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88-478: Scots-Irish , Pennsylvania Dutch , Polish , Ukrainian and Croatian immigrants to the area all provided certain loanwords to the dialect (see "Vocabulary" below). Many of the sounds and words found in the dialect are popularly thought to be unique to Pittsburgh, but that is a misconception since the dialect resides throughout the greater part of western Pennsylvania and the surrounding areas. Central Pennsylvania, currently an intersection of several dialect regions,

176-485: A ], but through raising they shift to [ ɐ ] , [ ʌ ] or [ ə ] . Canadian English often has raising in words with both / aɪ / ( height, life, psych, type , etc.) and / aʊ / ( clout, house, south, scout, etc.), while a number of American English varieties (such as Inland North , Western New England , and increasingly more General American accents) have this feature in / aɪ / but not / aʊ / . It

264-645: A contrastive THOUGHT vowel instead: [no̞ːʔt] , which falls together with [ ɒ ] in Pittsburgh). Earlier reports give [ ɜ ] as the norm for STRUT in Pittsburgh. The remaining checked vowels /ɪ/ , /ʊ/ , /ɛ/ and /æ/ are all within the General American norm. The GOAT vowel often has an unrounded central or fronted starting point in Pittsburgh: [əʊ] . Outside of

352-418: A description of the dialect, whose author Bruce Lee Johnson notes that the auxiliary verb might is typically pronounced with nasalization, as [mɜ̃ɪ̃ʔt] . Elsewhere in the article, this allophone is transcribed ⟨ ʌɪ ⟩, following its usual transcription on Misplaced Pages. The MOUTH vowel typically begins front in the mouth [æʊ] . A less common variant has a central starting point, [äʊ] , matching

440-528: A dogg, or any Scotch Irish dogg". Leyburn cites the following as early American uses of the term before 1744. The Oxford English Dictionary says the first use of the term Scotch-Irish came in Pennsylvania in 1744: In Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America , historian David Hackett Fischer asserts: Some historians describe these immigrants as "Ulster Irish" or "Northern Irish". It

528-447: A flapped /t/ may still be raised, even though the flap is a voiced consonant. Hence, while in accents without raising, writer and rider are pronounced differently as a result of a slight difference in vowel length due to pre-fortis clipping , in accents with raising, the words may be distinguished by their vowels: writer [ˈɹʌɪɾɚ] , rider [ˈɹaɪɾɚ] . The raised variant of / aɪ / typically becomes [ɐɪ] . In most of Canada,

616-532: A group they produced goods for themselves and for others. They generally were Patriots . Just prior to the Revolution, a second stream of immigrants came directly from Ireland via Charleston. This group was forced to move into an underdeveloped area because they could not afford expensive land. Most of this group remained loyal to the Crown or neutral when the war began. Prior to Charles Cornwallis 's march into

704-624: A name by which they are not known here. ... Here their name is Scotch-Irish; let us call them by it." From 1710 to 1775, over 200,000 people settled from Ulster to the original thirteen American colonies. The largest numbers went to Pennsylvania. From that base some went south into Virginia, the Carolinas and across the South, with a large concentration in the Appalachian region . Others headed west to western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and

792-523: A nobleman named Sorley Boy MacDonnell and others, who be of the Scotch-Irish race ... This term continued in usage for over a century before the earliest known American reference appeared in a Maryland affidavit in 1689–90. Scotch-Irish, according to James Leyburn, "is an Americanism, generally unknown in Scotland and Ireland, and rarely used by British historians". It became common in

880-485: A prefix in words like dichotomy and anti-Semitic . This pattern may have to do with stress or familiarity of the word to the speaker; however, these relations are still inconsistent. In most dialects of North American English, intervocalic /t/ and /d/ are pronounced as an alveolar flap [ɾ] when the following vowel is unstressed or word-initial, a phenomenon known as flapping . In accents with both flapping and Canadian raising, / aɪ / or / aʊ / before

968-570: A rounded /ɒ/ (phonetically [ ɒ ~ ɔ ] ). As in most other American dialects, the father–bother merger also occurs. Therefore, cot and caught are both pronounced /kɒt/ ; Don and dawn are both /dɒn/ . While the merger of the low back vowels is also widespread elsewhere in the United States, the rounded realizations of the merged vowel around [ɒ] is less common, except in Canada , California and Northeastern New England . /ɒ/ has

