A History of English Language

The english language in america
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small area a number of interesting variants for the same thing can often be found in the
half-hidden recesses of popular speech. Thus in different New England communities the
earthworm exists under the name angleworm, angledog, easworm (with variants
eastworm and easterworm), fishworm, mudworm, and minworm. 50 There are also odd
deviations of idiom from the standard speech. Such are the Middle Western phone up and
I want in, or the expression reported from South Dakota, “I got up at six o’clock this
morning although I don’t belong to get up until seven.” It would be easy to multiply local
peculiarities of word or phrase in all parts of America, as in other countries. In this
country they are not always genuine examples of dialect, because they are not peculiar to
a particular dialectal region but may occur in numerous parts of the country, often at a
considerable distance from one another. 51 In any case they should not by themselves be
made the basis for distinguishing major dialect areas.
In connection with this discussion of American dialects it is necessary to recall what
was said above about the general uniformity of the English language in this country. The
differences between the English of one section and that of another are not great. The
universal spread of education in modern times and the absence of any sharp
differentiation of social classes in this country are not favorable to the development or
maintenance of dialect. Although southerners or people from “down East” can usually be
recognized by their speech, there are large sections of the country in which it would be
impossible to tell within a thousand miles the district from which an individual comes.
That such differences as exist are more noticeable in the East and are
50
Cf. Rachel S.Harris, “New England Words for the Earthworm,” American Speech, 8, no. 4
(1933), 12–17, and maps 139 and 140 in Kurath, Word Geography, mentioned on page 370.
51
Miles L.Hanley, at one time editor of Dialect Notes, gave an interesting example of this in the
Connecticut term “the minister’s face” for the head of a pig after the animal has been butchered and
the ears, jowls, eyes, etc., have been removed. The phrase is occasionally found in New Hampshire
in parts settled from Connecticut but also occurs in Virginia.