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91-532: American English , sometimes called United States English or U.S. English , is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States ; the de facto common language used in government, education, and commerce; and an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states . Since the late 20th century, American English has become

182-705: A cot–caught merger , which is rapidly spreading throughout the whole country. However, the South, Inland North, and a Northeastern coastal corridor passing through Rhode Island, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore typically preserve an older cot–caught distinction. For that Northeastern corridor, the realization of the THOUGHT vowel is particularly marked , as depicted in humorous spellings, like in tawk and cawfee ( talk and coffee ), which intend to represent it being tense and diphthongal : [oə] . A split of TRAP into two separate phonemes , using different

273-433: A high /ɔ/ vowel with a glide (sometimes called the aww vowel) as well as a phonemic split of the short a vowel, /æ/ (making gas and gap , for example, have different vowels sounds)—New York City's split not identical though to Philadelphia's. Linguist William Labov has pointed out that a similarly structured (though differently pronounced) split is found today even in the southern accents of England; thus,

364-519: A pronunciations for example in gap [æ] versus gas [eə] , further defines New York City as well as Philadelphia–Baltimore accents. Most Americans preserve all historical /r/ sounds, using what is known as a rhotic accent . The only traditional r -dropping (or non-rhoticity) in regional U.S. accents variably appears today in eastern New England , New York City , and some of the former plantation South primarily among older speakers (and, relatedly, some African-American Vernacular English across

455-619: A short- a split system (in which, for example, the a in gas is not assonant to the a in gap ), a high gliding /ɔ/ vowel (in words like talk , thought , all , etc. and thus an absence of the cot–caught merger ), absence of the Mary–marry–merry merger , and the highly stigmatized (and largely now-extinct) coil–curl merger . These are some words or grammatical constructions used mainly in Greater New York City: The word punk tends to be used as

546-438: A split. Younger Philadelphians, however, are retreating from many of the traditional features shared in common with New York City. Due to an influx of immigrants from New York City and neighboring New Jersey to southern Florida , some resident southern Floridians now speak with an accent reminiscent of a New York accent. Additionally, as a result of social and commercial contact between New Orleans, Louisiana and New York City,

637-402: A standard variety , some lect that is selected and promoted prescriptively by either quasi-legal authorities or other social institutions, such as schools or media. Standard varieties are accorded more sociolinguistic prestige than other, nonstandard lects and are generally thought of as "correct" by speakers of the language. Since the selection is an arbitrary standard , standard forms are

728-442: A Brooklynite might pronounce "over there" something like "ovah theah/deah" [oʊvə ˈd̪ɛə] , an Elizabeth native might say "over there/dare" [oʊvɚ ˈd̪ɛɚ] . The Atlas of North American English by William Labov et al. shows that the short- a pattern of New York City has diffused to many r -pronouncing communities in northern New Jersey, like Rutherford (Labov's birthplace) and North Plainfield . However, in these communities,

819-630: A complex phenomenon of "both convergence and divergence": some accents are homogenizing and leveling , while others are diversifying and deviating further away from one another. Having been settled longer than the American West Coast, the East Coast has had more time to develop unique accents, and it currently comprises three or four linguistically significant regions, each of which possesses English varieties both different from each other as well as quite internally diverse: New England ,

910-442: A consonant, such as in pearl , car and fort . Non-rhotic American accents, those that do not pronounce ⟨r⟩ except before a vowel, such as some accents of Eastern New England , New York City , and African-Americans , and a specific few (often older ones) spoken by Southerners , are often quickly noticed by General American listeners and perceived as sounding especially ethnic, regional, or antiquated. Rhoticity

1001-432: A fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. but especially associated with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of there being one single mainstream American accent . The sound of American English continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents having emerged in

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1092-468: A lack of the cot–caught , Mary–marry–merry , and hurry–furry mergers heard in many other American accents. Today, New York City English is associated particularly with urban New Yorkers of lower and middle socioeconomic status who are descended from 19th- and 20th-century European immigrants. The dialect is spoken in all five boroughs of the City and throughout Long Island 's Nassau County ; it

