California English

California English
Region California
Language codes
ISO 639-3 –
Glottolog None

California English (or Californian English) is a variety of Western American English, mostly documented in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay area of Northern California.[1][2] California is home to a highly diverse population, which is reflected in the historical and continuing formation of California English, whose uniquely developing features were only first noted by linguists in the 1980s.[1] Since that time, unique California speech has been mostly associated in U.S. popular culture with adolescent and young-adult speakers of coastal California; the possibility that it is, in fact, an age-specific variety of English has been proposed, though not yet confirmed.[3]

History

English was first spoken on a wide scale in the area now known as California following the influx of English-speakers from the United States, Canada, and Europe during the California Gold Rush. The English-speaking population grew rapidly with further settlement, which included large populations from the Northeast, South and the Midwest. The dialects brought by these pioneers were the basis for the development of the modern language: a mixture of settlers from the Midwest and the Border South produced the rural dialect of Northern California, whereas settlers from the Lower Midwest and the South, (especially Missouri and Texas), produced the rural dialect of Southern California.

Before World War I, the variety of speech types reflected the differing origins of these early inhabitants. A distinctly Southwestern drawl could be heard in Southern California. When a collapse in commodity prices followed World War I, many bankrupted Midwestern farmers migrated to California from Nebraska, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa contributing to a new homogenized speech in urban sprawl, where teachers banned "ain't", 'awl' (oil),[4] and "ahll" (I'll). Subsequently, incoming groups with differing speech, such as the speakers of Highland Southern during the 1930s, have been absorbed within a generation. The Dust Bowl migration re-introduced a purer Southwestern accent to the West Coast in the 1920s and 30s before the migration ended in World War II.

California's status as a relatively young state is significant in that it has not had centuries for regional patterns to emerge and grow (compared to, say, some East Coast or Southern dialects). Linguists who studied English as spoken in California before and in the period immediately after World War II tended to find, few if any, distinct patterns unique to the region.[5]

However, several decades later, with a more settled population and continued immigration from all over the globe, a noteworthy set of emerging characteristics of California English had begun to attract notice by linguists from the late 20th century onward. As more people moved into the state, all those groups, ranging from a diverse variety of backgrounds, began to pick up different elements of spoken language from one another.[6]

Phonology

The typical California English pure vowels, based here on nine Southern California speakers,[7] are similar to General American English, though /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ are considerably lower, whereas /u/ and /ʊ/ are slightly fronter.
California English diphthongs.[7]
Differences in Californian versus General American vowels
English
diaphoneme		 California General American Example words
/ɒ/ (LOT set) [ä~ɑ] ( listen) [ä~ɑ] bother, lot, top
/ɒ/ (CLOTH set) [ɒ(ː)] ( listen) or [ɑ~ɒ] ( listen) cloth, loss, off
/ɔː/ all, bought, saw
/ɛ/ [ɛ~æ] ( listen) [ɛ] ( listen) dress, said, breath
/ɪ/ [ɪ~ɛ] ( listen) [ɪ] ( listen) hit, skim, tip
/ʊ/ [ʊ~ʊ̈] [ʊ] ( listen) book, put, should
/u/ [u~ʉ] ( listen) [u] ( listen) food, glue, new

Several phonological processes have been identified as being particular to California English, but they are neither universal within nor limited to the California area.

The more innovative variant of the California Shift occurring in Northern California, according to Penelope Eckert's research;[8] also associated with Valleyspeak.

It is often assumed that the Central Valley's holdout of Southwestern speech (such as the pin/pen merger) was strengthened by people from western Oklahoma who emigrated during the Dust Bowl. However, no documentation of change of the dialect before and after the arrival of the "Okies" is submitted. Rural Southern California had already been populated by descendants of settlers who came to California in the Southwest from different regions of the Southeast,[12] which fully explains why the speech patterns of rural Southern California are native and entrenched.

Lexical characteristics

The popular image of a typical California speaker often conjures up images of the so-called Valley girls popularized by the 1982 hit song by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa, or "surfer-dude" speech made famous by movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High. While many phrases found in these extreme versions of California English from the 1980s may now be considered passé, certain words such as awesome, totally, fer sure, harsh, gnarly, and dude have remained popular in California and have spread to a national, even international, level. The use of the word like for numerous grammatical functions or as conversational "filler" (such as in place of thinking sounds "uh" and "um") has also remained popular in California English and is now found in many other varieties of English.

A common example of a Northern Californian[13] colloquialism is hella (from "hell of a (lot of)", euphemistic alternative, hecka) to mean "many", "much", "so" or "very".[14] It can be used with both count and mass nouns: "I haven't seen you in hella long"; "There were hella people there"; or "This guacamole is hella good." Pop culture references to "hella" are common, as in the song "Hella Good" by the band No Doubt, from Southern California, and "Hella" by the band Skull Stomp, from Northern California.[15]

California, like other Southwestern states, has borrowed many words from Spanish, especially for place names, food, and other cultural items, reflecting the heritage of the Californios. High concentrations of various ethnic groups throughout the state have contributed to general familiarity with words describing (especially cultural) phenomena. For example, a high concentration of Asian Americans from various cultural backgrounds, especially in urban and suburban metropolitan areas in California, has led to the adoption of words like hapa (itself originally a Hawaiian borrowing of English "half"[16]). A person who was hapa was either part European/Islander or part Asian/Islander. Today it refers to a person of mixed racial heritage such as half-Asian/half-European-Americans in common California usage and FOB ("fresh off the boat", often a newly arrived Asian immigrant). Not surprisingly, the popularity of cultural food items such as Vietnamese phở and Taiwanese boba in many areas has led to the general adoption of such words among many speakers.