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1056-834: A single monarch with the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI , King of Scots, succeeded Elizabeth I as ruler of England and Ireland. In addition to the unstable border region, James also inherited Elizabeth's conflicts in Ireland. Following the end of the Irish Nine Years' War in 1603, and the Flight of the Earls in 1607, James embarked in 1609 on a systematic plantation of English and Scottish Protestant settlers to Ireland's northern province of Ulster. The Plantation of Ulster

1144-416: A stylistic variant, which is open central unrounded [ ä ] , as in the sarcastic pronunciation of I apologize as [aɪ əˈpʰäɫɨdʒaɪz] . It may also occur before /r/ , as in start [stäɹʔt] or car [kʰäɹ] , but a more common pronunciation is back and rounded: [stɒɹʔt] etc. The vowel in hoarse is the same as the one in horse , phonetically [ ɔ ] : [hɔɹs] but phonemically /oʊ/ due to

1232-553: A type of whiskey , etc., and in the term Scotch-Irish. Although referenced by Merriam-Webster dictionaries as having first appeared in 1744, the American term Scotch-Irish is undoubtedly older. An affidavit of William Patent, dated March 15, 1689, in a case against a Mr. Matthew Scarbrough in Somerset County, Maryland , quotes Mr. Patent as saying he was told by Scarbrough that "it was no more sin to kill me then to kill

1320-570: Is also common in African-American English . The word mirror can be pronounced as the single-syllable mere . Western Pennsylvania English speakers may use falling intonation at the end of questions, for example, in "Are you painting your garage?" [↗ˈɒɹ jə ˈpʰeɪɾ̃ɪŋ jɚ ɡə↘ˈɹɒdʒ] (with pitch rising in intonation up to just before the last syllable and then falling precipitously). Such speakers typically use falling pitch for yes–no questions for which they already are quite sure of

1408-497: Is an allophonic rule of phonology in many varieties of North American English that changes the pronunciation of diphthongs with open-vowel starting points. Most commonly, the shift affects / aɪ / or / aʊ / , or both, when they are pronounced before voiceless consonants (therefore, in words like price and clout , respectively, but not in prize and cloud ). In North American English, /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ usually begin in an open vowel [ ä ~

1496-755: Is confined to the environment of a following nasal, matching the GenAm allophony. An epenthetic (intruding) /r/ sound may occur after vowels in a few words, such as water pronounced as [ˈwɔɹɾɚ] , and wash as [wɔɹʃ] . A number of vowel mergers occur uniquely in Western Pennsylvania English before the consonant /l/ . The pair of vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ may merge before the /l/ consonant, cause both steel and still to be pronounced as something like [stɪɫ] . Similarly, /u/ , /oʊ/ , and /ʊ/ may merge before /l/ , so that pool , pull , and pole may merge to something like [pʰʊɫ] . On

1584-552: Is consistently found only in western Pennsylvania. The /i/~/ɪ/ merger towards [ɪ] may also appear before /ɡ/ : eagle then sounds to outsiders like iggle . L -vocalization is also common in the Western Pennsylvania dialect; an /l/ then sounds like a /w/ or a cross between a vowel and a "dark" /l/ at the end of a syllable. For example, well is pronounced as [wɛw] ; milk as [mɪwk] or [mɛwk] ; role as [ɹʊw] ; and cold as [ˈkʰʊwd] . The phenomenon

1672-530: Is most prominent in the Inland North , Western New England, and Philadelphia . It has been noted to occur before [d] , [ɡ] and [n] especially. Hence, words like tiny , spider , cider , tiger , dinosaur , cyber- , beside , idle (but sometimes not idol ), and fire may contain a raised nucleus. (Also note that in six of those nine words, /aɪ/ is preceded by a coronal consonant; see above paragraph. In five [or possibly six] of those nine words,

1760-576: Is one of the few features, if not the only one, restricted almost exclusively to western Pennsylvania in North America, but it can sometimes be found in other accents of the English-speaking world, such as Cockney and South African English . The sound may be the result of contact from Slavic languages during the early 20th century. Monophthongization also occurs for the sound /aɪ/ , as in eye , before liquid consonants, so that tile

1848-570: Is pronounced [tʰɑːɫ] ; pile is pronounced [pʰɑːɫ] ; and iron is pronounced [ɑːɹn] . That phenomenon allows tire to merge with the sound of tar : [tʰɑːɹ] . The NURSE vowel (phonemically an /ər/ sequence) is phonetically close-mid [ ɘ˞ ] . Johnson notes a tendency to diphthongize /æ/ to [ɛə] not only before nasals (as in GenAm) but also before all voiced consonants (as in bad [bɛəd] ) and voiceless fricatives (as in grass [ɡɹɛəs] ). This has since been reversed and now [ɛə]

