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REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIALECTS. by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen. 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.
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REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIALECTS by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen
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
New England and New YorkCompare New Jersey, New Amsterdam, New Orleans, Nova Scotia…
SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA: PENNSYLVANIA NAMES • William Penn • Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch) • “thee” “thy,” “thine” and “thou”
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
Virginia and West VirginiaSettled by Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin” Queen
The Slave Trade: Charleston, South CarolinaLiverpool, England and West Africa
SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA: THE CUMBERLAND PASS • Scottish and Irish settlements in the South • Irish story tellers (the Jack tales like “Jack and the Beanstalk”)
PHONOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES • Greasy • With • spoon (noon) • Creek • Roof • However, wash is not so much regional as rural.
PHONOGICAL DISTINCTIONS THAT ARE BECOMING LOST • cot-caught • witch-which • mourning – morning • However, pin-pen is remaining stable.
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
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)
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)
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)
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)
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
Three Southern Dialects: Deep South, Southernand Texas and Oklahoma
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
SOUTHERN VOCABULARY • chitlins and grits • to buy a pig in a poke • “Carry me Back to Old Virginie”
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)
CANADIAN PHONOLOGY • out and about the house • schedule • Canadian -eh
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
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
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
