Misplaced Pages

#918081

40-608: A distinctive chain shift of vowel sounds, the California Vowel Shift , was first noted by linguists in the 1980s in southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area of northern California . This helped to define an accent emerging primarily among youthful, white, urban, coastal speakers, and popularly associated with the valley girl and surfer dude youth subcultures . The possibility that this is, in fact, an age-specific variety of English

80-420: A chain shift is a set of sound changes in which the change in pronunciation of one speech sound (typically, a phoneme ) is linked to, and presumably causes, a change in pronunciation of other sounds. The sounds involved in a chain shift can be ordered into a "chain" in such a way that after the change is complete, each phoneme ends up sounding like what the phoneme before it in the chain sounded like before

120-400: A raising diacritic ⟨ ɜ̝ ⟩, to denote the mid central unrounded vowel . It may also be used with a lowering diacritic ⟨ ɜ̞ ⟩, to denote the near-open central unrounded vowel . Conversely, ⟨ ə ⟩, the symbol for the mid central vowel may be used with a lowering diacritic ⟨ ə̞ ⟩ to denote the open-mid central unrounded vowel, although that

160-413: A "typical" General American English , abbreviated "GA". /ɪ/ is pulled towards [ɛ] ( bit and miss are sounding more like how other dialects realize bet and mess ), /ɛ/ is pulled towards [ æ ] ( wreck and kettle are sounding more like rack and cattle ), /æ/ is pulled towards [ ä ] , and /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ merge ( cot and stock are sounding more like caught and stalk ):

200-501: A chain from Bedouin Hijazi Arabic involves vowel raising and deletion: In nonfinal open syllables, /a/ raises to /i/ while /i/ in the same position is deleted. Synchronic chain shifts may be circular. An example of this is Xiamen tone or Taiwanese tone sandhi : The contour tones are lowered to a lower tone, and the lowest tone (21) circles back to the highest tone (53). Synchronic chain shifts are an example of

240-622: A greater determiner of this accent than the authenticity of the individual's Southern heritage. For example, this correlates with less educated rural men of northern California documented as raising /ɛ/ in a style similar to the Southern drawl . Overall, among those who orient toward a more town lifestyle, features of the California Vowel Shift are more prominent, but not to the same extent as in urban coastal communities such as San Jose . By contrast, among those who orient toward

280-502: A higher place of articulation , so that the pronunciation of geese changed from /ge:s/ to /giːs/ and broken from /brɔːken/ to /broːkən/ . The high vowels /iː/ and /uː/ became diphthongs (for example, mice changed from /miːs/ to /maɪs/ ), and the low back vowel /aː/ was fronted , causing name to change from /naːmə/ to /neːm/ . The Great Vowel Shift occurred over centuries, and not all varieties of English were affected in

320-533: A linguistic boundary between northern and southern California, particularly regarding the northern use of hella and southern (but now nationally widespread) use of dude , bro , and like . Varieties of English most popularly associated with California largely correlate with the major urban areas along the coast. Notable is the absence of a distinct /ɔ/ phoneme (the vowel sound of caught, stalk, clawed, etc.), which has completely merged with /ɑ/ (the vowel sound of cot, stock, clod, etc.), as in most of

360-615: A more country lifestyle, the Southern features are more prominent, but some aspects of the California Vowel Shift remain present as well. The Mission brogue is a disappearing accent spoken within San Francisco , mostly during the 20th century in the Mission District . It sounds distinctly like New York and possibly Boston accents , due to a large number of Irish Americans migrating from those two East Coast cities to

400-463: A national, even international, level. A common example of a northern Californian colloquialism is hella (from "(a) hell of a (lot of)", and the euphemistic alternative hecka ) to mean "many", "much", "so" or "very". It can be used with both count and mass nouns. For example: "I haven't seen you in hella long"; "There were hella people there"; or "This guacamole is hella good". The word can be casually used multiple times in multiple ways within

440-499: A set of chain shifts collectively termed lenition , which affected stop consonants between vowels: In this case, each sound became weaker (or more "lenited"). It is also possible for chain shifts to occur synchronically, within the phonology of a language as it exists at a single point in time. Nzebi (or Njebi), a Bantu language of Gabon , has the following chain shift, triggered morphophonologically by certain tense/aspect suffixes: Examples follow: Another example of

SECTION 10

#1732765747919

480-416: A single sentence. Pop culture references to "hella" are common, as in the song " Hella Good " by the band No Doubt , which hails from southern California, and "Hella" by the band Skull Stomp, who come from northern California. California, like other Southwestern states, has borrowed many words from Spanish , especially for place names , food, and other cultural items, reflecting the linguistic heritage of

520-567: A typical southern California speaker often conjures up images of the so-called Valley girls popularized by the 1982 hit song by Frank and Moon Zappa , or " surfer-dude " speech made famous by movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High . While many phrases found in these extreme versions of California English from the 1980s may now be considered passé, certain words such as awesome , totally , for sure , harsh , gnarly , and dude have remained popular in California and have spread to

