Re: American Dutch dialects

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 63484
Date: 2009-02-27

--- 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, 12:46 PM
> > > And the Germans arrived through 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.
>
> And once there, they started learning the top dog dialect
> at the time,
> New York English.

No, they learned English from the local school marm, who taught them a book form of the local English. Midwest English does include some non-standard features such as "warsh," Warshington," etc. and I suppose people once pronounced ma'am as "marm", hence "school marm," --probably the most educated person in town.
>
>
> > > 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.
>
> Ulster has retroflex r, and it's opposite Liverpool,
> which was an
> emigrant harbor, but does it have r-colored vowels? And by
> what
> mechanism would it influence General American?

The overwheming majority of early settlers west of the Appalachian mountains were from Ulster or had their roots there. The Scots-Irish were frontier people. They cleared the land, some stayed, others sold out and moved on. Germans tended to follow them and preferred to buy already cleared land.
Read the Wiki blurb on Pittsburgh English, Burghese, which is transitional form of Midwestern English with origins in Scots-Irish and Philly English.