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1936-711: Is roughly 4,000 deaths. In one notorious incident, the Protestant inhabitants of Portadown were taken captive and then massacred on the bridge in the town. The settlers responded in kind, as did the Dublin Castle administration , with attacks on the Irish civilian population. Massacres of native civilians occurred at Rathlin Island and elsewhere. In early 1642, the Covenanters sent an army to Ulster to defend

2024-633: Is that over 200,000 Scotch-Irish migrated to the Americas between 1717 and 1775. As a late-arriving group, they found that land in the coastal areas of the British colonies was either already owned or too expensive, so they quickly left for the more mountainous interior where land could be obtained less expensively. Here they lived on the first frontier of America. Early frontier life was challenging, but poverty and hardship were familiar to them. The term hillbilly has often been applied to their descendants in

2112-624: Is thought to have originated in Canada in the late 19th century. In the U.S., aboot [əˈbut] , an exaggerated version of the raised pronunciation of about [əˈbʌʊt] , is a stereotype of Canadian English. Although the symbol ⟨ʌ⟩ is defined as an open-mid back unrounded vowel in the International Phonetic Alphabet , ⟨ʌɪ⟩ or ⟨ʌʊ⟩ may signify any raised vowel that contrasts with unraised / aɪ / or / aʊ / , when

2200-592: Is true that many sailed from the province of Ulster ... part of much larger flow which drew from the lowlands of Scotland, the north of England, and every side of the Irish Sea. Many scholars call these people Scotch-Irish . That expression is an Americanism, rarely used in Britain and much resented by the people to whom it was attached. "We're no Eerish bot Scoatch," one of them was heard to say in Pennsylvania. Fischer prefers to speak of "borderers" (referring to

2288-577: Is used primarily in the United States, with people in Great Britain or Ireland who are of a similar ancestry identifying as Ulster Scots people . Many left for North America, but over 100,000 Scottish Presbyterians still lived in Ulster in 1700. Many English-born settlers of this period were also Presbyterians. When King Charles I attempted to force these Presbyterians into the Church of England in

2376-412: The /il/~/ɪl/ merger, Labov, Ash and Boberg (2006) note "the stereotype of merger of /ɪl ~ il/ is based only on a close approximation of some forms, and does not represent the underlying norms of the dialect." The /i/~/ɪ/ merger is found in western Pennsylvania, as well as parts of the southern United States, including Alabama, Texas and the west (McElhinny 1999). On the other hand, the /u/~/ʊ/ merger

2464-539: The Alleghenies , as well as into Virginia , North Carolina , South Carolina , Georgia , Kentucky , and Tennessee . The typical migration involved small networks of related families who settled together, worshipped together, and intermarried, avoiding outsiders. Most Scotch-Irish landed in Philadelphia. Without much cash, they moved to free lands on the frontier, becoming the typical western "squatters",

2552-531: The Anglo-Scottish border , a region that had seen centuries of conflict. In the near constant state of war between England and Scotland during the Middle Ages, the livelihood of the people on the borders was devastated by the contending armies. Even when the countries were not at war, tension remained high, and royal authority in one or the other kingdom was often weak. The uncertainty of existence led

2640-711: The German Palatinate , and France (such as the French Huguenot ancestors of Davy Crockett ). What united these different national groups was a base of Calvinist religious beliefs, and their separation from the established church (the Church of England and Church of Ireland in this case). That said, the large ethnic Scottish element in the Plantation of Ulster gave the settlements a Scottish character. Upon arrival in North America, these migrants at first usually identified simply as Irish, without

2728-657: The Inland North , the Upper Midwest , New England , New York City , and the mid-Atlantic areas of Pennsylvania (including Philadelphia ), Maryland, and Delaware, as well as in Virginia. It is somewhat less common in the lower Midwest, the West , and the South . However, there is considerable variation in the raising of / aɪ / , and it can be found inconsistently throughout the United States. The raising of / aɪ /

Western Pennsylvania English - Misplaced Pages Continue

2816-967: The Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee , Seneca , and others tribes of western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Country . Indigenous attacks occurred within 60 miles of Philadelphia, and in July 1763 the Pennsylvania Assembly authorized the raising of a 700-strong militia to be used only for defense. Formed into two units of rangers, the Cumberland Boys and the Paxton Boys , the militia soon exceeded their mandate and began offensive forays against Lenape villages. The Paxton Boys' leaders received information, which they believed credible, that "hostile" tribes were receiving information and support from