1183-590: A merger with the THOUGHT ( caught ) set. Having taken place prior to the unrounding of the cot vowel, it results in lengthening and perhaps raising, merging the more recently separated vowel into the THOUGHT vowel in the following environments: before many instances of /f/ , /θ/ , and particularly /s/ (as in Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often, etc.), a few instances before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long, wrong ), and variably by region or speaker in gone , on , and certain other words. Unlike American accents,

1274-633: A nice day , for sure); many are now distinctly old-fashioned (swell, groovy). Some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey , boost, bulldoze and jazz , originated as American slang. American English has always shown a marked tendency to use words in different parts of speech and nouns are often used as verbs . Examples of nouns that are now also verbs are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, hashtag, head, divorce, loan, estimate, X-ray, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, bad-mouth, vacation , major, and many others. Compounds coined in

1365-530: A nineteenth-century imitation of the prestigious British feature , consistently starting among the upper classes in New York City before spreading to other socioeconomic classes. After World War II, social perceptions reversed and r -preserving (rhotic) pronunciations became the new American prestige standard, rejecting East Coast and British accent features, while postwar migrations transferred rhotic speakers directly to New York City from other regions of

1456-401: A particular region is called a regional dialect (regiolect, geolect ); some regional varieties are called regionalects or topolects, especially to discuss varieties of Chinese . In addition, there are varieties associated with particular ethnic groups (sometimes called ethnolects ), socioeconomic classes (sometimes called sociolects ), or other social or cultural groups. Dialectology is

1547-478: A process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in Britain. English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and Africa. Additionally, firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English (particularly in contrast to

1638-678: A series of other vowel shifts in the same region, known by linguists as the " Inland North ". The Inland North shares with the Eastern New England dialect (including Boston accents ) a backer tongue positioning of the GOOSE /u/ vowel (to [u] ) and the MOUTH /aʊ/ vowel (to [ɑʊ~äʊ] ) in comparison to the rest of the country. Ranging from northern New England across the Great Lakes to Minnesota, another Northern regional marker

1729-476: A short- a split system that linguists suggest is an expanded or generalized variant of the New York City short- a system. Certain New York City dialect features also understandably appear in New York Latino English . Though William Labov argued in 2010 that the New York City accent is basically stable at the moment, some recent studies have revealed a trend of recession in most features of

1820-414: A show of interest in the other person, whereas in other parts of [the] country, people don't ask because it might put the person on the spot." Metro New Yorkers "stand closer, talk louder, and leave shorter pauses between exchanges," Tannen said. "I call it 'cooperative overlap'. It's a way of showing interest and enthusiasm, but it's often mistaken for interrupting by people from elsewhere in the country." On

1911-543: A single common origin of this split may trace back to colonial-era England. New York City became an urban economic power in the eighteenth century, with the city's financial elites maintaining close ties with the British Empire even after the Revolutionary War. According to Labov, New York City speakers' loss of the r sound after vowels (incidentally, not found in the nearby Delaware Valley) began as

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2002-425: A specific community". More recently, sociolinguists have adopted the concept of the community of practice , a group of people who develop shared knowledge and shared norms of interaction, as the social group within which dialects develop and change. Sociolinguists Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet explain: "Some communities of practice may develop more distinctive ways of speaking than others. Thus, it

2093-460: A survey, completed in 2003, polling English speakers across the United States about their specific everyday word choices, hoping to identify regionalisms. The study found that most Americans prefer the term sub for a long sandwich, soda (but pop in the Great Lakes region and generic coke in the South) for a sweet and bubbly soft drink , you or you guys for the plural of you (but y'all in

2184-475: A synonym for "weak", "someone unwilling or unable to defend himself" or perhaps "loser", though it appears to descend from an outdated New York African-American English meaning of male receptive participant in anal sex . New York City speakers have some unique conversational styles. Linguistics professor Deborah Tannen notes in a New York Times article it has "an emphasis to involve the other person, rather than being considerate. It would be asking questions as

