Talk:American English

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Archive 1 - 2002-2004

Contents

1 Broken characters 2 Hiram Falutin 3 Phonology 4 Phonology 5 Mergers, mergers, and more mergers 6 Spelling reform 7 Consolidation 8 Slovene and German loanwords 9 Japanese loanwords removed 10 loanwords comemntary 11 Webster POV 12 American English an oxymoron? 13 Loan words from British English 14 Phonics 15 American English#Loanwords not common in British English 16 Cape 17 Loanwords, again 18 Words that have dropped out of common usage in British English? 19 Removed claim 20 IPA vs SAMPA 21 Scope of American English 22 Broken characters 23 Hiram Falutin 24 Phonology 25 Phonology 26 Mergers, mergers, and more mergers 27 Spelling 28 Relationship to other dialects 29 Youse for You in northern midwest 30 Are these traits for southern Illinois speech very well known? 31 use of "skosh" 32 Central and South Florida

Broken characters

On IE6 under WinXP, a large portion of the special characters don't display properly. (They show up as empty boxes.) IE, "/æ/ to /ɑ/" (the second doesn't show). Any thoughts?

You need a Unicode-supporting font, such as Code2000. --ɛvɪs 02:05, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)

Hiram Falutin

I cannot find any references to a Hiram Falutin on the web, apart from a few that seem to have been copied from this Wikipedia article. In addition, the only definition for high-falutin on dictionary.com somes from "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language", and indicates that the origin of the word is unknown.

Therefore I believe that the derivation given for high-falutin is a joke, and should be removed. Can anyone demonstrate otherwise?

Sounds like a joke to me, too. The American Heritage Dictionary calls it origin unknown, but speculates high-fluting. --FOo 07:02, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it's nonsense. Get rid of it. RickK 07:07, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

And I though that was how it came about. Apparently Hiram Falutin was mentioned in a New York Times column I read some time ago, and I seemed to believe the story. Feel free to remove the reference. Peter O. (Talk) 07:12, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

Phonology

In the Phonology section, this sentence bothers me: Its rhotic pronunciation was derived from Hiberno-English and Scottish English, as large numbers of Irish and Scottish settlers resided.

The pronoun should be clarified as it's not entirely clear whether it refers to the rhotic change, or to one of the varieties of English which did or did not participate. Additionally, it makes little sense... the Irish and Scottish settlers resided where? I'm guessing that the original intent of the sentence was: "The rhotic trill's pronunciation was derived from Hiberno-English and Scottish English, as large numbers of Irish and Scottish settlers resided in England."

If that's not the intent of the sentence, then I don't really know what it is. If that is the intent, I'm not sure why it's even included in the article, as it has little to do with the pronunciation in North America, and more to do with the pronunciation in the UK.

Any thoughts? I'm in favor of dropping the sentence altogether.

Phonology

It does not make sense to say that a dialect of a language is "conservative in its phonology" (American English#Phonology). Every dialect changes in a different way, but it changes anyway.

• It is true that some varieties change more rapidly than others, though. For example, speakers of Modern Icelandic can understand the sagas written a millennium ago, while no Modern English speaker could understand an Old English text without training. It makes sense that if one language can change more rapidly than another that the same would be true for dialects, that divergent dialects do not change at exactly the same rate and one variety resembles the proto-dialect more. — Ливай | ☺ 07:28, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That's only true because written Icelandic has barely changed in a thousand years. Phonologically, Icelandic has undergone massive changes since the time of the sagas. --Angr 08:08, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Mergers, mergers, and more mergers

All these mergers in the Phonology section are getting out of hand. For one thing, there's no differentiation between mergers that are found in both British and American English and those that are unique to American English:

Both British (mostly England, not Scotland) and American:

• pour-poor (highly stigmatized in the U.S. but thoroughly normal in England)
• whine-wine (increasingly popular in the U.S. and virtually complete in England)
• horse-hoarse (virtually complete in both countries)
• yod dropping (highly stigmatized in England but thoroughly normal in the U.S.)
• higher-hire (both are in RP)
• flower-flour (both are in RP and have probably always been homophones since they're etymologically identical)
• employer-coir (both have in RP; incidentally is it really necessary to have three articles for the above mergers? Couldn't they have been covered in a single article?)
• Ditto dial-tile, royal-roil, towel-owl (again, couldn't these have been a single article?)
• mail centering, feel centering, gold centering, tool centering (ditto)
• metal-mettle (are there any accents spoken today where these haven't merged?)
• opossum-prism (ditto)
• wooden-wouldn't (have these ever been distinct in the history of English?)
• meter-metre (ditto)

American only:

• father-bother
• cot-caught
• Mary-marry-merry
• Sirius-serious
• furry-hurry
• pan tensing
• squirrel-girl
• glottaling of T before syllabic N (found in England only in accents that glottal T more generally)
• winter weakening
• wing tensing
• bang raising
• intervocalic t/d merger (some amount of intervocalic T voicing is also found in London, Northern Ireland, and Australia, though it isn't clear whether there's an actual merger so that latter and ladder are homophones, as they are in North America)

--Angr 07:58, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Spelling reform

Having personally lost a city wide spelling bee over plough/plow (my elementary school used an Australian grammar series, American grammar books having already gone to hell) I still hold a grudge against Noah Webster. And its not anecdotal. Is there a page yet for spelling reform? There are certainly lots of 'em. This entry is going to shift to more substantive issues (17th century English as the base for American dialects, etc.) when a dialectician gets ahold of it, but I'm not up to that. --MichaelTinkler

Consolidation

Someone please consolidate this with the English language/American English subpage entry.

Slovene and German loanwords

Interesting readings about borowings in the American English. One small question. As there are a lot of Slovenes in the States, did American English borrowed any words from Slovene language? I am missing any borrowings from German language, too. I know some by heart - but I know just they are from English language (flak, Einsatz, ...), because I had never learned American English in deep. -- XJamRastafire 18:58 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)

Never heard of Einsatz. That's supposedly and American English word? -- Zoe

Could we cut the width of this table, too? It runs over the left-hand margins. -- Zoe

I had an edit conflict. So here's my text: Sorry I meant Ansatz. This word is not in Wikipedia. See for an example at http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/VariationOfParameters.html. I am not good at German grammar at all. My native language has a lot of borrowings from it. For example s<caron>us derived from Schuß, meaning shot. -- XJamRastafire 19:15 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)

I don't know the word Ansatz, either. You sure it's an American English word? You don't mean ersatz, do you? -- Zoe

"Ansatz" is not in my general-purpose dictionaries, though it's entirely possible that it has some obscure mathematical usage. --Brion VIBBER

To Zoe (edit conflict+)

We slightly do not understand each other :-). I didn't wrote that Ansatz is an American English word. I just wrote that I saw it sometimes in English articles, specially at math pages (see the link above). And I just asked for another borrowings to the American English (e.g. German, and specially for Slovene). I know common English, let us say for a 70-80 %, but I must say that this culture is still so different than mine. So that is why it is quite a big curiosity for non-native-English reader to get such useful (why not usefull - these are those 20-30 % of ignorance) informations and vice versa for English reader from different cultures and languages. And the Wikipedia is a good place for this!!!! Any futher help is very much appreciated. Best regard.

