American English Varieties, Part III: Dixie English

On March 26th, I mentioned the term Dixie English and defined it as the variety of American English spoken in the Southern States. Did you know that it makes up the largest accent group in the US? I And that it is one of the most diverse varieties of American English? This is due to the rich history of the area which is also attributed to the shared similarities it has with African American English Vernacular. I I want to outline some of the most important characteristics of Dixie English today.

1. Dixie English is known for its non-rhotic feature or in lay terms, ones that we can all understand, they drop the final /r/ before a consonant or if the /r/ is at the end of a word as in ‘door’ (also known as a word boundary). So, if you live in New York, as I do, the words ‘guard’ and ‘God’ usually sound different. In the South, they would sound very similar.

2. Also, in Dixie English, the distinction between the word pairs horse/hoarse and for/four are preserved; the pairs sound different. This is not so in other parts of the United States where they are pronounced as homophones (words that sound alike but are different in spelling).

3. One other major difference between Dixie English and other varieties of American English is the wine/whine merger. For those of us outside of the Southern states region, the two words sound pretty much the same, so we have a merger of the two sounds /w/ and /ʍ/. In the south, the /w/ is pronounced differently in both words, where 'wine' is pronounced asa /wain/ and 'whine is pronounced as /ʍain/ with an initial /hw/ sound.

These are just a few of the characteristics found in the Dixie or South American English variety. Experts do say that with the younger generations some of these features are not as prevalent as they used to be. A good example of a Dixie speaker is Dolly Parton. And with that, I leave you with one of her many famous quotes: “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain”.

To listen to examples of the above phonetic phonemes /w/, /ʍ/ visit http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html.

American English Varieties: Part II

Last week we looked at how vowels and the way we pronounce them can affect our speech and label it as a specific variety of American English. This week, I’d like to look at General American English. More specifically, I’d like to comment on its origin and its use. According to The American Heritage Dictionary, “General or Standard” English is the speech of educated speakers. For years, research has tried to define which region represents this variety of English. However, region is not so much the factor as is the media. Natalie Baker-Shirer of Carnegie Mellon University teaches acting students and theater professionals how to speak Standard American English, free of regionalisms, accents or dialects. She states that “Standard American,” in the context of dramatic speech, means one single standard of speech that will sound American — simple, unaffected and distinct, devoid of regional influences. Does this mean, then, that “Standard or General American” English is ideally sought after by the media and entertainment industries and not a variety of the nation’s language after all? If that is in fact true, then where can we trace its origins? In other words, if a standard doesn’t really exist but is a variety that is fabricated and can only be taught by accent coaches, where did its make-up come from? And why is it that so many of us seek to perfect it?

American English Varieties, Part I: Mary-Marry-Merry

As I mentioned last week, there is more than one variety of English in the United States. Today, I’d like to look at the factors that make them different. According to noted Linguist, William Labov, there are three major dialect regions in the United States — the Inland North, the South, and the West. Each of these regions pronounces their vowels differently. The way the variations are pronounced rely on the placement of the tongue and associated articulators when a word is spoken. And all of this changes depending on which part of the country you grow up in. Let’s look at the long, high and mid vowels using a classic example of Mary-marry-merry to help illustrate the point.


In this first sample http://www.alt-usage-english.org/mmm_bc.wav, the speaker pronounces the /æ/ phoneme the same way for all three words. Thus this speaker is an example of what Linguists call the Mary-marry-merry merger, found predominantly among speakers in the US, more specifically in the North or "yankee" region of the US.


In this second sample http://www.alt-usage-english.org/mmm_rf.wav, the speaker has a three-way distinction, and therefore pronounces the vowels in each of these words differently. This linguistic behavior is characteristic of other regions of America, like the Southern or "dixie region.


Where do you fit in? So, far, I fit in with the "Yankee" viariation of English. Come back next week as we continue to explore the different variations of American English.

American English: Which one do you speak?

I was recently asked what kind of American English I speak. Huh? The choices were:

1. General American English
2. Yankee
3. Dixie
4. Mid Western
5. Upper Midwestern

I was then faced with three questions: What is Yankee English,what is Dixie English, and what about the west coast? I guessed New England English for the first, and I was right. But I had never heard the term Dixie English. After some research, I found that Dixie English refers to a region, within the United States, that is made up of the eleven Southern States that seceded to form the Confederate States of America. So, Dixie English refers to English spoken in, what we consider to be, the traditional South of the United States. In the following weeks, I will outline the characteristics of each of these different kinds of American English and search for the term (or maybe even coin the term?) for west coast English. What type of American English do you speak?

American English: An Embarrassing Moment

American English can be tricky. Ask anyone, native American English speaking or not, and they may have an anecdote to share. A client, originally from Japan, once told me that he could understand a French business person speaking English better than an American one. Strange? Not really; I think it makes perfect sense. When, as foreigners, we learn English as a second language, we are learning a 'standard' form of the language—one that is universally understood by millions of learners worldwide. It's no wonder that misunderstandings and communication issues arise when international professionals find themselves embedded in American culture. A recent embarrassing moment I can remember happened in graduate school. I was studying Linguistics where the word pedagogy often came up when speaking about teaching language strategies. I'd never had to utter the word out loud before and had no idea how to pronounce it. The unfortunate moment came when I had to read it out loud in class. As I read it, I knew it didn't sound right (did it? How could I know?). I quickly realized, from the reaction of my peers, that I was right; I had made a fool of myself in front of very smart people. I thought less of myself for the rest of the afternoon until I realized that there was absolutely no way I would've known that in the word pedagogy, the second /g/ is soft. Nowhere in our ESL books does a rule exist to show that what I was doing was wrong. And so, English to me, even 30 years later, remains a challenge every time I come across a new word. But now, all the wiser, whenever in doubt, I ask my dear friends - because if you do not, you will never know. Next time you find yourself across the table from a colleague whose birthplace is not America, ask them to tell you about an embarrassing English learning moment. I bet you they have one. And while you are at it, share one of your own.