2904-810: The Ulster Protestants as British (a description many Ulster Protestants have preferred themselves to Irish , at least since the Irish Free State broke free from the United Kingdom, although Ulstermen has been adopted in order to maintain a distinction from the native Irish Gaels while retaining a claim to the North of Ireland). However, as one scholar observed in 1944, "in this country [the US], where they have been called Scotch-Irish for over two hundred years, it would be absurd to give them

2992-795: The elite of 17th and 18th century Ireland. For this reason, up until the 19th century, and despite their common fear of Irish Catholics, there was considerable disharmony between the Presbyterians and the Protestant Ascendancy in Ulster. As a result of this, many Ulster-Scots, along with Catholic native Irish, ignored religious differences to join the United Irishmen and participate in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 , in support of Age of Enlightenment -inspired egalitarian and republican goals. Scholarly estimate

3080-683: The "friendly" tribe of Susquehannock (Conestoga) settled in Lancaster County, who were under the protection of the Pennsylvania government. On December 14, 1763, about fifty Paxton Boys rode to Conestoga Town, near Millersville, Pennsylvania, and murdered six Conestogas. Pennsylvanian authorities placed the remaining fourteen Conestogas in protective custody in the Lancaster workhouse, but the Paxton Boys broke in, killing and mutilating all fourteen on December 27, 1763. In February 1764,

3168-581: The 1630s, many chose to immigrate to North America, where religious liberty was greater. Later attempts to force the Church of England's control over dissident Protestants in Ireland led to further waves of immigration to the transatlantic colonies. The term is first known to have been used for Scottish Catholics in Ireland. In a letter of April 14, 1573, in reference to descendants of " gallowglass " mercenaries from Scotland who had settled in Ireland, Elizabeth I of England wrote: We are given to understand that

3256-548: The 1770s. In Pennsylvania, Virginia, and most of the Carolinas, support for the revolution was "practically unanimous". One Hessian officer said, "Call this war by whatever name you may, only call it not an American rebellion; it is nothing more or less than a Scotch Irish Presbyterian rebellion." A British major general testified to the House of Commons that "half the rebel Continental Army were from Ireland". Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, with its large Scotch-Irish population,

3344-534: The 18th century (between 1717 and 1770 alone, about 250,000 settled in what would become the United States ). According to Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (1988), Protestants were one-third the population of Ireland, but three-quarters of all emigrants leaving from 1700 to 1776; 70% of these Protestants were Presbyterians. Other factors contributing to

3432-595: The Covenanter movement in Scotland, the Parliament of Scotland had threatened to invade Ireland in order to achieve "the extirpation of Popery out of Ireland" (according to the interpretation of Richard Bellings , a leading Irish politician of the time). The fear this caused in Ireland unleashed a wave of massacres against Protestant English and Scottish settlers, mostly in Ulster, once the rebellion had broken out. All sides displayed extreme cruelty in this phase of

3520-631: The Kingdom of Dál Riata , eventually mixing with the native Pictish culture throughout Scotland. The Irish Gaels had previously been named Scoti by the Romans , and eventually their name was applied to the entire Kingdom of Scotland . The origins of the Scotch-Irish lie primarily in the Lowlands of Scotland and in northern England , particularly in the Border Country on either side of

3608-626: The Midwest. Transatlantic flows were halted by the American Revolution , but resumed after 1783, with total of 100,000 arriving in America between 1783 and 1812. By that point few were young servants and more were mature craftsmen, and they settled in industrial centers, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York, where many became skilled workers, foremen and entrepreneurs as the Industrial Revolution took off in

Western Pennsylvania English - Misplaced Pages Continue

3696-586: The Paxton Boys with a few hundred backcountry settlers, primarily Scotch-Irish, marched on Philadelphia with the intent of killing the Moravian Indians who had been given shelter there. Benjamin Franklin led a delegation that met the marchers at Germantown, Philadelphia . Following negotiations the Paxton Boys agreed to disperse and submit their grievances in writing. The United States Declaration of Independence contained 56 delegate signatures. Of

3784-649: The Protestant settlers in the province of Ulster. However, the Presbyterians and other dissenters, along with Catholics, were not members of the established church and were consequently legally disadvantaged by the Penal Laws , which gave full rights only to members of the Church of England or Church of Ireland . Members of the Church of Ireland mostly consisted of the Protestant Ascendancy , Protestant settlers of English descent who formed

