Varieties of English Around the World

North America

How did American English arise?

It is common knowledge that the American variety of English is very conservative in comparison to the British one. The first English settlers that survived in America (Crystal, 1988: 223) came in 1607 to what is now Virginia. They were followed by the famous Pilgrim Fathers, who founded New England in 1620. In the beginning, English people provided the overwhelming majority in the colonies. They coined the language of the East Coast, where the immigrants lived in the first centuries. Up to 1790 two thirds of the population in the United States of that time were of English descendance. In the following years, two important changes took place. The treck to the West began, and there grew to come more immigrants from other European countries. The larger group remained to be anglophone, the Irish being the majority of newcomers now (it was in that time that Irish was replaced by English in Ireland as well, caused among other things by the great famine). Besides, the number of people coming from non-anglophone countries like Germany, Italy, and Russian (in this order), grew, too; they left only few traces in American English, though. That is why I spoke about the kindredness of Irish English and American in the Irish chapter. The Irish and, to a lesser extent, the Scottish influenced the speech of the largest part of present-day North America, viz. the whole U.S.A. except New England and the South and the anglophone Canada.

The American language

As a result, three distinct linguistic areas arose: New England (with New York playing a special role), the South, and the rest which is known as General American. You can see the preponderance of the latter, which eventually reached the Pacific Coast, on the following map, scanned from Bähr, 1974: 326; in addition, the demographic preponderance is moving westwards, too (Bähr, 1974: 197):

General American

This most important variety of American English should thus be described first. It is, in fact, the most different from Standard English, but a great deal of its features can be found in the two other dialects, too. In future, it will probably gain even more weight, because of its demographic preponderance and its growing cultural sigificance. Its most outstanding feature, rhoticity, is already finding its way into the East and South.

I will describe this variety as the American English, afterwards, the other ones will be regarded in comparison to this; the main divergence between them lies on the field of pronunciation.

In General American, we find a lot of features already dealt with in the Irish section: The English [] as in ask, path, castle is pronounced as [æ(:)], the open o of top is unrounded, wh is voiceless. On the other hand, the [æ] occurs, too, in words where Irishmen would tend to [], as in dance. Rhoticity is there, but not realized by the StE [], the American [] is retroflex (constituting a great amount of the "American sound"). Intervocalic voiceless plosives are "weakened": p, t, k become b, d, g; like in English dialects, but here also in relatively cared pronunciation, full syllables are omitted in certain, lexically determined cases, like I'm gonna instead of I'm going to. The ing-form is pronounced [], especially if it is participle, less often as gerund. Unlike IE, the monophthongization phenomenon has nothing to do with an influence from a substratum. So, the StE diphthongs do not just turn to single vowels, rather the American pronunciation reflects an older English one; they extend from [e, o] to [ei, ou]. In England, this pronunciation changed to (RP)[] in the 17th century (up to [, ] in the Southern dialects).

At any case, I have to drop a few lines on intonation. The intonation pattern is completely different from StE, intonationally, StE is closer to Russian than to American English (Reese, 1993: 8).

The overweight of the stressed over the unstressed syllable is a lot smaller in American English; unstressed syllables are not reduced up to inaudibility as in Britain. Besides, Americans know a "secondary stress" (Bähr, 1974: 211) that can affect the position of the primary stress, too.

Some examples:
AE BE
[] []
[] []
[] []
[] []

American grammar

In the field of grammar, a lot of archaisms have been preserved. On the other hand, a great deal of simplification has taken place. I want to mention especially the usage of the present perfect. In American, it is possible to say: "I just ate" or "I didn't see her yet", in contradiction to the rules foreigners learn at school (Crystal, 1988: 249). Again, the famous "half an hour" can occur as "a half hour" (German substratum?). Shortening like "I want out", "Look out the window", "Mondays we take the bus", "I'll start March 1st" are common, pointing to possible German substratum, too. As for the archaisms, strong forms like "gotten", "proven", "snuck" could be mentioned. Sometimes archaism and simplification can come together: cf. the adverb ending "-ly" being regularly omitted.

American spelling

American English is the country which has enjoyed the longest period of time in cultural and political independance from London.

As a result, it is not surprising that the U.S.A. are the nation in the English-speaking world that has deviations in spelling rules from the British practice. Consider the following examples (American - British): "center - centre", "program - programme", "dialog - dialogue", "color - colour", "defense - defence", "judgment - judgement", "maneuver - manoeuvre". As for the "-ize/-ise"-ending, Americans prefer "-ize", English "-ise".

American vocabulary

American English is the most independent variety of English, the only one that is taught to foreigners besides Standard English (StE). There is even borrowing from American English to other varieties, including StE.

Whereas different political systems are the source for divergence in vocabulary and for some Englishes almost the only one, American English has plenty of these, but just as much from other domains. Let us first quote some "obvious" political terms:

Education system:
high school, freshmen, sophomore, junior and senior students
Legal system:
the Administration, attorney, blank
Differences in vocabulary shows the independent development until this century. As the railroad came up, depots were built for it, and the engineers were not interested in the fact that Londoners would call it railway station (Gräf/Spitzbardt, 1983: 44-53).

