20. Fifty States, Many Voices

Star-Spangled Stories. Article 20.

Fifty States, Many Voices

Why don't all Americans speak the same way? From Boston through Texas to California – a language map of a country we do not just hear in textbooks.

In Boston you may hear pahk the cah instead of park the car. In Georgia the word five can sound almost like fahv. And in Minnesota the vowels may remind you of a completely different English from the one in New York. It is still the same language – just with different life stories.

American English is not one accent. It is dozens of regional and social varieties that developed gradually as people moved, made contacts, founded cities and changed their way of life. The differences are not only in individual sounds, but also in intonation, rhythm and vocabulary.

A map you will not find in an atlas

The map shows six large, rough areas. Some dialects have their own "islands" in the middle of others: New York, Boston and Philadelphia are not the same as the wider area around them. And there is huge variety even within a single city, for example between different generations or communities.

How did the American language mosaic come about?

The first English-speaking colonists did not bring a single uniform English. The Puritans in New England, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the settlers in the southern colonies and, later, the Scots-Irish immigrants in the Appalachian Mountains spoke different regional forms of English. Their speech kept developing on the new continent – often differently from the way it developed in Britain.

People kept moving west. Rivers, trade routes, railways and later migration to the cities carried language habits across the country. In some places differences survived; in others they mixed. Immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, Ireland and many other places each entered this story in a different way.

Just as important is the history of the native peoples, of enslaved Africans and their descendants, of Spanish-speaking communities and of later immigration. Their language traditions helped shape American English. So the whole picture cannot be explained only by where the British came from.

Where did the R go? Boston and New York

English has a special term for the difference in how the letter r is pronounced: rhoticity. In so-called rhotic accents we also hear r after a vowel, for example in car, hard or four. In non-rhotic accents we often do not hear a separate r there – yet it may reappear before a following vowel.

Boston. Traditional Boston speech is one of the best-known non-rhotic varieties. That is where the famous imitation Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd comes from. But it is not true that everyone in Boston speaks like this today. Pronunciation varies with age, background and life experience.

New York City. New York is not one voice either: Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan alone bring together different social and language histories. The traditional city accent used to be non-rhotic in many groups, but pronouncing the r has gradually spread, and the differences between speakers are considerable.

Why the coast in particular? The Atlantic cities kept long contacts with Britain, and their social elites sometimes adopted ways of speaking that were prestigious at the time. But the actual development was different in Boston and New York; the simple claim that "they brought a British accent with them" is not enough.

Philadelphia: a "wooder" that is not quite the same anywhere else

Philadelphia is only about two hours' drive from New York, but its city dialect has developed in its own way. The local pronunciation of water is popularly written as wooder or wudder. This is not a universal pronunciation of all its residents, and the spelling is not a phonetic transcription – it just captures how the word may sound to a visitor from another region.

This local form of English developed over centuries in a trading city where different layers of settlers and immigrants mixed. It is a nice reminder that the "Northeast" on the map does not mean a single northeastern accent.

The Great Lakes: when vowels move like dominoes

Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo are linked by a remarkable phenomenon called the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. Some vowels change, and neighbouring sounds react to the change. In certain forms of this pronunciation, cat can sound unusually high or diphthong-like to a foreigner, while other vowels shift in a different direction.

This shift is not "bad pronunciation". It is living language change, much like the Great Vowel Shift described in the article Name, Time, Knight – only much younger and more limited in geography. Its extent also changes from generation to generation and from city to city.

Minnesota and the northern plains: a Scandinavian trace

Minnesota, the two Dakotas and parts of Wisconsin are associated with the speech of the northern plains. They are famous for the idea of especially strong vowels and a sing-song intonation. In some communities, contact with Norwegian, Swedish or German immigrants also left its mark historically.

But this does not mean that every Minnesotan talks like a descendant of the Vikings. Pronunciation is shaped together in local communities and changes with migration and with generations. The film Fargo deliberately exaggerates some recognizable features of northern speech to make it funny. So it is better to hear the real Minnesota in an authentic recording as well.