2275-450: A variation of American English in these islands. In 2021, about 245 million Americans, aged 5 or above, spoke English at home: a majority of the United States total population of roughly 330 million people. The United States has never had an official language at the federal level, but English is commonly used at the federal level and in states without an official language. 32 of the 50 states, in some cases as part of what has been called

2366-653: Is also associated with the United States, perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South. American accents that have not undergone the cot–caught merger (the lexical sets LOT and THOUGHT ) have instead retained a LOT – CLOTH split : a 17th-century distinction in which certain words (labeled as the CLOTH lexical set ) separated away from the LOT set. The split, which has now reversed in most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent CLOTH set into

2457-500: Is also heard to varying degrees in Suffolk County (Long Island), Westchester County , and Rockland County of New York State plus Hudson County , Bergen County , and the city of Newark ( Essex County ) in northeastern New Jersey . The origins of many of New York City English's diverse features are probably not recoverable. New York City English, largely with the same major pronunciation system popularly recognized today,

2548-664: Is also home to a creole language known commonly as Hawaiian Pidgin , and some Hawaii residents speak English with a Pidgin-influenced accent. American English also gave rise to some dialects outside the country, for example, Philippine English , beginning during the American occupation of the Philippines and subsequently the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands ; Thomasites first established

2639-537: Is common in most American accents despite being now rare in England because, during the 17th-century British colonization, nearly all dialects of English were rhotic, and most North American English simply remained that way. The preservation of rhoticity in North America was also supported by continuing waves of rhotic-accented Scotch-Irish immigrants, most intensely during the 18th century (and moderately during

2730-428: Is defined as "the language use typical of an individual person". An individual's idiolect may be affected by contact with various regional or social dialects, professional registers and, in the case of multilinguals , various languages. For scholars who view language from the perspective of linguistic competence , essentially the knowledge of language and grammar that exists in the mind of an individual language user,

2821-567: Is described by sociolinguist William Labov as the most recognizable regional dialect in the United States. Its pronunciation system—the New York accent —is widely represented in American media by many public figures and fictional characters. Major features of the accent include a high , gliding /ɔ/ vowel (in words like talk and caught ); a split of the "short a" vowel /æ/ into two separate sounds; variable dropping of r sounds ; and

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2912-619: Is general social acceptance that gives us a workable arbitrary standard, not any inherent superiority of the characteristics it specifies." Sociolinguists generally recognize the standard variety of a language as one of the dialects of that language. In some cases, an authoritative regulatory body , such as the Académie Française , maintains and codifies the usage norms for a standard variety. More often, though, standards are understood in an implicit, practice-based way. Writing about Standard English, John Algeo suggests that

3003-418: Is often identified by Americans as a "country" accent, and is defined by the /aɪ/ vowel losing its gliding quality : [aː] , the initiation event for a complicated Southern vowel shift, including a " Southern drawl " that makes short front vowels into distinct-sounding gliding vowels . The fronting of the vowels of GOOSE , GOAT , MOUTH , and STRUT tends to also define Southern accents as well as

3094-510: Is the common language at home, in public, and in government. Variety (linguistics) Variation at the level of the lexicon , such as slang and argot , is often considered in relation to particular styles or levels of formality (also called registers ), but such uses are sometimes discussed as varieties as well. O'Grady et al. define dialect : "A regional or social variety of a language characterized by its own phonological , syntactic , and lexical properties." A variety spoken in

3185-467: Is the variable fronting of /ɑ/ before /r/ , for example, appearing four times in the stereotypical Boston shibboleth Park the car in Harvard Yard . Several other phenomena serve to distinguish regional U.S. accents. Boston , Pittsburgh , Upper Midwestern , and Western U.S. accents have fully completed a merger of the LOT vowel with the THOUGHT vowel ( /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ , respectively):

