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The west was the last area in the United States to be reached during the gradual westward expansion of English-speaking settlement and its history shows considerable mixing of the linguistic patterns of other regions. As the settlement populations are relatively young when compared with other regions, Western American English is a dialect area in formation.
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Vocabulary
- buckaroo: cowboy; Anglicization of vaquero.
- be all: used as a quotative.
- be like: quotative; now used throughout the country.
- hella: adverb; very
- like: filler word; now used throughout the country.
Phonology and phonetics
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- Unlike the North, cot-caught merger and no Northern Cities Shift.
- Unlike the South, no glide deletion of /ai/.
- The Western dialect is not clearly distinct from either Canada or the Midland:
- Unlike Canada, little Canadian raising.
- some speakers have the Canadian shift, but /ɑ/ is generally fronter than in Canada.
- Unlike the Midland, /ou/ is conservative (little fronting) and the cot-caught merger is complete (except in San Francisco).
- But /u/ is being fronted like in most of North America.
- Some speakers have the pin-pen merger.
Local dialects
References
Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016746-8
See also
External links
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Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 18 October 2008, at 01:33.
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