Re: OT American dialects

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Roger Mills" <romilly@...> wrote:

> Torsten wrote:
> >This is the way I reconstruct it, without too many hard facts:
> There are basically three dialects in the USA: New England, Southern
> and Standard. Standard stretches from New York west like smoke from

a

> smokestack. New England is the old North, behind the port of Boston,
> and Southern is the old South, based in Virginia.>
>
> You're right, Torsten, about the New Yorkish accent in old movies;

when I

> was a child that was the norm for national radio announcers.

Replaced since

> about the 50s by our flat Midwestern norm, and when you still hear

it in

> movies or TV, it's invariably from upper-class or hoity-toity

characters.

>
> And you're essentially correct on the 3 dialects.. It had to do with
> settlement patterns. The first English settlers (from many regions,

many but

> not all r-less) were succeeded by large numbers of English from the

north,

> Welsh, Scots and Irish-- mostly r-ful. How they spread out from

the major

> port cities depended on geography.
>
> In the South, the first settlers grabbed the land and became, by

and large,

> a wealthy elite. The later Scots/Irish became the Southern

proletariat, and

> it was mostly this group who later emigrated by various routes west

as far

> as Texas, to grab land for themselves...(beyond Texas it's a total
> mish-mash). So, in the South, you actually find two accents-- the

prestige

> r-less one, and the more common r-ful one (but they all drawl their
> vowels...). Many of the Fine Old Southern Families were undone by

the Civil

> War, while their more numerous proletarian neighbors did a little

better in

> the aftermath-- and their r-ful accent is heard much more nowadays

(though

> still disdained by many old "upper-class" Southerners).
>
> Humorous "How to Talk Southern" articles offer examples

like "tarred =

> tired", "far = fire" etc.
>
> Many Northerners hold all Southern accents in low regard, for a

variety of

> reasons that we needn't go into.
>
> Two interesting old recordings (vinyl LPs from the 50s) that

presumably

> reflect the old prestige dialect--
> --a Civil War album that includes Robert E. Lee III reading his
> grandfather's Farewell Address-- (Tidewater Virginia dialect,

sounds almost

> RP-ish)
> --Tennessee Williams (also from an Old Family, though much reduced)

reading

> his story "The Yellow Bird"-- ("Delta" dialect, from New Orleans

north up

> the Mississippi to about Memphis).
> Both men pronounce the stressed schwa-r+C sequence as [&j], and Lee

also

> pronounces /aw/ as [&w]-- sounding like "boyd" and "hoose" = house

to the

> untrained ear. By and large, I think those pronunciations are dying

out;

> I've heard them lately only from elderly folks, both black and

white.

>

Isn't BTW the pronunciation of <ou> as [&w], not [aw] supposed to be
the trait that traditionally sets Canadian English apart from
American English?

> (Let's hope this OT also dies out; on Conlang-L we label them
> YA(D)EPT --"Yet Another (Dreaded) Engl. Pronunciation Thread"--,

but they

> also come in Swedish, Dutch, French and Spanish flavors....). I'm a
> linguist, but not a US dialectician, though I know the bare bones;

it's more

> that in 70 years I've been around and heard a lot.)

Thank you very much for your posting; I was very happy to learn of
these facts (instead of opinions). I was pointing to a possible Dutch
connection, because it seemed to me that American dialectologists
wouldn't have been aware of that particularity of Dutch dialects (or
worse, would have reacted like Miguel: this dialect is insignificant,
since no one has written about it, and Dutch influence on (the
previous gangs of ;-) ) Old New York was insignificant, since no one
has written about it, and therefore the whole matter is insignificant
and doesn't exist); therefore I wanted to draw the relevant people's
attention to it.

Torsten