts
  of Georgia and South Carolina.
• One of these receding accents is the slow
  juleps-in-the-moonlight drawl favored by
  Hollywood portrayals of the South.
• That particular accent is now mostly found in
  movies.

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The Plantation Drawl vs. Appalachian Speech

• 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.
• Walt Wolfram says that the vowel shift where
  one-syllable words like air come out in two
  syllables, ay-ah is certainly vanishing.
• However many other aspects of the Southern
  dialectsuch as double-modal constructions like
  might couldare still pervasive.

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Roy Blount Jr. on Southern Speech

• Roy Blount Jr. said, My father, who was a surely
  intelligent man, would say caint, He wouldnt
  say cant. And, There aint no way, just
  there aint no way. You dont want to say,
  There isnt any way. That just spoils the
  whole thing.
• Blount says that theres a certain eloquence in
  Southern vernacular that he wouldnt want to lose
  touch with. He says that a person ought to sound
  like where he comes from.
• In fact, there are many professions that thrive
  on a good ol southern twangfrom preachers to
  football coaches to a certain breed of courtroom
  litigators.

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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,
Southernand Texas and Oklahoma
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Las Colinas, Texas
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Southern Grammar

• Double Modals might could
• Negative Modals Hadnt 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

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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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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 couldnt make
  him say three words.
• He responded, You lose.

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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 Keillors 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.

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Garrison Keillors 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 Worlds
  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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New York Dialect

• Buddy Hacketts New York Accent
• https//www.youtube.com/watch?vcKiSA_FvZrY

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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 OBrien, Bill Maher, and Jon Stewart.

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• Wayne Flynt, a history professor at Alabamas
  Auburn University explained that this is because
  of Alabamas trying to invent a world consistent
  with our ideals, and its a world that doesnt
  exist anymore. Were 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, Ive won! Theres
  no way Ill 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 Studios 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, thats 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! Im just so proud to be here!
• Hee Haw, and The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville,
  Tennessee were the roots of todays 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 Im a Son of a Gun
• If You Want to Keep the Beer Real Cold, Put it
  Next to My Ex-Wifes Heart

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• Drop-Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of
  Life
• Dont 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 Dialect Exam, Slide 1

• 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.
• What do you drink water out of?
• Drinking fountain, cooler, bubbler or geyser.

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Regional Dialect Exam, Slide 2

• 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 or
  imagine.

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British and American Dialects

• Accents and Archetypes of Great Britain
• http//www.bing.com/videos/search?qyoutubebritis
  hdialectsviewdetailmid2DDBFA52A6AC272F4D9D2DD
  BFA52A6AC272F4D9DFORMVIRE
• Accents in the Movies
• http//www.bing.com/videos/search?qDialectsinMo
  viesviewdetailmidA268827068EE4FA6E602A2688270
  68EE4FA6E602FORMVRDGAR
• American Dialect Society
• http//americandialect.org/