The American Language
Version 5.3
Prof. Dr. Russell Block University of Applied Sciences - München Fakultät 13 - Allgemeinwissenschaften ©2013 Um eine gute Note in der Klausur zu erzielen, genügt es nicht, dieses Skript zu lesen.
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Unit 1: The Origins of the American Language ...... 8
1 Origins of the English language ...... 8 1.1 The Celts...... 8 1.2 The Roman colonization ...... 8 1.3 The Germanic invasion ...... 8 1.4 Anglo-Saxon England ...... 9 1.5 The first literary language ...... 9 1.6 The submergence of English ...... 10 1.7 The re-emergence of English ...... 10 1.8 The London standard ...... 11 1.9 The Renaissance ...... 11 1.10 Codification of the Received Pronunciation ...... 12
2 American English ...... 13 2.1 Major dialect groups ...... 13 2.2 Black English ...... 14 2.3 The American standard ...... 14 2.4 Network English ...... 15
Unit 2: The American Koiné ...... 16
1 The early period...... 16
2 A few words that British travelers found odd in American speech...... 16
3 What is a koiné ...... 17
4 Sources of information on early American English ...... 17 4.1 Rhymes and misspellings ...... 17 4.2 Technical descriptions ...... 17 4.3 Literary sources ...... 18 4.4 Travelers’ reports ...... 18
5 Where does a standard come from? ...... 20
6 British Travelers Objections to American English ...... 21
7 Frontier English ...... 24 7.1 Pidgins and Creoles ...... 25 7.2 Black English and Frontier English ...... 25 7.3 Pidgin and Frontier English...... 25
-iii- Unit 3: British and American Pronunciation ...... 27
1 Introduction ...... 27
2 Standard Dialects ...... 27
3 The major differences between German and English ...... 27 3.1 The Consonants...... 28 3.2 Overview of the English consonants ...... 28 3.3 Tense vs. Lax ...... 28 3.4 The Final Devoicing Rule ...... 29 3.5 The “th”-sounds ...... 29
3.6 The “sh”-sound ...... 29
3.7 The voiced sounds / / and / ¡ / ...... 29 3.8 The liquid /l/ ...... 29 3.9 The Liquid /r/ ...... 30 3.10 The Glide /w/ ...... 30
3.11 The Glottal Stop / ¢ /...... 30
4 The vowels ...... 30
5 The English vowels ...... 32 5.1 Diphthongization of Tense Vowels ...... 33 5.2 Vowel Length ...... 33 5.3 The Schwas...... 33
5.4 The vowel / £ / ...... 33
¥ ¤ ¦
5.5 The diphthongs / ¤ / and / / ...... 34 ¥ 5.6 The diphthong / § /...... 34
6 Major Differences in Pronunciation Between the British and American Standard . . 34 6.1 Intonation...... 34 6.2 Rhythm ...... 34 6.3 Prefixed verbs...... 35 6.4 Sometimes accent shift is associated with differences in meaning: ...... 35 6.5 Individual sounds ...... 35 6.6 Flapped-t and d in AE...... 35 6.7 BE and AE /l/...... 36 6.8 /r/...... 36 6.8.1 Flapped-r in BE ...... 37 6.8.2 r-Dissimilation in AE ...... 37
6.8.3 Provincial-r in AE...... 37 © 6.8.4 The New York City Pronunciation of / ¨ / ...... 38
6.9 Short-o in BE and AE...... 38
6.10 Differences in the distribution of / £ / and / / between AE and BE ...... 39 6.11 The systematic difference in the pronunciation of long-o ...... 39 6.12 Difference in the distribution of /u/ and /ju/ ...... 39
-iv- 6.13 Final /i/...... 40 6.14 The pronunciation of wh- ...... 40 6.15 Historical divergence ...... 40
7 Morphological differences ...... 41 7.1 {-ed} ...... 41 7.2 The pronunciation of ate ...... 41 7.3 The suffix -ile ...... 41 7.4 Some British and American Words That Are Pronounced Differently . . . . . 41
Unit 4: The Written Language - American Spelling and Dictionaries ...... 44
1 The real differences between AE and BE spelling ...... 44
2 Why reform English spelling? ...... 44
3 Attempts at an “American” spelling reform ...... 44 3.1 Benjamin Franklin...... 44 3.2 Noah Webster ...... 45 3.2.1 Early spelling reform proposals ...... 45
4 The dictionary ...... 46 4.1 Samuel Johnson’s dictionary ...... 46 4.2 Later dictionaries ...... 46 4.3 Webster’s dictionaries...... 46 4.4 Webster’s example ...... 48
5 Summary of important spelling differences between BE and AE ...... 48 5.1 AE -or for BE -our ...... 48 5.2 AE -er for BE -re ...... 49 5.3 AE -l- for BE -ll- ...... 49 5.4 AE drops silent e after dg ...... 50 5.5 AE e instead of the digraphs æ, œ ...... 50
5.6 AE simplification of Greek words in -gue, -mme entering by way of French 50 ¡ 5.7 AE -ize in words with the Greek suffix - for BE ize/-ise ...... 50 5.8 AE -ense for BE -ence ...... 51 5.9 Some individual words that are spelled differently...... 51
6 Summary ...... 51
Unit 5: Differences Between BE and AE Vocabulary ...... 52
1 Words with different meanings in AE and BE ...... 52
2 Important Differences in Vocabulary (from AE point of view) ...... 54
-v- Unit 6: Major Dialect Differences in American English ...... 56
1 Overview...... 56
2 Canadian ...... 56 2.1 Differences between Canadian and Network English ...... 57
2.1.1 Unrounding of back vowels...... 57
¥ ¤ ¦ 2.1.2 Raising in / ¤ /, / / ...... 57 2.1.3 Resistance to breaking of short vowels ...... 57 2.1.4 Consonants ...... 57 2.1.5 Individual words ...... 57
3 Eastern (New England) ...... 58 3.1 Differences between Eastern and Network English ...... 58
3.1.1 R-dropping...... 58 £ 3.1.2 The distribution of / / and / /...... 58
4 New York City ...... 59 4.1 Differences between New York City and Network English ...... 59 4.1.1 R-dropping...... 59
4.1.2 Breaking of / £ /...... 59
4.1.3 Breaking of short-o ...... 60 © 4.1.4 The realization of/ ¨ /...... 60 4.1.5 Dentals and alveolars ...... 60 4.1.6 Nasalization ...... 60
5 Southern ...... 61 5.1 Differences between Southern and Network English ...... 61
5.1.1 The Southern drawl ...... 61 ¥ 5.1.2 Monophthongization of / ¤ / ...... 61 5.1.3 Neutralization of /i/ and /e/ before nasals ...... 61 5.1.4 Nasalization ...... 62 5.1.5 R-dropping...... 62 5.1.6 Vowel laxing before /r/ ...... 62 5.1.7 The hoarse - horse distinction...... 62 5.1.8 The poor - door merger ...... 63
6 Black English...... 63
Unit 7: Black English ...... 64
1 Is there such a thing as Black English? ...... 64 1.1 The traditional view ...... 64 1.2 A reassessment ...... 65 1.3 The syntax of Black English ...... 66 1.4 Conclusions ...... 67
-vi- Samples of Black English: ...... 68
The American Language: Someday Reading ...... 72
Reference: ...... 73
Review Questions: ...... 74
-vii- Unit 1: The Origins of the American Language
1 Origins of the English language It is quite impossible to understand the American language without at least a thumbnail sketch of the origins and development of British and American English. More than any other social institution, language carries its history along with it. This social history is reflected in every aspect of the language from its sounds to its social use. In this and the next section we will concentrate on the external history, on the origins of the English language and its spread to the North American continent.
1.1 The Celts The Celts, who in prehistoric times spoke a language closely related to Latin and Ancient Greek, began settling in Britain ca. 600 BC driving the native population to the north. They consolidated their hold on the south and central portions of the island and lived pretty much undisturbed until the arrival of the first Roman legions under Julius Caesar in 55 BC. At first the Celts were able to repel the invaders, but the Romans returned the next summer and defeated the Celts in a number of encounters. Caesar was able to exact a tribute from the Celtic chiefs (which in fact was never paid) and retired to the continent leaving things essentially as they were.
1.2 The Roman colonization The real Roman colonization began under the emperor Claudius in 43 AD. Within three years, the Roman armies were able to establish their hegemony in south and central Britain and ruled this portion of the island for more than three hundred years, building roads, several cities and more than a hundred towns. A good number of place names containing the Latin elements castra ‘camp’ or vicus ‘village’ like Lancaster, Cloucester, Worcester, Harwich, and Berwick date from Roman times. By the middle of the fourth century, pressure on the more central areas of the empire forced the Romans to withdraw their legions from Britain. The Roman withdrawal was completed by 410 AD, once again leaving the Celts to their own devices.
1.3 The Germanic invasion As the Romans withdrew, the Celts were subjected to attacks from the Picts and Scots in the north and Saxon raiders along the south and east coasts. According to the earliest historical records, they invited in the Jutes, a Germanic tribe, to help fight off the attackers. The Jutes, whose original homeland was probably the north west coast of the Danish peninsula (Jutland), were joined by two neighboring tribes, the Angles, from the south of Jutland, and the Saxons, who probably inhabited the coastal area between the Elbe and the Ems. Together
-8- they conquered most of Britain and drove the Celts into Cornwall, Wales and Scotland. The legend of King Arthur, a Celtic hero who resisted the Germanic invaders, probably dates from this period.
1.4 Anglo-Saxon England These three groups settled in different areas of Britain. The Jutes occupied the extreme south east (Kent), the Saxons the south central area (Wessex, Sussex, Essex) and the Angles the central and northern areas (Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria). In the eighth century they were joined (very much against their will) by Viking raiders who managed to establish themselves on the north east coast. Thus, from the outset English was by no means a unified language, but rather a group of closely related dialects akin to Low German and East and North Frisian on the continent. The marked dialect differences in England today have their roots in the original patterns of settlement. The Scandinavian element made itself felt most strongly in the north and is exemplified in dialect poetry like that of Robert Burns. A good number of common words in standard English are also of Scandinavian origin. Most prominent are the pronouns they, them, their. There are also a number of interesting word pairs that exist side by side in Scandinavian and English forms with similar, but differentiated meaning like skirt/shirt, dike/ditch, hale/whole. Other important words of Scandinavian origin dating from this period are: take (for OE niman), sky (for OE hemel), husband, fellow. The Celtic element in English is rather small only two words of ancient heritage are still in common use in the standard language: ass and bin. The Latin words introduced in the Old English period were mostly brought from the continent by the invaders. They include: street, mile, ancor, devil, dish, wine, sign, wall. With the Christianization of the of England additional church-related terms were introduced. These included: church, bishop, priest, abbot, monk, school. Interestingly, a number of terms were not borrowed, but translated so that OE has hælend, halga (cf. German Heiland, Heilige) for modern savior, saint.
1.5 The first literary language The first English literary language, Old English or Anglo-Saxon was established under the reign of King Alfred (871-899) and was based on West Saxon. Alfred had the most important works of theology, history and philosophy of his time translated into English from Latin and is even credited with doing some of the translating himself. In addition there is a substantial body of religious and heroic poetry in Old English that has come down to us in West Saxon versions (best known is the epic Beowulf). Remains of other Old English dialects are rather fragmentary.
1.6 The submergence of English After the Norman Conquest in 1066, English was replaced by Norman French (Old French) as the official language of the realm. This break in the English tradition has left a deep and lasting mark
-9- on the English language of today and accounts for its mixed character. This is rather neatly illustrated by comparing the English terms for farm animals and their meat with the German and French terms for the animals:
German Animal Meat French Kuh cow beef boeuf Kalb calf veal veau Schwein swine pork porc Lamm lamb mutton mouton
As the table shows, the names of the animals in English are of Germanic origin, while the terms for the meat derived from the animals is of French origin. This can be taken to reflect the social structure in Norman England, where the common folk spoke English and tended to the animals while the nobility spoke French and ate the meat. As we shall see, there is a deep split between the Germanic and the foreign (French, Latin, Greek) element in English, which affects not only the vocabulary, but the phonology of English as well. Although the vast majority of people in England continued to speak English, for a period of about three centuries after the Norman Conquest, French was the language of the schools, government, the law courts and the church. In short, most literate activity was conducted in French. Native speakers of English who wanted to “get ahead” had to learn French. Naturally they sent their children to French schools. The social situation could be roughly compared to Spanish dominance on the Iberian peninsula, French dominance in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium up till WWII or the English dominance in French-speaking Quebec (Canada) today.
1.7 The re-emergence of English The reestablishment of English as a national language was the result of a number of political and social developments. To begin with, Normandy was lost to the English crown in 1204, severing traditional economic, political and social ties between England and the Norman homeland on the continent. Moreover, there was a kind of backlash against French administrators and churchmen led by the English barons and the middle class. In 1258 the barons forced King Henry III to sign the Provisions of Oxford, guaranteeing certain baronial rights. This document was issued in English (along side French and Latin versions) and was the first public document in English in almost two hundred years. The final separation of the two nations and the two languages was settled in a series of conflicts known as the Hundred Year’s War (1337-1453). During this period French was clearly the language of the enemy and English gained in prestige.
-10- 1.8 The London standard The new literary standard that arose around the turn of the fourteenth century is best known through the works of Chaucer. It bears little resemblance to King Alfred’s Old English. Although the structure of the language is basically English, nearly half of the content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) are of French origin. The fact that these words were pronounced more or less as in French had profound consequences for English phonology. A second marked difference is one of dialect. While Alfred’s Old English was based on West Saxon, the new standard took the London dialect as its point of departure. There were two basic reasons for this development. First of all, London was the seat of government and the social and commercial center of England. This alone might have sufficed to establish its hegemony, but another factor was also very influential. The London dialect was by virtue of its geographic location well suited as a standard. The Southeast Midlands area occupied an intermediate position between northern and southern regions. Speakers of both regions could understand speakers of the central East Anglian dialect better than they could understand each other. Another factor worth mentioning is the introduction of printing. William Caxton established his press in London in 1476 and issued numerous books in the South Midlands dialect, which helped to establish it as a literary standard. It must not be thought that the new London standard (exemplified by Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales ca. 1400) was the language of all Englishmen. It started out as the language of the court, government and educated elite. Even a century after Chaucer, Caxton prefaces his translation of Vergil’s Aeneid (1490) with the statement that it “is not for a rude uplandish man to labor therein, nor read it, but only for a clerk and a noble gentleman” (modernized spelling).
1.9 The Renaissance In the two centuries that followed, the revival of interest in learning and the new possibilities for disseminating knowledge opened up by the printing press led to a veritable flood of books in English, including hundreds of translations of Greek and Latin works on history, politics, science and philosophy as well as the standard works of classical literature. Although great weight was placed on issuing these (and many original works) in the vernacular, it was considered fashionable, more elegant or perhaps just easier to import Latin and Greek vocabulary for the new technical and philosophical terminology required, rather than attempting to invent native English equivalents. (A similar phenomenon can be observed today in modern German, where thousands of Latin and Greek words began to flow into the language (via English) after the Second World War.) As a result large numbers of learned (Greek and Latin) words entered the English language affecting not only the vocabulary, but the phonology of English as well since the rules of Latin pronunciation (in modified form) were borrowed along with the words themselves.