To Brion

Yes, Americans would know better than anyone. I am looking here of course for those with no obscure usages. Check the above link, too for instance. And by heart I think I saw it on many places. -- XJamRastafire 15:59 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

Here are some English Ansatz obscure usages from the Google:

• http://neon.df.ufscar.br/~quantum/ansatz/ansatz.htm
• http://www.physics.sunysb.edu/itp/symmetries-99/scans/talk13/talk13.html
• http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb/15/sample/1531/S0217979201008123.html (See the authors-one German and one Russian :-))
• www.iisc.ernet.in/pramana/march2000/p5152.pdf
• http://www.cisco.com/global/DE/unified_channels/cpn_home.shtml
• http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/lep2/report/qcdgen/node31.html

• and many more...

For my opinion - interesting, (but it can be wiped out eventually from here in some near future - it is here just for an information). We all learn every single day... Uph, I guess I'll have to write a Wikipedian article about the Ansatz, but first I have to clarify with a little help... -- XJamRastafire 16:18 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

In the article Problem solving Ansatz is simply translated to an approach. I would better tranlsate it as more general term an equation or a formula. But I have no slightest idea what it means in fact. -- XJamRastafire 16:27 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

Japanese loanwords removed

From Japanese

kamikaze	suicide attack. Japanese for Divine Wind
karate	Japanese for the Unarmed Way
origami	paper crafts
tycoon	wealthy and powerful businessperson. Japanese for big monarch
tsunami	tidal wave
sake	a Japanese liqour

I've removed this table because this article is supposed to be about American English, whereas all of the above terms are used also in British English. --Zundark 09:28 Jan 6, 2003 (UTC)

kosher	correct, proper, ("That's not kosher" is similar to "That's not cricket".)
patio	an outdoor paved area of a house
incommunicado	lack of communication
OK	'yes' or 'you are correct'. A word now used by many languages.
Its origin is not clear - for more information, read the "Ask Oxford" article at http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=4&q=http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwordorigins/ok&e=42.

Likewise I dumped the above as being very common in the UK. I wondered about "fiesta" and "cookie" too, but I think they're not that common. Honestly who thought us Britons don't use "kosher" or "ok"?

The way OK was included was a little odd, I agree, but OK originated in the United States, and furthermore, its origin is well known and has been since approximately 1965. But I don't like working on articles with tables in them and usually avoid them, so it is up to someone else to fix this. (If I worked on the article, the tables would go.) The story on OK is, briefly, that there was a word game popular in the United States in the early 19th century of misspelling phrases and using only the initials -- not unlike the transformations of Cockney rhyming slang -- in which "O.K." stood for "oll korrect". This origin was obscured by the subsequent combination of the phrase with the nickname of Martin Van Buren in the campaign slogan "Old Kinderhook is O.K." and the proliferation of many, many a folk etymology in later years. The research by A. W. Read tracing the origin as stated here is accepted by both the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's III. OK is, perhaps, the best known of all Americanisms and certainly belongs in the article on American English as well as in an article of its own, which I have just half written. (Why the "Ask Oxford" article is less positive on this is a mystery since their own, more authoritative OED presents it, but "Ask Oxford" is a good source for all the folk etymologies.) Ortolan88

OK. There could perhaps be a table of words of US origin put in this article. Bagpuss

I have removed all of the words that were aparantly derived from Hindi. These words are commonly used in British English and not peculiar to American English. AreJay 05:59, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

loanwords comemntary

I think it should be noted that not all of the loanwords are common in all parts of the United States. In my section of the Midwest at least many of these borrowings, especially the Yiddish ones and Spanish ones not dealing with food, have not yet become standard vocabulary.

---

A couple of the loanwords currently listed are, in my opinion, placed under the wrong headings. "Gumbo" is ultimately of African origin, but it entered English via Louisiana French. The same goes for "bayou" -- it comes from Louisiana French, which took it from Choctaw. In short, if English gets a word from French, it should be irrelevant where the French got it from. After all, we're not listing "adobe" as an Arabic loanword. BrianSmithson 19:54 20 May 2003 (UTC)

Surely this page is incorrectly titled? The subject is clearly USA English, as opposed to Canadian English, Mexican English etc. markb

"American" in this context means "United States of America". This is nothing new and it's also the standard name (used both commonly, dictionaries, and so forth). Mexico has Spanish as its primary language and Canada has Canadian English. North American English is both Canadian and American. Daniel Quinlan 19:56 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Removed the following as all are firmly established in British English

• Gung ho,
• Cookie (used in Brit English but more specific),
• Praline,
• Honcho (Head Honcho being used in Brit English)
• Tycoon
• Teepee
• Fiesta (see comment on Siesta below)
• Siesta (Brits have been going to Spain on holiday for decades and may have known this before)
• Pronto

Dainamo

I think all of these may have been used in American English first---especially words taken from Spanish and Native American languages for obvious reasons. Britons havent had the exposure to Spanish that Americans have had for a substantially longer period of time. MikeMcG

Webster POV

This page seems a bit disparaging of Webster, perhaps written from the perspective of someone who doesn't like his spelling reforms. The article should be more neutral about Webster, perhaps mentioning that Webster did simplify the spelling of many words in American English and a good number of those reforms have stuck. Daniel Quinlan 19:56 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

American English an oxymoron?

North Americans are always going to win this argument as it's a North American website.

This isn't an argument between North Americans and Brits. It's an argument between you and the rest of the world.

The point is, English was the language spoke by the peoples of England. Further languages based on this have evolved. This is the key, they are no longer English. You can't have 'American English' (Somthing of or belonging to England, belonging to America), aside from the fact they fought the British Empire for independance, they invented a new language. THIS IS NOT A DIALECT. It is a new language, originally derived from English. English itself is derived of other languages, but we don't refer to it as "English Greek", or such. It is therefore incorrect to refer to this as 'American English' language.

Is the same true of Scottish English, Welsh English, Irish English, Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English, and Indian English? Are those "new languages" according to your way of thinking too? Incidentally, English is not derived from Greek.

