The Digue Square and Digue Street are located in the lower town of Charleroi , Belgium .
92-513: The triangular-shaped square rises from Dampremy Street in the east to Grand Central Street in the west. Before the works, it was a paved parking lot ; since May 2014, it has been a pedestrian space above an underground parking lot. The street climbs from Digue Square towards Alliés Avenue, a little further north. They owe their name to the dike built to close off the valley of the Lodelinsart stream, creating an artificial pond to help protect
184-707: 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
276-403: A pay and display system, where a ticket is purchased from a ticket machine and then placed on the dashboard of the car. Parking enforcement officers patrol the lot to ensure compliance with the requirement. Similar to this is the system where the parking is paid by the mobile phone by sending an SMS message which contains the license plate number. In this case, the virtual cashier books
368-520: 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
460-631: 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 ,
552-447: 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
644-579: A durable or semi-durable surface. In most jurisdictions where cars are the dominant mode of transportation , parking lots are a major feature of cities and suburban areas. Shopping malls , sports stadiums , and other similar venues often have immense parking lots. (See also: multistorey car park ) Parking lots tend to be sources of water pollution because of their extensive impervious surfaces , and because most have limited or no facilities to control runoff. Many areas today also require minimum landscaping in parking lots to provide shade and help mitigate
736-591: 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,
828-636: 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
920-460: A payment method, and the system remembers where a vehicle is parked and allows users to share a parking session with Facebook friends. Users may also, for a nominal monthly fee per registered car, subscribe to reminders that text alerts shortly before metered time expires, and in some municipalities, users may buy additional metered time via cellphone. Philadelphia, encourages parking space turnover by charging escalating parking fees when metered time
1012-480: 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
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#17327980537071104-680: 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
1196-1036: A small island of trees was present, temperatures only reached 89 °F (32 °C). It also found that a further 1 °F temperature reduction could be obtained for every additional canopy tree planted. More recently, parking lots have been seen as prime real estate for installing large solar panel installations, with the additional benefit of shade for vehicles parked underneath. A parking lot needs fairly large space, around 25 square meters or 270 square feet per parking spot. This means that lots usually need more land area than for corresponding buildings for offices or shops if most employees and visitors arrive by car. This means covering large areas with asphalt. Some lots have charging stations for battery vehicles . Some regions with especially cold winters provide electricity at most parking spots for engine block heaters , as antifreeze may be inadequate to prevent freezing. Parking lots are responsible for many greenhouse gas emissions because they increase driving and contributing to
1288-525: 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
1380-434: A third of the square's current area. Rue de l'Hôpital took its name from the civil hospital that ran alongside it from 1844 to 1937, when it was demolished to make way for a school building in 1939. Prior to 1860, this street was known as Vieux-Fours Street, because the town's former communal ovens were located here. The street became Dampremy Street in 1919, the name of the street it was an extension of. Rue des Tonneliers
1472-453: 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
1564-533: A way to add more housing for residents while encouraging the use of public transit. Parking lots designed specifically for bicycle parking are also becoming more prevalent in response to increased environmental and health consciousness. These may include bicycle parking racks and locks, as well as more modern technologies for security and convenience. For instance, a growing number of bicycle parking lots in Tokyo include automated parking systems . Efforts to reduce
1656-460: Is a section of curtain wall forming a pincer that crosses the excavation from north to south over a total length of 73m. It is built of rubble stones bonded with lime mortar. It is fitted with a dozen buttresses and rests on an earthen bank inside the town. The exterior is clad in carefully crafted sandstone. This is the longest section of the French fortified wall observed to date. A section of
1748-401: Is added. Another app, Streetline, whose primary purpose is to help motorists find open parking spots using their smartphones, includes a timer, so users can get back to a parking meter before it expires, and a filter that lets users choose between on-street and off-street parking spaces; it also connects to the phone's camera so a user can take a photograph of their car. Other lots operate on
1840-654: 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
1932-664: 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
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#17327980537072024-538: 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
2116-471: Is groundwater abstraction 'downstream' for potable water supply. Many areas today also require minimum landscaping in parking lots. This usually principally means the planting of trees to provide shade. Customers have long preferred shaded parking spaces in the summer, but parking lot providers have long been antagonistic to planting trees because of the extra cost of cleaning the parking lots. Paved surfaces contribute to heat islands in two ways. The first