3872-504: The Scottish settlers there from the Irish rebels who had attacked them after the outbreak of the rebellion. The original intention of the Scottish army was to re-conquer Ireland, but due to logistical and supply problems, it was never in a position to advance far beyond its base in eastern Ulster. The Covenanter force remained in Ireland until the end of the civil wars but was confined to its garrison around Carrickfergus after its defeat by

3960-485: The U.S. Another half million came to America 1815 to 1845; another 900,000 came in 1851–99. While settling in the new world evolved Scotch-Irish culture, what the settlers brought is the basis of what has been and is referred to as American culture. According to the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups , there were 400,000 U.S. residents of Irish birth or ancestry in 1790 and half of this group

4048-523: The United States after 1850. The term is somewhat ambiguous because some of the Scotch-Irish have little or no Scottish or Irish ancestry at all: numerous dissenter families had also been transplanted to Ulster from northern England, in particular the border counties of Northumberland and Cumberland . Smaller numbers of migrants also came from Wales , the Isle of Man , and the southeast of England, and others were Protestant religious refugees from Flanders ,

4136-584: The United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. Their ancestors had originally migrated to Ulster, mainly from the Scottish Lowlands and Northern England in the 17th century. In the 2017 American Community Survey , 5.39 million (1.7% of the population) reported Scottish ancestry, an additional 3 million (0.9% of the population) identified more specifically with Scotch-Irish ancestry, and many people who claim " American ancestry " may actually be of Scotch-Irish ancestry. The term Scotch-Irish

4224-652: The answer. A speaker uttering the above example is simply confirming what is already thought: yes, the person spoken to is painting their garage. It is most common in areas of heavy German settlement, especially southeastern Pennsylvania, hence its nickname, the "Pennsylvania Dutch question", but it is also found elsewhere in Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh. It is of German origin. Scotch-Irish American 977,075 (0.3%) "Scotch-Irish" alone 2021 estimates, self-reported Scotch-Irish Americans are American descendants of primarily Ulster Scots people who emigrated from Ulster ( Ireland 's northernmost province) to

4312-526: The backcountry in 1780, two-thirds of the men among the Waxhaw settlement had declined to serve in the army. The British massacre of American prisoners at the Battle of Waxhaws resulted in anti-British sentiment in a bitterly divided region. While many individuals chose to take up arms against the British, the British themselves forced the people to choose sides. In the 1790s, the new American government assumed

4400-475: The backcountry of the Appalachian region. The new wave of Catholic Irish settled primarily in port cities such as Boston, New York, Charleston, Chicago, Memphis and New Orleans, where large immigrant communities formed and there were an increasing number of jobs. Many of the new Irish migrants also went to the interior in the 19th century, attracted to jobs on large-scale infrastructure projects such as canals and railroads . The usage Scots-Irish developed in

4488-562: The character of Northern New Englanders reflect this fact. The Scotch-Irish brought the potato with them from Ireland (although the potato originated in South America, it was not known in North America until brought over from Europe). In Maine it became a staple crop as well as an economic base. From 1717 for the next thirty or so years, the primary points of entry for the Ulster immigrants were Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New Castle, Delaware. The Scotch-Irish radiated westward across

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4576-588: The city itself, [oʊ] is more common. GOOSE is sometimes also fronted, to [ɨu] (more usual value: [ʊu] ). As in other American dialects, FLEECE and FACE are narrow diphthongs [ɪi, ee̝] . CHOICE is also within GenAm norm: [ɔ̟ɪ] . The PRICE vowel alone undergoes Canadian raising to [ɜɪ] before voiceless consonants, as in ice [ɜɪs] . In 1971, the Journal of the International Phonetic Association published

4664-499: The cot-caught merger: /hoʊrs/ . /ʌ/ is backer and more open than [ ɜ ] found in Midland American English , being closer to [ ɑ ] . This makes STRUT an unrounded counterpart of LOT , with pairs such as nut [nɑʔt] vs. not [nɒʔt] or cut [kʰɑʔt] vs. cot [kʰɒʔt] contrasting mainly by roundedness . This is also found in contemporary Standard Southern British English, where nut [nʌʔt] also differs from not [nɔʔt] by rounding (though nought has

4752-692: The debts the individual states had amassed during the American Revolutionary War , and the Congress placed a tax on whiskey (among other things) to help repay those debts. Large producers were assessed a tax of six cents a gallon. Smaller producers, many of whom were Scottish (often Scotch-Irish) descent and located in the more remote areas, were taxed at a higher rate of nine cents a gallon. These rural settlers were short of cash to begin with, and lacked any practical means to get their grain to market, other than fermenting and distilling it into relatively potable spirits. Canadian raising Canadian raising (also sometimes known as English diphthong raising )

