This document discusses regional dialects in the United States. It begins by explaining how different places in the US were originally settled, such as New England by the English and New Amsterdam by the Dutch. It then covers various regional dialects including those of Pennsylvania, the South, West, California, Canada and more. It also discusses humor styles associated with different regions like the Borsht Belt, Lake Wobegon and country humor. In conclusion, it notes the decline of rural dialects as fewer Americans live on farms.

1. 1
Regional and Social Dialects
by Don L. F. Nilsen and
Alleen Pace Nilsen

2. 2
Explain what each of these names tells you
about the immigrants and colonization.
• New England
• Plymouth Rock
• New York
• New Jersey
• Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Boston Celtics (Irish)
• New Amsterdam (Dutch)
• Harlem (originally settled by the Dutch)
• New York Knickerbockers
• Dutch West Indies

3. New England and New York
Compare New Jersey, New Amsterdam, New Orleans, Nova Scotia…
3

4. 4
EASTERN U.S. DIALECTS (Marckwardt and Dillard)

5. 5
SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA:
PENNSYLVANIA NAMES
• William Penn
• Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch)
• “thee” “thy,” “thine” and “thou”

6. Philadelphia 76ers
6

7. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
7

8. 8
SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA:
CONNECTIONS WITH ENGLAND, ETC.
• Jamestown, Virginia
• Williamsburg, Virginia
• The Slave Trade: Charleston, South Carolina;
Liverpool, England; and Sierra Leon, West Africa
• Pidgins and Creoles resulting from “Maritime
English”
• The development of black English as a pidgin

9. Jamestown Virginia
Settled by King James
9

10. Williamsburg, Virginia
Settled by William and Mary
10

11. Virginia and West Virginia
Settled by Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin” Queen
11

12. North & South Carolina
Settled by King Charles
12

13. The Slave Trade: Charleston, South Carolina
Liverpool, England and West Africa
13

14. 14
SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA:
THE CUMBERLAND PASS
• Scottish and Irish settlements in the
South
• Irish story tellers (the Jack tales like
“Jack and the Beanstalk”)

15. The Cumberland Pass
15

16. 16
NORTHERN, MIDLAND
& SOUTHERN EXPANSION WESTWARD

17. San Francisco 49ers
17

18. 18
PHONOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES
• Greasy
• With
• spoon (noon)
• Creek
• Roof
• However, wash is not so much regional as rural.

19. 19
PHONOGICAL DISTINCTIONS
THAT ARE BECOMING LOST
• cot-caught
• witch-which
• mourning – morning
• However, pin-pen is remaining stable.

20. 20
NEW ENGLAND PHONOLOGY
• lot (New England)
• park the car; Cuba-r-is
• merry – marry – Mary
• calf (pass, path, dance)
• Brooklyn: dis, dat, dese, dose, dem

21. 21
The Southern Dialect
• Because many people in the South are rural and
isolated, there are many different dialects:
Appalachian twangs in several states, Elizabethan
lilts in Virginia, Cajun accents in Louisiana and
African-influenced Gullah accents on the coasts of
Georgia and South Carolina.
• One of these receding accents is the slow juleps-in-
the-moonlight drawl favored by Hollywood
portrayals of the South.
• That particular accent is now mostly found in
movies.

22. 22
The Plantation Drawl vs. Appalachian Speech
• The Upland South accent, a faster-paced dialect native to the
Appalachian mountains, is said to be spreading just as fast as
the plantation drawl disappears.
• Walt Wolfram says that “the vowel shift where one-syllable
words like “air” come out in two syllables, “ay-ah” is certainly
vanishing.”
• However many other aspects of the Southern dialect—such as
double-modal constructions like “might could”—are still
pervasive.

23. 23
Roy Blount Jr. on Southern Speech
• Roy Blount Jr. said, “My father, who was a surely intelligent
man, would say ‘cain’t,’ He wouldn’t say ‘can’t.’ And, ‘There
ain’t no way, just there ain’t no way.’ You don’t want to say,
‘There isn’t any way.’ That just spoils the whole thing.”
• Blount says that there’s a certain eloquence in Southern
vernacular that he wouldn’t want to lose touch with. He says
that a person ought to sound like where he comes from.
• In fact, there are many professions that thrive on a good ol’
southern twang—from preachers to football coaches to a
certain breed of courtroom litigators.

