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There are 8 major English dialect areas in North America, listed below the map at left. These are shown in blue, each with its number, on the map and in the Dialect Description Chart below, and are also outlined with blue lines on the map.
Jan 3, 2018 · A survey of more than 30,000 people, turned into a series of maps, showcase the linguistic quirks that make American English such a fascinating dialect.
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More than a decade ago, Robert Delaney, a reference associate at Long Island University, put together this map of the 24 regions of American English:
- A National Map of The Regional Dialects of American English
- The Data Base
- Dialect Regions of The United States
- The Taxonomy of American Dialects
- The North
- The South
- The West
- The Midland Cities
a. No data are given for New York City and Philadelphia, whosevowel systems have been extensively reported elsewhere (LYS 1972, Labov1994). b. A minimal number of points are given for Eastern New England. c. There is minimal coverage of the South, with only one speakerfor most major cities representing the Gulf States, as compared to twoor more spe...
Map1 also identifies a number of distinct and important dialect areasin the Eastern United States, which were clearly set out in the work ofthe Linguistic Atlas (Kurath and McDavid 1961): Eastern New England; NewYork City; and the Mid-Atlantic coastal area encompassing Philadelphia,Wilmington and Baltimore. No phonological basis for a division betw...
(1) They show maximal geographic clustering indicated by an isoglosswith the minimal percent of occurrences outside the area along with themaximal proportion of occurrences inside it. (2) They are drawn from the set of systematic sound changes thatdifferentiate the phonology of that area, and are linked causally to thatwider set of features as show...
The North Central region
Table 1 shows the distribution of the defining features of theNorth Central and Inland North regions. The back position of checked /ow/is characteristic of 25 of the 35 points in the North Central region, or71%. Eighteen speakers with back checked /ow/ lie outside this area, almostall in the neighboring regions of the West, the Midland and the InlandNorth. Back position of /ow/ is also characteristic of the other conservativearea, Western New Englan.d. The conservative character of the North...
The Inland North
(2) The Northern Cities Shift . The NCS begins with the wholesale raising and fronting of the /æ/phoneme, the triggering event which differentiated the Inland North fromNew England, as registered on Figure 1. The second stage, the frontingof short /o/, was first noted in Fasold's unpublished report on the movementof /æ/ and /o/ in his Detroit study (1969). LYS 1972 give acousticand impressionistic evidence for stages 1,2,4 and 6 based on recordingsin Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Rochester and S...
Bailey 1997 traces the history of 23 features of white vernacular Englishin Texas from a variety of sources, using acoustic analysis of early recordings.The monophthongization of /ay/ is shown in his Table 2 to be absent before1875, variable from 1875 to 1945, and consistent after 1945. The monophthongizationof this vowel can be seen as the trigger...
In Figure 1, this joint heritage of the West is shown by linesdescending from both the Midland node and the pre-Northern node C. However,the end result of this mixture for urban dialects is not the diffuse orunmarked character that was predicted for the West. Instead, we find thatin the phonological system, a fair degree of homogeneity is emerging,...
The city of St. Louis is located squarely in the South Midlandregion, but it has long been recognized as a center of Northern linguisticinfluence. On most Atlas maps, the St. Louis speakers show features thatare held in common with the North, notable particularly in the long highand mid vowels, and there a corridor of northern influence that runs f...
Apr 15, 2013 · The map and list below show the major (and a few minor) geographic dialects and subdialects of English spoken in the United States. Many of these may be further subdivided into local subdialects that are not shown here.
The map above shows the major regional dialects of American English (in all caps) plus smaller and more local dialects, as demarcated primarily by Labov et al.'s The Atlas of North American English, as well as the related Telsur Project's regional maps. Any region may also contain speakers of a "General American" accent that resists the marked ...
A National Map of the Regional Dialects of American English, by William Labov, Sharon Ash and Charles Boberg. This paper presents the overall results of the Telsur Project in responding to the question, "How many dialects of American English are there?" and "Where are the boundaries located?"