-11- The different pronunciations of the letter c in electric, electricity, electrician as well as the shift stress from the second syllable in electric to the third syllable in electricity and electrician are due to the Latin pronunciation of these words, which are ultimately derived from Greek elektron ‘amber’.
The pronunciation of the learned vocabulary is the result of a complex fusion between native English, Old French and Renaissance Latin rules of phonology. It is also worth noting that the first English dicitionaries, published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were dictionaries of “hard words” not unlike the Duden Fremdwörterbuch. Gradually the London upperclass standard spoken by the landed gentry from all over the country, who spent their winters in London and educated their children with tutors who spoke the prestige London dialect, gained precedence.
1.10 Codification of the Received Pronunciation Although the South Midlands standard emerged at the beginning of the fifteenth century, it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that the spelling, grammar and pronunciation of English underwent standardization. We can mention three basic reasons for this development. First of all, the eighteenth century was The Age of Reason. Orderliness and regularity was on the intellectual agenda. The recognition of the fact that there are “laws of nature” underlying the apparent chaos of the universe gave impetus to the search for “laws” of grammar, orthography and pronunciation. If it was possible to precisely characterize the way the moon circled the earth, it must be possible to characterize the way English is or should be spoken. Secondly, it may be argued that standardization - at least in orthography - had become a dire necessity. Since English is not a language that is easily or consistently spelled the way it sounds (cf. the example in the previous section) and language change had removed the spoken language considerably from traditional orthography, spelling had become thoroughly chaotic. People even spelled their own names different ways on different occasions! Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) put an end to this state of affairs and correct (i.e., normalized, consistent) spelling was soon established as the mark of an educated person. Thirdly, deep-going social and economic changes affected England at this time. The rise of the new monied mercantile and industrial classes threatened the traditional status of the landed gentry. Since the nouveaux riches could acquire all the status symbols money could buy - servants, houses, furniture, etc. - the old aristocracy was forced to fall back on intangibles like its prestige dialect, in order to maintain its continuity. This led to flurries of activity on both sides of the class line - some attempting to establish the prestige standard, others attempting to teach it the rising middle class. Toward the end of the century John Walker published his Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791), which enjoyed great popularity. Robert Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) launched the
-12- “prescriptive” school of grammar teaching, which holds sway down to this very day. A more reasonable approach based on usage is advocated in the most popular American Grammar, Lindley Murray’s English Grammar, Adapted to the Different Classes of Learners (1795). The prestige dialect (or more accurately sociolect), often called the Received Pronuncia- tion (RP), became fixed as the speech of the upper class during the nineteenth century. The importance of being “well-spoken” for those who are eager for social advancement was satirized in G.B. Shaw’s play Pygmalian (1913) better known in the musical comedy version My Fair Lady. After the advent of the radio, RP was widely disseminated as “BBC-English” since the British Broadcasting Corporation recommended this form of nonregional pronunciation for its news readers. This form of educated Southern British English is the one most widely described in books on English phonetics and the one generally taught to foreigners. When we loosely refer to British English (BE) in this outline, we mean RP although the phenomena discussed for the most part characterize many other varieties of British English as well. In recent years, RP has been on the decline, perhaps because many people felt it to be a “posh” or snobbish and associated it with unwarranted social privilege. Some authorities believe that a new standard is arising - once again based on the colloquial speech of London.
2 American English The origins of American English (AE) are to be found in British English of the seventeenth century. The first permanent English-speaking colony in North America was established at Jamestown (Virginia) in 1607, the second at Plymouth (Massachusetts) in 1620. From these modest beginnings, the east coast of North America from present-day Maine to Georgia was successfully colonized within a period of 150 years. By 1890 the English language had established its hegemony from coast to coast although the native languages of America and the languages brought by settlers from continental Europe have to this day maintained an at least tenuous existence (with the exception of Spanish, which is expanding in influence and can lay claim to being a second language in many areas of the United States and French, which is widely spoken in Quebec in Canada).
2.1 Major dialect groups The origin of the American dialects remains something of a mystery. Attempts to trace the American dialects to dialect areas in England have not met with notable success. Indeed, the subjective reports of British travelers in America in the mid-eighteenth century note an astounding uniformity and “purity” of speech throughout the colonies, which suggests that whatever peculiarities of speech were imported from the Old Country had been leveled during the first century and a half of colonialization. Britishers’ complaints about the barbarism of American speech begin to appear in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, but these concern mostly the language of the frontier rather than
-13- the speech of the major cities of the East Coast. However the dialects arose, the East Coast of the United States from Maine to Georgia now exhibits a colorful pallet of dialects although these are not nearly as differentiated as the dialects of England. The major division is between the north-eastern New England dialects and the Mid-Atlantic dialects of the “Old South.” The southern dialect region extends to the west into Texas. In the central and northern areas we find a blurring of individual characteristics into what is often termed General American, the rather uniform dialect that covers most of the continent. Many attempts have been made to classify American dialects in detail, but we will adhere to the rather simple scheme proposed in Kenyon and Knott’s A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English (1953), distinguishing three major dialects: E (New England), S (South East and West), N (Middle West and West Coast) with the addition of NY for New York City, which is a complex linguistic world of its own. The areas covered by these regions are indicated on the map in the Appendix.
2.2 Black English In addition to the major dialect groups listed above another variety, Black English, should be mentioned. The origins of this form of speech have not been determined with certainty. Some investigators hold that Black English is not significantly different from the dialects spoken by poor southern whites. Others see it as a development of the pidgins and creoles spoken by African slaves on southern plantations. Whatever its origins, the migrations of the Black population which began around the time of WWI have carried this variety to northern cities, where it maintains its distinctive character.
2.3 The American standard Perhaps the most striking characteristic of American English is that there is no standard dialect like RP, based on the dialect of a particular dominant city or social group. The highly distinctive speech of major eastern cities like Boston, New York or Atlanta is often a source of good natured humor, but not of emulation for the rest of the country. Rather the tendency has long been one of creating and enforcing uniformity by avoiding local peculiarities in speech. This tendency was noted as early as 1784 by John Witherspoon, one of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence and later president of Princeton University in New Jersey. He wrote: “the vulgar [uneducated - R.B.] in America speak much better than the vulgar in Great Britain, for a very obvious reason, viz. that being much more unsettled, and moving frequently from place to place, they are not so liable to local peculiarities, either in accent or phraseology. There is a greater difference in dialect between one county and another in Britain, than there is between one state and another in America” (quoted in Krapp, The English Language in America, I,46). This statement rather aptly characterizes the situation prevailing today. Geographic (and social) mobility in America is high. And those who move from one dialect or sociolect to another tend to deny their origins rather than take on new marked characteristics. The ideal speaker of
-14- “neutral” American English is someone who sounds like he/she comes from somewhere else although one cannot be sure of exactly where.
2.4 Network English The “neutral” variety of English which we will be concerned with in this outline is often called “network” or “American Radio Announcer English” in view of the fact that this nonregional variety is used by the announcers and news readers of major radio and television networks. It is a “sanitized” version of the speaker’s native speech habits, an attempt to avoid “local peculiari- ties,” as Witherspoon put it. In contrast to “BBC-English” discussed above, network English is not felt to be an “upper class” form of speech. In the author’s case, the base dialect which has been purged of its local peculiarities is a variety of the middle class speech of New York City.
-15- Unit 2: The American Koiné
1 The early period The earliest English in America harkens back to the time of Shakespeare, d. 1616, and the Bible. By the Bible, we mean, of course, the contemporaneous King James version of 1611 – still the most popular protestant Bible translation in America. These dates correlate well with the foundation of the original English settlements – Jamestown (1608) and Plymouth (1620). There is, however, little of this early sixteenth century language in evidence in modern American English. As might be expected, the vocabulary of English in America was by needs expanded to include new words for new objects and concepts encountered by the settlers in North America. Many of these were borrowed from Native American languages, e.g., opossum, a small marsupial, from Algonquin words meaning ‘white + dog’ or skunk, Ger. ‘Stinktier’ from ‘urinate + fox-like animal’. This process continues well into the frontier period, where we find Spanish words like mesa ‘table’ for a peculiar geological formation – a flat-topped mountain or arroyo ‘creek or gully’ in an desert region. More interesting, however, are natural survivals of English vocabulary (not necessarily from Shakespearean times) that fell out of usage in Britain only to be proclaimed as Americanisms by British observers who found them unfamiliar.
2 A few words that British travelers found odd in American speech
1. bamboozle to deceive by underhanded means’ first appears in England (1703) and is attacked by English purists.
2. square a small city park’ appears in America in 1698, eleven years earlier in England.
3. fall autumn’ 4. immigration (England was a land of emigrants).
5. lynch to hang without benefit of judge and jury’ real Americanism (1820) from William Lynch, American vigilante. 6. fun (if the British didn’t even have the word, what did they do for amusement?)
These, of course, could be counterbalanced by many words that have survived in common usage in Britain, but are considered quaint or are largely unknown in America, e.g., a fortnight ‘two weeks’, porridge ‘hot cereal’, greengrocer ‘a dealer in fresh fruit and vegetables’. In addition, we can add common words that have diverged in meaning such as corn ‘grain’ in BE, but only ‘Indian corn’, ‘maize’ in AE or lumber ‘disused articles stored away in the lumber room’ in BE, ‘timber’ in AE. About this, we shall have more to say in the Unit on British and American vocabulary.
-16- Of considerably greater importance for emergence of American English is the formation of an American koiné.
3 What is a koiné A koiné is a common standard speech variety that replaces earlier dialects. The term was first applied to Hellenistic Greek (the language of the New Testament), which replaced the classical Greek dialects and served as the standard of communication in the Mediterranean basin following the conquests of Alexander the Great. The modern Greek dialects (with one small exception) are all derived from the Hellenistic Koiné. Similarly, many scholars believe that the American dialects are based on a koiné that was established in the original thirteen colonies in the eighteenth century and which survives today as Network English. Before exploring this further, we should take a closer look at our sources of information for the early history of American English.
4 Sources of information on early American English Clearly, we have no sound recordings of colonial English so we must rely on written sources. There are three different kinds of sources we can draw from: rhymes and misspellings, technical descriptions, travelers’ reports.
4.1 Rhymes and misspellings Spelling tends to be conservative. While the sounds of a language may change, the way the words are written may not. Rhymes in poems and misspelled words that depart from spelling conventions offer some insight into actual pronunciation. For example, if a poem rhymes weight with late, we can assume that the poet pronounced these words as we do today, i.e, the vowels represented by
4.2 Technical descriptions Although professional linguists are a rather modern phenomenon (going back only 150 years or so), over the centuries, a number of investigators have been interested in how people speak, or should speak. Their attempts to describe the sounds of the spoken language independently of the
-17- conventional spelling also provides invaluable information. For American English, the efforts of Benjamin Franklin and Noah Webster in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are particularly valuable. We will return to this under our discussion of American spelling.
4.3 Literary sources Authors of works of fiction often try to capture the sound of real dialog by altering the conventional spelling. The “local color” authors of the second half of the nineteenth century (Mark Twain is the best known) are a good source for American dialects. In the introduction to Huckleberry Finn, Twain explains to the reader:
In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest formof the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.
Some of the earliest records of Arican-American speech are also found in literary sources. We will discuss this under Black English, below.
4.4 Travelers’ reports During the period 1750 to 1850, a good number of intrepid British travelers visited North America and reported on the people and the customs. Some attention was also paid to the American language and these early travelers’ reports are a prime source of information about the American Koiné and the later speech of the frontier. The impressions of these travelers, who were not trained observers, tend to be somewhat subjective. We can, nevertheless, sift out considerable information from them. Here is a selection from the last part of the eighteenth century (taken from Allen Walker Read, “British Recognition of American Speech in the Eighteenth Century”):
1. William Eddis (June 8, 1770) The language of the immediate descendants of such a promiscuous ancestry is perfectly uniform, and unadulterated; nor has it borrowed any provincial, or national accent, from its British or foreign parentage. . . . . This uniformity of language prevails not only on the coast, where Europeans form a considerable mass of the people, but likewise in the interior parts, where the population has made but slow advances; and where opportunities seldom occur to derive any great advantages from an intercourse with intelligent strangers.
-18- 2. Rev. Jonathan Boucher (1777) It is still more extraordinary that, in North America, there prevails not only, I believe, the purest pronunciation of the English tongue that is anywhere to be met with, but a perfect uniformity.
3. Nicholas Creswell (1777) They [the inhabitants of the American colonies] in general speak better English than the English do. No country or colonial dialect is to be distinguished here, except it be the New Englanders, who have a sort of whining cadence that I cannot describe.
4. Rev. James Adams (1799) The Anglo-Americans speak English with great classical purity. Dialect in general is here less prevalent, except among the poor slaves.
5. London editor of Ramsay’s History of the American Revolution (1782) It is a curious fact, that there is perhaps no one portion of the British empire, in which two or three millions of persons are to be found, who speak their mother-tongue with greater purity, or a truer pronunciation, than the white inhabitants of the United States. . . . This was attributed by a penetrating observer to the number of British subjects assembled in America from various quarters, who in consequence of their intercourse and intermarriages, soon dropped the peculiarities of their several provincial idioms, retaining only what was fundamental and common to them all; a process which the frequency or rather the universality of school-learning in North America, must naturally have assisted.
6. John Harriot (1793) [American English is] better spoken by the whole mass of people, from Georgia to Quebec (an extent of more than 1200 miles,) than by the bulk of people in the different counties of England.
7. John Witherspoon (1784) The vulgar [uneducated - R.B.] in America speak much better than the vulgar in Great Britain, for a very obvious reason, viz. that being much more unsettled, and moving frequently from place to place, they are not so liable to local peculiarities, either in accent or phraseology. There is a greater difference in dialect between one county and another in Britain, than there is between one state and another in America.”
Commentary:
1. Good English = English without recognizable social or geographic features (cf. the British social pyramid).
-19- 2. The slaves - Two of the above statements limit “good English” to the white population. The slaves - according to one theory - spoke Plantation Creole, the ancestor of Black English. In any case, it is clear that they did not speak the Koiné.
3. Harriot includes Georgia (now Southern dialect region) in the koiné area, suggesting that the now prominent Southern dialect did not yet exist. 4. Creswell was not the only commentator to complain about the “whining cadence” of the New Englanders. Perhaps the Eastern dialect region was already established, at least among the “rustic” population.
5. Noah Webster recommending his American Spelling Book and Grammar to the New York State Legislature in 1783 asserts that his book is “calculated to exirpate the improprieties and vulgarisms which were necessarily introduced by settlers from various parts of Europe . . . [and] render the pronunciation of [the language] accurate and uniform by demolishing those odious distinctions of provincial dialects which are the subject of reciprocal ridicule in different states.”