3276-477: Is within communities of practice that linguistic influence may spread within and among speech communities." The words dialect and accent are often used synonymously in everyday speech, but linguists define the two terms differently. Accent generally refers to differences in pronunciation , especially those that are associated with geographic or social differences, whereas dialect refers to differences in grammar and vocabulary as well. Many languages have

3367-478: The English-only movement , have adopted legislation granting official or co-official status to English. Typically only "English" is specified, not a particular variety like American English. (From 1923 to 1969, the state of Illinois recognized its official language as "American", meaning American English.) Puerto Rico is the largest example of a United States territory in which another language – Spanish –

3458-622: The Mid-Atlantic states (including a New York accent as well as a unique Philadelphia–Baltimore accent ), and the South . As of the 20th century, the middle and eastern Great Lakes area , Chicago being the largest city with these speakers, also ushered in certain unique features, including the fronting of the LOT /ɑ/ vowel in the mouth toward [a] and tensing of the TRAP /æ/ vowel wholesale to [eə] . These sound changes have triggered

3549-544: The Native American languages . Examples of such names are opossum , raccoon , squash , moose (from Algonquian ), wigwam , and moccasin . American English speakers have integrated traditionally non-English terms and expressions into the mainstream cultural lexicon; for instance, en masse , from French ; cookie , from Dutch ; kindergarten from German , and rodeo from Spanish . Landscape features are often loanwords from French or Spanish, and

3640-721: The francophile tastes of the 19th century Victorian era Britain (for example they preferred programme for program , manoeuvre for maneuver , cheque for check , etc.). AmE almost always uses -ize in words like realize . BrE prefers -ise , but also uses -ize on occasion (see: Oxford spelling ). There are a few differences in punctuation rules. British English is more tolerant of run-on sentences , called " comma splices " in American English, and American English prefers that periods and commas be placed inside closing quotation marks even in cases in which British rules would place them outside. American English also favors

3731-403: The "correct" varieties only in the sense that they are tacitly valued by higher socio-economic strata and promoted by public influencers on matters of language use , such as writers, publishers, critics, language teachers, and self-appointed language guardians. As Ralph Harold Fasold puts it, "The standard language may not even be the best possible constellation of linguistic features available. It

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3822-762: The 18th century; apartment , shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium , townhouse , mobile home in the 20th century; and parts thereof ( driveway , breezeway, backyard ) . Industry and material innovations from the 19th century onwards provide distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms through railroading (see further at rail terminology ) and transportation terminology, ranging from types of roads ( dirt roads , freeways ) to infrastructure ( parking lot , overpass , rest area ), to automotive terminology often now standard in English internationally. Already existing English words—such as store , shop , lumber —underwent shifts in meaning; others remained in

3913-545: The 20th century. The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas . The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing

4004-627: The British form is a back-formation , such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar ). However, while individuals usually use one or the other, both forms will be widely understood and mostly used alongside each other within the two systems. While written American English is largely standardized across the country and spoken American English dialects are highly mutually intelligible, there are still several recognizable regional and ethnic accents and lexical distinctions. The regional sounds of present-day American English are reportedly engaged in

4095-410: The East Coast (perhaps in imitation of 19th-century London speech), even the East Coast has gradually begun to restore rhoticity, due to it becoming nationally prestigious in the 20th century. The pronunciation of ⟨r⟩ is a postalveolar approximant [ ɹ̠ ] or retroflex approximant [ ɻ ] , but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the approximant r sound

4186-570: The Inland North. Rather than one particular accent, General American is best defined as an umbrella covering an American accent that does not incorporate features associated with some particular region, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group. Typical General American features include rhoticity , the father–bother merger , Mary–marry–merry merger , pre-nasal "short a " tensing , and other particular vowel sounds . General American features are embraced most by Americans who are highly educated or in