The new language is American.

Unsigned comments above were added at 16:55, 20 Jun 2005, by 80.177.116.191. Comments in italics added at 19:03, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC) by Angr/.

Why is "American English" supposed to be an oxymoron --- or at least more so than, say, Australian English, Latin American Spanish or Quebecois French? Perhaps a better word for American English would be majority English. After all, most English speakers worldwide speak and write a variety from North America. This comment strikes me as non-NPOV, and an attempt to portray some social-class-bound insular dialect as normative, an attitude which ever has been and remains a jaw-dropping pretension. -- IHCOYC 11:47 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Most? Since when?

Population of the USA: around 280 millions. Canada adds 85% of 31 millions. Population of the UK is 58 millions, add 19 millions for Australia, 8m for New Zealand and maybe 4m for the native English speaking population of South Africa. No matter how you slice the pie, the center of gravity for the English language is in North America and not in any of the outlying islands. -- IHCOYC 13:40 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

In India English is the language in which most university courses are taught. It is also the language used in most areas of administration, and they have many English language newspapers. Out of a total population of 1 billion potential speakers, some 40 million plus Indians speak British English there. The situation is similar in countries like Pakistan, Ghana, Nigeria and Singapore etc. etc. When English is taught as a foreign language in Europe and elsewhere it is very often taught as British English through organizations like the British Council.

When I was in Sweden in the mid-1970s, the saying there was that people over 35 had learned British English in school, and that people under 30 learned American English. -- IHCOYC 15:10 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

IHCOYC is correct, at least regarding number of speakers. There are 341 million first language speakers of English, 210 million of those are in the United States (228 million in North America). There are 508 million including second language speakers, and 240 million of those are in the United States (260 million in North America). I'm not even accounting for some English usage being American rather than British (or another Commonwealth country) in origin outside of North America. It is also worrisome that some Wikipedia editors feel obliged to move pages and alter spelling on the basis that Commonwealth English is not only more correct, but is also more common than either American English or North American English. (My United States figures are actually a bit low since they date from 1984 and most of the other figures are from the late 1990s.) I believe the US probably has the most influence on the English language today, although only partially due to the influence of numbers. More of the influence is through movies, television, books, the internet, and other media. More immediately, I think Wikipedia would benefit from a clearer definition and analysis of the various types of English, including different orthographies. My figures are primarily from http://www.ethnologue.com/ Daniel Quinlan 08:21, Aug 3, 2003 (UTC)

The main thing that concerns me is when British English is taken as a familiar norm in descriptions of other languages. I've seen pronunciation guides that say to pronounce Goethe as "Gertie," for example. Reference to the variety of broad A and O sounds in British English are other frequent sources of confusion; most North Americans don't even hear the sounds as separate phonemes. Since the introduction of the IPA this sort of thing is seen less often, but there's still a lot of it in older reference books; and older reference books have a way of being perpetuated here.

Some writers on British English treat American English with profound condescension. This annoys especially when you realize that the prestige dialect of British English is strongly bound to social class --- you had to have gone to a handful of the "right" boarding schools to get it exactly right --- and a dialect spoken by a much smaller percentage of the population of the British Isles than Standard American is in North America. There's a passage in Fowler's The King's English that mocks American place names like Indianapolis and Memphis, as if Bognor Regis or Stow-on-the-Wold were superior in euphony or dignity. This tradition is not wholly dead among the prescriptive usage writers, and I think that some North Americans are still cowed by it. -- IHCOYC 13:58, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

"Proper" British English is not simply the preserve of the public school elite - whilst it may be true that those from the public schools may be more likely to use RP in their everyday speech, most across the nation know how to use the correct form and do so for official documents etc., even if they revert to their local dialect for normal usage. Even though I was comprehensive-schooled (in Scotland nonetheless) I still know how to correctly use the English Language and so do those around me. This appears to be in contrast with the situation in the USA. 217.43.185.226 10:34, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh the superiority of everything American! Hah! Considering the linguistic inabilities of your president, the hilarity of watching winners of Oscars trying to construct sentences and the sheer inability of an astonishing number of American students to communicate in any even moderately articulate manner (which is why a number of European universities in the last five years have been forced to start summer courses for visiting American students with special 'basic english' grinds explaining such things as use of verbs, definite and indefinite articles, how to use the past tense!!!) America can hardly brag about its skill or knowledge of english. The lame excuse about comparing population numbers is a nonsense. American english (well at least the lliterate variety) is found on the American continent. The result of the world uses British english or a nativised version of British english, in which some aspects of American english may make an appearance. In no sense can American english claim the right to be the international brand of english and it is a particularly ludicrous form of arrogance to think it can, based on the fact that there are more people in America that in Britain, Ireland, Australia. But the worst form of 'so called' english has got to be MTV english, which consists of nothing more than a string of empty-headed, poorly constructed cliches with all the substance of a quarter pounder and fries. :-) FearÉIREANN 14:41, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the point of this discussion. Whoever added "oxymoron" to this article was obviously aiming tickle a few ribs with some humour. I am given to understand from the couple of business trips I've made to Sweden that they very sensibly take courses in Business English (which leans towards British English as much of Sweden's business is centred on the EU) and Technical English (which leans towards American English for spellings like 'program' and 'color' extensively used in software). Whatever the figures say (and I dispute the validity of your source Daniel which quotes only 11 million speakers of English in India from a 1960s survey) there's no denying that a significant number of people prefer to read and write in British English. It's just the same with American English of course; only the vast majority of British English speakers don't live in the state of technical bliss that is the USA. On Wikipedia we quite rightly have a policy at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPOV#Americo-centric_point_of_view decrying Americo-centrism in view of the fact that this is an international encyclopaedia. It's a shame that attempts to roll-back Americo-centrism as sometimes paranoiacally(sic) seen anti-Americanism by certain individuals. Let the status quo survive. Mintguy 15:13, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The two points I actually sought to make was that calling American English an "oxymoron" struck me as a violation of NPOV; and that assuming easy familiarity with the phonemic structure of British English is not a good idea in explaining the pronunciation of non-English words. I do admit to being somewhat ornery about the Brits presuming to judge "Americanisms," and the supposed pre-eminence and universality of the British boarding-school dialect. I went to grade school in Canada, and learned a subset of the British spellings myself. I'm not on a tear to remove them.