5 Where does a standard come from? There are various possibilities for the establishment of a standard:
1. Political and economic conquest as in the case of the original koiné that was installed by Alexander’s armies or Parisian French, which has mostly suppressed the French dialects.
2. Through a “leveling” of local peculiarities, where no one city could assert dominance as some assume for American English.
3. Through informal agreement as a matter of convenience as was the case in German, where the dialect of Upper Saxony gained ascendence because it was “central” and most widely understood.
4. Through formal language planning as was the case with Serbo-Croatian or Yiddish.
In the German-speaking area, the standard exists side by side with the regional dialects, which have been in place for more than a thousand years, (except in the north, where it has largely supplanted Low German). In America, the regional dialects are presumed to have arisen from the koiné as in Greece, but in a very short period of time (Dillard’s interpretation, see Someday Reading at the end of this book). In any case, specific sources in England for Boston or New York or Atlanta speech are
-20- not identifiable. Particularly Harriot’s testimony (including Georgia) seems to indicate that the “southern accent” did not yet exist at the end of the eighteenth century. The emergence of a common form of speech is not difficult to explain. The fact that no area of emigration from England nor any colonial city was able to impose its speech on the rest of the English speaking area and, most of all, the mobility of the population could have led to the elimination of localisms preserving what was common to all varieties of American speech. Somewhat more difficult to explain is convergence between the American koiné and the upperclass British standard that was formed during the course of the eighteenth century. Supporting evidence for the existence of such a British-American standard comes from the fact that Network English agrees with RP in a number of crucial points where the British dialects depart from the standard. Eliza Doolittle’s “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain” is quite superfluous as a pronunciation exercise in America since everyone pronounces rain, Spain and plain as in RP. The same is true for the development of short-u in words like cup and bush, where Network has the same vowels as RP. This indicates that a leveling took place in America in favor of the British prestige dialect. This would explain both the uniformity of American speech and the remarks to the effect that the Americans spoke better English than the British. A similar situation is found in parts of north Germany, e.g., Hannover, where Network German has supplanted Hessian dialect. The Hannoveraner, as we all know, speak better “Hochdeutsch” than the high Germans themselves. An alternate interpretation (McDavid) assumes that the dialects were established by the time of the revolution and that the travelers’ reports refer to the “relative” homogeneity of American speech as compared to the extreme dialect differences encountered in England. If we accept Dillard’s interpretation, the American koiné survived the development of the dialects along the eastern seaboard as a form of “educated speech.” Later it formed the basis of the Northern or General American dialect, which covers about two thirds of the country. It’s modern form is “Network English,” which was established with the advent of radio in the 1920’s.
6 British Travelers Objections to American English Although, as we have seen, British travelers were impressed by the “classical purity” of American English up till the end of the eighteenth century, this attitude changed radically by the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century. From about 1825 on, they were impressed by the barbarousness of American English. Thomas Hamilton (Men and Manners in America, 1833) reports on the American language as he encountered it on a trip made in 1830:
Even by this educated and respectable class, the commonest words are often so transmogrified as to be placed beyond the recognition of an Englishman. The word does is split into two syllables, and pronounced do-es. Where, for some incomprehensible
-21- reason, is converted into whare, there into thare; and I remember, on mentioning to an acquaintance that I had called on a gentleman of taste in the arts, he asked, “Whether he shew (showed) me his pictures.” Such words as oratory and dilatory, are pronounced with the penult syllable, long and accented; missionary becomes missiona-iry; angel, a-i- ngel; danger, da-i-nger, &c.
Analysis:
1. This is probably a reference to the “southern drawl,” which lengthens and diphthongizes
¥ ¡ even short vowels, appx. [ ¡ ]
2. The where - whare, there - thare correspondencies - typical of southern dialect. This may be a British dialect feature. In Anglo-Norman and hence in Middle English, Latin -er appears -ar- ,e.g. Lat. mercator, ME marchaunt, Lat. persona, ME persoune, parsoun (cf. modern person - parson, clerk - clark, Berkeley, Barclay).
3. Shew is simply an archaic past tense of show, as knew is to know.
4. The modern BE pronunciation of words like oratory, dilatory elides the penultimate
syllable. They say: orat’ry, dilat’ry. For British ears the still normal conservative AE
¢ £ ¤ ¥ § ¢ ¦ pronunciation / § /with a secondary accent on the penult sounded “long and accented.” (See the discussion in Unit 3 on the differences between AE and BE
pronunciation.)
§ ¥
5. Da-i-nger, a-i-ngel: This is still heard in southern mountain dialects. Presumably / ¦ / for §
/ ¥ /. This is characteristic of the mountain “twang.”
The text continues:
But this is not all. The Americans have chosen arbitrarily to change the meaning of certain old and established English words, for reasons which they cannot explain, and which I doubt much whether any European philologist could understand. The wordclever affords a case in point. It has here no connexion with talent, and simply means pleasant or amiable. Thus, a good-natured blockhead in the American vernacular, is a clever man, and having had this drilled into me, I foolishly imagined that all trouble with regard to this word at least, was at an end. It was not long, however, before I heard of a gentleman having moved into a cleaver house, of another succeeding to a cleaver sum of money, of a third embarking in a cleaver ship and making a cleaver voyage, with a cleaver cargo, and of the sense attached to the word in these various combinations, I could gain nothing like a satisfactory explanation.
-22- Analysis: Hamilton seems to have caught onto a passing fad word. Foreigners are particularly sensitive to this sort of thing, e.g., my disgust at the BBC’s use of the word fresh (as in fresh milk and fresh
flowers) to mean new’ as in “fresh fighting has broken out in Bosnia” or “fresh disagreements have emerged in the cabinet.” Fad words are like tattoos or platform shoes – minor cultural phenomena that suddenly become all the rage and then quickly return to their former status. Interestingly, Webster confirms Hamilton’s observations in his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828):
In New England, good-natured, possessing an agreeable mind or disposition. In Great Britain, this word is applied to the body or its movements, in its literal sense; in America, it is applied chiefly to the mind, temper, disposition. In Great Britain, a clever man is a dextrous man, one who performs and act with skill or address. In New-England, a clever man is a man of a pleasing obliging disposition, and amiable manners, but often implying a moderate share of talents. Fitness, suitableness, gives both senses analogically; the former applied to the body; the latter, to the mind, or its qualities. It is a colloquial word, but sometimes found in respectable writings.
In some of the United States, it is said this word is applied to the intellect, denoting ingenious, knowing, discerning.
Hamilton continues:
The privilege of barbarizing the King’s English is assumed by all ranks and conditions of men. Such words as slick, kedge, and boss, it is true are rarely used by the better orders; but they assume unlimited liberty in the use of “expect,” “reckon,” “guess,” “calculate,” and perpetrate conversational anomalies with the most remorseless impunity. It were easy to accumulate instances, but I will not go on with this unpleasant subject . . . .
Analysis:
1. Slick, meaning smooth’ goes back to the 14th c. As a term of general approval, it was common in popular American speech up till the 1920s. 2. Kedge, meaning “brisk, livel, in good spirits” first appears in 1440 and is listed by the OED as an East Anglian dialect word. It is attested for N. America by H. Murray’s Historical Acccount of Discoveries and Travels in North America (1829). The word is not in Webster’s Collegiate, but it is in Webster’s unabridged 3 ed. . 3. Boss from Du. baas, entered the language in 1679 according to Webster. J. Flint remarks (1822) that the American workingman does not know the word “Master,” substituting the word boss of Dutch origin. If the finer folk didn’t use the word, perhaps because they
-23-
didn’t have one. The word boss may have been introduced to distinguish between
employer of a wage worker’ and slave master’. The wordmaster being understood only in the latter sense. Since Great Britain confined slavery to its colonies, there was no problem with using the word master. When speaking about a qualification, master is used in AE in the sense of German Meister: master plumber, master electrician, etc. 4. reckon, guess, calculate are further hedges. Only guess is colloquial today (along with figure and suppose) “That’s all right, I guess.” This is less assertive and takes less responsibility than “That’s all right!” Calculate is no longer used in this sense and reckon is considered provincial.
The text continues:
I feel it something of a duty to express the natural feeling on an Englishman, at finding the language of Shakespeare and Milton thus gratuitously degraded. Unless the present progress of change can be arrested, by an increase of taste and judgment in the more educated classes, there can be no doubt that, in another century, the dialect of the Americans will become utterly unintelligible to an Englishman.
Fortunately this was a bit exaggerated. Thanks to Hollywood, American speech is well understood in Great Britain.
7 Frontier English Up until the American Revolution, the English-speaking settlement of North America was pretty much confined to the area along the coast east of the Appalachian Mountains extending from Georgia to the present-day Canadian Maritime Provinces. After the Revolution, white settlers began to move west. Later (in the second half of the nineteenth century, the English speaking settlers began to move east. Around the year 1890 the frontier disappeared. The entire continent north of Mexico was settled (however sparsely) by English speakers. Several different groups met at the frontier:
1. Emigrants from various parts of Great Britain, speaking varied British dialects. 2. Emigrants from various parts of Europe, speaking “foreign” languages (like German). 3. Industrious “Easteners,” shopkeepers, ministers, teachers, journalists as well as land- hungry farmers. This group included many “educated” speakers of the koiné. 4. Native American Indians, speaking a large number of mutually incomprehensible languages. 5. African-Americans, speaking Plantation Creole as well as koiné. 6. Spanish speakers.
-24- 7.1 Pidgins and Creoles A pidgin is a simplified form of speech used largely for purposes of trade among people who speak different languages. The interesting thing about pidgin is that it typically has features that are not common to any of the languages from which it is derived. A creole is a pidgin learned by children as their native language. Creoles also typically have features that are not contained in the pidgins from which they are derived.
7.2 Black English and Frontier English Black slaves developed English-based pidgins since they were culturally and linguistically mixed and had no common African language. The origins of Black English go back to Portuguese-based West-African pidgin, which was widely used as a trade language in the areas where the slaves were kidnapped for transportation to America. Communication between Native Americans and whites on the Frontier also produced a pidgin, which is more or less faithfully recorded in western novels and films. Some characteris- tics:
1. been as past tense marker. Him been go He went’.
2. -um transitive verb marker. Him drinkum fire water He drinks alcohol.’
3. heap big intensifier. Heap big chief important leader’.
Contact between Blacks and Native Americans also involved pidgins, but nothing certain is known
other than the peculiar fact that a number of common western “slang” terms seem to be of
Romance, but not Spanish origin. These include terms like savvy smart’, understand’, lasso
snare’, buckaroo cowboy’, vamoose get lost’. These terms could come from Spanish sabe,
lazo, vaquero, vamos, but palaver talk’ cannot be from Spanish (cf. palabra), but must come from Port. palavra speech’. Similarly, galoot, common fellow’ is most likely from It. galeotto
galley slave’. These words are probably from the West African and Caribbean Pidgin known to the slaves and transmitted by them to the Frontier.
7.3 Pidgin and Frontier English The Frontier whites apparently spoke a language that was no more strange. Colonel R.B. Marcy recorded this bit of dialog with a Texas hostess in 1866:
Wall now, stranger, my ole man he ar out on a bar track, but I sort-o-reckon maybe you mought get to stay . . . . that thar war narry shaw of vittles in the house barrin some sweet taters and a small chance of corn.” What my name mought be,” “she knowed a heap of Massys (Marcy) in ole Massasip. . .
me an him allers lowed that them thar Massys was considdible on bar and other varmits.”
-25-
Analysis:
1. ole man (old man) still current slang for husband’ or father’. Ole lady is current for
mother’.
2. bar bear’ cf. whar - where (see comments on Hamilton above). 3. sort o’ hedge - still current. (He was sort o’ big = medium to big). 4. reckon (see above – comments on Hamilton). 5. mought (archaic past tense of may). 6. thar, war (see 2 above).
7. narry (never a) not a’ also in BE 8. shaw probably from pshaw, an interjection indicating belittlement (‘Geringschätzung’).
9. vittles (victuals) pron. from OFr. spelling from Lat. provisions, food’.
10. barrin (barring) except for’ still current usage.
11. taters potatoes’ 12. chance ‘quantity’ fronteer usage first attested in 1805. D. Thomas (1819) Travels Through the Western Country in 1816, notes that “a considerable quantity is expressed by a ‘smart chance’.”
13. heap o’ many’ possible influence by Native American pidgin.
14. Massasip Mississippi’. Identifies southern origin of speaker.
15. allers ‘llowed (‘always allowed’). Allow admit’, maintain’. 16. them thar (those). The same construction in Swed. dem där.
17. varmits (‘varmints’ - alternate form of vermin) animal pest’.
This form of speech is clearly not derived by divergence from the standard (like Southern dialect), nor is it the result of creolization. It is an example of what is often called “Appalachian English.” This is the development of British dialects that arrived much later and developed in relative isolation in the Appalachian mountains that form the western border of the original English settlement. Later settlers from this region spread out to the south and south-west. (Our Texas housewife mentions that her family comes from Mississippi.) Appalachian speech still exists in Appalachian mountains and has blended with Southern dialect to produce a distinctive variety of “nonstandard” American speech that can be heard throughout the southern third of the United States.
-26- Unit 3: British and American Pronunciation
1 Introduction The following is a short list of some of the major differences between German, American and British pronunciation. The idea behind the compilation is that unknown difficulties cannot be overcome and, due to a peculiarity of our educational system, school leavers (high school graduates) go out into the world knowing more about the surface of the moon than what happens in their mouths when they speak. The information presented here is based on the author’s Outline of American Phonetics and Phonology.
2 Standard Dialects In America and Great Britain (not to mention other English speaking regions) a large number of varieties of “English” are spoken. The situation in Britain is very similar to that in Germany - with strong regional differences in pronunciation. The major difference is that speaking with a regional accent in Great Britain is not “socially acceptable” as it is in Germany. In general, the higher an individual rises on the socio-economic ladder the more his/her speech conforms to the prestige standard (Received Pronunciation - RP). In America, dialects play a much smaller role than in Germany or Great Britain. About two-thirds of the country speaks the Northern or General American Dialect. In the north east (Maine to Massachusetts), the Eastern Dialect is spoken. The Southern Dialect Region covers a broad belt from Delaware to Texas. In general, the differences in pronunciation in American English are not as large as those encountered in Great Britain or Germany. The standard speech form in the United States is Network English - so-called because it is the dialect adopted by radio and TV network news readers. It’s major distinguishing feature is that it is geographically neutral. As with RP, speakers of this dialect cannot be located geographically because they have no local peculiarities in their speech. Unlike RP, Network English is not considered a “snob” dialect.
3 The major differences between German and English We will start our survey by contrasting the sounds of Newtwork German with those of Network American English. In a second run through, we will contrast Network American English with the British standard – the Received Pronunciation.
