Two Dialects in Contact

Abstract

Linguists and language historians have not ignored the effects of one dialect upon another when their speakers mix. Bloomfield, for example, has an entire chapter entitled Dialect Borrowing, in which his chief concern is with written forms of languages other than English.2 For American English he does give a few instances of pronunciation change but he offers no lexical evidence. Weinreich's seminal monograph provides a careful analysis that purports to be equally appropriate for different languages and for different dialects of one language, but in practice he restricts his discussion to interlanguage, rather than interdialect, impact.3 For this aspect of dialect research the unique population movement in the United States in the nineteenth century set up a dramatic situation with the western migration of eastern dialect speakers. Westward into the northern fringes of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and into Michigan and Wisconsin, moved the speakers of Northern American English. Westward into central Ohio and Indiana and Illinois moved the speakers of what Kurath has described as the Midland dialect, with others, speaking what is sometimes known as South Midland, moving north across the Ohio River from Kentucky.4 In these states the Northern and Midland settlers generally maintained their separate speech characteristics. Even as far west as Illinois the division between them was quite distinct, as Shuy's doctoral investigation revealed.5