A History of English Language

The english language in america
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includes the speech of western Pennsylvania and its derivatives in Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois. Although closely related to the Middle Atlantic dialect, it has some differences of
pronunciation such as the merging of the vowels in cot and caught. The two words are
generally homonyms the same vowel occurring with a considerable range of
allophones in lot, John, palm, barn, law,frost, dog, fog, and foggy.
5. Upper South.
This area includes all of West Virginia except the counties bordering on Pennsylvania
and Maryland, 33 the mountain regions of Virginia and North Carolina, most of Kentucky
and Tennessee, with a small portion of the states to the north and the south. At the present
stage of investigation it appears that the dialect of the Upper South extends west of the
Mississippi through southern Missouri and northern Arkansas into north Texas, where it
blends with that of the Plantation South. Settled first from Pennsylvania and later from
the South, the region shows in its speech the mixed character that is to be expected under
the circumstances. Although none of the dialect features of the Upper South are unique in
themselves, and all of them occur in either the Lower North or the Plantation South, the
configuration of features is peculiar to the Upper South. Thus the r is sounded as in the
Lower North, but [aI] is generally pronounced [a ε ],or in the southern part of the area [a ə ,
a] as in many parts of the South. Despite this mix, the speech of the Upper South has so
much in common with that of the Plantation South that a variety of Southern English
comprising the two large regions is a linguistic and cultural reality.
6. Lower South.
The dialect of the Lower South covers a large area, the old plantation country, and it
would be unreasonable to expect uniformity in it. Important focal areas are the Virginia
Piedmont and the low country near the coast of South Carolina. In many districts it agrees
with eastern New England in the loss of r finally and before consonants, as in car and
hard, but tends to go even further and omit the r before a word beginning with a vowel,
as in far away [fa:ə’we]. But it does not have the rounded vowel in words like top and
hot, or the broad a in grass and dance. In the latter words it shows a preference for [æə,
æ I ] ae I ]. A distinctive feature of the Southern dialect is the treatment of the diphthong in
out. Instead of the usual [aU] the Southern speaker begins this diphthong with [æ] before
voiced consonants and finally, while in Virginia and South Carolina this diphthong takes
the form [əU, ΛU] before voiceless consonants. Equally characteristic is the so-called
Southern drawl. This is not only a matter of slower enunciation but involves a
diphthongization or double diphthongization of stressed vowels. In its most pronounced
form this results in yes becoming [jεIs] or [jεjəs], class becoming [klæIs] or [klæjəs], etc.
Final consonant groups are likely to suffer from a weakened articulation: las’, kep’, fin’,
for last, kept, find, especially in nonstandard use. Around New Orleans and Charleston
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In the southern and eastern part of West Virginia the influence of Virginia speech is
strong.