Bernard Ollila Philadelphia’s Language: The Most Influential and Advanced form of English in America English spoken in America differs tremendously from English spoken in the language‟s motherland, Britain. The most significant difference between the language in England and the United States does not lay in the vocabulary or slang of the countries, though. Linguistically, what sets the two countries apart the most is the way the language sounds in either place. In their book, Do You Speak American?, Robert MacNeil and William Cran note that what makes American English so unique is the pronunciation of the letter r. However, the phonological revolution surrounding the letter r in the United States did not happen coincidentally, nor was it deliberate. It came as a result of immigration patterns during the original colonization of the United States. In American Voices, Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes note that the original British colonial settlers migrated in groups according to their places of origin in the British Isles. But, there was one territory in the colonies that was not as regionally correspondent in regards to its immigration patterns with Britain as the others, that territory being Philadelphia. In his study, Ethnicity and National Origin among British Settlers in the Philadelphia Region, Ned Landsman establishes that Philadelphia‟s populace was an amalgamation of sorts regarding the nationalities of its settlers. Unlike the way in which Boston‟s first settlers can be traced back to a specific group of separatists, as Ryan Fitzpatrick mentions in Beantown Babble, Philadelphia‟s original settlers were a mix-up of primarily Scots and Irish, with some people from other areas of Britain and Europe. Claudio Salvucci‟s Expressions of Brotherly Love indicates that Philadelphia‟s geographical position made it prone to newcomers and passers-by more so than any of the other Ollila 2 colonial settlements. This, in conjunction with the diversity of the city‟s settlers, changed the way English was spoken in Philadelphia, ultimately making the city the first to fully pronounce the letter r. Moreover, since people were so frequently coming and going in Philadelphia, the city‟s linguistic influence eventually spread to the west; and, today what was once a phonological trait exclusive to Philadelphia is, as Cran and MacNeil mentioned, what provides American English not only with its most distinct trait, but also with its identity. Although, Philadelphia‟s linguistic innovation is not restricted to its relationship with the pronunciation of the letter r. Research conducted by William Labov and other linguists documents the evolution of speech patterns in the United States. To be specific, the research mentioned pertains to a number of vowel shifts occurring in the United States today, which have been identified in the north, south, west, and in Philadelphia. While the rest of the country is embarking on a series of phonological evolutions in association to large geographical areas, for instance the northern cities and the area from Pittsburgh to California, the city of Philadelphia and its immediate neighbors are in the midst of a linguistic movement particular to that vicinity. In his article, Phillyspeak, Jim Quinn summarizes in a more layman friendly manner the findings of the research conducted by Labov and his constituents. But first, in order to understand the impact Philadelphia has had on the development of American English, one must understand what initially made American English a distinct variant of the tongue. The people who colonized the United States immigrated from different parts of the British Isles. The regions in Britain from which the first migrants came had their own morphological and phonological practices of English that made them differ, to some extent, from one another. These settlers occupied territories in the colonies in groups, with those from given regions in Britain remaining amongst themselves once they were in the states. Ollila 3 Traditional dialect divisions in the U.S. reflect differences first established in Colonial America by people from different parts of the British Isles. These differences were cemented in early cultural hubs such as Richmond, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston. (Wolfram, 2) Thus, if a person from a small town in Whales relocated to the colonies, he or she would not only do so as a part of a group, but would move to a territory that was occupied by others from the same small Welsh town. Today‟s distinguishable American accents didn‟t take very long develop once their originators moved to the colonies; what‟s more, each accent can be traced back to a given region. Once the settlers were in the United States, their particular accents grew and became what they are today. But, most accents maintained features of the English spoken in Britain. Today‟s American English is very distinguishable from its British mother tongue in several ways. “In the rest of the English-speaking world, probably the most characteristic sound in American English is the fully sounded „r,‟” (Cran and MacNeil 49). Thus, the most significant feature of American English that separates it from British English is the r sound. How could such a dramatic change in language take place? There had to be somewhere in colonial America where the r sound began to be pronounced fully. “Boston, New York, Richmond, Savannah, and Charleston were „r‟-less. Philadelphia was the only exception, the only East Coast city originally to pronounce its „r‟s,” (Cran and MacNeil 49). Philadelphia was not only the birth place of the Declaration of Independence, but also the birthplace of the r sound in America. As mentioned, the accents in America particular to given regions are the result of mass immigration from one specific area in the British Isles to another. The Philadelphia r is a direct Ollila 4 result of this. Just as Jim Fitzpatrick notes in Beantown Babble, the Boston accent can be traced back to a group of separatists from Lincolnshire (64), as the Philadelphia r can be traced back to the city‟s original settlers from Scotland and Ireland, particularly the areas of lowland western Scotland, Belfast, Dublin, and Londonbery. In correspondence with this, Ned Landsman observes that the settlement of Philadelphia and its immediate surroundings were so diverse because of the city‟s location, between New York and Maryland (Landsman 172-3). Unlike the other major hubs mentioned by Wolfram, the immigration to Philadelphia wasn‟t done by large groups of people; rather, Philadelphia was settled in waves by a number of different groups. As Caludio Salvucci points out in Expressions of Brotherly Love, while people were flooding into Philadelphia from overseas, there were also people moving from the north to the south, as well as people moving from the south to the north, bringing with them their languages and incorporating them with the cultural jumble that was Philadelphia‟s English. Philadelphia‟s position along the Eastern seaboard has also greatly influenced its linguistic development. Northern and Southern features have always competed in the city, given its close proximity to both New York City and the Mason-Dixon line. (Salvucci 90) That‟s interesting, but how can Philadelphia be credited with being the primary source for American English today if people were coming and going so haphazardly? It is possible that Philadelphia shaped American speech more than any other city, because the „r‟ sound that so typifies American English migrated west from Philadelphia. That makes Philadelphia not only the cradle of American independence, but the cradle of what we think of today as modern American language. (Cran and MacNeil 49). Ollila 5 Where the language in the original colonial settlements grew out of mass, factioned immigration, the waves of people and abruptness with which they came to Philadelphia fused their dialects together and formed the original pronounced r in American English. Moreover, the Philadelphia r moved from the city with the expansion of the United States to the western frontier. The Philadelphia r has not only made its way westward, though. In New York City, the letter r has become a larger point of linguistic evolution which can be traced back to Philadelphia. Though the r sound in New York is not used the same as it is in Philadelphia, it is still recognizable; but, the New York r is more of an intrusive sound rather than a natural one. In Michael Newman‟s examination of speech in New York, New York Tawk, he illustrates the intrusiveness of the r. New Yorkers sometimes maintain [the r], particularly when a final r sound comes right before another word that begins with a vowel sound. Just as the r is sometimes pronounced in lore and legend, so it can appear in law-r and order. When they are speaking carefully New Yorkers even occasionally maintain r‟s when there is no following vowel. You get the idear? (83) So, the Philadelphia influence made its way to New York. However, New York hasn‟t quite fully developed the natural r sound that Philadelphia and the rest of the western United States has. The New York r is thrown in, so to speak, at the end of words in certain dialectical situations. The Philadelphia r had not seen the end of its expansion finally in the west and in New York. As the New York r is heard, though intrusive, the r can be heard in modern Bostonian speech patterns as well. Like New York, though, the r sound in Boston is also a rather unnatural sound. Though the generalized Boston accent can be easily differentiated from the New York accent, the Boston r shares with the New York r in regard to the way in which the r appears in Ollila 6 places it shouldn‟t, particularly when the word that follows an r sound begins with a vowel.