From: Rick McCallister
Message: 63484
Date: 2009-02-27
> From: tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>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.
> 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.
>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.
>
> > > 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?