24. 24
SOUTHERN PHONOLOGY
• Mrs. hog (frog, dog, Deputy Dog)
• south  souf during  doin, and going  gon
• help  hep test  tes
• ring  rang boy  boah
• car  cah POlice

25. Three Southern Dialects: Deep South, Southern
and Texas and Oklahoma
25

26. Las Colinas, Texas
26

27. Southern Grammar
Double Modals: might could
Negative Modals: Hadn’t ought
Strange Past Participles: larnt
Strange Possessive Pronouns: yourn, hisn, hern, ourn theirn
Strange Prepositions: a quarter before eight
Starnge Conjunctions: unless  without, lessen, thouten
Starnge Adverbs: anywheres, nowheres
27

28. 28
SOUTHERN VOCABULARY
• chitlins and grits
• to buy a pig in a poke
• “Carry me Back to Old Virginie”

29. 29
CALIFORNIA VALLEY-GIRL &
SURFER-DUDE SPEECH
• Rising Inflections (like Australian English)
• Superfluous use of the word “like”
• Animated Body Language (like sticking a
finger down the throat)
• Specialized Vocabulary (like “dude”, esp.
relating to shopping malls, the beach, and
personality types)

30. Silicon Valley: Surfer Dude
and Valley Girl Speech
30

31. 31
CANADIAN PHONOLOGY
• out and about the house
• schedule
• Canadian -eh

32. Canadian Dialect:
32

33. 33
VOCABULARY
DIFFERENCES
• What do you fry your eggs in?
• creeper, fryer, frying pan, fry pan, skillet, or spider
• What do you call a soft drink?
• pop, soda, soda pop, or tonic?
• What do you call a long sandwich containing salami
etc.?
• hero, submarine, hoagy, grinder or poorboy

34. 34
• What do you drink water out of?
• drinking fountain, cooler, bubbler or geyser
• How do you get something from one place to
another?
• take, carry, or tote
• What do you carry things in?
• a bag, a sack, or a poke
• How do you speculate?
• reckon, guess, figgure, figger, suspect,
imagine

35. 35
HUMOROUS
EXAMPLES
OF
REGIONAL
DIALECTS

36. 36
BORSHT BELT HUMOR
• The Borsht Belt was a chain of hotels
in the mountains near New York.
• These hotels provided entertainment
from their guests, most of whom were
Jewish vacationers from New York
City.

37. Yiddish Influences
37

38. 38
DOWN-EAST YANKEE HUMOR
• This humor is taciturn and reluctant.
• There is a story about Calvin Coolidge. He was
seated next to a woman at an official White House
function. She leaned toward him and confided that
someone had bet her that she couldn’t make him say
three words.
• He responded, “You lose.”

39. 39

40. 40
• While southern and western humor is
filled with grammatical errors, New
England humor is shown through the
use of archaic or old-fashioned words
like “clumb,” “tonk,” or “holp.”
• They make the character sound quaint
rather than ignorant.

41. 41
MINNESOTA & LAKE WOBEGON HUMOR
• In Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, “all the
women are strong, all the men are good-
looking and all the children are above
average.”
• Tourists in the upper Midwest can find the
Paul Bunyan Logging Camp. They can find
his mail box, and can climb the ladder to
drop in their letters.

42. Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon
42

43. 43
• As they travel the roads in Minnesota
tourists will also find a huge ear of corn
mounted on a water tower, a Jolly
Green Giant, an oversized snowman, a
huge Uncle Sam, and the “World’s
Biggest Revolver.”
• Each state of the upper Midwest has its
own share of roadside attractions.

44. Turtle Bay, New York
44

45. 45
SOUTHERN HUMOR
• A radio comedian once remarked that the Mason-
Dixon line is the dividing line between you-all and
youse-guys.
• People from Alabama feel particularly picked on
because they have become the butt of jokes made by
talk show hosts, disc jockeys, newspaper
cartoonists, columnists and such TV personalities
as Conan O’Brien, Bill Maher, and Jon Stewart.

46. 46

47. 47
• Wayne Flynt, a history professor at
Alabama’s Auburn University explained
that this is because of Alabama’s trying
to “invent a world consistent with our
ideals, and it’s a world that doesn’t
exist anymore. We’re trying to squeeze
rural values into an urban world.”

48. 48
WESTERN FRONTIER HUMOR
• The frontier humor of the American West or of
Australia tends to be exaggerated:
• He is so stingy that he sits in the shade of the
hackberry tree to save the shade of the porch.
• His feet are so big that he has to put his pants on
over his head.
• His teeth stick out so far that he can eat a pumpkin
through a rail fence.

49. 49
• When Slue-Foot Sue married Pecos Bill, Sue
insisted on riding his horse, Widow-Maker.
• Widow-Maker bucked her off and she
bounced so high on her spring bustle that
she orbited the moon and they had to throw
jerky to her to keep her from starving to
death.
• When Pecos Bill died, they marked his grave
site with, “Here lies Pecos Bill. He always
lied and always will. He once lied loud. He
now lies still.”