2208-494: Is known in linguistics as General American ; it covers 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
2300-420: 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
2392-546: Is small for the car owner and the owner is always responsible. The United Kingdom has two types of car parking: either on public or on private land. The police will investigate any reported accident on public land but have no legal obligation and will not do so on private land. Public road is defined by the Road Traffic Act 1972 and (Amendment) Regulations 1988 S.I. 1988/1036 as: "Road", in relation to England and Wales , means any highway and any other road to which
2484-462: Is the low moisture content of paving and building materials. Such materials are watertight, so no moisture is available to dissipate the sun's heat through evaporation. Tree planting has been shown to significantly reduce temperatures in open, paved areas. In one study in Alabama , daytime summer temperatures of 120 °F (49 °C) were recorded in the centre of a bare parking lot, whereas where
2576-469: 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):
2668-528: Is through excessive accumulation of heat. Dark materials and the enclosed canyons created by city buildings trap more of the sun's energy. The reflection rate of paving compared to natural surfaces is important as higher reflectance means cooler temperatures. Black pavements, the hottest, have solar reflectances of 5 to 10 percent. Lighter pavements have solar reflectance rates of 25 percent or higher. Reflectance values for soils and various types of vegetation range from 5 to 45 percent. The second cause of heat islands
2760-524: Is to use permeable paving surfaces, such as brick , pervious concrete , stone , special paving blocks, or tire -tread woven mats. These materials allow rain to soak into the ground through the spaces inherent in the parking lot surface. The ground then may become contaminated in the surface of the parking lot park, but this tends to stay in a small area of ground, which effectively filters water before it seeps away. This can however create problems if contaminants seep into groundwater , especially where there
2852-411: Is widely seen as disruptive to walkable urban fabric, maximizing convenience to each individual building but hampering foot traffic between them. Large paved areas have been called "parking craters", "parking deserts", and similar terms, emphasizing their "depopulated" nature and the barriers they can create to walking movement . Urban planning policies such as parking minimums and maximums can influence
Digue Square - Misplaced Pages Continue
2944-482: 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 –
3036-622: 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
3128-551: 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
3220-498: The counterscarp wall, parallel to the curtain wall, shows the rear face of the Dampremy ravelin , which originally protected the gate of the same name. Between the two was a drowned ditch spanned by a bridge. The bridge's five piers, some of which have been preserved, are made of large, carefully dressed rubble stone. The eastern part of the square reveals a group of houses created in the late 17th century and which evolved until
3312-722: 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
3404-491: The urban heat island due to the materials they are built from. American English 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
3496-541: The "Projet Phénix", with the help of European funds , has enabled a thorough overhaul of the Digue Square. It has become a pedestrian area above an underground parking lot. Work began in late February 2011 and was completed on May 3, 2014. Given the scale of the work and its location, archaeological monitoring will be carried out during the earthworks scheduled from May to October 2011. Remains of Vauban's fortress have come to light during this work. The main element
3588-764: 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
3680-546: 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
3772-427: The 20th century. Here, the relief plan shows terraced houses with gardens that follow the triangular shape of the square. Subsequently, the plots were subdivided. However, despite the major modifications made over the course of two centuries, the whole respects the boundaries of the original plot. This is evidenced by the replacement of old walls in more recent constructions. It was this block, known as "Sâle Dèbout", that
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3864-441: The 50 U.S. states . Since the late 20th century, American English has become 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
3956-627: 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
4048-593: The Charleroi fortress. The fortress was partially dismantled by Louis XV in 1748 . After the Battle of Waterloo (1815), the Dutch built a new, larger fortress. When this fortress was still protecting the city (from 1815 to 1870), the future square was a built-up island surrounded by three streets: l'Hôpital Street (to the north), Tonneliers Street (to the south) and Digue Street (to the west). This block occupied around
4140-413: 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
4232-571: 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
4324-573: 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 ,
4416-528: 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
4508-570: 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
4600-676: 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
4692-530: 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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#17327980537074784-427: 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