The most important cereals on the American continent are maize; consequently, the American word is equal to the British notion for any kind of cereals: corn (Crystal, 1988: 250). So there are two important bases for the divergence of English and American vocabulary: independent development and different life styles. On the other hand, loan words from other languages into the melting pot or even from the languages of the "oldest" settlers are few.

A short list of examples of Americanisms, the total number of which could fill dictionaries (Bähr, 1974: 216-221; Crystal, 1988: 249-250):
American English British English
aluminum aluminium
apartment flat
ash-can dustbin
baggage luggage
candy sweets
bar pub
cab taxi
e.g. Hudson River e.g. River Thames
Mo thru Fr Mo to Fr inclusive
call (phone) ring
can tin
first floor ground floor
second floor etc. first floor etc.
elevator lift
sidewalk pavement
line queue
pants trousers
truck lorry
vacation holidays
yield give way

However, the divergence is decreasing. Nowadays, mass media and intercultural contact have stopped linguistic diversification. Again, linguistic and social power and cultural hegemony are situated in America. It has given the world new things and new words for them. The American vocabulary is scattering around the world. The computer was invented by a German technician, but the notion for it in most of the world is taken from American English, who first invented a word for it.

The mother country, sharing the same language, has become one of the weakest victims towards linguistic Americanisation. Many British call about "movies", though every dictionary says this word is not used in Britain, and "lifts" are also known as "elevators" these days. Englishmen "O.K." to use American words, though there are movements against this development, too.

In other English-speaking countries, like Australia and New Zealand, the willingness to adopt Americanisms is higher and resistance against it weaker.

American slang

The American language is very rich in slang. A good deal of slang words, widely known in the world by American songs, have reached British English, other Englishes and other languages. Every German "kid" (sic in present-day German!) knows what a "ghetto blaster" is, and whereas they may wonder about the translation of "Another one bites the dust" (lit. translation to German: »Ein anderer beißt den Staub.«), English children will understand and use it on the streets to console themselves with an unpleasant experience. American slang is perhaps the most significant in the world, no other one influencing other languages' slangs that much. Some slang examples (Georgi-Wask/Linnemann, 1992):

slang meaning
Yummy! tasting good
hangout pub
Hit me! another beer, please.
joint hash cigarette
tube television
You bet! Of course!
shades sun glasses
Haul ass! Let's go!
tough shit bad luck
play dirty be unfair
be down in the dumps be in a bad mood
cig, drag, fag cigarettes
four-letter words invectives
square conservative
mug glass
Good job! Well done!
Park your butt! Sit down!
zany, wild, jazzed, tough, hot, cool etc. good

Dialectal divergence - other accents

New England

Among the varieties spoken in North America, the speech of New England is most similar to StE. The New England pronunciation is not used in all of historical New England: Connecticut, Vermont, and Western Massachusetts use General American (Wells, 1982b: 518).
New England accent is marked by its "nasal twang", i.e., vowels and diphthongs are nasalized before and after nasal consonants. It used to be non-rhotic, as a result of the intrusion of General American, the r before consonants tends to be more and more pronounced. The second striking sound of this accent is [a], which is also losing ground to General American [æ]. Based on this vowel, a stereotype example in order to imitate New England speech exists:

Park your car in Harvard Yard [] (Wells, 1982b: 522).

Because of its bridge function, for Americans, New England accent sounds British, to British, though, American.

The open o is rounded, as New England accent is scarcely concerned by Irish influence. There is some difference to the English pronunciation yet: it tends to be longer, e.g. Boston [] (StE: [])(Wells, 1982b: 519). The r-colored diphthong [] is produced with a closed o, so that the difference between north [] and force [] is striking (Wells, 1982b: 525). The StE diphthongs, though, are mostly pronounced the GenAm way.

To conclude this paragraph, some words on the often mentioned treatment of the long vowel u, which is [] in StE and said to be [] in America. In fact, the latter is the normal pronunciation in New England. In the rest of America, it is very common, too, but in a lot of words regarded as uneducated (Gräf/Spitzbardt, 1983: 21). So it can be expected that this feature will be one of the last Eastern peculiarities to be dropped.

New York City

"New York ... has a distinctive accent, which differs from others more sharply than does any other North American regional accent. Americans in general are more aware of this accent than of any other local accent except possibly American southern accents (and in this they differ from the British, who are usually quite unaware that a New York accent is in any way different from other American accents)." (Wells, 1982b: 501f.)

