| California English | |
|---|---|
| Region | United States (California) |
Early forms | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | en-u-sd-usca |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
California English (orCalifornian English) is the collection ofEnglish dialects native toCalifornia, traditionally classified underGeneral orWestern American English.[1][2]
As California becamemore diverse, English speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds began to pick up different linguistic elements from one another and also developed new ones; the result is both divergence and convergence within California English.[3] Overall, linguists who studied English aroundWorld War II tended to find few, if any, patterns unique to the state.[4][5] Studies in the 1950s and 1960s largely only commented on the increasingly commoncot–caught merger within the state.
In the 1980s, linguists first noted a distinctivechain shift of vowel sounds, theCalifornia Vowel Shift, used by young people insouthern California and theSan Francisco Bay Area ofnorthern California.[6] This helped to define an accent emerging primarily among youthful, white, urban, coastal speakers, and popularly associated with thevalley girl andsurferyouth subcultures.[7][5] The possibility that this is, in fact, an age-specific variety of English is one hypothesis;[8] however, certain features of this accent are intensifying and spreading geographically.[9]
Other documented California English includes a "country" accent associated with rural and inland white Californians, which is also (to a lesser extent) affected by the California Vowel Shift; an older accent once spoken byIrish Americans inSan Francisco; and distinctly Californian varieties ofChicano English mainly associated withMexican Americans. Research has shown that Californians themselves perceive a linguistic boundary between northern and southern California,[10] particularly regarding the northern use ofhella and southern (but now nationally widespread) use ofdude,bro, andlike.[11]
Varieties of English most popularly associated with California largely correlate with the major urban areas along the coast. Notable is the absence of a distinct/ɔ/ phoneme (the vowel sound ofcaught, stalk, clawed, etc.), which has completelymerged with/ɑ/ (the vowel sound ofcot, stock, clod, etc.), as in most of the Western United States.[12]
| Front | Central | Back | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | ||||||
| lax | tense | lax | tense | lax | tense | tense | |
| Close | i | u | |||||
| Close-mid | ɪ | eɪ | ə,ʌ | ʊ | oʊ | ||
| Open | ɛ | æ | ɑ | ||||
| Diphthongs | aɪ ɔɪ aʊ | ||||||
A fewphonological processes have been identified as being particular to urban and coastal California English. However, these vowel changes are by no means universal in Californian speech, and any single Californian's speech may only have some or none of the changes identified below. These sounds might also be found in the speech of some people from areas outside of California.[13]
One topic that has begun to receive much attention from scholars in recent decades has been the emergence of a vowel-basedchain shift in California (with a similar pattern now reported nationwide and known as thelow back merger shift). The image in this section illustrates the California vowel shift on avowel chart. The vowel space of the image is a cross-section (as if looking at the interior of a mouth from a side profile perspective); it is a rough approximation of the space in a human mouth where the tongue is located inarticulating certain vowel sounds (the left is the front of the mouth closer to the teeth, the right side of the chart being the back of the mouth). As with other vowel shifts, several vowels may be seen moving in a chain shift around the mouth. As one vowel encroaches upon the space of another, the adjacent vowel in turn experiences a movement in order to maximizephonemic differentiation.
For convenience, California English will be compared with a "typical"General American English, abbreviated "GA"./ɪ/ is pulled towards[ɛ] (bit andmiss are sounding more like how other dialects realizebet andmess),/ɛ/ is pulled towards[æ] (wreck andkettle are sounding more likerack andcattle),/æ/ is pulled towards[ä], and/ɑ/ and/ɔ/ merge (cot andstock are sounding more likecaught andstalk): thecot-caught merger.