-27- 3.1 The Consonants
3.2 Overview of the English consonants The following chart gives an overview of the English consonants using the IPA transcription found in most modern dictionaries:
English Consonants
¥ ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¥ ¥ ¦
voiceless
¡ ¨ © ¡ ¡ ¢ voiced §
stops fricatives affricates liquids nasals glides
obstruents sonorants
Unfamiliar symbols:
¥
£ thin church
then vision judge song
A more detailed classification of the English and German consonants is given in the Reference section at the end of this outline. Problems with English consonants can be divided into to general and specific problem areas. In the following, we will first consider the general and then the specific considerations.
3.3 Tense vs. Lax In northwest German and British and American English there is an important distinction made between tense and lax consonants. The tense consonants (which are also voiceless) are pronounced with considerably more muscle tension in the vocal organs and more air pressure from the lungs. In south Germany, this distinction tends to be neutralized and the major difference between sounds pairs like /s/ and /z/ is one of voicing and not tenseness.
For Anglo-American ears, however, tenseness and not voicing is essential. A lax /s/ sounds like a /z/.
-28- 3.4 The Final Devoicing Rule German has a final devoicing rule which makes all obstruents (consonants pronounced with obstruction of the air stream, i.e., stops, fircatives and affricates) voiceless at end of a word or
before a morpheme boundary. Cf.
¡ ¢ £
Liebe / /
¡
lieb / /
¡ ¤ ¥ lieblich / /
Carrying this habit over into English can have disastrous consequences. A word like said /sed/ comes out sounding like set /set/.
Be careful to maintain full voicing of English obstruents in final position.
3.5 The “th”-sounds English has two sounds spelled
3.6 The “sh”-sound
Both German and English have the sound / /. Although the dictionaries use the same symbol to transcribe this sound in both languages, there is in fact quite a difference between the two.
German / / is pronounced with rounded lips and a grooved tongue. Its English counterpart is pronounced with spread lips and a flat tongue. On the whole the English sound is rather closer
to German / ¥ /.
¨ §
3.7 The voiced sounds / § / and / /
The voiced sounds / / and / / are foreign to German and only occur in a few loan words like
Journalist or Dschungel. There is a tendency for German speakers to substitute their voicelss
counterparts / / and / / in both German and English!
3.8 The liquid /l/ English has two l-sounds - neither of which is identical to German /l/. The so-called light-l [l] is pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar (gum) ridge (rather than the back of the teeth as in German). In addition, the tongue is slightly grooved and the lips lightly rounded
-29- in English, whereas German has a flat tongue and spread lips. Light-l occurs at the beginning of a word (after an optional consonant) (cf. flight, light, plate, late, etc.).
Dark-l [ ] occurs after a vowel (cf. bill, tell, pull). In American English this is true even if another vowel follows as in follow, Philip, pulling. (Compare British English below.)
Dark-l is pronounced with the with the tip of the tongue turned up and the root of the tongue retracted. It is close in sound to the /r/.
3.9 The Liquid /r/ The famous r-sound is made by rolling up the sides of the tongue, rasing the tip toward the roof of the mouth, retracting the root of the tongue and rounding the lips. As mentioned above, it is similar to dark-l, the major differences being stronger lip rounding and a much higher position of the tip of the tongue.
In American English, /r/ is pronounced wherever it is written - either as the consonant sound /r/
¢ £ or the vowel sound / ¡ / or / / (see below).
3.10 The Glide /w/ In German, historical /w/ has become /v/, still written
3.11 The Glottal Stop / ¤ / The glottal stop is not actually a speech sound in either English or German (in the same way that
/b/ or /s/ is), but it nevertheless plays a significant role in German pronunciation because it is
¦ §
inserted at the beginning of a word starting with a vowel or after prefixes as in Iß auch was / ¥
¨ © ¨ § ¥ ¨ ¦ ¦ § ¥ / or Ereignis / /. This gives German its particularly “crisp “ sound, which is extremely annoying when carried over to English.
4 The vowels Vowel sounds are much more difficult to describe than consonants because they are not produced with stoppage or friction and are consequently difficult to “feel.” In addition, vowels are not discrete sounds but points in a continuum.
-30- You can try this yourself by pronouncing the vowel sound in Eng. beat or Germ, biet(e). Notice that your lips are spread and your tongue is about as high and forward as it can go without causing friction in the air stream. Now, keeping your tongue forward, slowly open your mouth as wide as it will go. You will hear a unbroken continuum of sound from the vowel of Eng.beat to bat. Now return to your starting point and pull your tongue back without opening your mouth. Your lips will automatically round and you will produce a vowel like Eng. do or Germ. du. Keeping your tongue back, you can once again open your mouth as wide as it will go, producing a spectrum of vowels between the starting point and the vowel of Eng. father or Germ. Vater. Given the up ~ down, front ~ back mobility of the tongue, vowels can be placed at any point on the two dimensional surface bounded by the four corner points we have experimentally determined. This is the basis of the Cardinal Vowel system devised by Daniel Jones at the beginning of the last century. Since the distance between the corner vowels is rather large, Jones added for arbitrary mid-points front and back to make a set of eight “cardinal vowels.” These vowels act as universal points of orientation to facilitate the description of the real vowels of any given language. The chart shows the cardinal vowels with the real vowels of modern English superim- posed.
One additional parameter is necessary to indicate the quality of a given vowel – lip rounding. As
indicated above, front vowels and the back vowel [ ] are normally pronounced with spread lips
£ ¢ in most of the world’s languages, while the back vowels [ ¡ , , ] have increasing lip rounding as you move the tongue up. Some languages also have vowels with reverse lip rounding – front rounded, or back unrounded vowels. Jones provided a set of “secondary” cardinal vowels for this eventuality. For
-31-
¡ ¢ £ German, we only need the four front rounded vowels [ , , , ]. These are like the “normal”
vowels with the same tongue position, but are pronounced with rounded lips. (See table below.)
§ §
¥ ¦ ¤ ¦
liegen ‘lie’ lügen ‘lie’ ¤
¦ © § ¡ © § ¨
Minze ‘mint’ Münze ‘coin’ ¨
§ § ¢ © §
¦ ¤ ¦
lesen ‘read’ lösen ‘dissolve’ ¤
§ £ § ¨ Mächte ‘might’ möchte ‘might’ ¨
5 The English vowels The following chart gives the English vowels with key words:
Key Words for Vowels
¥
/ ¥ /
¦
¦
/ /
¦
¦
/ /
/ /
/ /
£
£
/ /
/ © /
£
¢ ©
¢ § ©
/ /
¡
¡
/ /
¨ §
/ ¨ /
/ /
§
¨ ©
/ § /
¡ ¢
¡ ¢ ¡
/ /
£
¡ ¢ £ §
/ ¨ /
¨ ¦
¨ ¦
/ /
¨ ©
¨ ©
/ /
¡ ¦
¡ ¦
/ /
§
§ / r/
-32- As with the consonants, we can distinguish between general and specific problems of pronuncia- tion. Once again we will begin with the general problems.
5.1 Diphthongization of Tense Vowels
£
¦ ¢ © The tense vowels /i / are not pure vowels like their German counterparts /i:,e:,u:,o:/, but rather combinations of a vowel plus a glide. This is one of the most important distinctions between English and German pronunciation.
5.2 Vowel Length
£
¢ ¢
In German tense vowels / ¥ /are long when accented, their lax counterparts
© ¡ ¢ ¡ ¨ / ¦ / are always short. In English vowel length depends on the following segment. If a vowel is in final position or followed by a voiced consonant it is long. If it is followed by a voiceless consonant, it is short. Compare the length of the vowels inbeat bead be. The same is
true for the vowel in diphthongs. Compare the length of /a/ in write, ride.
¡
¢ ¤ After sonorants / ¨ / the vowel is naturally long (since these are voiced consonants). However, the vowel is shortened if a voiceless consonant follows the sonorant. Compare pence (short), pens (long), core (long), course (short).
5.3 The Schwas A major pronunciation problem is presented by the central vowels (schwas). These sounds occur
in German, but only in unaccented position and without r-coloring as in the final sounds of eine
¦ § ¨ ¦ / ¨ / and einer / /.
American English has four schwas (two accented and two unaccented) as illustrated by the
following words:
© § ¨ ©
bud / / about / /
¡ ¢ ¦ £ £
bird / / maker / ¨ /
Germans tend to substitute the low back vowel / / or the accented schwa.
5.4 The vowel / ¤ / Only people with a strong German accent substitute /e/ for /æ/. The proper pronunciation of /æ/ can be achieved by saying /e/ and then lowering the jaw slightly.
-33-
¡ ¢ 5.5 The diphthongs / / and / / This are quite similar in German and English. In English, however, the front vowel is much longer than the following glide, whereas in German the two components of the diphthong are of about
equal length. Compare: mein - mine, Haus - house. ¡
5.6 The diphthong / £ / ¦
The diphthong / ¡ / as in boy is similar to the German sound spelled
6 Major Differences in Pronunciation Between the British and American Standard
6.1 Intonation The intonation of AE is rather “flat and monotonous” as compared to RP. For this reason, British speakers sound rather excited to Americans and Americans sound rather disinterested and “lazy” to British speakers. American intonation is very close to German intonation.
6.2 Rhythm
In long words, the basic rhythm of AE alternates full and reduced syllables.
¥
¤ § § ¥
Ex.: Tennessee / /
¥
¡
£ § ¤ § ¡ Arkansas / /
In other words, the syllables preceding and following the accented syllable are reduced, while those two or more syllables removed from the accent are full (a number of other factors play a
role here as well). Compare the pronunciation of Birmingham:
¥
¦
¡ ¢ ¦ ¢ ¤ ¨
/ ¨ / in Alabama
¥
¡ ¦ ¢ § ¨ / ¨ / in England
In BE there tends to be one accent and the syllable two to the right of the accent is syncopated
(left out) before -ry:
¥
¡ ¡
§ ¤
¥
§
Ex.: temporary AE / ¨ /
¥
¡ ¡
¦
§
BE / ¨ /
¥
¡
§ § ¤
¥
cemetery AE / ¨ /
¥
¡
§ § ¦
BE / ¨ /
-34-
¥
¡ ¡
¡ § ¤ ¡ ¥
dormitory AE / ¨ /
¥
¡ ¡
¡ § ¦ BE / ¨ /
In this feature, American English is clearly more conservative than British: If the syllable had been added in American it wouldn’t be written in British. Furthermore, the “extra syllable” is found in the Latin original, temporarius, cemeterium, dormitorium. Thanks to Thomas Hamilton’s comments, we know that the British pronunciation goes back at least to 1833.
6.3 Prefixed verbs Following the Germanic pattern (cf. Ger. Urlaub vs. erlauben), both BE and AE have a number of two syllable words which are accented on the second syllable when used as verbs and on the first when used as nouns or adjectives.
Ex.: récord n. recórd v.
AE can have the accent on the first syllable in a number of words, where BE preserves the original pattern:
Ex.: import increase access export decrease dictate conflict recess migrate
6.4 Sometimes accent shift is associated with differences in meaning: Ex.: AE to díscount goods to discóunt a rumor
AE/BE to détail troops to detaíl a plan
AE áddress/addréss where you live’
addréss a speech’
6.5 Individual sounds
6.6 Flapped-t and d in AE Between vowels (or more precisely between an accented vowel and another vowel or /r,l,m/), AE has a flapped variety of t, d, which is very similar to BE [ ¡ ] (see above). Here BE has normal
-35-
¡ ¡ stops / /, / /. In most AE dialects t and d fall together into a voiced sound [ ¢ ] so that the flaps in writer and rider are identical. The difference in vowel length (long vowel before voiced
sounds) is, however, maintained. Other dialects of AE maintain separate voiced and voiceless
¡
£ ¢ flaps [ ¢ and [ ]. Examples:
pretty biddy mettle medal liter leader latter ladder
6.7 BE and AE /l/ Light-l occurs before vowels initially in BE and AE:
Ex.: light, flight, plight
In addition, light-l occurs between vowels in BE:
¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ ©
Ex.: follow me £
¤ ¥ § fill it up £
AE has dark-l between vowels.
¤ ¥ ©
Ex.: follow me £
¤ ¥ fill it up £
Both AE and BE have dark-l after vowels as in full and syllabically as in the second l in little,
but the AE dark-l is darker than the BE variety.
¤
The postvocalic dark dark-l causes “breaking” - the insertion of a centering glide £ after tense
¤ ¨ § ¤ ¨ § ¤ ¨
£ £
vowels so that pool /pul/ is actually pronounced £ / /, ; pale / / and
© § ¤ © ¨ £ pole / / . There is a similar breaking before /r/ (see the next point).
6.8 /r/ The basic difference between BE and AE /r/ is that BE only pronounces /r/ when it is followed
by a vowel, whereas AE pronounces /r/ everywhere it is written.
¡ ¡
Ex.: card AE / / BE / /
© ¨ tower AE / © / BE / /
-36-
This rule applies across word boundaries:
© ¥ © Ex.: far out AE / ¥ / BE / /
In BE this is called the “linking-r.”
In addition BE laxes the high tense vowels /i,u/ before /r/ so that fear and pure are pronounced
¥ ¨ © ¨ ¥ [ £ and [ ], cf. AE [ ] and [ ].
(Notice that the r-dropping rule in BE is is essentially the same as the rule for standard German! In both German and BE r-dropping is considered “elegant.” Both languages have dialects that do not drop r’s. These are considered provincial or vulgar. By contrast, AE dialects thatdo drop their r’s are considered provincial or vulgar!)
R-dropping is described by observers as characteristic of London speech in the second half of the eighteenth century. Since it is also characteristic of the dialects along the eastern coast of North America, there is a good chance that it was also a feature of the koiné. The present custom of pronouncing r wherever it is written would then have arisen as a “spelling pronunciation.”
6.8.1 Flapped-r in BE
¡ ¡
¤ ¤ ¡ £ BE sometimes has a flapped-r £ between vowels. Thus a word likecarry sounds almost like AE caddy with a flapped-d (see below).
6.8.2 r-Dissimilation in AE
In AE, the first r is often dropped before another r in the same word:
¨ £
surprise / ¢ /
¤ ¤
¥ ¥ ¨ ¦
February / ¥ /, / /
¨ © governor / § /
6.8.3 Provincial-r in AE
In provincial AE dialects VrV = V
¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨
American / ¨ // /
§ ¢ ¥ ¨ £ ¥ ¨ £ ¥ / / / /
-37- This tends to be identified with xenophobia although certainly not all “real Americans” who use
this pronunciation hate “foreigners.” ¡ 6.8.4 The New York City Pronunciation of / /
Once considered “typical” of New York City (cf. old films of the thirties and forties), the
£ ¤ ¥ ¦ § pronunciation of standard / ¢ / / /, rendered in print as “oi” (e.g., I doitied my doiby on the coib at toity toid sreet ¨ I dirtied my derby on the curb at Thirty-Third Street’), is now obsolete. A similar pronunciation was typical of the Atlantic seaboard. This pronunciation was always considered substandard.