It is really curious that Bähr (1974) does not mention this special accent. Geographically, the speech of New York is no longer restricted to the City as it was till the beginning of this century. It comprehends the surrounding counties of New York State and New Jersey, too (Bronstein, 1962: 13). Within it, there is the greatest range of social divergence found in the whole "new world" (Wells, 1982b: 502). Till the Second World War, the dialect was fully non-rhotic; today, rhoticity has become prestige norm (Oomen, 1982: 37). That is why by time different vowel treatments arose. In original New York City speech vowel + r tended to be produced as a diphthong ending in [] or []. Diphthongs unknown in StE nor GenAm are a sign of this accent in general. Long vowel often end in schwa ([]), e.g. bath [], thought[]. The [] is mostly pronounced []. Beside the [] of time (Bronstein, 1962: 18) and the glottal stop that occurs in lower class dialect, reminding of southern English pronunciation (Wells, 1982b: 515), the omitting of syllable-ending l or d after nasal consonants and the very unusual treatment of the th'es, which tend to be spoken as dental stops, should be emphasized. In opposition to the latter, "Many New Yorkers pronounce the alveolar consonants /t, d, n, l/ with the blade of the tongue rather than with the tip." (Wells, 1982b: 515).

Though it is the dialect of one of the most outstanding cultural centers in the English-speaking world, New York City speech is regarded as socially stigmatized (Wells, 1982b: 503). In recent years, the tendency has been moving towards a more GenAm-colored kind of speech.

The South

The variety of American English that is spoken in the South (i.e. South-East) of the United States (s. dialect map) enjoys the same status, although GenAm features have not penetrated this area in the amount it has done in New York and the rest of New England.

"Die r-lose Aussprache gilt als charakteristisch für den Süden... Sprachhistorisch gilt der Verlust des präkonsonantischen und auslautenden /r/ als eine jüngere Entwicklung, die sich während des 18. Jahrhunderts vollzog. Die gängige Vorstellung, dieser Verlust sei charakteristisch für die Südstaatendialekte, trifft jedoch nicht überall zu. Einerseits gibt es Enklaven innerhalb des Südens, in denen sich postvokalisches /r/ als archaisches Aussprachemerkmal erhalten hat... Andererseits werden in manchen Gebieten des Südens r-lose und r-haltige Formen nebeneinander beobachtet." (Oomen, 1982: 66)

Rhoticity is thus not necessarily a sign for GenAm influence. Of course, there is a tendency towards the use of General American. The characteristics of the southern dialect is summarized as "Southern drawl". This comes from the lengthening of the vowels (Cassidy, 1982: 203). Striking is, too, that the []-diphthong is pronounced as [] and the [] becomes [] (Bähr, 1974: 208). The South is rather different in itself: "... we can expect to find at least thirty important subvarieties of Southern speech." (McDavid, 1970) It would take us too far to describe all of them.

The region around the first settlement of English people in America, however, the coastal area of Virginia round Jamestown (founded 1607), is a bit special, although it is subscribed to the southern dialect zone, too. The "Tidewater accent" is regarded as being closest to Shakespearian English. It is rhotic, the s-sounds are voiced (colloquially called "Zummerzet voicing"; Crystal, 1988: 224).

The special situation of Canada

As Canada was settled in the same time as the United States by people from similar areas and, originally, the two nations were only politically seperated, Canadian English in most respects resembles General American. In pronunciation, they are more similar than General American is to New England speech or the Southern dialect. On the other hand, Canada as a British dominion has lacked the long period of independent development the U.S.A. have had. Often the American form, known from the media, and the British one, known from school, compete. Looking at Bähr (1981), most of the items mentioned in the questionnaire represent either the American or the British habit. Nevertheless, no Canadian would ever accept his speech being regarded as a mixture of AE and StE with GenAm pronunciation.

In fact, only Canadian themselves and people from the U.S. will be able to recognize Canadian English is distinctive from the U.S. way of talking.

Yet there are Canadian specialties, we even find regional variation within this vast country. Only in Canada, the ai- and au-diphthongs exist in two allomorphs: one before voiceless, the other one before voiced consonants: [ - [], [/] - []. The replacement of the question tag by the word eh? has been known as a stereotype of CE (Bailey, 1982: 161).

As for the regional variation, it is declining towards the West. "From Ottawa to Vancouver is more than 3000 kilometres; their accents are virtually the same." (Wells, 1982b: 491). Eastern Canadian has felt a lot of Scottish influence; in Nova Scotia we still find a Gaelic-speaking minority. A special role is played by Newfoundland, which has few to do with the rest of Canada.

Newfoundland

Newfoundland was the first British colony in North America (1583) and remained in this status until 1949, when it became part of Canada. Hence, its speech is very conservative even in American eyes and quite different from other varieties of English. Newfies [], as they are commonly called, often use me instead of I, e.g. me goes shopping (Bentfeld, 1991: 96). Their dialect is rhotic and the only one dropping the h's among all the dialects of North America (Wells, 1982b: 501). To notice also the treatment of the th's that become dental plosives or even [f, v]. The vowel of but is an open o, l is always clear (!) and the most i-containing diphthongs take schwa as their first part. There are a lot of special words, too, that are widely used, so in the 10th Canadian province, tourists will need the Newfie-English dictionary (Bentfield, 1991: 96).

Back to the contents page!
© bey Johannes Reese, March 1993
Thanks to .