I cheerfully agree that Dubya is no Churchill. -- IHCOYC 19:05, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You are a bit behind the times as regards english dialects. The days when Oxbridge english was viewed as the correct version have long long since gone. Right now, a BBC programme is on using scouse (a dialect I hate, BTW. It sounds to me like a cat chewing a wasp.) But BBC Four seems to require it. 'Proper english', ie, Oxbridge, has been out of fashion for decades, with Estuary English, Scouse etc far more popular. BTW 2 (sounds like a TV station that!:-) I came across a US student's history essay that has down in my university's history as one of the worst attempt at communication ever witnessed. (You'll enjoy this!) Writing about the Irish Easter Rising, an American woman (allegedly a history major, though I find it hard to believe!) wrote:

It is like the Irish don't like the english and their rules. So they like rebel in Easter. Patrik (sic) Pierce (sic) leads the rebells (sic) and they take a big post office in Oconnel (sic) street, and they gang up on the British. And they tell them like 'no queen here'. But the english don't like it and send in their soldiers from the first world war in France or somewhere to stop them. And the english like arrest Pierce and devillera (sic) and lock them in a big prisom (sic) but the Irish keep rebelling and rebelling and get their new republic with devillera as president and Michael Collin's (sic) becomes his right hand man. And then they fight a war of independents. And the Irish throws the english out and then have a civil war, where Collin's is killed at Bale na Bla (sic) and Northern Ireland joins england and the queen.

AAAAAGH! And that is only one paragraph. The strange thing was that the woman could not understand when she got a fail mark for the paper! She said she had never failed anything before in her life. The question on all our lips was, how could she have possibly passed a single exam in her life, let alone make it to college? But she was the worst. Nobody else has ever quite hit that level of awfulness, though every year some try and come close! :-) FearÉIREANN 20:03, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

One doesn't want to belabor a point or anything, and perhaps this effusion should be passed over in silence; but would you mind explaining just what in the bloody Hell that has to do with the article that this page supposedly exists to improve? Dandrake 02:03, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC)

I expexct she'll get a job as a Hollywood screenwriter. Andy G 20:29, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Anti-intellectualism (zeech! that page needs a real article) is a major feature of the culture of the USA. One of the many ways this trait manifests is in a certain impatience with usage norms. Reading is a solitary vice to most Americans, and it gives you no fresh air and exercise. There are indeed many US high schools who would look at that paper and see that the student had learned where the event took place, who the combatants were, and kept in mind enough proper nouns to make small talk about the Uprising. And that would in the minds of many teachers be enough. Spelling and grammar is another department.

Now if you want to hear ugly English, let me send you to Tennessee. The speech of that state, especially in the female mouth, sounds like a cat being tortured.

You haven't heard an Ozark dialect then. Then again there are both Western and Eastern accents within the Dialects. I'm always shocked by a lot of these studies on phonology and dialects within the US... When they get to MO, Southern Il, and Arkansas they don't tend to do enough studies, especially as the demographic centor of the US is in MO. I can't find the article, or perhaps it was this one, but there was one a few days ago which listed the differences in the Saint Louis Metro Area from Midwestern English. The blurb wasn't quite right but it was right in the fact that the Peoples inside Saint Louis City and in parts of the county talk different than lets say 30 miles away in Franklin and Jeffereson counties and that the dialect is unique to St. Louis. It was wrong becuase it grouped accents in the saint louis area which are actually in deep Franklin Counties and Jeff Counties. The accent in Tennessee is actually pleasent compared to that of your typical Ozarkian.

But most of this seems to be leaving behind the main business of embellishing the article on American English. -- IHCOYC 01:01, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Loan words from British English

I've removed the table of loan-words from English. American English is a form of English, so there can't be loan-words from itself. If it was meant to represent loan-words from British English, then that's wrong too; such words as draperies, rooster, skillet just don't exist in current British English. To say they come from an earlier from of British English is hardly an argument, since the great majority of American English does derive from an earlier form of British English!

What the table was listing was differences between American and British usage - not loan-words - so I've moved the relevant entries from that table to List_of_American_English_words_not_used_in_British_English. Spellbinder 14:25, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Phonics

The northern cities ... extending west through Cleveland, Ohio ... have undergone a shift ... where the vowels in the words stuck, stalk, stock, and stack have shifted from [ʌ], [ɔ], [ɑ], [æ] (SAMPA [V], [O], [A], [}]) to [ɔ], [ɑ], [a], [eæ] (SAMPA [O], [A], [a], [e}]).

Does this truly happen? I live in Cleveland, and I pronounce stuck, stalk, stock, and stack as /stVk/, /stOk/, /stAck/ and /st{k/, and as far as I know, everyone I know that lives here pronounces them the same. Gus 03:51, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)

The northern cities shift is not universal in these areas and varies in the degree of the shift, but see [1] (http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Northeast/ncshift/ncshift.html) and [2] (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch11/Ch11.html). Also, the fact that you live in Cleveland may color your impression of these vowels. They may well be more different from the IPA spec than you imagine. Nohat 06:53, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)

American English#Loanwords not common in British English

I am confused why the definition of hacienda 'a type of ranch house' replaced 'principal house on a ranch'.
Dictionary.com/hacienda (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hacienda) has:

1. A large estate or plantation in Spanish-speaking countries.
2. The house of the owner of such an estate.

Merriam-Webster Online (http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=hacienda&x=23&y=16) has:

1.  : a large estate especially in a Spanish-speaking country : PLANTATION
2.  : the main dwelling of a hacienda

Are these American dictionaries incorrect? Pædia 15:17, 2004 May 24 (UTC)

I'm confused by this too. The first definition of 'hacienda' isn't distinct from 'estate' as used by Americans, so I figured not to include it. A house is a hacienda because of its function as the main house, not because of any sort of architectural features implied by 'a type of ranch house'. The dictionaries jibe with how I've heard and seen the word used. --Atemperman 22:59, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Cape

I wish to question the inclusion of cape with the meaning headland as being American English. Even if derived from a native american language, it seems to have entered both American and Brtish English quickly and equally. Witness: Cape Town, Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope, Cape Province (all 17th-18th century, some possibly earlier). And 18th century English explorers named many capes in Australia and New Zealand - the majority of headlands in NZ being named cape. -- dramatic 00:17, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Loanwords, again

I have removed the following "Loanwords not common in British English", because they are common in British English:

• Cape (this may be similar to an American Indian word, but is derived from Latin and pre-dates the discovery of the new world)
• Toboggan
• Squash
• Barbecue
• Hammock
• Tycoon

PhilHibbs 16:14, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Words that have dropped out of common usage in British English?

