American dialects in linguistics: interactive features

American Dialects

Geography in Linguistic Variation

Examining the dialects of the inland North and the South reveals many key differences, most notably having to do with vowels, but also touching on consonants and the syntactic usage of language. Whether these differences occurred as a result of change instituted through migration, isolation, etc. is a question of interest after this examination. Clearly, the dialect in the south would be expected to have been heavily influenced by the large number of slaves that once dwelled in the area and their native African languages. Other influences on the South may have been immigrants from areas of Europe that found the climate and economic opportunities more acceptable than in the North, which was, originally, populated with native English citizens during the colonial days. A discussion of the differences among vowel, consonant, and syntactic uses of language in the South and inland North, the dialect that I am most familiar with, begs these questions.

Vowel sounds in the southern part of the United States are noticeably longer in than in the Inland North. For instance, in speaking the sample sentence given to the participants, a Caucasian female from Alabama pronounces the words "white" and "air" much differently than I would, as an inland North dialect speaker. While I would use the [e] sound for the vowel in these words, pronouncing them with the "I" sound as in sky when pronouncing the word "white," the speaker pronounces them with the [a] sound as in father. The southern speaker uses a rounded, lower vowel in the pronunciation of the word, while I use a tense, closed, high vowel. The vowel length is different between my pronunciation and the southern dialect speakers when it comes to the word "air" as well. While I would use a shortened, vowel sound in pronouncing the word "air," the southern speaker almost creates a diphthong, using a hard "a" sound as in face and the [j] sound as in yellow. Thus, when it comes to vowels, this short comparison led me to believe the southern dialect uses longer, more rounded, looser vowels than the inland North dialect.

Consonant sounds also differ between the two regions; or perhaps it is more accurate to note that consonants are used in different ways in the southern and inland northern areas of the United States. Take, for instance, the word "white." While I pronounce this word with a defined, voiced [j] sound at the end, the southern speaker allows it to conclude by lengthening the [a] vowel, as in father. This difference leads to southern words sounding softer and more rounded than the hard, tight edges of Northern words. Although there is a great deal of bias regarding the Southern dialect in the United States today, with some saying it sounds uneducated, listening to the features alone reveal it as a beautiful, if different, use of spoken word.