6.9 Short-o in BE and AE
In words like not, hot, bottom AE has a characteristically unrounded / © / the same vowel as in
father, while BE has a rounded variety / /. Historically, these are both derived (mostly) from
Middle English short-o / /. In the middle of the seventeenth century (according to Gimson), this
vowel was lengthened before /f, ,s/. The long vowels remained / / in AE (e.g., off, moth, loss)
while the short vowel unrounded to / © /. Two Dutch loan words also show this distribution: dollar from Du. daler and boss from Du. baas. (Notice that the original vowel in baas was
rounded before /s/.)
Before / /, written o is also usually / / in “older words” like song, long, belong. But, note King
Kong, congo, bongo. Here o is the only available spelling for / © /.
Lengthening of short-o also took place before the velar fricative /x/ (spelled
¤ ¥ ¤ ¥
became silent. This accounts for the pronunciation of caught / / cot / /.
Before /r/, either / / or / / may appear: foreign / / or / /. But, before r+C it is always
rounded, e.g., lord / /.
An absolute and mysterious exception is the word dog, which is pronounced / /although log,
frog, hog, bog, etc. are all pronounced with / /.
As a rule of thumb, we can say that short-o is pronounced / / before the voiceless fricatives
! " ! # $ / /, historical /x/ (spelled
-38- of common two-syllable words with / /: coffee, coffin, office. The rounded vowel is also used before r + V as in foreign, florist (unrounding possible) and before r + C as in lord, morbid (always rounded).
Just when this “American unrounding” took place is difficult to determine, especially since
authorities and dictionary writers apparantly frowned on the pronunciation / / for short-o and refused to recognize it. Local records from New England document the unrounding from as early as 1648, where the proper name Knapp is spelled
Still more intriguing, is a British Restoration comedy Relapse, or Virtue in Danger (1696) by John Vanbrugh in which Lord Foppington, an affected young gentleman, uses the unrounded vowel as in modern AE (exept for unrounding before r+C in
both vowels in forgot as / /.
The probable solution to the riddle of “American” unrounding is to be found in seventeenth century BE. There were three conflicting styles of unrounding at that time: never, always, not when lengthened (as discussed above). Ultimately, never won out in BE and not when lengthened
in AE in the standard varieties. In the dialects, other resolutions persist. ¡
6.10 Differences in the distribution of / / and / / between AE and BE
! " ¢ Before /f, # / and Nasal + C, BE generally has / / rather then / / as in AE. Compare the
pronunciation of laugh, bath, dance, can’t, example. Both have / / before /r/, far, dark, etc., and before
6.11 The systematic difference in the pronunciation of long-o
¥ ¥
¤ ¤ £ ¤ ¤ Where AE has / £ /, BE has / /. For example in boat AE / /, BE / /. The BE diphthong
is relatively recent. The onset, represented in the dictionary as/ /, is a central unrounded vowel,
actually / ¦ /.
6.12 Difference in the distribution of /u/ and /ju/ In AE, historical /ju/ (preserved in BE) has become /u/ after alveolar consonants /t,d,s,z,n/. Compare the pronunciation of the following words: tune, due, suit, presume, new. Historically, this sound has two sources. It was imported with French loan words in /y/ (written ) like fury and it resulted from reversal of English diphthongs from off-glides to on-glides. Consider the spelling of few, which looks like /few/ but is now pronounced as /fju/. The earlier pronun- ciation had a vowel with an off-glide /ew/. The reversal produced an on-glide plus vowel /ju/.
-39- In AE, the on-glide /j/ is lost in accented syllables as in the examples above. In unaccented syllables, it coalesces with /t,d,s,z/ to produce affricates and fricatives as in fortune, education,
issue, visual. Conservative BE retains the original /ju/ in these cases.
Note that the morpheme -tion is pronounced / / after a vowel or a stop as in nation, or eruption
and / / after a fricative as in question .
6.13 Final /i/
In words like very, happy, BE can have either /i/ or / ¡ / . The dictionary indicates this by using the symbol /i/ (without dots). In AE, this vowel is always tense /i/.
6.14 The pronunciation of wh-
¢ £ ¢ Most American and British speakers pronounce which and witch identically ¡ . Historically,
the spelling wh indicated a voiceless or aspirated w / ¤ /. The aspirated w is considered “elegant” by some speakers of the American standard (particularly Canadians). In BE it is considered “provincial.”
6.15 Historical divergence We certainly wish we knew more about the time scale for the divergence between the pronunciation of BE and AE, but solid evidence is hard to come by. Benjamin Franklin’s reformed spelling (1768) clearly indicates the pronunciation of r as in Network English and the unrounding
of short-o. Additionally, as notde above, Franklin indicates the unrounded vowel even where
¥
Network retains / / as in the spelling
One particularly intriguing document is a play, Madmen All by J.K. Paulding, written between 1838 and 1847. Here the affected stage Englishman Huskisson Hodgson is characterized by pronunciations such as impawsible for impossible, mawning for morning, deaw for dear, vawstly
for vastly, indicating that rounded short-o, r-dropping and retraction of the vowel / ¢ / were all considered British traits as early as the mid- nineteenth century. (cf. Krapp, II,145 f.)
7 Morphological differences
7.1 {-ed}
BE and AE have the same basic rule for realizing the past and past participle morpheme {-ed}: {-ed} —> / / after t,d (e.g., wanted, aided) /d/ after other voiced sounds (e.g., laid, rubbed) /t/ after other voiceless sounds. (e.g., wrapped, backed)
-40- BE also uses /t/ after rn (e.g., learnt, burnt) and l (spellt, spillt). This is reflected in the spelling learnt vs. learned.
7.2 The pronunciation of ate
¡ In AE, the past tense of eat is pronounced / /. The pronunciation /et/ is considered substandard and provincial. In BE, both forms occur but, /et/ is preferred.
7.3 The suffix -ile
¡ ¡ ¡
In BE the suffix -ile is generally pronounced / ¡ /. In AE both / / and / / are heard, some
¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
¡ £ " £ words showing a preference for ¡ .
Ex: futile, fertile, versatile, hostile, reptile, textile, etc. (Note: gentile is only
¤
¡ £ pronounced with / ¡ /. / / is a different word - gentle.)
Here are some sentences illustrating the systematic differences. Try pronouncing them both in BE and AE:
1. I can’t find the boat. 2. She wrote a little note about the dance for the newspapers. 3. The following work stations are out of order due to a temporary disturbance in the net. 4. The fire burned through the bottom rung of the ladder. 5. That British oratory is better is total nonsense.
7.4 Some British and American Words That Are Pronounced Differently In contrast to standard German, where a word may have only one standard pronunciation, English (BE and AE) allows two or more pronunciations for the same word. In the chart below they are listed in order of preference. The differences noted here do not reflect any general rule:
-41- Some British and American Words That Are Pronounced Differently
Word American 1 American 2 British 1 British 2
¡
again
" " ¡ "
against
¥ ¥ ¡ ¥
¡
been ¡
¢ £
clerk
£ ¤ ¥ £
conjure
¡ ¡
¢ ¡
dahlia
¡ ¦ ¦
£ ¤ ¤
depot
¡ ¡ § ¡ ¡ §
diamond
¡ ¡
¡ ¡ " ¡ "
dynasty
¡ ¡
¡ ¨ § ¨ §
egotism
¡ © © © ¡ ©
¤ ¡ ¡ ¤ ¡ ¡
either
¦ ¡ ¦
epoch
¡
evolution
¡ " ¢
fracas
¢ £ ¢ £ ¢ ¡ £
garage
¥ ¢ ¥ ¢ ¥
£ ¢ £ ¢
herb ¢
¡
£ ¤ £ ¤ £
leisure
¡ ¡
¤ ¤
lever
lieutenant
¡ © © © ¡ ©
¤ ¡ ¡ ¤ ¡ ¡
neither
nephew
¦ ¦ ¦
¢ ¡ ¢
patent
¦ ¦ ¦
¢ ¡ ¡ ¨ ¡ ¡ ¡ ¨ ¢ ¡ ¡ ¨ patronize (act more
important than)
¦ ¡ ¦
¡ ¡ ¨ ¢ ¡ ¡ ¨ patronize (use shop,hotel)
-42-
¦ ¦ ¡
" " ¤ " "
predecessor
¦ ¡ ¦
¡ § § ¡
premier
© ©
¢ ¤
rather
" £
schedule
¡
¡
sheik
¤
¡
" ¡ ¡ § " ¡ § ¡ "
simultaneous
¡
¡ "
¡
" ¤ " " ¤
solder
£ £
" ¡
suave "
§ ¡ £ ¤ § ¤
tomato
¡ ¨ ¨
¨ vase (more
expensive)
¡ ¡ § ¡ ¡ § ¡ ¡ ¡ § ¡
vitamin
¡
¨
z ¨
¡
# ¨ # zenith ¨
Adapted from Hans Galinsky Die Sprache des Amerikaners (1951, Vol. 1, pp. 125-127. Authority for British pronunciation: Longmans Dictionary of Contemporary English, 1st ed. (1978).
Exercise: Read the following text in American and British pronunciations:
There was a fracas in the garage again yesterday.
Lt. Smyth was arguing with his nephew, a clerk at Sotheby’s, about a vase offered for sale by the predecessor of the current Sheik of Oman, along with a diamond brooch. Smyth reproached the young man with ignorance of the evolution of Chinese porcelain in the epoch in question.
The young man was rather angry, simultaneously turning red as a tomato and slamming the autumn train schedule against the door lever. His wrath reached its zenith when he accused his uncle of patronizing egotism and conjuring with expertise he had either borrowed from others or had never been privileged to acquire.
-43- Unit 4: The Written Language - American Spelling and Dictionaries
1 The real differences between AE and BE spelling To “dispel” any misconceptions at the beginning - the real differences between AE and BE spelling are far smaller than they loom in the popular imagination. Often enough when I have pointed out a misspelling - the culprit has pleaded British English or when caught in a misspelling myself I have been judiciously asked if that was some sort of “newfangled” American spelling. In fact, the differences between British and American are quite minimal. There are perhaps half-a-dozen systematic differences (BE centre vs. AE center) and a few dozen “preferences” (BE defence, AE defense). Otherwise, there is not much difference to record. More interesting, is the question of how things got that way and under whose authority.
2 Why reform English spelling? As pointed out previously, the modern written form of English reflects the pronunciation of about the year 1400. Since the pronunciation has undergone numerous deep-going changes, which have at least complicated the relationship between the written and spoken form of the language far beyond what is the case in German. G.B. Shaw (an enthusiastic supporter of spelling reform) is often credited with the remark that the word fish could be spelled
in final position in a few words (cough, laugh, enough). The letter
derivational morpheme {- ns} as
3 Attempts at an “American” spelling reform
3.1 Benjamin Franklin The earliest attempt at an English spelling reform by an American was apparently a proposal by Benjamin Franklin, one of the fathers of the American Revolution. Franklin introduced six new symbols and reused the traditional symbols in novel ways. He did not, however, pursue his plan with any great conviction, nor did he see his reform as particularly “American” as opposed to “British.” In the next century, numerous “American” spelling reforms were purposed until the wave of American exceptionalism died out towards the end of the nineteenth century.
-44- 3.2 Noah Webster The most important of the would be reformers was Noah Webster - the man who wrote the dictionary (all American dictionaries are called “Webster’s” these days - testifying to his lasting influence on marketing if not scholarship).
3.2.1 Early spelling reform proposals Webster’s first proposal for reforming American spelling was drawn up in 1786 and submitted naturally enough in a letter to Franklin, who generally approved. Although Webster, at this point in his career, may have been a visionary, he certainly was no fool. He understood that in postrevolutionary America “the minds of the people are in a ferment, and consequently disposed to receive improvements” (Krapp,I,331). He also attempted to organize his revolution from the top down - enlisting first the approval of Franklin (who had shown interest in such a project) and further suggesting that Franklin use his influence to win over George Washington and then present the proposals to Congress for action. In 1790, Webster published a series of essays in which he not only proposed but also used a form of simplified spelling, getting rid of silent letters and using more familiar letters for odd spellings, thus ch = k (karacter), s= z (reezon), o = u (abuv), ea = ee (reeder). Unfortunately, he was not consistent in his spelling (why should the second /k/ in character be spelled
Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors.
The Essays were greeted with ridicule and nothing came of the congressional proposal.
This might well have relegated Noah Webster to the obscurity of footnotes to history of American English along with any number of other well-meaning visionaries - but for Webster’s keen business sense. Webster was one of America’s first and certainly America’s most successful school book publishers. Starting in 1789, his American Spelling Book went thorough dozens of editions, selling some 42 million copies by 1865! (By comparison, the total population of the USA in 1870 was 38.5 million.) Ironically, the fairly conservative spellings advocated in the American Spelling Book and Webster’s dictionaries probably played a greater role in blocking radical spelling reform than any other influence.
-45- 4 The dictionary
4.1 Samuel Johnson’s dictionary The first compendious dictionary of the English language was published by Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1755. Although numerous details have been changed since, it is generally credited with “fixing” the English literary language in its present form.
4.2 Later dictionaries Since the original was hardly suitable for practical everyday use, numerous shortened adaptations soon appeared. In America, an edition improved by Todd, abridged by Chalmers and combined with Walker’s pronouncing dictionary (Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language, 1791) was issued in 1810 and set a standard even after the publication of Noah Webster’s work. (The full Johnson dictionary was not published in America until 1818). Other influential dictionaries were Perry’s Royal Standard English Dictionary (1775) and Sheridan’s General Dictionary of the English Language (1780), but Johnson for spelling and Walker for pronunciation set the standard for the first quarter of the nineteenth century in England as well as America. The pronouncing dictionaries of this period are rich source of information, but, unfortunately it is difficult “to decide how far their accounts are reliable, and to what extent the type of pronunciation described may be accepted as the Received Standard of the period” as Wylde points out (History of Modern Colloquial English, p.168).
4.3 Webster’s dictionaries Noah Webster made his debut as a lexicographer with his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, published in his home state of Connecticut in 1806. This work was followed in 1807 by the Dictionary for Schools. In these works he maintained a number of spellings he had earlier introduced in his spelling books. Among these are four systematic points that have entered into the standard spelling of American:
1. -ic for -ick in polysyllabic words like music, public, magic. Also the accepted standard in modern BE.
2. -or for -our in favor, honor, savior.
3. -er for -re in center, meter, miter.
4. Single letters for digraphs: e for oe, ae as in economy, encyclopedia.
-46- He also introduced the principle of omitting the silent-e when it was not needed to indicate the length of the preceding vowel as in ax. Most of these spelling were rejected by popular usage (i.e., definit, opposit, nightmar, examin). He made a number of other suggestions for sensible reforms that never took hold, such as
-47- the “true meaning” of words. Since usage and authority could be cited for any number of meanings – only the true history of a word could reveal its “real” meaning. To this end, Webster devoted ten years of study to the “radical words” (radical in the sense of “root”) of twenty languages. Unfortunately, this work was largely in vain since it was based on the assumption that entire world spoke Chaldee before the Tower of Babel and that all languages were thus derived from this tongue. To be sure, Webster’s dictionary was published more than twenty-five years before Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species (1859) at a time when most people took the Biblical histories literally, but it nevertheless reveals the appalling provincialism of American scholarship. (As late as 1824, Harvard University granted a doctorate for a thesis claiming to show that all languages were derived from Hebrew.) All the same, ignorance of the work of Rask, Grimm and Bopp and the most elementary principles of historical linguistics is inexcusable for a lexicographer who devoted ten years to finding the “true roots” of language. Fortunately, for Webster’s reputation, his fanciful etymologies were purged from later editions.