560-615: Is East Los Angeles Chicano English, which has been influenced by both Californian and African American Vernacular English . The coastal urban accent of California traces many of its features back to Valleyspeak : a social dialect arising in the 1980s among a particular white youthful demographic in the San Fernando Valley , including Los Angeles . Boontling is a jargon or argot spoken in Boonville, California , with only about 100 speakers today. The popular image of

600-439: Is familiar from its prominence in plays such as George Bernard Shaw 's Pygmalion (and the related musical My Fair Lady ): Many chain shifts are vowel shifts , because many sets of vowels are naturally arranged on a multi-value scale (e.g. vowel height or frontness). However, chain shifts can also occur in consonants. A famous example of such a shift is the well-known First Germanic Sound Shift or Grimm's Law , in which

640-609: Is not known which phonemes changed first during the Great Vowel Shift; many scholars believe the high vowels such as /i:/ started the shift, but some suggest that the low vowels , such as /aː/ , may have shifted first. During the Great Vowel Shift in the 15th and 16th centuries, all of the long vowels of Middle English, which correspond to tense vowels in Modern English, shifted pronunciation. The changes can be summarized as follows: Most vowels shifted to

680-528: Is one hypothesis; however, certain features of this accent are intensifying and spreading geographically. Other documented California English includes a "country" accent associated with rural and inland white Californians, which is also (to a lesser extent) affected by the California Vowel Shift; an older accent once spoken by Irish Americans in San Francisco ; and distinctly Californian varieties of Chicano English mainly associated with Mexican Americans . Research has shown that Californians themselves perceive

720-411: Is the front of the mouth closer to the teeth, the right side of the chart being the back of the mouth). As with other vowel shifts, several vowels may be seen moving in a chain shift around the mouth. As one vowel encroaches upon the space of another, the adjacent vowel in turn experiences a movement in order to maximize phonemic differentiation . For convenience, California English will be compared with

760-547: The Californios as well as more recent immigration from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. High concentrations of various ethnic groups throughout the state have contributed to general familiarity with words describing (especially cultural) phenomena. For example, a high concentration of Asian Americans from various cultural backgrounds, especially in urban and suburban metropolitan areas in California, has led to

800-628: The International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ ɜ ⟩ (formerly ⟨ ᴈ ⟩). The IPA symbol is not the digit ⟨3⟩ or the Cyrillic small letter Ze (з). The symbol is instead a reversed Latinized variant of the lowercase epsilon , ɛ . The value was specified only in 1993; until then, ⟨ ɜ ⟩ was an alternative symbol for the mid central unrounded vowel [ə] . The ⟨ ɜ ⟩ letter may be used with

840-640: The Proto-Indo-European voiceless stop consonants became fricatives , the plain voiced stops became voiceless, and the breathy voiced stops became plain voiced: Another is the High German consonant shift which separated Old High German from other West Germanic dialects such as Old English , Old Frisian , and Old Saxon : The Romance languages to the north and west of central Italy (e.g. French , Spanish , Portuguese , Catalan and various northern Italian languages) are known for

SECTION 20

#1732765747919

880-545: The close central rounded vowel [ʉ] or close front rounded vowel [y] for /u/ are widespread in Californian speech, the same high degree of fronting for /oʊ/ is found predominantly among young speakers. The effects of the California vowel shift have been noted in varieties of Californian Spanish , particularly in the Bay Area . One dialect of English, mostly reported in California's rural interior, inland from

920-401: The cot-caught merger . Other vowel changes, whose relation with the shift is uncertain, are also emerging: except before /l/ , /u/ is moving through [ ʉ ] towards [ y ] ( rude and true are almost approaching reed and tree , but with rounded lips), and /oʊ/ is moving beyond [əʊ] . /ʊ/ is moving towards [ ʌ ] (so that, for example, book and could in

960-526: The nonstandard accents of the South Midland and Southern United States, speakers of such towns as Redding and Merced have been found to use the word anymore in a positive sense and the verb was in place of the standard English plural verb were . Related other features of note include the pin–pen merger , fill–feel merger , and full–fool merger . The Great Depression 's westward Dust Bowl migrations of settlers into California from

1000-456: The "leading" edge of the chain changes first. In the example above, the chain shift would be a pull chain if /i:/ changed to /aɪ/ first, opening up a space at the position of [i] , which /e:/ then moved to fill. A push chain is a chain shift in which the phoneme at the "end" of the chain moves first: in this example, if /aː/ moved toward [eː] , a "crowding" effect would be created and /e:/ would thus move toward [i] , and so forth. It

1040-520: The 1940s and early 1950s, local common usage was primarily the freeway name preceded by the definite article, such as " the Hollywood Freeway ". It took several decades for Southern California locals to start to commonly refer to the freeways with the numerical designations, but usage of the definite article persisted. For example, it evolved to "the 605 Freeway" and then shortened to "the 605". Chain shift In historical linguistics ,