I know there are a lot of phrases that the English think of as "Americanisms", that are in fact phrases that have merely fallen out of use over here, but were maintained in the US. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I think this would be a worthwhile addition to this page. I certainly came here hoping to find some. PhilHibbs 16:16, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The two most conspicuous ones I can think of are fall, the season; and gotten as a past participle for get. Do they speak of bluffs or creeks in the UK? Smerdis of Tlön 16:30, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bluffs yes, creeks not so often. If I saw a sentence with creek in it I would think it about 75% likely to be of US origin. I would't say that it has gone entirely out of use. PhilHibbs 12:50, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Removed claim

I took out this content:

A key area where American English has grown (on both sides of the Atlantic), is in the world of business and commerce, where use of the rhetorical euphemism is common. One example would be the phrase "are you comfortable with that". This phrase will typically be used by a business manager introducing a change which may, or may not, be welcome. A negative answer is neither expected nor, indeed, invited. However, the question is, at least on the face of it, conciliatory.

However, it was the British composers Gilbert and Sullivan who felt it necessary to point out that their ideal officer in HMS Pinafore "almost always said 'If you please.'".

because there didn't seem to be any evidence and it seems like an awfully vague assertion. Also, it only really applies to the "corporate-ese" variety of American English. It just seemed out of place here. If anyone could show a reasonable justification for why it should be put back, I'd be glad to entertain it. Nohat 06:13, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

IPA vs SAMPA

Can we (meaning "I") get rid of the SAMPA annotations? The beginning of the article has a box telling the reader that IPA is going to be used, and links to an article providing assistance if eir browser is having trouble with it. IPA is really the only standard we need for phonetic notation — it appears in every dictionary I've seen, it's all we use in the linguistics community, and it's very well-defined. The SAMPA annotations are cumbersome, not as well-understood or commonly used, and pointless in the dawning age of Unicode. The doubling of pronunciations in IPA and SAMPA makes for very unattractive clutter in my opinion. Maybe there's something I'm overlooking here, but I really don't think we need SAMPA in this article (or in many others). Comments? Jeeves 05:25, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Scope of American English

It needs to be made clear whether American English is being used to refer to US, North American or true American English. If the article is only supposed to refer to US English, it also needs to mention the existence of other English dialects in America like Canadian, Carribean, &c English with links to their articles. Or else, there needs to be a seperate article, English of the Americas, prominently linked to from here (or this needs moving to US English to make room for such an article here).

-Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley 07:58, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)

I agree. "U.S. English" is unambiguous, and is obviously what this article is about. "American English" can mean a few different things in a universal context, as could "North American English". —Michael Z. 21:52, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

The article is fine where it is, I believe. "US English" could also refer to the movement to promote "English only" in the United States. You should take a poll and garner consensus before making such a move as this. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 03:32, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

The objection to the use of the adjective "American" to describe things of the United States of America is well-understood and widely recognized. However, it also has to be recognized that this is an objection to the common use -- it is not a misunderstanding of what the common use is, or an ambiguity that confuses people.

People who wish that the word were not used this way are not confused by its use. They object to it, much as many Trotskyists object to the use of the term "socialism" to describe the economics of the Stalinist Soviet Union. This objection and the reasons for it should be recognized, described, and respected.

However, we also have to write Wikipedia articles in some language or another. And so we need to distinguish between ambiguous usages that confuse people, which should be avoided where possible and clarified where not; and common usages to which some people object. The latter we simply cannot avoid entirely, without turning Wikipedia into a hodgepodge of periphrasis. Wikipedia has to be written in common language, so that people can understand it ... despite the fact that for many common expressions there are people who are offended by them.

"American English" is an unambiguous name for the subject matter. US English is the name of a rather controversial political advocacy group for the exclusion of other languages from American public life. The top Google hit for the expression "US English", by the way, is that group: http://www.us-english.org/ That might make "US English" a rather more ambiguous expression, oddly enough -- Wikipedia should have an article about the group, and what should that article be called? --FOo 04:45, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with the current title. "American" is commonly understood to indicate the United States. Maurreen 04:52, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, please don't pedantically expound on what I'm objecting to. It comes off as rude, especially when you're wrong.

"American English" is obviously not unambiguous, as you'd see if you'd read this talk page. Some people writing here are assuming the article covers Canadian English, which it doesn't. A good example of "ambiguous usages that confuse people." Why do you think there's a disambiguation page at America and a whole disambiguation article at American?

I've never heard of the "U.S. English" advocacy group, and no Wikipedian has found it significant enough to write about. This can be handled using the standard disambiguation methods. The organization can be at U.S. English (organization), and the language at U.S. English, or if you really think someone will confuse one with the other, at U.S. English language.

—Michael Z. 22:44, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

To a linguist, "American English" means only English as spoken in the United States, unambiguously and precisely. English spoken in North America is "North American English". English spoken in both North and South America (which isn't really a meaningful grouping from a linguistic perspective) is "Pan-American English" or "English as spoken in the Americas". There is nothing ambiguous about "American English". The fact that some people may be confused by that doesn't make it ambiguous, it just means they're not familiar with how the terminology is used. That's why it says in the first sentence that American English means English spoken in the United States—to clarify for those people who might be confused. The proposed alternative, "U.S. English" has the disadvantage of not being the normal term used by experts in the field in addition to being the name of a controversial organization. The ambiguity cased by the name "American English", which only affects those people who think that American primarily refers to the continents, is much less significant than the ambiguity caused by "U.S. English". On balance, "American English" should be preferred. Nohat 00:57, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Broken characters

On IE6 under WinXP, a large portion of the special characters don't display properly. (They show up as empty boxes.) IE, "/æ/ to /ɑ/" (the second doesn't show). Any thoughts?

You need a Unicode-supporting font, such as Code2000. --ɛvɪs 02:05, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)

I'm kind of (read: very) late on saying this, but I think I'm wrong—I think it's because some of the characters lack the {{IPA}} template. I'll have to get to that.... --ɛvɪs 11:38, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Hiram Falutin

I cannot find any references to a Hiram Falutin on the web, apart from a few that seem to have been copied from this Wikipedia article. In addition, the only definition for high-falutin on dictionary.com somes from "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language", and indicates that the origin of the word is unknown.

Therefore I believe that the derivation given for high-falutin is a joke, and should be removed. Can anyone demonstrate otherwise?

Sounds like a joke to me, too. The American Heritage Dictionary calls it origin unknown, but speculates high-fluting. --FOo 07:02, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it's nonsense. Get rid of it. RickK 07:07, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

And I though that was how it came about. Apparently Hiram Falutin was mentioned in a New York Times column I read some time ago, and I seemed to believe the story. Feel free to remove the reference. Peter O. (Talk) 07:12, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)

Phonology

In the Phonology section, this sentence bothers me: Its rhotic pronunciation was derived from Hiberno-English and Scottish English, as large numbers of Irish and Scottish settlers resided.