4.4 Webster’s example All in all - Noah Webster the perfect American career: Born 1758, Yale graduate, revolutionary soldier, visionary, school teacher, defender of the morals of children, journalist, historian, international traveler, Bible translator - businessman. Died wealthy at age 85 in 1843. The rights to his dictionary were sold to the C.G. Merriam Co. by his heirs in the same year. One hundred seventy years later, no one dares publish a dictionary in America without putting his name on it. Noah Webster – live like him.
5 Summary of important spelling differences between BE and AE
5.1 AE -or for BE -our The BE spelling reflects French transmission. AE reverts to the original Latin: honor, honoris; color, coloris, etc.
AE BE honor honour color colour favor favour
This is a systematic difference between AE and BE spelling.
-48- 5.2 AE -er for BE -re
This is a “simplification” since the final / / is spelled <-er> in other cases: e.g., worker, summer.
AE BE theater theatre center centre meter metre
This is a systematic difference between AE and BE spelling.
5.3 AE -l- for BE -ll- In AE the preferred spelling for
occur occurring occurrence transfer transferring transference
but:
interfere interfering interference
Rule:
repel repelling repellency control controlling controller
but:
travel traveling traveler wool woolen
BE always doubles the
AE also admits of a number of exceptions where the
-49- chancel chancellor cancel cancellation
This is a systematic difference between AE and BE.
5.4 AE drops silent e after dg ¡
Since the combination
AE BE judgment judgement acknowledgment acknowledgement
The AE spelling is now generally accepted in BE.
5.5 AE e instead of the digraphs æ, œ In words (mostly) of Greek origin, AE simplifies the digraphs æ, œ reflecting the pronunciation. Thus:
AE BE encyclopedia encyclopædia anemia anæmia esophagus œsophagus diarrhea diarrhœa
This is a systematic difference between AE and BE although the
5.6 AE simplification of Greek words in -gue, -mme entering by way of French
AE BE program programme program (computers) telegram telegramme dialog dialogue prolog prologue
-50- ¡
5.7 AE -ize in words with the Greek suffix - for BE ize/-ise
£ ¤ The Greek suffix - ¢ is used to form causative verbs, eg., sterilize to make sterile’,
civilize ¤ to make civil’. Wherever this suffix appears in AE, it is spelled <-ize>. In BE, the spelling varies between <-ize> and <-ise>:
AE BE organize organise (organize) dramatize dramatise (dramatize)
This is a systematic difference between AE and BE although the <-ize> spelling is making headway in BE.
5.8 AE -ense for BE -ence This often-cited difference between AE and BE occurs only in the words: defense, offense, license, pretense, where BE custom prefers: defence, offence, licence, pretence.
5.9 Some individual words that are spelled differently
AE BE jail gaol, jail tire tyre curb kerb check cheque skeptic sceptic
6 Summary The differences between AE and BE spelling are minimal. Most of them can be traced back to the efforts of one man - Noah Webster. In the late nineteenth century, American dictionary writers, attempted to reverse some of Webster’s “more radical” reforms and move AE spelling back in the direction of BE. In the second half of the present century the trend toward leveling of differences is working in the other direction - i.e., BE is moving toward AE. From the AE point of view, the only BE spellings that should be avoided are those in
-51- Unit 5: Differences Between BE and AE Vocabulary
Note: It is not difficult to find lists of words that are different in AE and BE in the literature. The problem is that all such lists that I have seen contain obvious “howlers.” For instance, one such list I consulted tells us correctly that both BE and AE use the expression go shopping for
¤ einkaufen’, but only BE uses go marketing in this meaning. (In AE marketing is selling and not buying although you can go to the market in order to buy things.) In the same list, however, we find that torch can mean ‘Taschenlampe’ in AE, where I have never heard in any other meaning
than ¤ Fackel’ and that taxi rank can be used for taxi stand in AE, which I cannot recommend to you if you are really in need of transportation because you won’t find what you are looking for. Other things that are listed as “preferences” are absolute differences, e.g., AE does not “prefer” period for full stop ‘Punkt’. In AE a “full stop” is what is required before a stop sign when driving and has nothing to do with punctuation. Still others are no differences at all. To the best of my knowledge, AE does not prefer hallway to hall, but uses them interchangeably.
The following lists are reliable for AE and cautious with regard to BE. The items marked with (!) are words that are normal vocabulary in one variety, but have an obscene meaning in the other! These are not usually included in the literature, but better to read it here than learn the hard way.
1 Words with different meanings in AE and BE There are a number of common words in AE and BE that mean different things. In America, for example, cutlery only refers to knives – things you use for cutting food. In Great Britain (and Canada), cutlery means the knives, forks and spoons placed on the table for eating food. In America, these are called silverware although they are rarely made of silver these days. Clearly, these differences can lead to confusion and misunderstanding between users of the different standards. Far worse, are those cases in which a perfectly normal, everyday word in one variety is an obscenity in the other. You can imagine the surprise of the American English teacher using a British text book when encountering “Do you have a fag” as an informal expression used to bum a cigarette. In AE, fag is a taboo word for a male homosexual. The list below, which is hardly exhaustive, includes a number of a common words with different meanings in AE and BE. The dangerous ones are indicated by (!).
-52- Words with Different Meanings in AE and BE
Word AE BE AE word for BE ass (!) Arsch Esel donkey cock (!) Geschlechtsorgan Hahn rooster corn Mais Getreide grain dresser Kommode Küchenschrank cupboard, cabinet faculty Lehrkörper Fakultät department fag (!) Homosexueller Zigarette butt fanny (!) Hinterteil (Arsch) Vorderteil (!) cunt (taboo!!) get stuffed (!) satt essen sich zum Teufel scheren Go to hell! grammar school Grundschule Gymnasium high school guard Wärter, Wache auch Schaffner conductor haberdasher Herrenausstatter Kurzwarenhändler notions counter, sewing shop hood Motorhaube Faltdach top jumper ärmelloses Kleid Strickjacke cardigan knock up (!) schwängern durch anklopfen wecken awake by knoc- king lift Fahrstuhl heben (Vb.) elevator outhouse (!) Außenklo Nebengebäude outbuilding public school öffentliche Schule Privatschule private school, prep school Randy (!) männ. Name (kurz geil, scharf horny für Randal) rubber (!) Kondom Radiergummi eraser slot machine Spielautomat Verkaufsautomat vending machine subway U-Bahn Fußgängerunterführung underpass suspenders Hosenträger Strumpfhalter garter to table vertagen vorbringen to present vest Weste Unterhemd undershirt wrench Schraubenschlüssel Schraubenzange pliers
-53- 2 Important Differences in Vocabulary (from AE point of view) The following list consists of British terms which are generally not understood in America. If you have a headache, you will not find what you need by asking for a chemist’s shop. There are, in addition, a number of cases where two terms are in use and there is a difference in preference between the two standards. These are items like postman vs. mailman or railway vs. railroad, which are used interchangeably or at least universally understood in both BE and AE. The following is a selection of common items in BE that are not understood in AE.
General Terms
Term AE BE Leitartikel editorial leading article Röhre tube valve Pause intermission interval Apotheker druggist, pharmacist chemist Eisenhändler hardware dealer iron monger Frisör barber (for men) hairdresser Grundstückmackler realtor estate agent Ratenkauf instalment plan hire-purchase GmbH Inc. Ltd. Rechnung (im Restau- check bill rant) Etagenwohnung apartment flat erster Stock second floor first floor Reißzwecke thumbtack drawing-pin Mülltonne garbage can dust bin Windeln diaper nappy Fischstäbchen fish stick fish finger Pommes frites French fries chips Kartoffelchips potato chips potato crisps Bonbons candy sweets
-54- Bahnschaffner conductor guard postlagernd general delivery poste restante nicht im Telefonbuch unlisted ex-directory Postanweisung postal money order postal order Postleitzahl zip code post code Gehsteig sidewalk pavement Straßenüberführung overpass flyover Parkplatz parking lot car park Hosenträger suspenders braces
Automobile
Autobahn expressway motorway Limousine sedan saloon car Motorhaube hood bonnet Kotflügel fender wing Kofferraum trunk boot Nummernschild license plate numberplate Schalldämpfer muffler silencer Lastwagen truck lorry Benzin gas(oline) petrol
-55- Unit 6: Major Dialect Differences in American English
1 Overview The most striking characteristic of North American English is its homogeneity in comparison to Great Britain, the German or the Netherlandic speaking areas. Over vast areas of more than 3000 km, fewer differences in pronunciation are encountered in North America than within 300 km in Germany. Nowhere does the situation arise that speakers of different North American dialects cannot communicate with one another - each speaking his “native” dialect. The reason for this is that the North American dialects are relatively recent developments from the eighteenth century koiné, whereas the British and German dialects go back more than a thousand years. Following Kenyon and Knott (A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English [1944]), we will distinguish between four general dialect regions of American English: (1) Eastern, (2) Southern, (3) Northern, (4) New York (see map). The Eastern region includes New England from Maine to the Connecticut River. The Southern Region extends approximately from Washington D.C. in the north east to Santa Fe, New Mexico in the south west. The rest of the U.S. (and Canada) is classified as “Northern.” New York City is a linguistic world unto itself, although it shares many features of pronunciation with the Eastern and Southern regions. The variation in the Northern region is very slight. Indeed, there are fewer differences in pronunciation among people of all social classes from Detroit to Los Angeles (a distance of appx. 3200 km) than there are between different social strata within New York City. The Eastern and Southern regions show considerably more internal differentiation. It is worth noting, however, that minor differences do exist even in the Northern region. In the 1950s, the American linguist Henry Lee Smith, Jr. contended that he could localize a speaker of AE to within 100 miles of his home town - a skill that he successfully demonstrated on his own radio show! Here, we will briefly consider four “typical” varieties of North American speech: (1) Canadian, (2) New England, (3) New York, (4) Gulf Southern.
2 Canadian Canadian speech is extremely homogeneous. From Ottawa to Vancouver, a distance of over 3000 km there are hardly more than trivial differences in pronunciation. Only the eastern seaboard region (particularly Newfoundland) exhibit strong dialect characteristics, which we will not consider here. It has been remarked that British speakers take Canadians for “U.S. Americans,” while U.S. Americans take them to be British. The British confusion is quite understandable given the fact that Canadian is almost identical to Northern speech in the USA (differences will be
-56- discussed below). The other confusion is somewhat more difficult to understand and reflects, perhaps, the appalling ignorance of U.S. Americans about their neighbor to the north. Anything not exactly “American” must be “British.” Another possibility closer to home does not exist.
2.1 Differences between Canadian and Network English
2.1.1 Unrounding of back vowels As noted above Network English (and most U.S. dialects) maintain a distinction between the
unrounded short-o in not and the rounded vowel before fricatives in loss or cough. In Canadian
¡
¢
this distinction tends to be leveled in favor of the unrounded / / Thus, we have loss / /, cough
¤ ¥ ¦
/ £ /, thought / / (where the historical fricative has become silent).
¨ © §
2.1.2 Raising in / § / / /
Most typical of Canadian speech is a higher, more centralized onset of the diphthongs / / / /
before voiceless (tense) consonants then in Network English. The diphthong / / is in this
environment and / / . The distinction can be heard clearly when comparing pairs likewrite
and ride or house houses .
2.1.3 Resistance to breaking of short vowels Canadian English has remained remarkable resistant to the breaking of short vowels characteristic of the eastern and mid-western border regions to the United States. So, while the unrounding of
short-o has crossed the St. Lawrence and is found in both Buffalo and Toronto, the breaking of
/ / > (see below) stops at the border.
2.1.4 Consonants
Canadian consonants agree in general with Network English. The flapped-t - flapped-d distinction is generally reduced to the voiced flap ] as in Northern. The voiceless-w in which, what, etc. is considered prestigious even though less than half of all Canadians use it. There is also a tendency to retain [j] after alveolar consonants as in tune, new.
2.1.5 Individual words Above, we considered a list of individual words that are pronounced differently in AE and BE. In this respect, Canadians often find themselves on the horns of a dilemma: Is schedule pronounced with /sk/ or / /? Not surprisingly, the AE pronunciations are making headway over the BE variants. Nevertheless, Canadian is distinguished by the occasional or possible use of BE
-57- forms that never occur in the USA. A good example is the name of the letter “z,” in AE always /zi/ in Canadian mostly /zed/ as in BE.
3 Eastern (New England) The Eastern dialect region includes the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachu- setts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Western Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont belong to the Northern region - the approximate border is the Connecticut River. The major city in the region is Boston - the most European city in the USA - and once the most influential thanks to its harbor and close commercial ties with Great Britain. Unlike Paris or London, Boston was unable to establish its cultural hegemony over the American colonies and the “Boston accent,” which enjoyed short-lived interest (not prestige) during the reign of John F. Kennedy, is now receding before the influence of the Northern dialect.
3.1 Differences between Eastern and Network English
3.1.1 R-dropping
The most characteristic feature of the New England region is r-dropping similar to RP. That is,
¡ rs are dropped unless a vowel follows and words like nurse have instead of . The linking-r in phrases like far out is also a feature of this dialect. Perhaps due to constant pressure from the “rhotic” (non-r-dropping) dialects to the west, there is a tendency toward overcorrection -
inserting rs where they do not belong as in phrases like law and order , which is sometimes
¢ £ £
¤
realized as with an “intrusive” nonhistorical r. An important difference between
¦ ¥
Eastern and RP is the fronting of / ¥ / before (historical) r. Thus, car is realized in RP as / / and
in Eastern as / ¦ /. The standard example for how people in Boston talk is: Park your car in
§ ¦ ¨ ¦ ¤ © ¨
Harvard yard ( )
3.1.2 The distribution of / / and / /
As in BE there is a (now declining) tendency to use / ¥ / for / / before / NC/ as in laugh, pass, bath, aunt. These pronunciations were probable once considered elegant (i.e., British), but
are now regarded as rustic and are definitely on the decline. Interestingly, they are not being
replaced by Network [ ] but by New York , which is steadily enlarging its area of influence.
3.1.3 The development of short-o Short-o may appear rounded in all environments (e.g., not, hop as well as before voiceless fricatives as in loss, off, broth). The rounded vowel is particularly common before /r/ as in
-58- foreign, florist. This latter feature divides Eastern from New York City - where the unrounded vowel is predominant.
In addition, short-o is subject to lengthening and breaking in the Boston area, as in
£ £
¦ § ¤ for box or for pond. New York speech also has this breaking, but only of the historically long vowels before voiceless fricatives.
