Re: American Dutch dialects

--- On Fri, 2/27/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> From: tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
> Subject: [tied] Re: American Dutch dialects
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Friday, February 27, 2009, 5:12 AM
> > 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.

German settlers went directly to the Midwest. They normally arrived in colony groups with land and supplies already paid for. The only thing they did in NY, Philly, Boston, etc. was get off the boat and catch a train or a river ship, etc. to get to the Midwest ASAP.

>
> > 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.'

The closest thing to American English is Ulster English. I've met a lot of people from there and they often sound very close to Americans. Some had the retroflex /R/ but I don't know if from there or here but they had been in the US for only a couple of months. Check it out.

>
> 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