4277-573: The South), sneakers for athletic shoes (but often tennis shoes outside the Northeast), and shopping cart for a cart used for carrying supermarket goods. American English and British English (BrE) often differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a much lesser extent, grammar and orthography. The first large American dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language , known as Webster's Dictionary ,

4368-527: The U.S. Several verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, weatherize , etc.; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, curate, donate, emote, upholster and enthuse). Among syntactic constructions that arose are outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, etc. Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, buddy, sundae , skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in

4459-569: The U.S. are for instance foothill , landslide (in all senses), backdrop , teenager , brainstorm , bandwagon , hitchhike , smalltime, and a huge number of others. Other compound words have been founded based on industrialization and the wave of the automobile: five-passenger car, four-door sedan, two-door sedan, and station-wagon (called an estate car in British English). Some are euphemistic ( human resources , affirmative action , correctional facility ). Many compound nouns have

4550-676: The U.S. are, for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky . A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United States have since disappeared in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots . Terms such as fall ("autumn"), faucet ("tap"), diaper ("nappy"; itself unused in

4641-529: The U.S. while changing in Britain. Science, urbanization, and democracy have been important factors in bringing about changes in the written and spoken language of the United States. From the world of business and finance came new terms ( merger , downsize , bottom line ), from sports and gambling terminology came, specific jargon aside, common everyday American idioms, including many idioms related to baseball . The names of some American inventions remained largely confined to North America ( elevator [except in

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4732-423: The U.S.), candy ("sweets"), skillet , eyeglasses , and obligate are often regarded as Americanisms. Fall for example came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year." Gotten ( past participle of get ) is often considered to be largely an Americanism. Other words and meanings were brought back to Britain from

4823-538: The U.S., especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"), I guess (famously criticized by H. W. Fowler ), baggage , hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently ("currently"). Some of these, for example, monkey wrench and wastebasket , originated in 19th century Britain. The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American (and Irish) English than British English. Linguist Bert Vaux created

4914-537: The United States and the United Kingdom suggest that, while spoken American English deviated away from period British English in many ways, it is conservative in a few other ways, preserving certain features 21st-century British English has since lost. Full rhoticity (or "R-fulness") is typical of American accents, pronouncing the phoneme /r/ (corresponding to the letter ⟨r⟩ ) in all environments, including in syllable-final position or before

5005-550: The West and Midwest, and New York Latino English , spoken in the New York metropolitan area . Additionally, ethnic varieties such as Yeshiva English and " Yinglish " are spoken by some American Orthodox Jews , Cajun Vernacular English by some Cajuns in southern Louisiana , and Pennsylvania Dutch English by some Pennsylvania Dutch people. American Indian Englishes have been documented among diverse Indian tribes. The island state of Hawaii , though primarily English-speaking,

5096-400: The accent, especially among younger speakers from middle-class or higher backgrounds. Documented loss of New York City accent features includes the loss of the coil–curl merger (now almost completely extinct), non-rhoticity, and the extremely raised long vowel [ɔ] (as in talk , cough , or law ). Researchers proposed that the motivation behind these recessive trends is the stigmatization of

5187-555: The accents spoken in the " Midland ": a vast band of the country that constitutes an intermediate dialect region between the traditional North and South. Western U.S. accents mostly fall under the General American spectrum. Below, ten major American English accents are defined by their particular combinations of certain vowel sounds: In 2010, William Labov noted that Great Lakes, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and West Coast accents have undergone "vigorous new sound changes" since

5278-502: The aeronautical sense ], gasoline ) as did certain automotive terms ( truck , trunk ). New foreign loanwords came with 19th and early 20th century European immigration to the U.S.; notably, from Yiddish ( chutzpah , schmooze, bupkis, glitch ) and German ( hamburger , wiener ). A large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from OK and cool to nerd and 24/7 ), while others have not ( have

5369-406: The country), though the vowel-consonant cluster found in "bird", "work", "hurt", "learn", etc. usually retains its r pronunciation, even in these non-rhotic American accents. Non-rhoticity among such speakers is presumed to have arisen from their upper classes' close historical contact with England, imitating London's r -dropping, a feature that has continued to gain prestige throughout England from