4 New York City New York City is a linguistic world unto itself. It is the largest city in the USA (over 8 million inhabitants) as well as being the de facto financial (Wall Street) and cultural (Broadway) capital of the country. One might think that New York would, thus, exert a profound influence on the way AE is spoken. Just the opposite is true. No one likes the New York accent, not even New Yorkers themselves. New York is also unique in having a fully-stratified sociolinguistic structure. In most areas
of the USA there is no social stigma attached to dialect forms, but in New York fine distinctions
£ ¡
are made. For example, the pronunciation ofdog varies between standard and diphthong-
£ ¡ ¡
ized varieties ranging between and . In general, the higher the onset of the diph- thong the lower the prestige of the speaker. In addition, r-dropping correlates with social status - the higher the social status of the speaker, the less like (s)he is to drop rs. Here, we can only consider some of the broad features of New York pronunciation.
4.1 Differences between New York City and Network English
4.1.1 R-dropping As in New England, rs not followed by a vowel may be dropped. The intrusive linking-r in law and order is also characteristic of New York City. Labov (1966) made a careful investigation of this phenomenon and was able to show that all New Yorkers (myself excluded) sometimes drop rs, but that the incidence of r-dropping decreases with increasing social position and formality of the speech situation. That is, people are more likely to drop their rs in informal speech than when reading from a text. Interestingly, the group with the lowest frequency of r- dropping was not those in the highest socio-economic bracket, but rather the upwardly mobile middle class. In general,r- dropping is on the decline and far less frequent today than it was at the time of Labov study.
4.1.2 Breaking of / /
Before voiceless stops and affricates New York speech retains / /. In most other environments, however, the vowel is raised and broken to a diphthong [ ]. Once again, the exact quality of the
-59- diphthong correlates with social class (the higher the onset, the lower the class). Thus, there is
a strong contrast between the vowels of pairs like: cap - cab, cat - cad, back - bag. Strangely,
©
the helping verbs can and have are not affected so that there is a contrast between have
© ¦ ¤ ¦ ¤ and halve , I can and a tin can . The “decent” form of this breaking seems to be spreading to the Northern region.
4.1.3 Breaking of short-o
Parallel to the previous development, historical short-o, which was lengthened before voiceless
£ fricatives and / /, is also broken to / /. The centering glide which arises from breaking is
identical to the centering glide that arises from r-dropping. This means that pairs like saw - sore
£
can be pronounced alike and that horse can rhyme with loss. The sociological conse-
quences have been mentioned above. ¢
4.1.4 The realization of/ ¡ /
¡ £ One of the fabled features of New York English is the realization of / / as something like . In print this is usually represented by “oi” as in “toity-toid” for thirty-third. This is characteristic of the extreme and now obsolete dialect of New York English often called “Brooklynese” after one of the boroughs of the city although this form of speech was no more common in Brooklyn than elsewhere in New York. Those born after World War II do not use this sound. The most likely example you will encounter is in the speech of Groucho Marx.
4.1.5 Dentals and alveolars In New York, the alveolar sounds /t,d,s,z,n/ may all be pronounced as dentals - that is, with the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth rather than the alveolar ridge. In addition, the interdental
fricative / / is realized as a kind of affricate made by pressing the front part of the tongue against
the upper teeth. Despite the “unorthodox” articulation, there is a clear distinction between /t/ and ¤ / /. The substitution of /d/ for / / is much less common and considered vulgar.
4.1.6 Nasalization Perhaps the most common and puzzling feature of New York speech is a general tendency toward nasalization of vowels. This does not result from the influence of nasal consonants as is usually the case, but seems to be the product of articulatory “laziness.” Mommy is there to tell you to sit up straight in your chair, but since she knows more about the surface of the moon than she does about what goes on inside her mouth when she speaks, she can’t tell you to raise your velum when you pronounce vowels.
-60- 5 Southern The Southern dialect region as noted above covers roughly the south-eastern third of the U.S. approximately from Washington D.C. to Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is sociologically speaking the most controversial of the dialects since Northern and Eastern speakers tend to feel that Southern speakers are rustic and backward. Confusions between Southern and Black English also abound. To be sure, there is little difference in the pronunciation of poor southern whites and southern Blacks, but there is much controversy as to how this situation came about. Southern speech shares a number of features with Eastern and New York - most notably r-dropping, but has a number of features that distinguish it from the other dialects. It is also the most varied of the three major varieties. We will not try to break it down into subgroups here.
5.1 Differences between Southern and Network English
5.1.1 The Southern drawl Perhaps the most characteristic and difficult to describe feature of Southern speech is the Southern drawl. Roughly speaking it is a lengthening and diphthongization of the lax vowels. In many respects, the phenomenon is not much different from what we have already seen in New
York City speech - only the realization is more “extreme” and more generalized. Thus bad,
Network , is New York , but Gulf Southern , with a much broader
diphthong. Similarly, bid and bed are pronounced with simple vowels in Network or New York
City speech, but are typically diphthongized to in Southern speech. ¨ 5.1.2 Monophthongization of / § / A general characteristic of Southern speech is the reduction of the diphthong in words like price to a simple long vowel. In all forms of AE, the first (vocalic) element is rather long as compared to German Preis, but in the south it is typically still longer before voiceless sounds in the same
syllable and disappears completely in other environments. Hence, the pronunciation ofnight time
¤ ¡ is something like . The phrase nice white rice used to be a “a social shibboleth,” the finer folk using the diphthong before the voiceless sounds while the common folk had the monophthong. Now, increasingly, the monophthong is used in all positions by educated speakers .
5.1.3 Neutralization of /i/ and /e/ before nasals Before nasals the contrast between /i/ and /e/ is neutralized in Southern speech, both becoming some variety of /i/. Thus, many common word pairs such as mint - meant, hymn - hem, sinner - center fall together. I myself have seen the confusion caused by a southern teacher in a New York
-61- suburban school asking to borrow a “pen.” No one could imagine what he wanted a “pin” for. Had he torn his trousers?
5.1.4 Nasalization
The nasalization rule converts a vowel followed by a nasal into a nasalized vowel when followed
¦ ¦ § ¤ §
by a voiceless consonant in the same syllable. Thus drink / / pint / / [ ã ],
¡
can’t /kæ /. If you want to sound like an east Texas dirt farmer, try practicing: I can’t drink a
¢
¡
¦ § pint of beer [ kæ ã ].
5.1.5 R-dropping East Coast r-dropping in New England and New York continues down the Atlantic seaboard and to the west through out the Southern dialect region. There are some interesting differences between Southern and other AE r-dropping. First of all, the prestige value, of this feature is or was reversed in some area of the “Old South,” r-dropping being associated with the Southern plantation aristocracy and postvocalic-r with “Yankee carpet-baggers.” Thus, r-dropping could be a matter of local pride in Charleston, South Carolina, while being seen as vulgar in New York City. In addition Southern r-dropping goes much further than in other varieties of English. The linking-r in far out and the intrusive-r in law(r) and order are virtually unknown in Southern speech. Furthermore, lower-class dialects in the deep south delete r in to two additional
environments: after / / and intervocalically. Hence, r may be missing from words like throw and
¢
¦ ¥ £ ¤
through, Carolina may be pronounced as and Paris may sound the same as pass,
§ namely . As elsewhere, r-dropping is on the decline in Southern speech reflecting the leveling pressure of the Northern standard.
5.1.6 Vowel laxing before /r/
£
AE lowers (laxes) the mid tense vowels before /r/. Thus, /e,o/ —> yielding (after glide
¢
¤ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ ©
insertion) Mary [ ¡ . In Southern speech neither the laxing rule nor
centering glide insertion before /r/ applies so that we have pronunciations like Mary © and
story © .
5.1.7 The hoarse - horse distinction Because vowel laxing does not apply in Southern speech (regardless of whether r-dropping applies), the historical distinction between originally tense and originally lax back mid vowels is
-62-
¡
£ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ ¢ £ © ¦ § maintained. That is,hoarse heiser’ from ME h (r)s is ¢ and horse from ME h rs is . Although the Southern tense vowel is felt to be substandard in other parts of the country and is definitely not permissible in Network English, it is faithfully recorded as /o/ in some dictionaries (e.g., the Dictionary of Contemporary English, 1st. ed) . Those who wish to avoid Southern
dialect should ignore this distinction and pronounce words listed with /o/ as having / © /.
5.1.8 The poor - door merger While keeping hoarse and horse distinct, Southern speech tends to merge words with standard
/u/ like poor, sure, moor, insure, etc. with the hoarse-group with the vowel /o/. Thus, poor and
¤ § ¢ ¤ § ¢
door rhyme: ¢ ~ . If you really want to sound like an east Texas dirt farmer, try:
! " " ! # " & ' (
$ %
¤ ¥ ¥ ¦ ¤ ¥ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ ¥ kæ ã The poor man is so tired and hoarse that he can’t open the door or drink a pint of beer.
6 Black English All of the Southern dialect characteristics listed above are characteristic of Black English as well. There are a few other characteristics that can be mentioned, but it must be emphasized that these are not shared by all speakers of Black English and certainly not under all circumstances.
1. Initial / / of this, that, then, etc. is sounded as [d].
2. Final / ) / in with, both, mouth, etc. is sounded as [f] or [t], with [f] considered the more “elegant” pronunciation.
3. The intervocalic / / in mother, other, brother, etc. as pronounced as [v].
* + 4. /d/ is dropped after /l/, /n/ in words like children [ ] (with assimilation of r), candle, land, find.
5. /b/ is a stop initially but a bilabial fricative [ , ] in medial position as in rubber.
6. /v/ is a bilabial fricative [ , ] in all positions: very, river, have. Similarly, /f/ is a
voiceless bilabial fricative [ - ].
-63- Unit 7: Black English
1 Is there such a thing as Black English? By Black English, we mean the variety of English spoken by Black persons who do not know or do not wish to use the white “middle class” standard used in their geographic locality. Since Black English is undeniably similar in most respects to the Southern American dialect, the differences between Black and white speech may be rather small in Arkansas and rather large in California. In fact, experiments have determined that speakers of the Northern dialect cannot distinguish between southern whites and Blacks on the basis of pronunciation alone – which is hardly surprising given the fact that all of the Southern dialect characteristics listed in the unit on American dialects are characteristic of Black English as well. This has lead to the view that there is no such thing as Black English and that Blacks simply speak the same way as poor whites in the South. And that speakers of the Southern dialect in the north (where there are few poor southern whites) are by default taken to be Black. In this connection, the dialect researcher, Raven I. McDavid, jr., a white southerner, reported that he was unable to rent an apartment in Ithica, NY (where Cornell University is located). Every time he phoned a prospective landlord, he was told that the apartment had just been rented. He had to go around personally so the landlord could see that he was white.
1.1 The traditional view This view – that there is no special Black English – is not necessarily at variance with the historical facts. No one can doubt that there was once something like Plantation Creole. Remnants of this dialect with clear African features are still preserved in Gullah, which is spoken on the islands off the Carolina coast. Perhaps, however, Plantation Creole has otherwise become so “decreolized” that it is now indistinguishable from the speech of poor southern whites. This seems to be the view taken by Krapp (I,246 ff.) He comments:
It is not improbable that the English of the original Gullah negroes was a kind of
Pan African English, used all along the slave coast, by Portuguese, Italian and other slave drivers as well as native Englishmen. . . . It is not likely that the native African characteris- tics of these negroes have stood in the way of their acquiring a better English, but rather that they have learned as much from the white man as he gave them opportunity to learn. The Gullah dialect, therefore, has not taken on the character of conventional English speech so extensively as the Virginia negro dialect. [I,243]
-64- As far as Virginia dialect is concerned, Krapp finds no significant differences between Black and white speech. Commenting on Joel Chandler Harris’s plantation legends, he notes:
The speech of Uncle Remus [a black slave – R.B.] and the speech of rustic whites as Harris records it are so much alike that if one did not know which character was speaking, one might often be unable to tell whether the words were those of a white man or a negro. [I,250]
More over,
the historical examination of the characteristics of American dialect speech makes it plain that the details of American dialect speech, both of negro and white, are for the most part survivals of older and native English elements in the language. [I,251]
The conventional “negro dialect” in literary works (Krapp treats Black English in the chapter on “Literary Dialects”) is much like Gullah until
after the middle of the nineteenth century. Virginia life in the period following was more skilfully exploited in literature than the life of any other region in the South an thus has come to seem most typically Southern. [I,254]
This would tend to support the complete decreolization theory for Black English (accept for Gullah). And even there,
The question of African origins is of very little importance ... since there is practically nothing in the recorded forms of Gullah speech which cannot be derived from English. [I,252]
1.2 A reassessment In the mid 1960s, however, a new approach arose, which rejected the characterization of Black English as a purely derivitive and perhaps “debased” form of Southern dialect. There were two new approaches which must be mentioned.
The first, typified by William Labov (of NYC dialect fame), ignored the possible origins of Black English, but attempted to show that Black English was not a barbarized form of white English, but a different variety with definite rules of its own and all the expressive capabilities of the “middle class” standard. Labov’s work was influential in countering the view that Black
-65- children were “verbally deprived” and had to learn to think and speak “logically” (cf., “The Logic
on Non Standard English”).
The second approach, typified by J.L.Dillard Black English (1972) attempted to establish the creole origins of Black English and explain the differences between Black English and
so called standard English on this basis. It must be admitted that the debate between “verbal deprivation,” “separate variety” and “African creole” was not without its ideological basis, representing respectively “conservative,”
“liberal” and “Black nationalist” views (although J.L. Dillard, the chief proponent of the African creole theory, is a southern white integrationist). But, where oh where does the truth lie? Perhaps in syntax.
1.3 The syntax of Black English Earlier comparisons between Black and Southern English were largely based on differences in vocabulary and pronunciation (a reflection of the linguistic practice of the time). But, as Dillard points out
Syntax, the focus of more modern linguistics, is the area in which the analysis of Black English is most revealing. [1972:40]
For instance, Labov pointed out that Black English regularly deletes the auxiliary verb where standard English contracts: (1) a. I am going to the store. b. I’m going to the store. c. I going to the store. (Black English)
(2) a. I will see you next week. b. I’ll see you next week. c. I see you next week. (Black English)
Dillard (1972:39 78) lists a large number of other constructions along with their creole and West African parallels. For example, the auxiliary be used with “extended time.”
-66- (3) a. He be waitin’ for me every evenin’. b. He waitin’ for me right now. (cf. (1), (2) above)
Another example is the resumptive subject pronoun as in:
(4) Mose he sick. (Mose is sick.)
(5) Ray sister go to school at Adams she got new baby doll. (Ray’s sister, who goes to school at Adams, has a new baby doll.)
Dillard (1972:59) may be correct in maintaining that “in this particular structure, Black English has retained a great deal of similarity to the ancestral Pidgin English . . . .” however, it must be pointed out that this sort of structure occurs in many of the worlds languages (e.g., Mayan, spoken in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico) and that one must, therefore, exercise caution in attributing influence or inheritance. Even standard French has this construction with compound subjects and questions:
(6) Jean et moi, nous sommes allés au cinema. (John and I, we went to the movies.)
