American Variety of English Language

Mamedzade Sevinj

doi:10.5539/ijel.v5n5p159

Abstract

In linguistics, dialect is the language that is used in certain area. Even when two people speak the same language, they may not speak it in the same way. In linguistics, we use the terms dialect and variety to describe the particularities of the speech of any regional or social group. Although all speech (and all language) belongs to one variety or another, the speech of the dominant class is popularly referred to as the standard and the speech of minority groups are labeled as dialects. Knowing the history of the different varieties of a language can tell us a lot about the history of a language, a region, and a people. In this article, our main purpose is not to study all the dialect varieties of English language, but to analyze the specific events which are against to grammatical rules and which cause problems while speaking in English or while translating. There are some grammatical forms that don’t exist in Standard English language, but they are used in spoken language in every part of the country. The example of this grammatical construction is the dialect variety of English speaking countries.

Highlights

In this article, our main purpose is not to study all the dialect varieties of English language, but to analyze the specific events which are against to grammatical rules and which cause problems while speaking in English or while translating
The people in New England are mainly the people who came from England and southern people consist of the people who came from Africa as slaves
“We have a lot of materials to analyze and to study the varieties of American and British English, such as the linguistic map of the United States and Canada.” (Thomas, 1936) As there are 50 states in the U.S.A. each of them has its own accent and pronunciation style

Summary

American Dialects

The formation of American Standard underwent the influence of minorities of languages, but its starting point was the English language of the early 17-th century. We have to point out that all the words and their pronunciations that are used in New England are not accepted in the same way in the southern part of the country. According to this map the dialect variety in the United States is divided into six regions (Kurath, 1949) It is the area on the coast of Mississippi River. In this area the main characteristic feature is that they pronounce differently the letter “a” in some words as [a:], e.g., fast [fa:st], past [pa:st], grass [gra:s] and so on They pronounce the letter “o” as [o] in words such as hot [hot], top [top]. The main feature of this linguistic area is that it accepts all the rules of general American pronunciation It means that they pronounce “a” as [ᴂ], in the words such as past [pᴂst] and path [pᴂs]. Several years later American English became the main problem of the day and different kinds of linguistic books were published after that (Mencken, 1919)

Black English

Summary