In 1958, essayist Clifton Fadiman pointed out that Northern California is the only place besides England where the word chesterfield is used as a synonym for sofa or couch,[17] but it is also used in Canadian English.

Freeways

Freeway signs along northbound US 101 at the interchange of Highway 110 in Los Angeles. The leftmost sign for US 101 north lists it name, the Hollywood Freeway, as well as its destination, Ventura.
Freeway signs along northbound US 101 at the interchange of Interstate 80 in San Francisco. The leftmost sign for US 101 north only lists its destination, the Golden Gate Bridge.

Californians sometimes refer to the lanes of a multi-lane divided highway by number, "the number 1 lane" (also referred to as "the fast lane") is the lane farthest to the left (not counting the carpool lane), with the lane numbers going up sequentially to the right until the far right lane,[18] which is usually referred to as "the slow lane". In areas where three and occasionally two lane freeways are more common, the lanes are simply the "fast lane", "middle lane" and "slow lane".

In the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, Inland Empire, Coachella Valley and San Diego, freeways are often referred to either by name or by route number (perhaps with a direction suffix), but with the addition of the definite article "the", such as "the 405 North" or "the 605 (Freeway)". This usage has been parodied in the recurring Saturday Night Live sketch "The Californians".[19] In contrast, typical Northern California usage omits the definite article.[20][21][22] When Southern California freeways were built in the 1940s and early 1950s, local common usage was primarily the freeway name preceded by the definite article, such as "the Hollywood Freeway".[23] It took several decades for Southern California locals to start to commonly refer to the freeways with the numerical designations, but usage of the definite article persisted. For example, it evolved to "the 605 Freeway" and then shortened to "the 605".[23] That did not occur in Northern California, where usage of the route numbers was more common.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Gordon, Matthew J. (2004). "The West and Midwest: phonology." Kortmann, Bernd, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar W. Schneider and Clive Upton (eds). A Handbook of Varieties of English. Volume 1: Phonology, Volume 2: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 347.
  2. ↑ Bucholtz, Mary; et all (December 2007). "Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal? : The Perceptual Dialectology of California". Journal of English Linguistics 35 (4): 325–352. doi:10.1177/0075424207307780. Retrieved 2010-11-04.
  3. ↑ Ward (2003:41): "fronted features in the young speakers seems to indicate a nascent chain shift in progress, [however] the lack of a true generational age range in the study precludes too strong of a conclusion. Alternatively Hinton et al. also suggest that possibility that the age-specific pattern could also be a function of age-grading, where the faddish speech style of California adolescents is adopted for its prestige value, only to be abandoned as adolescence wanes."
  4. ↑ Upton Sinclair, Oil! (1927).
  5. ↑ Walt Wolfram and Ben Ward, editors (2006). American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 140, 234–236. ISBN 978-1-4051-2108-8.
  6. ↑ "Do you speak American? - California English". PBS. Retrieved October 28, 2013.
  7. 1 2 Ladefoged, Peter (1999). "American English". In Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, 41–44, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-63751-1.
  8. 1 2 3 Eckert, Penelope. "Vowel Shifts in Northern California and the Detroit Suburbs". Stanford University. Accessed 2015.
  9. ↑ "Professor Penelope Eckert's webpage". Stanford.edu. Retrieved 2011-12-30.
  10. ↑ Ward (2003:43)
  11. 1 2 Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:68)
  12. ↑ Laurence Fletcher Talbott, Phd., California in the War for Southern Independence, et al.
  13. ↑ "However, science isn't all that sets Northern California apart from the rest of the world," Sendek wrote. "The area is also notorious for the creation and widespread usage of the English slang 'hella', which typically means 'very', or can refer to a large quantity (e.g. 'there are hella stars out tonight')."
  14. ↑ "Jorge Hankamer WebFest". Ling.ucsc.edu. Retrieved 2011-12-30.
  15. ↑ "Lyrics | Skull Stomp - Hella". SongMeanings. 2008-11-02. Retrieved 2011-12-30.
  16. ↑ Mary Kawena Pukui, Samuel H. Elbert & Esther T. Mookini, The Pocket Hawaiian Dictionary (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983)
  17. ↑ Fadiman, Clifton Any Number Can Play 1958
  18. ↑ "Choosing a Lane". California Driver Handbook (PDF). California Department of Motor Vehicles. 2010. p. 33.
  19. ↑ Rose, Joseph (April 16, 2012). "Saturday Night Live's 'The Californians': Traffic's one big soap opera (video)". The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon). Retrieved December 3, 2013.
  20. ↑ Simon, Mark (2000-06-30). "'The' Madness Must Stop Right Now". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
  21. ↑ Simon, Mark (2000-07-04). "Local Lingo Keeps 'The' Off Road". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
  22. ↑ Simon, Mark (2000-07-29). "S.F. Wants Power, Not The Noise: The 'The'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
  23. 1 2 Geyer, Grant (Summer 2001). "'The' Freeway in Southern California". American Speech 76 (2): 221–224. doi:10.1215/00031283-76-2-221.

Further reading

External links

  1. ↑ http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_B16001&prodType=table
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