50. 50
• Joe Barnes was sired by a yoke of cattle, suckled by
a she-bear and had three sets of teeth and gums for
another set.
• Nimrod Wildfire was a touch of the airthquake. He
had the prettiest sister, the fattest horse, and the
ugliest dog in the district.
• Wirt Staples has a shadow that can wilt grass,
breath that can poison mosquitoes, and a yell that
can break windows.
• Mike Fink was a Salt River roarer, a ring-tailed
squealer, half wild horse and half cock-eyed
alligator and the rest crooked snags and red-hot
snappin’ turtle.

51. 51
WESTERN COUNTRY HUMOR
• Country humor is associated with the “Corn
Belt,” and is therefore sometimes called
“corny.”
• In The Henry Holt Encyclopedia of Word and
Phrase Origins, Robert Hendrickson said,
“Corn came to be known as what farmers
feed pigs and comedians feed farmers.”

52. The Western Dialect
52

53. 53
• Jim Garry of Big Horn, Wyoming says that
farmers and ranchers are subject to three
uncontrollable forces: the weather, the bank,
and the government.
• Therefore, their humor tends to be fatalistic,
even though the details change from region
to region. It could be based on blizzards,
floods or droughts.
• Garry tells about a guy smiling as he walks
away from a bank. The guy says, “I’ve won!
There’s no way I’ll live long enough to have
to pay this note off.”

54. Western Dialect and Western Humor
54

55. 55
• Marvin Koller described rural humor as
“down-to-earth” as when a small Oklahoma
town each summer sponsors a “cow chip”
throwing contest, and a rural Ohio town has a
“chicken-flying” contest to measure how far a
hen will fly when released from her coop. In
Vermillion, Ohio there is a “wooly bear”
festival to celebrate the amount of “fur” or
“fuzz” on brown and black caterpillars.
• This last festival is designed to predict
whether the coming winter will be severe or
mild.

56. 56
• In the 1940s, country singer and comedian Judy
Canova was Republic Studio’s top female star.
Her show foreshadowed Hee Haw and she wore
clod-hopper shoes and carried a cardboard
suitcase. Her hair was braided into pigtails.
• During the 1950s, there was the National Barn
Dance featuring Homer and Jethro. Homer
played a guitar and Jethro a mandolin, and they
would crack jokes and then say, “Oooh, that’s
corny!”
• This phrase later became part of an advertising
campaign for cornflakes.

57. 57
• Cousin Minnie Pearl was a favorite on Hee
Haw. She told corny jokes, wore a straw hat
with a price tag hanging down, and greeted
the audience with, “How-deeee! I’m just so
proud to be here!”
• Hee Haw, and The Grand Ole Opry in
Nashville, Tennessee were the roots of
today’s country music industry. Earlier, the
Old Southwest had been settled by Scottish
and Irish immigrants who had come through
the Cumberland Pass and settled in the
Ozarks.

58. 58
• A nasal twang that imitates the sound of a guitar has
long been a feature of country and Western singing,
and CB radio. There has also long been a tradition
of “moonshine” humor, as can be seen in these
book titles by Lewis Grizzard:
• The Shoes I Bought and Paid For are Walking Out on
Me
• My Daddy was a Pistol, and I’m a Son of a Gun
• If You Want to Keep the Beer Real Cold, Put it Next
to My Ex-Wife’s Heart

59. 59
• Drop-Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of Life
• Don’t Cry Down My Back, Baby, You Might Rust My
Spurs
• My Wife Ran Off with My Best Friend, and I Miss Him
• She Stepped on my Heart and Stomped that Sucker
Flat
• Jeff Foxworthy and other redneck comedians on the
Comedy Channel continue this tradition

60. Portland, Oregon and Salt Lake City, Utah
60

61. 61
• Between 1910 and 1920, one-third of all Americans
lived on farms, but by the late 1990s fewer than 2
percent did.
• In a 1997 Wall Street Journal article, Cynthia
Crossen wrote, “The record shows the evolution of a
people from innocent, hopeful, rural and God-fearing
to plugged-in, ironic, inward-looking and dripping
with ennui.”

62. Star Wars Dialect:
62

63. Regional Dialect Exam, Slide # 1
What do you fry your eggs in?
Creeper, fryer, frying pan, fry pan skillet or spider.
What do you call a soft drink?
Pop, soda, soda pop or tonic.
What do you call a long sandwich containing salami, etc.?
Hero, submarine, hoagy, grinder or poorboy.
What do you drink water out of?
Drinking fountain, cooler, bubbler or geyser.
63

64. Regional Dialect Exam, Slide # 2
How do you get something from one place to another?
Take, carry or tote.
What do you carry things in?
A bag, a sack or a poke.
How do you speculate?
Reckon, guess, figgure, figger, suspect or imagine.
64

65. 65
British and American Dialects
Accents and Archetypes of Great Britain:
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+british+dialects&view=detail&mid=2DDBF
Accents in the Movies:
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Dialects+in+Movies&&view=detail&mid=A26882706
American Dialect Society:
http://americandialect.org/