1080-463: The California dialect start to sound, to a GA speaker, more like buck and cud ), /ʌ/ is moving through [ ɜ ] , sometimes approaching [ ɛ ] ( duck, crust, what, etc. are sounding like how U.S. Southerners pronounce them, or like how other Americans might pronounce deck, crest, wet, etc.). New vowel characteristics of the California shift are increasingly found among younger speakers. For example, while some characteristics such as

1120-492: The Mission District in the late 19th century. It is today spoken only by some of the oldest Irish American and possibly Jewish residents of the city. From before the 1870s to the 1890s, Irish Americans were the largest share of migrants coming to San Francisco, the majority arriving by way of Northeastern U.S. cities like New York and Boston , thus bringing those cities' ways of speaking with them. In San Francisco,

1160-597: The Mission District quickly became a predominantly Irish Catholic neighborhood, and its local dialect became associated with all of San Francisco as a way to contrast it with the rest of California. Sounding like a "real San Franciscan" therefore once meant sounding "like a New Yorker", the speakers said to "talk like Brooklynites". Other names included the "south of the Slot" (referring to the cable car track running down Market Street) or "south of Market" accent. Pronunciation features of this accent included: Overall, starting in

1200-503: The Southern California, freeways are often referred to either by name or by route number but with the addition of the definite article "the", such as " the 405 North", " the 99 " or " the 605 (Freeway) ". This usage has been parodied in the recurring Saturday Night Live sketch " The Californians ". In contrast, typical Northern California usage omits the definite article. When Southern California freeways were built in

1240-561: The Southern United States, namely from Oklahoma , Texas , Missouri , and Arkansas , is the presumable cause of this rural white accent's presence in California's Central Valley . Rural northern California was also settled by Oklahomans and Arkansans, though perhaps more recently in the 1970s and 1980s, due to the region's timber industry boom . However, even in a single town, any given individual's identification with working and playing outdoors versus indoors appears to be

California English - Misplaced Pages Continue

1280-578: The Western United States. A few phonological processes have been identified as being particular to urban and coastal California English. However, these vowel changes are by no means universal in Californian speech, and any single Californian's speech may only have some or none of the changes identified below. These sounds might also be found in the speech of some people from areas outside of California. One topic that has begun to receive much attention from scholars in recent decades has been

1320-485: The adoption of the word hapa (itself originally a Hawaiian borrowing of English "half") to mean someone of mixed European/Islander or Asian/Islander heritage. In 1958, essayist Clifton Fadiman pointed out that northern California is the only place (besides England and the area surrounding Ontario and the Canadian Prairies ) where the word chesterfield is used as a synonym for sofa or couch . In

1360-539: The change. The changes making up a chain shift, interpreted as rules of phonology , are in what is termed counterfeeding order . A well-known example is the Great Vowel Shift , which was a chain shift that affected all of the long vowels in Middle English . The changes to the front vowels may be summarized as follows: A drag chain or pull chain is a chain shift in which the phoneme at

1400-403: The emergence of a vowel-based chain shift in California. The image in this section illustrates the California vowel shift on a vowel chart . The vowel space of the image is a cross-section (as if looking at the interior of a mouth from a side profile perspective); it is a rough approximation of the space in a human mouth where the tongue is located in articulating certain vowel sounds (the left

1440-515: The later half of the 20th century, San Francisco has been undergoing dialect levelling towards the broader regional Western American English , for example: younger Mission District speakers now exhibit a full cot–caught merger, show the vowel shift of urban coastal Californians, and front the GOOSE and GOAT vowels. Certain varieties of Chicano English are also native to California, sometimes even being spoken by non-Latino Californians. One example

1480-530: The major coastal cities, has been popularly described as a "country," "hillbilly," or "twang" variety. This California English variety is reminiscent of and presumably related to Southern or South Midland U.S. accents , mostly correlated with white, outdoors-oriented speakers of the Central Valley . It has been studied even as far north as Trinity County but could possibly extend farther, and as far south as Kern County (metropolitan Bakersfield). Similar to

1520-936: The most well-known is the Northern Cities Vowel Shift , which is largely confined to the " Inland North " region of the United States. Other examples in North America are the Pittsburgh vowel shift , Southern vowel shift (in the Southern United States ), the California vowel shift and the Canadian Shift (though the last two may be the same). In England, the Cockney vowel shift among working-class Londoners

1560-581: The same ways. For example, some speakers in Scotland still pronounce house similarly to its sound in Middle English before the shift, as [hu(ː)s] . A chain shift may affect only one regional dialect of a language, or it may begin in a particular regional dialect and then expand beyond the region in which it originated. A number of recent regional chain shifts have occurred in English. Perhaps

1600-441: The theoretical problem of phonological opacity . Although easily accounted for in a derivational rule-based phonology, its analysis in standard parallel Optimality Theory is problematic. Open-mid central unrounded vowel Legend: unrounded  •  rounded The open-mid central unrounded vowel , or low-mid central unrounded vowel , is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages . The symbol in

#918081