4840-468: The diphthong / aɪ / fell on a continuum between raised and unraised. Raising is influenced by voicing of the following consonant, but it may also be influenced by the sound before the diphthong. Frequently the diphthong was raised when preceded by a coronal : in gigantic , dinosaur , and Siberia . Raising before /r/ , as in wire , iris , and fire , has been documented in some American accents. Raising of /aɪ/ before certain voiced consonants

4928-449: The distribution of the two sounds is becoming more unpredictable among younger speakers. Raising can apply to compound words . Hence, the first vowel in high school [ˈhʌɪskul] as a term meaning "a secondary school for students approximately 14–18 years old" may be raised, whereas high school [ˌhaɪ ˈskul] with the literal meaning of "a school that is high (e.g. in elevation)" is unaffected. (The two terms are also distinguished by

5016-407: The early 19th century, when it was replaced by the word "Scottish". People in Scotland refer to themselves as Scots, as a noun, or adjectivally/collectively as Scots or Scottish . The use of "Scotch" as an adjective has been dropped in the UK and Ireland where it is now more commonly regarded as offensive, but remains in use in the U.S. in place names, names of plants, breeds of dog, a type of tape,

5104-537: The exact quality of the raised vowel is not important in the given context. In general, Canadian raising affects vowels before voiceless consonants like / f / , / θ / , / t / , and / s / . Vowels before voiced consonants like / v / , / ð / , / d / , and / z / are usually not raised. However, several studies indicate that this rule is not completely accurate, and have attempted to formulate different rules. A study of three speakers in Meaford, Ontario , showed that pronunciation of

5192-456: The farthest forward in eastern and southern Ontario : thus, [ɛʊ~ɜʊ] . Newfoundland English is the Canadian dialect that participates least in any conditioned Canadian raising, while Vancouver English may lack the raising of / aɪ / in particular. Canadian raising is not restricted to Canada. Raising of both / aɪ / and / aʊ / is common in eastern New England , for example in some Boston accents (the former more likely than

5280-420: The fighting on the frontier from New Hampshire to the Carolinas. The Scots-Irish also became the middlemen who handled trade and negotiations between indigenous tribes and the colonial governments. Especially in Pennsylvania, whose pacifist Quaker leaders had made no provision for a militia, Scotch-Irish settlements were frequently destroyed and the settlers killed, captured or forced to flee after attacks by

5368-531: The frontier guard of the colony, and what the historian Frederick Jackson Turner described as "the cutting-edge of the frontier". The Scotch-Irish moved up the Delaware River to Bucks County , and then up the Susquehanna and Cumberland valleys, finding flat lands along the rivers and creeks to set up their log cabins , their grist mills , and their Presbyterian churches. Chester, Lancaster, and Dauphin counties became their strongholds, and they built towns such as Chambersburg, Gettysburg, Carlisle, and York;

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5456-406: The high level of patriotism was the Waxhaw settlement on the lower Catawba River along the North Carolina-South Carolina boundary, where Loyalism was strong. The area experienced two main settlement periods of Scotch-Irish. During the 1750s–1760s, second- and third-generation Scotch-Irish Americans moved from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. This particular group had large families, and as

5544-504: The historically war-torn England-Scotland border) as the population ancestral to the "backcountry" "cultural stream" (one of the four major and persistent cultural streams from Ireland and Britain which he identifies in American history). He notes the borderers had substantial English and Scandinavian roots. He describes them as being quite different from Gaelic-speaking groups such as the Scottish Highlanders or Irish (that is, Gaelic-speaking and predominantly Roman Catholic). An example of

5632-481: The late 19th century as a relatively recent version of the term. Two early citations include: 1) "a grave, elderly man of the race known in America as 'Scots-Irish ' " (1870); and 2) "Dr. Cochran was of stately presence, of fair and florid complexion, features which testified his Scots-Irish descent" (1884). In Ulster-Scots (or "Ullans"), Scotch-Irish Americans are referred to as the Scotch Airish o' Amerikey . Twentieth-century English author Kingsley Amis endorsed

5720-420: The latter), as well as in the Upper Midwest . South Atlantic English , New Orleans English , and the accents of England's Fens feature it as well. Raising of just / aɪ / is found in a much greater number of dialects in the United States; some researchers have begun to refer to raising of / aɪ / without raising of / aʊ / as American Raising . This phenomenon is most consistently found in