(7) Jean, est-il içi? (John, is he here?)
Be this as it may, Dillard is correct in asserting that these constructions have no parallel, contemporary or historical in the English dialects of Great Britain and must be in some sense
“non European.” A further controversy involves the question of whether and to what extent white southerners use similar syntactic constructions. (I personally have heard white speakers from the “deep south” use auxiliary deletion as in (1) and (2).) But, even if it could be shown that southern
whites use such constructions, that would leave open the question of influence did Blacks learn from them or the other way around?
1.4 Conclusions At any rate, it seems safe to conclude that Black English has its roots in West African pidgin and represents a decreolization of Plantation Creole as spoken in the south before the Civil War. It’s present state is that of a separate variety with its own phonological and syntactic rules. This must be borne in mind when teaching speakers of Black English the standard variety, which is necessary for their economic survival. Black English is to be treated as a different variety, not
as an “incorrect” or “degenerate” form of the middle class standard. In this sense, Black English
has very much the same position as the German dialects that exist side by side with so called Hochdeutsch.
-67- Samples of Black English:
John Leacock (1776) The Fall of British Tyranny Act IV, Scene iv
Scene British war ship near Norfolk, Virginia. Characters: Lord Kidnapper, Cudjo (a run-away slave).
Kidnapper: Well, my brave blacks, are you come to list?
Cudjo: Eas, massa Lord, you preazee.
Kidnapper: How many are there of you?
Cudjo: Twenty-two, massa.
Kidnapper: Very well, did you all run away from your masters?
Cudjo: Eas, massa Lord, eb’ry one, me too.
Kidnapper: That’s clever; they have no right to make you slaves. I wish all the Negroes,
wou’d do the same. I’ll make ‘em free what part did you come from?
Cudjo: Dissse brack man, disse one, disse one, disse one, come from Hamton, disse one, disse one, disse one, come from Nawfok, me come from Nawfok too.
Kilnapper: Very well, what was your master’s name?
Cudjo: Me massa name Cunney Tomsee.
Kidnapper: Colonel Thompson eigh?
Cudjo: Eas, massa, Cunney Tomsee.
Kidnapper: Well then I’ll make you a major and what’s your name?
Cudjo: Me massa cawra me Cudjo.
-68-
Kidnapper: Cudjo? very good was you ever Christened, Cudjo?
Cudjo: No, massa, me no crissen.
Kidnapper: Well then I’ll christen you you shall be called major Cudjo Thompson . . .
Cudjo: Tankee, massa, gaw bresse, massa Kidnap.
* * *
Conclusion of the Tar baby story from Uncle Remus (1904):
“Skin me, Brer Fox,” sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, “snatch out my eyeballs, t’ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,” sezee, “but do please, Brer fox, don’t fling me in dat
Brier patch,” sezee.
Co’se Bre Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad ez he kin, so he cotch ‘im by de behime legs
en slung ‘im right in de middle er de brier patch. Dar wuz a considerbul flutter whar Brer Rabbit struck the bushes, en Brer Fox sorter hang ‘round fer to see w’at wuz gwinter happen. Bimeby he hear somebody call ‘im, en way up de hill he see Brer Rabbit settin’
cross legged on a chinkapin log koamin’ de pitch outen his har wid a chip. Den Brer fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad. Brer Rabbit wuz bleedzed fer ter fling back some
a his sass en he holler out:
“Bred en bawn in a brier patch, Brer fox — bred en bawn in a brier patch!” en wid dat he skip out des ez lively ez a cricket in de embers.
* * *
Interview with an “old African” in Demarara (West Indies) from Cruikshank Black Talk (1916)
The author asks his informant if he knew English when he arrived.
Engreesh! Whi’side me go l’arn um?
You know no English at all when you come to Bakra Country?
-69- ‘T all ‘t all!
Who teach you when you come?
Who l’arn me? Eh-eh! No me matty?
How he learn you? Gi’e you book and so?
Book! Youse’f too! A-we nation got book? Fo’ a-we book yah!
He touched his chest, where the Negro “mind” is supposed to reside; his memory was his book.
What fashion you learn?
Da Uncle me a lib wit’ he se’f l’arn me. Unclew a say, ‘Bwoy, tekky this crabash (calabash)—de crabash dey a he hand—go dip watah. Watah—watah da ting inside da barrel O’ so Uncle do, sotay me a ketch wan-wan Engreesh.
So all of you catch Bakra talk, little by little?
Ah! Same thing! Matty a l’arn matty, matty a l’arn matty. You no see da fashion pickny a l’arn fo’ talk—when he papa a talk he a watch he papa mout?
* * * Modern street talk NYC (1968) conversation between John Lewis and Larry H. (Labov)
JL: What happens to you after you die? Do you know? Larry: Yeah, I know. JL: What? Larry: After they put you in the ground, your body turns into – ah – bones an’ shit. JL: What happens to your spirit? Larry: Your spirit – soon as you die, your spirit leaves you. JL: And where does the spirit go? Larry: Well, it all depends. . . JL: On what? Larry: You know, like some people say if you’re good an’ shit, your spirit goin’ t’ heaven . . . ‘n’ if you bad, your spirit goin’ to hell. Well, bullshit! Your spirit goin’ to hell anyway, good or bad.
-70- JL: Why? Larry: Why? I’ll tell you why. ‘Cause, you see, doesn’ nobody really know that it’s a God, y’know, ‘cause I mean I have seen black gods, pink gods, white gods, all color gods, and don’t nodbody know it’s really a God. An’ when they be sayin’ if you good, you goin’ t’ heaven, tha’s bullshit, ‘cause you ain’t goin’ to no heaven, ‘cause it ain’t no heaven for you to go to. JL: Well, if there’s no heaven, how could there be a hell?
Larry: I mean – ye eah. Well, let me tell you, it ain’t no hell, ‘cause this is hell right here, y’know! JL: This is hell? Larry: Yeah, this is hell right here! JL: But, just say that there is a God, what color is he? White or black? Larry: He’d be white, man. JL: Why? Larry: Why? I’ll tell you why. ‘Cause the average whitey out here got everything, you dig? And the nigger ain’t got shit, y’know? Y’understan’? So – um – for – in order for that to happen, you know it ain’t no black God that’s doin’ that bullshit.
-71- The American Language: Someday Reading
Barron, Dennis E. (1982) Grammar and Good Taste - Reforming the American Language, New Haven:Yale University Press. Excellent history of prescriptive, school grammar in America.
Dillard, J.L. (1975) All American English, New York: Vintage. A “revisionist” approach to the
American language emphasizing the non ¡ British origins of American speech in African and Caribbean pidgins. Makes excellent reading and is a good antidote to books like Marckwardt (q.- v.). At times, however, Dillard overstates his case.
Dillard, J.L. (1972) Black English, New York: Vintage. A fascinating and highly readable study of Black English from African pidgin to New York classrooms of the 1960s. A good treatment of historical, linguistic and social issues.
Francis, W. Nelson (1958) The Structure of American English. A good, readable, detailed description of AE from the American structuralist point of view. Includes a chapter on dialects by Raven I. McDavid, Jr.
Fries, Charles Carpenter (1940) American English Grammar. New York: Appleton, Century, Crofts. Commissioned by the National Council of English Teachers, this is a precise, statistical study of American grammar as actually practiced by a broad cross-section of the population. Not
exactly bed ¡ time reading, but interesting for gaining a perspective on the standard.
Galinsky, Hans (1951) Die Sprache des Amerikaners. 2 Vol., Heidelberg: F.H. Kerle. A turgid compilation of views and observations on AE by a man who read everything on the subject but apparently never spoke to an American. To give him his due, I must admit that I was able to glean a great deal of useful information for this course from this work – but, only because I am a (a) a trained linguist and (b) a native speaker of AE. Others are advised to treat this work with extreme caution.
Krapp, George P. (1925) The English Language in America, 2 Vols., New York: Frederick
Ungar. A pioneer treatment that has stood up well over time. The first volume is well ¡ worth reading from cover to cover. A good deal of the material for this course was derived from this source.
Lakoff, Robin (1975) Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper & Row. A provocative essay that has stood the test of time. Lakoff combines astute observation with the professional training of a linguist in this introspective study.
-72- Marckwardt, Albert H. (1958) American English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A good representative of the “anglo ¡ centric” view of the origins and development of AE.
Mencken, H.L. (1936) The American Language. 4th ed., New York: Alfred A. Knopf. A classic first published in 1919 and continually expanded and revised. Mencken was a journalist rather than a linguist and this book reflects his interests. A huge compendium of interesting observations on the American language, particularly good for immigrant speech and the common tongue.
Reference:
Dictionary of Contemporary English (2009), 5th ed.. N.c.: Langenscheidt ¡ Longman. An extremely reliable foreign users’ dictionary of BE and AE. Both pronunciations are indicated in IPA and differences of usage are pointed out. This dictionary also contains a wealth of grammatical information and practical examples of usage. No foreign user of AE/BE should be without this book.
Kenyon, John S., Thomas A. Knott (1944) A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English. Springfield, MA: C.G. Merriam. The standard work, unrevised for half a century. Indicates regional N,S,E pronunciations.
Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed.. Springfield, MA: Merriam ¡ Webster. “The Voice of Authority.” The dictionary found on every American desk. If you can’t buy it for less than 20 , have a friend send you one from the USA.
-73- Review Questions:
Early History:
1. Who were the first Indo-Europeans to settle in Britain?
2. Give the approx. dates of the Roman colonization. What influence did this historical period have on the English language?
3. Who were the German invaders in the fifth century. Where did they come from. Where did they settle in Britain.
4. Who was the original King Arthur?
5. What influence did the Viking raiders have on the English language?
6. Who united England and established the first literary language? What dialect was this literary language based on?
7. What language dominated public life (church, schools, courts, government administration) in the period following the Norman invasion.
8. Who were the Normans and where did they come from?
9. What does a comparison of the English words for domestic animals like cow and the meat from them (beef) tell us about society in Norman England?
10. What dialect is modern English based on? What reasons are there for the ascendence of this dialect as a standard?
11. Does everyone in England now speak this standard? Explain?
12. How did the “learned” (Greek and Latin) vocabulary enter the English language?
13. English is spelled today approximately as it was pronounced in what year?
14. The modern English language was standardized around what year?
-74- 15. What is the British standard called? It is based on the speech of what group of people (geographical location, social class)?
16. Explain the relationship between dialect and social class in England, America, Germany.
17. What is Shaw’s play Pygmalion about? It is better known in musical version called:
The English Language in America:
18. When and where were the first English-speaking settlements established in North America?
19. What geographical area did the original thirteen colonies cover?
20. What date is usually given for the disappearance of the frontier?
21. What other languages are widely spoken in North America?
22. What is the American standard called? How does it differ from the British standard?
23. What are the major American dialects? How does the dialect situation differ between America and England or Germany?
24. What is Black English?
25. What is a koiné?
26. What do travelers’ reports tell us about English in the American colonies around the time of the Revolution (1776).
27. What factors led to the establishment of the American koiné?
28. What two theories are there about the development of the American dialects?
29. When do British travelers begin complaining about the barbarity of American English (cf. Thomas Hamilton).
-75- 30. What is the origin of the word boss?
31. What are expressions like: I guess, I reckon, I expect, called?
32. What is a pidgin?
33. What is a creole?
34. What theories are there about the origins of frontier slang terms like: buckeroo, palaver, savvy, etc.?
British and American Pronunciation:
35. What is the German final devoicing rule? Why is it a problem for German speakers of English?
36. What problems does English /w/ present for speakers of German?
37. What is the difference between German and English vowel length?
38. What is the difference in the BE and AE pronunciation of the word boat?
39. What is the difference between the BE and AE pronunciation of dance? When does BE pronounce short-a differently from AE.
40. How is short-o (as in not) pronounced in BE? In AE?
41. What is the difference in the pronunciation of t as in city in AE and BE?
42. When does the American standard pronounce r? What is the rule for pronouncing r in BE?
43. Which standard pronounces do and due exactly alike?
44. What is the origin of the sound /ju/ in words like use?
45. What is the difference in sentence intonation between BE and AE? Which is easier for Germans to learn?
-76- 46. What is the difference between the pronunciation of Birmingham in England and America? How does this illustrate a basic difference in rhythm between AE and BE?
47. The words garage and vase are loan words from what language? How do the differing pronunciations of these words reflect their “naturalization.”
48. What is the name of the letter “Z” in BE, AE?
Spelling and the Dictionary:
49. Who was responsible for introducing the major differences in spelling between BE and AE?
50. Approximately when did the word shit first appear in American dictionaries?
51. What are the AE spellings of the following: traveller, centre, judgement, programme, encyclopædia?
52. Why were Noah Webster’s etymologies worthless?
53. What was the best-selling book in America in the nineteenth century (after the Bible).
54. Who wrote the first authoritative English dictionary, which “fixed” the English language in something like its present form? When?
Vocabulary:
55. Explain the difference in the meaning of the following words in BE and AE: corn, public school, slot machine.
56. Why should you never use the BE words cock, fag, knock up, in America. What do these words mean in AE. What are the AE equivalents for the BE words?
57. Give the AE equivalents for the following BE words: flat, chemist, men’s hairdresser, braces.
-77- Dialects of American English:
58. The most striking feature of the AE dialect situation as compared to BE or German is:
59. The standard American pronouncing dictionary is? It was published in the year?
60. The dialects can be classified into three major regions plus New York City. What are they? Describe their geographic boundaries.
61. A shibboleth is a word or phrase that reveals a person’s origins. Identify the following shibboleths with their geographical regions: the white house, law(r) and orde(r), night time, fourth floor.
62. In which dialect regions is r-dropping found? What is the social status of r-dropping in New York City, London, Munich? What factors determine the frequency of r-dropping in New York City speech as determined by Labov.
63. Describe the “Southern drawl.”
64. In which dialect are pin and pen likely to be pronounced identically?
65. Which U.S. presidential candidate in the last elections would be most likely to pronounce door and poor identically?
66. In the American standard horse and hoarse are pronounced the same or different?
Black English:
67. What do we mean by Black English?
68. There is virtually no difference between the pronunciation of Black English and the speech of what group?
69. How did the Black slaves in America originally communicate with each other and their overseers?
70. What is the traditional view of Black English as taken by Krapp or McDavid?
-78- 71. What is Dillard’s position?
72. The most revealing differences between Black English and Southern Dialects are not in phonology (sounds), but in:
73. Give the Black English equivalents of the following: I’m going to the store, I’ll see you next week.
74. Labov showed that Black English was not a “restricted code” and that Black children were not “verbally deprived.” His essay on the logic of non-standard English de- monstrates:
75. Give the standard English equivalents for: It ain’t no heaven for you to go to. When they be sayin’ you be good. What differences in syntax between Black English and the standard do they reveal?
-79-