5460-594: The country. The result is that non-rhoticity, which was once a high-status feature and later a city-wide feature, has been diminishing and now, since the mid-twentieth century onward, largely remains only among lower-status New Yorkers. Today, New York City metropolitan accents are often rhotic or variably rhotic. Other features of the dialect, such as the dental pronunciations of d and t , and related th -stopping , likely come from contact with foreign languages, particularly Italian and Yiddish, brought into New York City through its huge immigration waves of Europeans during

5551-701: The course of a communicative event as the relationship between speakers changes, or different social facts become relevant. Speakers may shift styles, as their perception of an event in progress changes. Consider the following telephone call to the Embassy of Cuba in Washington, DC . Caller: ¿Es la embajada de Cuba? ( Is this the Cuban embassy? ) Receptionist: Sí. Dígame. ( Yes, may I help you? ) Caller: Es Rosa. ( It's Rosa. ) Receptionist: ¡Ah Rosa! ¿Cóma anda eso? ( Oh, Rosa! How's it going? ) At first,

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5642-737: The dialect region spans all of Nassau County and some of Suffolk County . Moreover, the English of the Hudson Valley forms a continuum of speakers who exhibit more features of New York City English the closer they are to the city itself; some of the dialect's features may be heard as far north as the state capital of Albany . A small portion of southwestern Connecticut speaks a similar dialect, primarily speakers in Fairfield County and as far as New Haven County . The northeastern quarter of New Jersey , prominently Hudson , Bergen , Union , and Essex Counties , including

5733-610: The diverse regional dialects of British English) became common after the mid-18th century, while at the same time speakers' identification with this new variety increased. Since the 18th century, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that retain minor influences from waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages, primarily European languages. Some racial and regional variation in American English reflects these groups' geographic settlement, their de jure or de facto segregation, and patterns in their resettlement. This can be seen, for example, in

5824-740: The double quotation mark ("like this") over the single ('as here'). Vocabulary differences vary by region. For example, autumn is used more commonly in the United Kingdom, whereas fall is more common in American English. Some other differences include: aerial (United Kingdom) vs. antenna, biscuit (United Kingdom) vs. cookie/cracker, car park (United Kingdom) vs. parking lot, caravan (United Kingdom) vs. trailer, city centre (United Kingdom) vs. downtown, flat (United Kingdom) vs. apartment, fringe (United Kingdom) vs. bangs, and holiday (United Kingdom) vs. vacation. AmE sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas BrE uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE transport or where

5915-466: The following sentence as an example of a nonstandard dialect that is used with the technical register of physical geography: There was two eskers what we saw in them U-shaped valleys. Most speakers command a range of registers, which they use in different situations. The choice of register is affected by the setting and topic of speech, as well as the relationship that exists between the speakers. The appropriate form of language may also change during

6006-516: The following two centuries) when this ethnic group eventually made up one-seventh of the colonial population. Scotch-Irish settlers spread from Delaware and Pennsylvania throughout the larger Mid-Atlantic region, the inland regions of both the South and North, and throughout the West: American dialect areas that were all uninfluenced by upper-class non-rhoticity and that consequently have remained consistently rhotic. While non-rhoticity spread on

6097-942: The hospital , BrE to hospital ; contrast, however, AmE actress Elizabeth Taylor , BrE the actress Elizabeth Taylor ). Often, these differences are a matter of relative preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable since the two varieties are constantly influencing each other, and American English is not a standardized set of dialects. Differences in orthography are also minor. The main differences are that American English usually uses spellings such as flavor for British flavour , fiber for fibre , defense for defence , analyze for analyse , license for licence , catalog for catalogue and traveling for travelling . Noah Webster popularized such spellings in America, but he did not invent most of them. Rather, "he chose already existing options on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology." Other differences are due to