5808-405: The mass exodus of Ulster Scots to America during the 18th century were a series of droughts and rising rents imposed by their landlords. During the course of the 17th century, the number of settlers belonging to Calvinist dissenting sects, including Scottish and Northumbrian Presbyterians , English Baptists , French and Flemish Huguenots , and German Palatines , became the majority among

5896-488: The mountains, carrying connotations of poverty, backwardness and violence. The first trickle of Scotch-Irish settlers arrived in New England. Valued for their fighting prowess as well as for their Protestant dogma, they were invited by Cotton Mather and other leaders to come over to help settle and secure the frontier. In this capacity, many of the first permanent settlements in Maine and New Hampshire , especially after 1718, were Scotch-Irish and many place names as well as

5984-433: The native Ulster Army at the Battle of Benburb in 1646. After the war was over, many of the soldiers settled permanently in Ulster. Another major influx of Scots into Ulster occurred in the 1690s, when tens of thousands of people fled a famine in Scotland to come to Ireland. A few generations after arriving in Ireland, considerable numbers of Ulster-Scots emigrated to the North American colonies of Great Britain throughout

6072-462: The next generation moved into western Pennsylvania. With large numbers of children who needed their own inexpensive farms, the Scotch-Irish avoided areas already settled by Germans and Quakers and moved south, through the Shenandoah Valley , and through the Blue Ridge Mountains into Virginia. These migrants followed the Great Wagon Road from Lancaster, through Gettysburg, and down through Staunton, Virginia, to Big Lick (now Roanoke), Virginia. Here

6160-473: The only feature whose distribution is restricted almost exclusively to the immediate vicinity of Pittsburgh is /aʊ/ monophthongization in which words such as house , down , found , and sauerkraut are sometimes pronounced with an "ah" sound, instead of the more standard pronunciation of "ow", rendering eye spellings such as hahs , dahn , fahnd , and sahrkraht . Speakers of Pittsburgh English are sometimes called "Yinzers" in reference to their use of

6248-498: The open vowel component of the diphthongs changes to a mid vowel ( [ ʌ ] , [ ɐ ] , [ ɛ ] or [ ə ] ). As its name implies, Canadian raising is found throughout most of Canada, though the exact phonetic quality of Canadian raising may differ throughout the country. In raised / aʊ / , the first element tends to be farther back in Quebec and the Canadian Prairies and Maritimes (particularly in Alberta): thus, [ʌʊ] . The first element tends to be

6336-520: The pathway split, with the Wilderness Road taking settlers west into Tennessee and Kentucky, while the main road continued south into the Carolinas. Because the Scotch-Irish settled the frontier of Pennsylvania and western Virginia, they were greatly affected by the French and Indian War and Pontiac's War . The Scotch-Irish were frequently in conflict with indigenous tribes, and did most of

6424-571: The people of the borders to seek security through a system of family ties, similar to the clan system in the Scottish Highlands . Known as the Border Reivers , these families relied on their own strength and cunning to survive, and a culture of cattle raiding and thievery developed. Though remaining politically distinct, Scotland, England (considered at the time to include Wales, annexed in 1535), and Ireland came to be ruled by

6512-492: The position of the stress accent, as shown.) The same is true of "high chair". However, frequently it does not. One study of speakers in Rochester, New York and Minnesota found a very inconsistent pattern of /aɪ/ raising before voiceless consonants in certain prefixes; for example, the numerical prefix bi- was raised in bicycle but not bisexual or bifocals . Likewise, the vowel was consistently kept low when used in

6600-583: The qualifier Scotch . It was not until a century later, following the surge in Irish immigration after the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, that the descendants of the earlier arrivals began to commonly call themselves "Scotch-Irish" to distinguish themselves from the newer, poor, predominantly Catholic immigrants. At first, the two groups had little interaction in America, as the Scots-Irish had become settled many decades earlier, primarily in

6688-577: The raised vowel is further front than / aɪ / , and in traditional New York City English, / aɪ / is backed towards [ɑɪ] except before voiceless consonants, resulting in a distinction based more on frontness, but in Philadelphia it may be more back. The raised variant of / aʊ / varies by dialect, with [ɐʊ~ʌʊ] more common in Western Canada and a fronted variant [ɜʊ~ɛʊ] commonly heard in Central Canada . In any case,