The pronoun should be clarified as it's not entirely clear whether it refers to the rhotic change, or to one of the varieties of English which did or did not participate. Additionally, it makes little sense... the Irish and Scottish settlers resided where? I'm guessing that the original intent of the sentence was: "The rhotic trill's pronunciation was derived from Hiberno-English and Scottish English, as large numbers of Irish and Scottish settlers resided in England."

If that's not the intent of the sentence, then I don't really know what it is. If that is the intent, I'm not sure why it's even included in the article, as it has little to do with the pronunciation in North America, and more to do with the pronunciation in the UK.

Any thoughts? I'm in favor of dropping the sentence altogether.

Phonology

It does not make sense to say that a dialect of a language is "conservative in its phonology" (American English#Phonology). Every dialect changes in a different way, but it changes anyway.

• It is true that some varieties change more rapidly than others, though. For example, speakers of Modern Icelandic can understand the sagas written a millennium ago, while no Modern English speaker could understand an Old English text without training. It makes sense that if one language can change more rapidly than another that the same would be true for dialects, that divergent dialects do not change at exactly the same rate and one variety resembles the proto-dialect more. — Ливай | ☺ 07:28, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That's only true because written Icelandic has barely changed in a thousand years. Phonologically, Icelandic has undergone massive changes since the time of the sagas. --Angr 08:08, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Mergers, mergers, and more mergers

All these mergers in the Phonology section are getting out of hand. For one thing, there's no differentiation between mergers that are found in both British and American English and those that are unique to American English:

Both British (mostly England, not Scotland) and American:

• pour-poor (highly stigmatized in the U.S. but thoroughly normal in England)
• whine-wine (increasingly popular in the U.S. and virtually complete in England)
• horse-hoarse (virtually complete in both countries)
• yod dropping (highly stigmatized in England but thoroughly normal in the U.S.)
• higher-hire (both are in RP)
• flower-flour (both are in RP and have probably always been homophones since they're etymologically identical)
• employer-coir (both have in RP; incidentally is it really necessary to have three articles for the above mergers? Couldn't they have been covered in a single article?)
• Ditto dial-tile, royal-roil, towel-owl (again, couldn't these have been a single article?)
• mail centering, feel centering, gold centering, tool centering (ditto)
• metal-mettle (are there any accents spoken today where these haven't merged?)
• opossum-prism (ditto)
• wooden-wouldn't (have these ever been distinct in the history of English?)
• meter-metre (ditto)

American only:

• father-bother
• cot-caught
• Mary-marry-merry
• Sirius-serious
• furry-hurry
• pan tensing
• squirrel-girl
• glottaling of T before syllabic N (found in England only in accents that glottal T more generally)
• winter weakening
• wing tensing
• bang raising
• intervocalic t/d merger (some amount of intervocalic T voicing is also found in London, Northern Ireland, and Australia, though it isn't clear whether there's an actual merger so that latter and ladder are homophones, as they are in North America)

--Angr 07:58, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"opossum-prism" I've never heard of this one. For me, opossum is and prism is . "wooden-wouldn't" I've never heard of this one, either. For me wooden is and wouldn't is . "meter-metre" Have these ever been pronounced differently? (I pronounce them both as , by the way.) "glottaling of T before syllabic N" Seems normal to me. I pronounce Latin as . --[[User:Evice|]] 03:35, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

Spelling

Any opinions on whether the British/Canadian spelling will become common in the United States several years from now?? Please feel free to give several external links talking about this. Georgia guy 18:42, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This isn't even true. Both spellings grey and gray are equally old, both first attested in the 14th century; even in Old English there was variation between grǣġ and grēġ. --Angr 18:49, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Relationship to other dialects

The relationships to Canadian English, Liberian English Philippine English and International English should be explored. Also, African American Vernacular English deserves considerably more discussion. I will try to work on this later.

Youse for You in northern midwest

The use of "youse" rather than "you", if it has ever been a hallmark of northern midwestern speech, is long since gone. It is regarded by speakers in at least Wisconsin and Minnesota, as a hallmark of New Jersey (esp.) speech. The use of "You all", sometimes (although not commonly enough to qualify as a "hallmark pronuncition") as a plural form (ONLY, unlike the common use for singular and plural in "the south") is actually fairly common, but "youse" is used only sarcastically. Tomer ^TALK 07:14, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Tiny nitpick - "You all" is NEVER used for a singular person in the South as far as I can tell. People would look at you strangely if you said something of that nature. I think that's just an invention of the media. Danthemankhan 22:04, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

My point, specifically, was that "you all" is used (quite often, in fact...almost as often as "you guys" (regardless of gender)) as a second-person plural pronoun in the upper midwest, and that "youse" never is, except to make fun of people from Nyoo Joyzee (another sarcastic pronunciation, since New Jersey is pronounced '). When I made my statement about "the south", it was meant to refer, not to "you all", but rather to "y'all", or ez zei sei ne saut, "yaowl", which I have heard often used to refer to people in the 2nd person, regardless of number. Tomer ^TALK 23:58, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Having grown up in Texas, I can say no one there ever uses y'all in the singular, except possibly recent arrivals from the North who want to blend in but haven't figured out that y'all is exclusively plural. I can't speak for the rest of the South, however. (There is, however, the confusing phenomenon of someone saying "How y'all doin'?" to a single person, meaning "How are you and your family doing?", but possibly construed by a nonlocal as an instance of singular y'all.) --Angr/_comhrá 05:01, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My experience in this area is, admitedly, limited to upland south carolina, where what bit of my family as there is in "the south" resides. In Greenville, South Carolina, at the very least, there is constant confusion of number with "y'all". None of this, however, has anything whatsoever to do with my deletion of the claim that upper midwesterners use "youse" as a plural for the 2nd person. Tomer ^TALK 12:09, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Are these traits for southern Illinois speech very well known?

None of the page described anything like the speech around here:

• The mentioned roof/root/book merger does not usually occur (they are , , and , respectively).
• The use of out to mean "off" when referring to a light is common, as in "Turn the light out," otherwise the standard off is used, as in "The plate fell off the table" or "Turn the computer off."
• The pin/pen merger occurs.
• Some people sound somewhat like people in the southern part of the United States (although almost everyone has rhotic speech), though most people have accents more like that of "standard" American English.
• [æ]-tensing occurs.
• sounds in contractions often become ; for example, doesn't sounds like "dudn't."
• Something often sounds like "sunt'm" instead of the standard .