4876-597: 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
4968-538: 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
5060-605: 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,
5152-555: 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
5244-452: The added material in the structure to elevate them for cars to park underneath. They can also be useful at protecting cars from extreme weather and the Sun 's heat. Parking lots tend to be sources of water pollution because of their extensive impervious surfaces . Virtually all of the rain (minus evaporation) that falls becomes urban runoff . To avoid flooding and unsafe driving conditions,
5336-505: 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
5428-479: The airport. There are mobile apps providing services for the reservation of long-term parking lot spaces similar to online or aggregate parking facility booking services. Some long-term parking mobile apps also have turn-by-turn maps to locate the parking lot, notably US and UK based ParkJockey . Solar canopy parking lots are solar arrays installed on canopies in parking lots. They are up to twice as expensive to install as normal open field solar arrays because
5520-565: The amount of space dedicated to parking lots for diminishing the dependence on cars, has been taken in Beijing , Mexico City , Delhi and different cities in California . Portland , Minneapolis , Austin abolished the requirement for parking minimum. As of 2 November 2023, Austin (Texas) is the biggest city in the US that has done so - for encouraging, walking, biking, public transit, lowering
5612-401: The boom. A more modern system uses automatic pay stations, where the driver presents the ticket and pays the fee required before returning to their car, then drives to the exit terminal and presents the ticket. If the ticket has not been paid for, the boom barrier will not raise, which will force the customer to either press the intercom and speak to a staff member, or reverse out to pay at
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#17327980537075704-885: The car and the time when the message is sent, and later a new SMS message must be sent whenever the time is due. The actual payment is then made via the mobile phone bill. Since 1978 in the United Kingdom , it has been possible to pre-book parking with specialist companies, such as BCP . This is prevalent at all airports, major ports and cities. Modern parking lots use a variety of technologies to help motorists find unoccupied parking spaces using parking guidance and information system, retrieve their vehicles, and improve their experience. This includes adaptive lighting, sensors , indoor positioning system (IPS) and mobile payment options. The Santa Monica Place shopping mall in California has cameras on each stall that can help count
5796-640: The cashiers at a separate cashier's office or counter (which are often located elsewhere from the entrances and exits of carparks). Such cashier's offices are called shroff offices or simply shroff in some parking lots in Hong Kong and other parts of East Asia influenced by the Hong Kong usage. If a ticket has not been paid, the barrier will not raise. In recent years, cashiers and shroff officers have often been replaced with automated machines. Another variant of payment has motorists paying an attendant on entry to
5888-476: The cost of housing and increase the amount of housing units that can be built in the city territory. In Sweden and Denmark , there are legally two types of car parking, either on streets and roads, or on private land. A parking violation on streets is a traffic crime, resulting in fines. A parking violation on private land (also if owned by the city) is a contract violation and gives additional parking fee ( Swedish : kontrollavgift = check fee). The difference
5980-406: 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
6072-614: 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
6164-742: 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
6256-799: The extent to which their paved surfaces contribute to heat islands . Many municipalities require minimum numbers of parking spaces for buildings such as stores (by floor area) and apartment complexes (by number of bedrooms). In the United States, each state's Department of Transportation sets the proper ratio for disabled spaces for private business and public parking lots. Modern parking lots use various technologies to enable motorists to pay parking fees, help them find unoccupied spaces and retrieve their vehicles, and improve their parking experiences. The effect of large-scale in-city parking has long been contentious. The replacement of historic structures by garages and lots has led to historical preservation movements in many cities. The massive acreage devoted to parking
6348-517: 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
6440-944: 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
6532-674: 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
6624-438: 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,
6716-682: The location of a vehicle. Another alternative is to use smartphone applications that does inertial dead reckoning, detection of turns made by the car while driving indoor, correlations of travel time between turns, and machine learning algorithms, to infer the rough location of the parked car based on a map or floorplan. Online booking technology service providers have been created to help drivers find long-term parking in an automated manner, while also providing significant savings for those who book parking spaces ahead of time. They use real-time inventory management checking technology to display parking lots with availability, sorted by price and distance from