6776-451: The second-person plural pronoun " yinz ." The word "yinzer" is sometimes heard as pejorative, indicating a lack of sophistication, but the term is now used in a variety of ways. Older men are more likely to use the accent than women "possibly because of a stronger interest in displaying local identity...." A defining feature of Western Pennsylvania English is the cot–caught merger , in which /ɑ/ (as in ah ) and /ɔ/ (as in aw ) merge to

6864-539: The signers, eight were of Irish descent. Two signers, George Taylor and James Smith , were born in Ulster. The remaining five Irish-Americans, George Read , Thomas McKean , Thomas Lynch, Jr. , Edward Rutledge and Charles Carroll , were the sons or grandsons of Irish immigrants, and at least McKean had Ulster heritage. In contrast to the Scottish Highlanders, the Scotch-Irish were generally ardent supporters of American independence from Britain in

6952-434: The starting point of PRICE ( [äɪ] ). It is monophthongized to [aː] in some environments (sounding instead like ah ), namely: before nasal consonants ( downtown [daːnˈtʰaːn] and found [faːnd] ), liquid consonants ( fowl , hour ) and obstruents ( house [haːs] , out , cloudy ). The monophthongization does not occur, however, in word-final positions ( how , now ), and the diphthong then remains [æʊ] . That

7040-431: The syllable after the syllable with /aɪ/ contains a liquid .) The use of [ʌɪ] rather than [aɪ] in such words is unpredictable from phonetic environment alone, though it may have to do with their acoustic similarity to other words that do contain [ʌɪ] before a voiceless consonant, per the traditional Canadian-raising system. Hence, some researchers have argued that there has been a phonemic split in these dialects;

7128-444: The traditional Scotch-Irish usage implicitly in noting that "nobody talks about butterscottish or hopscots , ... or Scottish pine ", and that while Scots or Scottish is how people of Scots origin refer to themselves in Scotland, the traditional English usage Scotch continues to be appropriate in "compounds and set phrases". The word " Scotch " was the favored adjective for things " of Scotland ", including people, until

7216-461: The use of the term is found in A History of Ulster : "Ulster Presbyterians – known as the 'Scotch Irish' – were already accustomed to being on the move, and clearing and defending their land." Many have claimed that such a distinction should not be used, and that those called Scotch-Irish are simply Irish, despite having previously come from Scotland or England. Other Irish limit the term Irish to those of native Gaelic stock, and prefer to describe

7304-402: The war. Around 4000 settlers were massacred and a further 12,000 may have died of privation after being driven from their homes. This, along with Irish Catholic refugees fleeing, caused Ireland's population to drop by 25%. William Petty 's figure of 37,000 Protestants massacred is far too high, perhaps by a factor of ten; certainly more recent research suggests that a much more realistic figure

7392-648: Was accelerated with James's official plantation in 1609, and further augmented during the subsequent Irish Confederate Wars . The first of the Stuart Kingdoms to collapse into civil war was Ireland where, prompted in part by the anti-Catholic rhetoric of the Covenanters in Scotland, Irish Catholics launched a rebellion in October , 1641. In reaction to the proposal by Charles I and Thomas Wentworth to raise an army manned by Irish Catholics to put down

7480-454: Was descended from Ulster, and half from the other three provinces of Ireland. A separate migration brought many to Canada , where they are most numerous in rural Ontario and Nova Scotia . Because of the proximity of the islands of Britain and Ireland, migrations in both directions had been occurring since Ireland was first settled after the retreat of the ice sheets . Gaels from Ireland colonized current southwestern Scotland as part of

7568-406: Was identified in 1949 by Hans Kurath as a subregion between western and eastern Pennsylvania, but some scholars in the 20th century onwards have identified it within the western Pennsylvania dialect region. Since Kurath's study, one of western Pennsylvania's defining features, the cot–caught merger , has expanded into central Pennsylvania, moving eastward until being blocked at Harrisburg . Perhaps

7656-533: Was seen as a way to relocate the Border Reiver families to Ireland to bring peace to the Anglo-Scottish border country, and also to provide fighting men who could suppress the native Irish in Ireland. The first major influx of Scots and English into Ulster had come in 1606 during the settlement of east Down onto land cleared of native Irish by private landlords chartered by James. This process

7744-599: Was to make the first declaration for independence from Britain in the Mecklenburg Declaration of 1775. The Scots-Irish " Overmountain Men " of Virginia and North Carolina formed a militia which won the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780, resulting in the British abandonment of a southern campaign, and for some historians "marked the turning point of the American Revolution". One exception to

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