From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 63475
Date: 2009-02-27
>AFAIK Southwestern England today has retroflex r's including
>
> > There was a distinct Midwestern accent by then.
>
> The question is, is it the one that exists today, or was it
> modified later?
>
> > Most early settlers in the Midwest originated around Lancaster Co. >
> PA, from where they went to the Potomac and Shenandoah valleys and
> > from there either down the New River or the Monengehela to the Ohio
> > Valley. This was the general settlement pattern until well into the
> > 1800s and immigration from present day WV into Ohio never stopped,
> > it still continues,
> > The upper Midwest, i.e. the Great Lakes was largely settled from
> > upper New England, upstate NY and Canada.
> > The lower Ohio Valley and much of Missouri was largely settled from
> > WV, VA, KY, etc.
> > This was probably the most common pattern until the 1840s or so,
> > when a new wave of German immigration moved into rural and small
> > town Midwest.
>
> And the Germans arrived thought New York in large numbers, in many
> parts of the Midwest people of German extraction were the largest
> component until recently.
>
> > Irish immigration in the 1840s was mainly urban,
> > although many had been farmer, they arrived penniless and couldn't
> > afford to set up farms. many couldn't even afford to get out of
> > Boston, NYC and Philly.
> > There was a large group in far upstate NY who got off the boar in
> > Montreal and walked to the US from there. The story I heard was
> > they were rejected from the US in Boston and sent to Canada, they
> > were refused entry into Canada until they got the idea of going
> > over to the US from there.
> >
>
> You're making the assumption that the first settlers will determine
> the language. That's not certain.
>
> Besides, in all I read on /r/ in American English, they make a
> semantic slide. They are looking for the origin as the American
> English *retroflex* /r/ in the *rhotic* dialects of Britain. But none
> of those AFAIK have *retroflex* /r/ which are the cause of the
> American English *r-colored vowels*
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-colored_vowel#R-colored_vowel
> 'A vowel may have either the tip or blade of the tongue turned up
> during at least part of the articulation of the vowel (a retroflex
> articulation) or with the tip of the tongue down and the back of the
> tongue bunched. Both articulations produce basically the same auditory
> effect, a lowering in frequency of the third formant. Although they
> are rarely attested, they occur in some non-standard varieties of
> Dutch and in a number of rhotic accents of English like General
> American. The English vowel may be analyzed phonemically as an
> underlying /&r/ rather than a syllabic consonant.'
>
> Note that the article does not mention English dialects with retroflex
> r's and r-colored vowels other than American, it seems to just assume
> they must exist. On the other hand, retroflex r's and r-colored vowels
> do exist in at least one Dutch dialect (calling it a 'non-standard
> variety' won't make the dialect of Leyden go away, most Dutch
> immigrants were pretty non-standard anyway), as you heard on YouTube.
> Now, if there is a candidate dialect on the British Isles with
> retroflex r's and r-colored vowels which anyone wants to claim as the
> ancestor of the American English retroflex r's and r-colored vowels,
> the I'd like to hear what and where it is. Otherwise I'll keep on
> maintaining that the Americans are basically English-speaking Dutch.
>
> Other than that, the article seems for some reason to confuse
> r-colored vowels with syllabic r's, but that does not influence my
> argument.
>
>
> Torsten
>