GHOTI

Why Do Individual Languages Vary among Places? Chapter 5 KEY ISSUE 3 Why Do Individual Languages Vary among Places?

Language is an extremely complex cultural feature. Not only is classification of different languages difficult- as we have seen- but there is a great degree of variation WITHIN many individual languages.

A dialect is a regional variation of a language - distinguished by distinctive vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.

Any language with a large number of speakers and widespread distribution is bound to form DIALECTS.

YouTube star, Dialect specialist Major distinctions can be heard between American and British English- and even between regions of the United States! AMY WALKER YouTube star, Dialect specialist

Where do varying dialects in the United States come from? The places that the ORIGINAL SETTLERS of different regions came from.

The Eastern United States can be grouped into three dialect regions, each with a different group of original settlers.

1.) New England Almost entirely settled by people from England, mostly by Puritans from the wealthy Southeast, near London. Very few immigrants from poorer Northern England.

2.) Southeast About half came from England, the rest from a mix of European countries. Those from England came from the poorer industrial North. More diverse than New England’s original settlers.

3.) Midlands Most diverse group of early settlers. Quakers from north of England, Scots and Irish, German, Dutch, and Swedish migrants.

FIGURE 5-20 DIALECTS IN THE EASTERN UNITED STATES The most comprehensive classification of dialects in the United States was made by Hans Kurath in 1949. He found the greatest diversity of dialects in the eastern part of the country, especially in vocabulary used on farms. Kurath divided the eastern United States into three major dialect regions—Northern, Midlands, and Southern—each of which contained a number of important subareas. Compare this to the map of source areas of U.S. house types (FIGURE 4-25). As Americans migrated west, they took with them distinctive house types as well as distinctive dialects.

SNL’s The Californians Today, the three original US dialect regions have been joined by a fourth, the WESTERN dialect. It is closest to the MIDLANDS dialect, from where many of the original inhabitants of the West migrated. SNL’s The Californians

4 Main U.S. Dialect Regions (And Sub-Dialects)

Like dialects, the varying use of certain WORDS/TERMS also form regions. ISOGLOSS - the geographic extent or boundary of a certain linguistic feature, like a word.

These are all cans OF…?

Producing an increasingly UNIFORM LINGUAL LANDSCAPE Mass media & popular culture has reduced the number of regionally distinctive words. Producing an increasingly UNIFORM LINGUAL LANDSCAPE

Mass media promotes the streamlining of language, like with physical landscapes. If ALL people can understand the messages in media, they are more likely to be effective (sell more products, more viewers, etc)

STANDARD LANGUAGES Languages with multiple dialects may recognize one as the standard language- widely recognized as the most acceptable for government, business, and mass communication.

England’s standard language is known as British Received Pronunciation (BRP). It was the dialect of London’s upper class, and became widely adopted during the 19th century.

America’s standard language is known as Standard American; you can hear it on TV or other media at any time. This accent, originating in the Midwest, became prominent in the 20th century with the development of mass media.

British v. American English Dialects American English is noticeably different from British English in three ways. Reasons for differences. Isolation Separation by Atlantic Ocean allowed two languages to develop independently. Limited travel and communications Few people traveled between the U.S. and England during the 18th and 19th centuries and no form of communication that transmitted voices across the ocean, thus pronunciation of words developed independently.

1.) Vocabulary Settlers in America encountered many new objects and experiences not present in England; these required new words. Native American words, and later foreign words were incorporated into American English

A man with a LINGUAL AGENDA! 2.) Spelling Noah Webster sought to make American English distinct from the British form. In his famous dictionary, he purposely spelled words differently, such as dropping the ‘u’ in ‘colour.’ A man with a LINGUAL AGENDA!

NOAH WEBSTER HOUSE – WEST HARTFORD

3.) Pronunciation In the past, there was limited interaction between English speakers across the Atlantic. As soon as these speakers were separated, pronunciations began to change.

A very interesting point- Linguists believe that today’s American English is closer to English of the 17th century than is today’s British English. England has ‘dropped the R’ since 1800, adopting London’s accent as its official dialect.

Linguists have a word for this distinction- RHOTIC is English where the R is pronounced NON-RHOTIC is English where the R is ‘dropped’ MASSACHUSETTS is NON-RHOTIC because many of its settlers were from the London area!

DIALECTS v. LANGUAGES It can be difficult to determine – or agree- if two languages are distinct, or whether they are dialects of the same language

Romance-speaking Europe is a good example. Several tongues in Italy that have been traditionally classified as dialects of Italian are now officially viewed as distinct languages.

These different forms of Italian remain MUTUALLY COMPRHENSIBLE, meaning speakers of each can still understand one another.

Whether or not a tongue is a language or a dialect has political implications. In Barcelona, the dominant Catalan language – recognized as distinct from Spanish – is often used as a reason for ‘Catalonia’ to break away from Spain.

ROMANIAN V. MOLDOVAN Romanian- separate from the other Romances- is spoken in Romania and Moldova. Linguists consider it to be the same language in both countries. Moldova, however, calls its language ‘Moldovan’ and writes it in Cyrillic instead of Latin letters to show its separate identity.

In some places, lingual disagreements have fueled actual conflict YUGOSLAVIA was a country aligned with the Soviet Union. Its was MULTIETHNIC; many different groups of people lived in the country, speaking different local languages.

Communist Yugoslavian soldier Under Soviet direction, Yugoslavians of all types were forced to speak a common language called ‘Serbo-Croatian.’ The Soviets demanded lingual unity. Communist Yugoslavian soldier

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Yugoslavia tore itself apart in civil war; Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro & Serbia all claim their own languages, though they are really the same: Serbo-Croatian.