Other vowel changes, whose relation with the shift is uncertain, are also emerging: except before/l/,/u/ is moving through[ʉ] towards[y] (rude andtrue are almost approachingreed andtree, but with rounded lips), and/oʊ/ is moving beyond[əʊ]./ʊ/ is moving towards[ʌ] (so that, for example,book andcould in the California dialect start to sound, to a GA speaker, more likebuck andcud),/ʌ/ is moving through[ɜ], sometimes approaching[ɛ] (duck, crust, what, etc. are sounding like how U.S. Southerners pronounce them, or like how other Americans might pronouncedeck, crest, wet, etc.).[18]
New vowel characteristics of the California shift are increasingly found among younger speakers. For example, while some characteristics such as theclose central rounded vowel[ʉ] orclose front rounded vowel[y] for/u/ are widespread in Californian speech, the same high degree of fronting for/oʊ/ is found predominantly among young speakers.[19]
The effects of the California vowel shift have been noted in varieties ofCalifornian Spanish, particularly in theBay Area.[20]
One dialect of English, mostly reported in California's rural interior, inland from the major coastal cities,[21] has been popularly described as a "country," "hillbilly," or "twang" variety.[22][23] This California English variety is reminiscent of and presumably related toSouthern or South Midland U.S. accents,[24] mostly correlated with white, outdoors-oriented speakers of theCentral Valley. It has been studied even as far north asTrinity County but could possibly extend farther,[25][22] and as far south as Kern County (metropolitan Bakersfield), possibly extending as far south as eastern San Diego County. Similar to thenonstandard accents of the South Midland and Southern United States, speakers of such towns asRedding andMerced have been found to use the wordanymore in a positive sense and the verbwas in place of the standard English plural verbwere.[26] Related other features of note include thepin–pen merger,[24][25][27][28]fill–feel merger, andfull–fool merger.[22]
TheGreat Depression's westwardDust Bowl migrations of settlers into California from the Southern United States, namely fromOklahoma,Texas,Missouri, andArkansas,[25] is the presumable cause of this rural white accent's presence in California'sCentral Valley.[24][29] Rural northern California was also settled by Oklahomans and Arkansans, though perhaps more recently in the 1970s and 1980s, due to the region'stimber industry boom.[30] However, even in a single town, any given individual's identification with working and playing outdoors versus indoors appears to be a greater determiner of this accent than the authenticity of the individual's Southern heritage.[27] For example, this correlates with less educated rural men of northern California documented as raising/ɛ/ in a style similar to theSouthern drawl.[25] Overall, among those who orient toward a more town lifestyle, features of the California Vowel Shift are more prominent, but not to the same extent as in urban coastal communities such asSan Jose.[21] By contrast, among those who orient toward a more country lifestyle, the Southern features are more prominent, but some aspects of the California Vowel Shift remain present as well.[24][27]
The Mission brogue is a disappearing accent spoken withinSan Francisco, mostly during the 20th century in theMission District. It sounds distinctly likeNew York and possiblyBoston accents, due to a large number ofIrish Americans migrating from those two East Coast cities to the Mission District in the late 19th century.[31] It is today spoken only by some of the oldest Irish American and possiblyJewish residents of the city. From before the 1870s to the 1890s, Irish Americans were the largest share of migrants coming to San Francisco,[31] the majority arriving by way of Northeastern U.S. cities likeNew York andBoston,[32][33][31] thus bringing those cities' ways of speaking with them.[33] In San Francisco, the Mission District quickly became a predominantlyIrish Catholic neighborhood,[34][33] and its local dialect became associated with all of San Francisco as a way to contrast it with the rest of California.[34] Sounding like a "real San Franciscan" therefore once meant sounding "like a New Yorker",[34] the speakers said to "talk like Brooklynites".[31] Other names included the "south of the Slot" (referring to the cable car track running down Market Street)[34] or "south of Market" accent.[35]
Pronunciation features of this accent included:
Overall, starting in the latter half of the 20th century, San Francisco has been undergoing dialect levelling towards the broader regionalWestern American English,[32][36] for example: younger Mission District speakers now exhibit a full cot–caught merger, show the vowel shift of urban coastal Californians, and front theGOOSE andGOAT vowels.[37]
Certain varieties ofChicano English are also native to California, sometimes even being spoken by non-Latino Californians.[38][39] One example is East Los Angeles Chicano English, which has been influenced by both Californian andAfrican American Vernacular English.[40]
The coastal urban accent of California traces many of its features back toValleyspeak: a social dialect arising in the 1980s among a particular white youthful demographic in theSan Fernando Valley, includingLos Angeles.
Boontling is ajargon orargot spoken inBoonville, California, with only about 100 speakers today.[41]
The popular image of a typical southern California speaker often conjures up images of the so-calledValley girls popularized by the1982 hit song byFrank andMoon Zappa, or "surfer-dude" speech made famous by movies such asFast 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 asawesome,totally,for sure,harsh (verb),gnarly, anddude have remained popular in California and have spread to a national, even international, level.
A common example of a northern Californian[42] colloquialism ishella (from "(a) hell of a (lot of)", and the euphemistic alternativehecka) to mean "many", "much", "so" or "very".[43] It can be used with both count and mass nouns. For example: "I haven't seen you inhella long"; "There werehella people there"; or "This guacamole ishella good". The word can be casually used multiple times in multiple ways within a single sentence. Pop culture references to "hella" are common, as in the song "Hella Good" by the bandNo Doubt, which hails from southern California, and "Hella" by the band Skull Stomp, who come from northern California.[44]
California, like otherSouthwestern states, has borrowed many words fromSpanish, especially forplace names, food, and other cultural items, reflecting the linguistic heritage of theCalifornios as well as more recent immigration from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. 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 ofAsian Americans from various cultural backgrounds, especially in urban and suburban metropolitan areas in California, has led to the adoption of the wordhapa (itself originally a Hawaiian borrowing of English "half"[45]) to mean someone of mixed European/Islander or Asian/Islander heritage.
In 1958, essayistClifton Fadiman pointed out that northern California is the only place (besidesEngland and the area surroundingOntario and theCanadian Prairies) where the wordchesterfield is used as a synonym forsofa orcouch.[46]
In Southern California, freeways are often referred to either by name or by route number but with the addition of thedefinite article "the", such as "the 405 North", "the 99" or "the 605 (Freeway)". This usage has been parodied in the recurringSaturday Night Live sketch "The Californians".[47] In contrast, typical Northern California usage omits the definite article.[48][49][50] WhenSouthern 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".[51] 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".[51]
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