Dialects of American English

Dialects are described in terms of general statements that comprise features. A feature is a descriptor of a given property of any language form or variety. For example, a feature of African American Vernacular English is the dropping of final /r/. For a recent comprehensive account of dialectal research, see Labov, Ash, & Boberg (2006) and Wolfram & Schilling (2015).

American English

American English mainly refers to the version of English spoken in the United States and Canada, as distinct from British English and English spoken outside these countries. The key feature of American English is the tapping or flapping of /t/ and /d/ between vowels, when the second vowel is unstressed (Kahn, 1976; Fox & Terbeek, 1977). The tapped sound involves the tongue quickly hitting the alveolar ridge (behind the front upper teeth). It resembles /d/, but is softer. The symbol for this sound is /ɾ/, which is the same as the Spanish “r” in pero (=but), pera (=pear), or cera (=wax). Outside the Americas, Irish English is the only other dialect that may have a similar feature.

The full /t/ and /d/ emerge only in careful speech. When a person speaks fluently, the tapped sound is pronounced in words like water, city, duty, or muddy. Tapping neutralizes the difference between /t/ and /d/, and this produces spelling hesitation in seeder/seater or ladder/latter.

A byproduct of tapping is a glottal stop after /n/. The glottal stop is an absorbed hit of the throat in words like mountain = moun’n, certain = cer’n or kitten = ki’n. Sometimes tapping becomes a complete deletion in chunks, such as ‘gonna’ and ‘wanna’.

Western American English

Western American English is the English spoken on the western side of the American continent. That includes states like Alaska, California, Colorado, part of New Mexico, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and Wyoming, as well as most of Canada.

The main feature is the merger between “caught” and “cot”. Other dialects produce “au” or “aw” with a distinct rounded sound that is imperceptible to speakers of Western American English. The most prominent recent change is the California Vowel Shift (Eckert, 2008), exemplified below:

• Dude -> (turns into) dood
• Boot -> beet
• Bat -> bot
• Cut -> kit
• And -> end

Southern American English

Southern American English is the English spoken in the southeastern United States, including Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, north of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Virginias. Some changes include:

• Peach -> (turns into) pache
• Thanks -> thaneks
• Ride -> rad
• Pin -> pen
• Santa -> Sana
• You (plural) -> y’all
• Going to -> fixing to

African American Vernacular English

This variety of English exists among speakers of the United States who share an African ethnic origin. The original geographical area is the same as Southern English, but it is also found in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Some examples include

• third floor -> (turns into) thia floa
• feel -> feeo
• act -> ak-
• thanks -> tanks
• these -> dese
• She wants to dance -> she wanna dance
• She’s a doctor -> she- a doctor
• An opposite -> a- opposite

Northern American English

Northern American English includes all other English varieties in the United States, such as Midwest English and New England English. As the first colonized area, it may exhibit more regional variation in smaller geographic regions. It might show features of Southern English in rural areas, lower-class varieties, or in border regions with Southern states. Similarly, it may display elements of Western American English near Western states.

Middle-class urban Midwest English comprises the basis for what is considered “standard” American English, with features such as:

• Distinction between caught and cot
• Pronunciation of /yu/ in words like student or dude
• Pronunciation of /th/ with the tongue between the front upper teeth
• Negation splits as in “I don’t have anything”
• Usage of “you” as both singular and plural
• Usage of “is” and “was” as the mark of third-person.

Finally, “ain’t” as a general auxiliary of negation, deletion of /r/, or double negation occur at an intersection of Southern American English, African American Vernacular English, and low-class English across the United States.

See more in Linguistics of American English for Educators (on Amazon)