6808-417: The lot occupancy and find lost cars. In outdoor parking lots, GPS can be used to remember the location of a vehicle (some apps saves location automatically when turning off the car when a smartphone breaks communication with a vehicle's Bluetooth connection). In indoor parking lots, one option is to record one's Wi-Fi signature (signal strengths observed for several detectable access points) to remember
6900-518: The lot, with the way out guarded by a one-way spike strip that will only allow cars to exit. Parking meters can also be used, with motorists paying in advance for the time required for the bay they are parked in. Pango (a play on "pay and go" ), a company founded in Israel in 2007, created a mobile app that allows users to both find and pay for available metered parking; the app can also be used to pay for garage parking. Users' accounts are linked to
6992-582: The lots are built to channel and collect runoff. Parking lots, along with roads, are often the principal source of water pollution in urban areas. Motor vehicles are a constant source of pollutants, the most significant being gasoline , motor oil , polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and heavy metals . are found in combustion byproducts of gasoline, as well as in asphalt and coal tar -based sealants used to maintain parking lots.) Many parking lots are also significant sources of trash which ends up in waterways. Treatment of pollution: Traditionally,
7084-427: 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
7176-617: 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
7268-506: The most part, old-built dwellings, was called "Sâle Dèbout" (dirty end, in French) by the inhabitants. In the early 1930s, this "Sâle Dèbout" was demolished and the square extended from Grand Central Street to Dampremy Street. For many years, the square was the site of a Sunday market for horses, piglets, goats and sheep, as well as a morning market for market gardeners . Long abandoned by the public authorities despite numerous announcements,
7360-402: 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
7452-439: The pay station or cashier booth. At some major airports' parking lots in the United States, a driver can choose to swipe a credit card at the entry ticket dispenser instead of taking a ticket. When the driver swipes the same credit card at the exit terminal upon leaving the lot, the applicable parking fee is automatically calculated and charged to the credit card used. In some parking lots, drivers present their tickets to and pay
7544-501: The proper ratio for disabled spaces for private business and public parking lots. Certain circumstances may demand more designated spaces. These reserved spaces are mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines. Various forms of technology are used to charge motorists for the use of a parking lot. Boom gates are used in many parking lots. A customer arrives to the entry ticket machine by vehicle, presses
7636-408: The public has access, and includes bridges over which a road passes. There is also a House of Lords judgment on this matter. Civil enforcement officers enforce parking restrictions on public, council-run car parks. These include failure to purchase a ticket as payment (if available)/not parking in a marked bay/other offences. In the United States, each state's Department of Transportation sets
7728-577: The runoff has been shunted directly into storm sewers , streams , dry wells or even sanitary sewers . However, most larger municipalities now require construction of stormwater management facilities for new lots. Typical facilities include retention basins , infiltration basins and percolation trenches . Some newer designs include bioretention systems, which use plants more extensively to absorb and filter pollutants. However, most existing lots have limited or no facilities to control runoff. Alternative paving materials: An alternative solution today
7820-501: The size of private parking lots. Due to a recent trend towards more livable and walkable communities, parking minimums (policies requiring each building to have a minimum number of parking spaces) have been criticized by both livable streets advocates and developers alike. For a time, the British government recommended that local councils should establish maximum parking standards to discourage car use. American cities such as Washington, DC, are now considering removing parking minimums as
7912-431: The ticket request push button, takes a ticket - which raises the barrier - and enters the parking lot. To exit the lot, the customer presents the ticket to a cashier in a booth at the exit and tenders payment, after which the cashier opens the boom gate. In 1954, the first automated parking lots were built where, for a monthly fee, a driver with a magnetic key card could enter and exit the parking lot by raising and lowering
8004-570: 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
8096-417: 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
8188-775: 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
8280-441: Was demolished in the early 1930s. The urgency of the work, subsidized by European funds, meant that the remains could not be preserved. However, metal nails mark the curtain wall on the ground. Parking lot A parking lot ( American English ) or car park ( British English ), also known as a car lot , is a cleared area intended for parking vehicles. The term usually refers to an area dedicated only for parking, with
8372-484: Was the site of Charleroi's first public Protestant place of worship. Following the dismantling of the fortress (1867–1871), a vast space became available, and a square opened up to the west of the islet, which was named Digue Square. Digue Street , known for a time as Charles Dupre Streett before taking on its present name in 1897, was extended into a new avenue, Avenue du Viaduc , before being renamed Avenue des Alliés in 1921. The block, made up of insalubrious and, for
8464-469: 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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