6188-498: The idiolect, is a way of referring to the specific knowledge. For scholars who regard language as a shared social practice, the idiolect is more like a dialect with a speech community of one individual. New York City English New York City English , or Metropolitan New York English , is a regional dialect of American English spoken primarily in New York City and some of its surrounding metropolitan area . It

6279-672: The influence of 18th-century Protestant Ulster Scots immigrants (known in the U.S. as the Scotch-Irish ) in Appalachia developing Appalachian English and the 20th-century Great Migration bringing African-American Vernacular English to the Great Lakes urban centers. Any phonologically unmarked North American accent falls under an umbrella known as General American. This section mostly refers to such General American features. Studies on historical usage of English in both

6370-431: The late 18th century onwards, but which has conversely lost prestige in the U.S. since at least the early 20th century. Non-rhoticity makes a word like car sound like cah or source like sauce . New York City and Southern accents are the most prominent regional accents of the country, as well as the most stigmatized and socially disfavored. Southern speech, strongest in southern Appalachia and certain areas of Texas,

6461-426: The mid-nineteenth century onwards, so they "are now more different from each other than they were 50 or 100 years ago", while other accents, like of New York City and Boston, have remained stable in that same time-frame. However, a General American sound system also has some debated degree of influence nationwide, for example, gradually beginning to oust the regional accent in urban areas of the South and at least some in

6552-436: The mid-to-late nineteenth century and twentieth century. Grammatical structures, such as the lack of inversion in indirect questions, similarly suggest contact with immigrant languages, plus several words common in the city are derived from such foreign languages. Philadelphians born in the twentieth century exhibit a short- a split system that some linguists regard as a simplification of the very similar New York City short-

6643-616: The most formal contexts, and regional accents with the most General American native features include North Midland, Western New England, and Western accents. Although no longer region-specific, African-American Vernacular English , which remains the native variety of most working- and middle-class African Americans , has a close relationship to Southern dialects and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans, including hip hop culture . Hispanic and Latino Americans have also developed native-speaker varieties of English. The best-studied Latino Englishes are Chicano English , spoken in

6734-414: The most influential form of English worldwide. Varieties of American English include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other English dialects around the world. Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markers is known in linguistics as General American ; it covers

6825-549: The municipalities of Weehawken , Hoboken , Jersey City , and Newark , plus Middlesex and Monmouth Counties , are all within the New York metropolitan area and thus also home to the major features of New York City English. With the exception of New York City's immediate neighbors like Jersey City and Newark, the New York metropolitan dialect as spoken in New Jersey is rhotic (or fully r -pronouncing) so that, whereas

6916-437: The other hand, linguist William Labov demurs, "there's nothing known to linguists about 'normal New York City conversation. ' " The New York City accent has a strong presence in media; pioneer variationist sociolinguist William Labov describes it as the most recognizable variety of North American English . The following famous people are native New York City–area speakers—including some speakers of other varieties native to

7007-402: The past forms of a few verbs (for example, AmE/BrE: learned / learnt , burned / burnt , snuck/sneaked , dove/dived ) although the purportedly "British" forms can occasionally be seen in American English writing as well; different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (for example, AmE in school, BrE at school ); and whether or not a definite article is used, in very few cases (AmE to

7098-418: The receptionist uses a relatively formal register, as befits her professional role. After the caller identifies herself, the receptionist recognizes that she is speaking to a friend, and she shifts to an informal register of colloquial Cuban Spanish . The shift is similar to metaphorical code-switching , but since it involves styles or registers, it is considered an example of style-shifting. An idiolect

7189-413: The region—that all demonstrate typical features of the New York City accent. Many fictional characters in popular films and television shows have used New York City English, whether or not the actors portraying them are native speakers of the dialect. Some examples are listed below. The accent is not spoken in the rest of New York State beyond the immediate New York City metropolitan area. Specifically,