I can't think of any odd features right now, but I'll add some if I can think of any others. --[[User:Evice|]] 18:51, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

Most of these sound like characteristics of Southern American English, which I have often heard extends into southern Illinois and southern Indiana. Most of the south is rhotic nowadays (see the map at Rhotic and non-rhotic accents) and the pin-pen merger has spread well beyond the south anyway (see the map at Phonemic differentiation.) --Angr/_comhrá 19:20, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I see. I forgot to mention that the distinction between and is also quite common, too. Oddly, though, I don't use out to mean "off," merge the and sounds in contractions (I forgot to mention that hasn't is an exception to the / merger, which is good since hadn't is already a word), or pronounce something the way most people do (I use the latter pronunciation listed above), and I never use the sound for the wh digraph. Does anyone know if any of these traits are disappearing, at least in the southern Midwest? Are there any books I could check out that discuss regional dialects of English? --[[User:Evice|]] 04:49, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

There's a map for the wh/w merger at Phonemic differentiation too. Keeping them distinct is definitely disappearing. The best book for regional accents of English I know of is Accents of English (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982) by John C. Wells, but unfortunately it doesn't cover American English in much detail. --Angr/_comhrá 08:29, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

use of "skosh"

I've heard this term used more than once (in Wisconsin and Minnesota), although I don't know if it's from japanese. I've also heard it pronounced "skótsh" (not to be confused with "skútsh", for "slide (your bum)", as in "scootch over"). Tomer ^TALK 22:08, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

I'm extremely suspicious of a phrasal degree adjective like this being borrowed into English from Japanese (or borrowed into any language for that matter). Those types of words tend to be a closed class, changing very little over the generations. What you're hearing perhaps has a different meaning or etymology. Also, I don't think the Japanese population in the USA would be sufficient to instigate generic borrowings. If you could give some authentic examples though, it could be really interesting... Jeeves 23:25, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

For the record, I'm not the original author, in fact, I didn't know that was in the article until it was deleted. I was simply commenting in response to the deletion "note" left by the person who deleted it from the article. I won't pretend to speak Japanese, so I'm unsure what "sukoshi" means, precisely, in Japanese, but I can tell you that it's used here to mean "a smidgin" or "a li'l bit". As for what you mean by "authentic examples", I'm unsure...it sounds like you're possibly calling me a liar for saying "I've heard this term more than once". I have made no claims regarding the etymology nor widespread use of this term. As for the likelihood that a term could have gained acceptance and widespread usage in light of a small immigrant Japanese population, that's possibly the most bogus argument I've ever heard. The Filipino population in the US is not that big, but everyone knows what the "boondocks" are. The Malay population is not impressively large, but everyone knows what an orangutan is. I could continue with such words as "amok", "pariah", "curry", "batik", "atoll" (ooh, the Maldive immigrant community is just HUGE!), etc. What makes this argument even less impressive is that the Japanese form a significant, if not majority, of the population of Hawaii, the native language of which has, for all the insignificance of its mainland immigrant population, given AmE the words "hula", "luau", "Pele" (not the soccer player), "poi", and "aloha", among others. Tomer ^TALK 02:21, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

On a related note, I think perhaps "sushi" should be included in the article, especially in light of its almost-exclusive usage in the speech of most AmE speakers to mean what is called in Japanese "sashimi". Tomer ^TALK 02:22, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you got the impression that I was "calling you a liar", but I wasn't at all. I was just thirsty for more information as I'm a linguistics student, I've never heard of this phenomenon before, and I would be interested in analyzing it. I'm sorry you find my "argument" to be "less than impressive", but you should consider statistical realities: heavy lateral borrowing, to such an extent that a language gains words in a closed class, has generally occurred when an immigrant population was quite large, or when a country was invaded (British Aisles by Normans, China by Mongols, etc). I'm not saying that this is the only way a language could pick up a new closed-class word, but that it's unlikely. French is a major donor to the English language, yet no one uses tr`s to mean "very" or beaucoup to mean "much", except to show deliberate affectation. Not to be nitpicking or anything, but orangutan and boondocks are not really the same kind of borrowing as sukoshi would be. Obviously ape and a little bit belong to very different lexical classes. I feel like I'm lecturing here, but most borrowings from Japanese into English are nouns, and interestingly, all the words you mention are also nouns, many of which are related to local phenomena (hula, atoll, etc). We see the same thing with sushi , tsunami, karate, honcho (emphasizing role of hierarchy in Japanese business). My point is that I'm highly skeptical that any dialect of English has actually absorbed sukoshi as a completely assimilated equivalent for a little bit. Do children use it? Are English syntactic rules applied to it? Do we see this borrowing spreading out from a geographic area where it occurred? Can we find it in recent literature, even newspapers and magazines? Until I saw proof tha all those were true, I would consider it to be a local affectation at most. But please do prove me wrong if you can, as such a borrowing from Japanese (in the true sense of being assimilated into English) would be fascinating. I might also check with a former professor of mine who specializes in Japanese sociolinguistics. Jeeves 05:11, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

First off, I'm gonna go out on a fragile limb here and assume you meant "British Isles", not "British Aisles". (And yes, thank you, I realize "gonna" isn't standard English spelling but I'm not gonna use any more punctuationinthissentence eitheratleastIknow thediff erencebetweenislesanda isles) Anyways, once again, your argument fails to evince from me any sense that you know whereof you speak. Both "très" and "beaucoup" are used as adjectives in everyday American idiolects, albethey pronounced like the English word "tray" for très, and "búku" (as opposed to bokú) for beaucoup. At no point have I ever seen their usage cause any confusion as to their meaning. That said, you'll note I never claimed that the word "skosh" was borrowed from Japanese. I merely mentioned that I have heard it numerous times, and apparently with the same meaning as "sukoshi" has in Japanese. How significant might it be from a paradigm perspective? I don't know, and I don't particularly care. I was simply reporting in response to the comment, as I've already said, made by the person who deleted the mention of skosh from the article. NOW. As I mentioned previously, this is just my experience. Keep in mind that I live in a community with a college graduate rate significantly higher than the national norm. Consider that the four "foreign languages" offered by the local public schools, for grades 6-12, are German, Spanish, French and JAPANESE (although credit is also given for independent courses (taken outside normal school hours) for Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian, Russian and (White) Hmong (Hmoov Daws)...lately there's even been a push to include lātviešu valoda in this list). As for "proving you wrong", that's not why I'm here. You are wrong, I know that, and that's sufficient to make me content. Take your flamewar elsewhere. I'm not interested in playing. Tomer ^TALK 07:22, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