The Midland: an accent people often do not hear

The Midland covers a wide belt across the middle of the United States, for example the area around Kansas City and parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri. To many Americans its pronunciation sounds unremarkable. So it is no accident that people sometimes consider voices similar to some speakers from this area to be "normal American English".

In reality, however, "accentless English" does not exist. The label General American is a useful shorthand for a broader group of pronunciation features, not one precisely defined dialect, nor a passport you are given when you are born in Kansas.

The American South: one long drawl? Not at all

The name Southern English covers a whole family of accents. Someone from coastal Georgia can sound different from someone from the Appalachian Mountains, and different again from a Texan from a big city. In many southern varieties, vowels are lengthened or changed; in a well-known process, simply called monophthongization, the diphthong in a word like time or five can lose part of its gliding movement.

Historical differences between the coast and the inland areas are linked to settlement, trade and social conditions, including slavery. The inland areas were also shaped by Scots-Irish immigrants, while the coastal plantation societies had different relationships and contacts. So today's southern pronunciation cannot be explained by a single source.

And what about y'all? That is no longer accent but grammar. The word y'all is used to address more than one person: while standard you can mean one person or a group, y'all makes this difference clear. It is a useful solution to a real communication problem.

Texas: cowboys, cities and many languages

In films, Texas is often shown as cowboy country with a strong "Texan" accent. In reality it is extremely varied in language. East Texas has close ties to the American South, while the big cities and the southern areas of the state were also shaped by long contact between English and Spanish.

Texan history includes Anglo-American settlement, Mexican and Tejano communities, the African American population and immigrants from Germany and the Czech lands. The film image of a slow country accent is just one part of a much more complex picture.

The West and California: really the most "normal" English?

Much of the American West was settled by English speakers later than the East Coast. People came to the same area from different parts of the USA, so some older regional differences gradually levelled out. But the West has its own language innovations.

Example: cot and caught. In many western accents, these two words sound the same. This is the cot–caught merger – the merging of two vowels that used to be kept apart. In some eastern areas, on the other hand, the difference remains.

California also has its own vowel shifts and social speaking styles. "Valley Girl" and "Surfer Dude" are well-known media stereotypes, not a full description of Californian English. Los Angeles and San Francisco are linguistically diverse big cities; English has long lived there alongside Spanish and many other languages.

Where are Hawaii and Alaska? And where do other communities belong?

Alaska and Hawaii are not shown on the map: both have their own language histories, and their pronunciation cannot simply be assigned to the nearest coloured area. Hawaiian English and Hawaii Creole English (often called Pidgin) in particular show the influence of long contact between many languages.

But region is never the only thing that influences speech. African American English has recognizable language features and a regular grammar, but it is not tied to just one part of the map. Similarly, there are different forms of English in Latino, Asian American and other communities. And one person can change their way of speaking depending on the situation – at home, among friends or at a job interview.

A listening atlas: nine authentic voices

The following QR codes and clickable links lead to free recordings from the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA). For each recording you will find information about the speaker, and for many also a transcript. The recordings stay on the original website – they are not embedded in this document.

Mini-listening: become a dialectologist for a moment

01 Listen to Boston and Kansas City. Notice especially the r in words like car, door and similar ones.

02 Compare the authentic Minnesota with the Fargo trailer. What does the film exaggerate?

03 Compare Georgia and Texas. Can you hear a difference between them, even though we link both places with the South?

04 Listen to California and Philadelphia. Do not assume that every speaker will show the "textbook" feature of their region.

English has not stopped changing

Radio, television, the internet and moving house can weaken some local differences. At the same time, new ways of pronouncing appear, which people use to express their identity. Two people from the same street may not speak the same way today – and the same person may change their speaking style several times in a single day.

Next time you hear an unusual vowel or a "missing" r while watching a series, instead of asking "Why are they saying it wrong?", try asking: "What story is hiding behind this accent?" You may be listening to a piece of American history.