7280-566: The standard variety "is simply what English speakers agree to regard as good". A register (sometimes called a style ) is a variety of language used in a particular social setting. Settings may be defined in terms of greater or lesser formality, or in terms of socially recognized events, such as baby talk , which is used in many western cultures to talk to small children or as a joking register used in teasing or playing The Dozens . There are also registers associated with particular professions or interest groups; jargon refers specifically to

7371-456: The study of dialects and their geographic or social distribution. Traditionally, dialectologists study the variety of language used within a particular speech community , a group of people who share a set of norms or conventions for language use. In order to sidestep the vexing problem of distinguishing dialect from language , some linguists have been using the term communalect – defined as "a neutral term for any speech tradition tied to

7462-451: The traditional accent of New Orleans, known locally as " Yat ", bears distinctive similarities with the New York accent, including the (moribund) coil–curl merger , raising of the /ɔ/ vowel to [ɔə] , a similar split in the short- a system, and th -stopping. Similarly, dialectal similarities suggest that older New York City English also influenced Cincinnati, Ohio and Albany, New York , whose older speakers in particular may still exhibit

7553-570: The traditional standard accent of (southern) England, Received Pronunciation (RP), has evolved a trap–bath split . Moreover, American accents preserve /h/ at the start of syllables, while perhaps a majority of the regional dialects of England participate in /h/ dropping , particularly in informal contexts. However, General American is also innovative in a number of its own ways: The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as English-speaking British-American colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from

7644-416: The typical New York City accent since the mid-1900s as being associated with a poorer or working-class background, often also corresponding with particular ethnic identities. While earlier projects detected trends of emphasizing New York City accents as part of a process of social identification, recent research attributes the loss of typical accent features to in-group ethnic distancing. In other words, many of

7735-518: The upper Hudson Valley mixes New York City and Western New England accent features, while Central and Western New York belong to the same dialect region as Great Lakes cities such as Chicago and Detroit , a dialect region known as the Inland North . New York City English is confined to a geographically small but densely populated area of New York State including all five boroughs of New York City as well as many parts of Long Island ;

7826-416: The verb-and-preposition combination: stopover, lineup, tryout, spin-off, shootout , holdup, hideout, comeback, makeover , and many more. Some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin ( win out, hold up, back up/off/down/out, face up to and many others). Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive in

7917-489: The vocabulary associated with such registers. Unlike dialects, which are used by particular speech communities and associated with geographical settings or social groupings, registers are associated with particular communicative situations, purposes, or levels of formality, and can constitute divisions within a single regional lect or standardized variety. Dialect and register may thus be thought of as different dimensions of linguistic variation . For example, Trudgill suggests

8008-775: The word corn , used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in the U.S. Most Mexican Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812 , with the opening of the West, like ranch (now a common house style ). Due to Mexican culinary influence, many Spanish words are incorporated in general use when talking about certain popular dishes: cilantro (instead of coriander), queso, tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, burritos, and guacamole. These words usually lack an English equivalent and are found in popular restaurants. New forms of dwelling created new terms ( lot , waterfront) and types of homes like log cabin , adobe in

8099-480: The young generations of ethnic groups who formerly were the most representative speakers of the accent are currently avoiding its features to not stand out socially or ethnically. The pronunciation of New York City English, most popularly acknowledged by the term New York accent , is readily noticed and stereotyped, garnering considerable attention in American culture. Some distinctive phonological features include its traditional dropping of r except before vowels,

8190-469: Was first reproduced in literature and scientifically documented in the 1890s. It was then, and still mostly is, associated with ethnically diverse European-American native-English speakers. The entire Mid-Atlantic United States , including both New York City and the Delaware Valley (whose own distinct dialect centers around Philadelphia and Baltimore ) shares certain key features, including

8281-469: Was written by Noah Webster in 1828, codifying several of these spellings. Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and do not normally affect mutual intelligibility; these include: typically a lack of differentiation between adjectives and adverbs, employing the equivalent adjectives as adverbs he ran quick / he ran quickly ; different use of some auxiliary verbs ; formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns ; different preferences for

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