Flamewar? I'm sorry you feel that way. I think our disagreement here hinges on what should be considered a loanword, and having actually studied linguistics, I seem to be thinking of stricter criteria. English closed classes have incorporated borrowed words before (the example that comes to my mind most readily is via from French/Romance, which became a preposition), so it's certainly not impossible. It's just unlikely. I would be interested to see a formal study done on the area or dialect you claim has incorporated sukoshi. You're not the only one who thinks so, as someone else added it in the first place. As for the other things you mention, again there's the question of loanwords versus local or subcultural affectations. If sukoshi is really a loanword, it should be broadly used, picked up by children and foreigners of non-Japanese extraction learning English in America, and exhibit the same behavior as any other adjectival in American English. Sorry for insisting on what you probably consider formalities, but at the same time I wish non-linguists would be a little more reserved about making such claims. I wouldn't make claims about quantum physics, having little background in the subject. Sorry about the "aisles" mistake, it was late. I reiterate that if there is real evidence of sukoshi being borrowed into English, I'd be interested to see the evidence, outside of an entry in someone's dictionary or other non-linguistic anecdotes. Jeeves 00:34, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Once again, I made no claim that sukoshi had been borrowed from Japanese, nor anyelsewhence, I merely said that I have heard "skosh" used as an adjective meaning "a little bit". The verb I mentioned, "skootch", on the other hand, is likely a colloquial form derived from "scoot". Curious about whether or not I might have picked up "skosh" from my brother, who studied Japanese for 7 years in HS and university, or perhaps from a former president of the local synagogue, who has spent several years in Japan, or perhaps from my grandfather, z"l, who was in Japan during WW2, I went and asked a few people who didn't have such influences today. (OMG, yes, I did "original research".) I was not incredibly surprised to find that the 6 people I asked all knew what a "skosh" was, and that 2 of them didn't actually know what "skootch" meant. So anyways. I guess it's time for you to pack your bags and come to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and do your study. Tomer ^TALK 01:13, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

The OED lists skosh, commenting "U.S. slang (orig. Forces')", and gives the etymology "[ad. Jap. sukoshi a little, somewhat.]" I have no reason to doubt the OED. AJD 02:23, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Wonderful. So then, can we agree to reinsert it into the article? Tomer ^TALK 10:34, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

By all means. AJD 16:15, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Central and South Florida

I've lived in Florida(both central AND south florida) and this whole section seems wrong. i'm going to think about this section over the next couple days, and then perhaps make a few changes or even rewrite the entire section. Anyone who has lived or spent substantial time in florida, please give input. (and i don't mean those who spent 2 weeks as a tourist- if you spent your whole time at the disney resort or in touristy areas of miami, you might as well say you haven't been to Florida. My critique of the section as a life long Floridian:

• First of all, I'm not sure including a section on "Central and South Florida" is valid when discussing Regional American dialects. Unlike the rest of the dialects mentioned in "Regional Differences", Florida English is a lot more dynamic. Sure, people move in and move out of other areas of the country, but not as much as occurs in Florida. Is there a single unique Central and/or South Florida dialect someone can point to and say, "that's it !" ??? I doubt it.
• The intro to the section states "The speech of Central and South Florida (everything South of and including Orlando) is noticeable for not being a typical southern accent." Go to a bar in Ft. Meade, St. Cloud, or Clewiston or even "The Chuck Wagon" in south Miami-Dade County and tell everyone, "Gosh everyone here sounds like a Yankee, " and see their reaction. And even north of the line drawn by the author(s) of this section, there are areas where the accent is predominantly "northern"- Daytona Beach for one. Perhaps it is a matter of urban/rural- transplants to Florida tend to move to cities/suburbs as opposed to rural areas. And perhaps many other southern cities, notably Atlanta are becoming less "Southern" in their speech.
• the article continues: " because a large proportion of the inhabitants of the area are either natives of the Northeast (and therefore speakers of accents like New York-New Jersey English)" while this is true to some extent in South Florida and in pockets of Central Florida, there are also a large number of people from new england and the midwest in Florida. As more generations have been born in Florida with roots elsewhere, it seems there's become what one could call a "generic" northern accent in much of southern florida. Perhaps Florida is ahead of the trend where wider media tends to blur dialects.
• "There are even stories of going through a drive-through at a fast food restaurant... " I like urban legends. Seriously, I went through 30 states on a roadtrip last October, and was greeted in Spanish in drive thrus in at least 10 of them. Typically, they don't greet you in Spanish in Miami in drives thru anymore, because fast-food restaurant managers get sick of the customer complaints sent to their national headquarters. Believe me, I know hundreds of Anglos in Miami who love the free food coupons they get sent when they complain about being addressed in Espanol. The part about Spanglish is a valid point, although this isn't unique in South Florida.
• My own personal life (from a linguistic perspective): I was born in Riverside, New Jersey, my father was from Clifton, New Jersey, my mother from Cadillac, Michigan. We moved to Miami-Dade County before I was a month old. Growing up in the 70's in Miami, I don't recall a huge number of native Spanish speakers in school until the late 70's (and I went to an Elementary School on 8th Street). We left Miami in the early 80's as part of the "Last American out of Miami, please take the flag" movement. We moved to Bartow, Polk County, Florida in Central Florida. My classmates there tended to make fun of my "Yankee" accent through much of my middle/high school years(listening to tapes of my voice then, i did seem to have somewhat of a "New York" accent , albeit not a distinct one. When I moved back to South Florida after high school, my old friends laughed at my "southern accent". Today, the average person would say I was from the midwest ( a college professor, an "expert" on American dialect once insisted I must be from Ohio, probably in the Ohio River valley. ) So there's the tale of one Floridian and his dialect. Am I a typical Southern/Central Floridian ? Is there a typical Central/Southern Floridian? Jcam 05:27, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I can't speak to the question of central and south Florida specifically, because I've never been there and I've never read anything about the local accent there. But more generally I can say:

• It is extremely likely that there is a local accent of the region, but that not everyone who lives there uses it. That seems to be the case everywhere else in the country.
• The best people to interview to discover the local accent are those who still live in the town where they were born, and whose parents also grew up in the same town. Children's accents are influenced both by their parents and by other children, and adults who live in the same town where they grew up are unlikely to have changed the accent they had as a child.
• Remember that Wikipedia is not the place for original research. Don't post anything about the local accent based on your own observations; rather, go to the library and find out what's been published about the local accent, and summarize that here, citing your sources.
• If something already written here strikes you as unlikely, and no source is cited for it, attach the {{unsourcedsect}} tag to it to alert people to the problem, and if no one adds a source for it within a week or so, feel free to remove it.
• I see the tag is already there. So go ahead and remove anything unsourced that you have a problem with, but bring it here for possible discussion with people who think it's right. (added 08:15, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC))

--Angr/ 06:50, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)