Southern Vowel Shift In Southern English

Using dialect in society is natural and people can often not control how they sound. When that same person writes however they are expected to drop their dialect and only use proper english. Vershawn Ashanti Young discusses this topic in his article “Should Writer’s Use They Own English?”. Young has several good points including that their accent comes through their writing and that “code meshing” can be effective in a person's’ writing. On the contrary, I agree more with the fact that we need a “universal” way of speaking in America, because of the fact that it is harder to learn several “languages” as a child and it would be almost impossible for people from other countries to learn all the slang if we don't have one set way of speaking.

My dialect is unique. You will not hear an accent like it anywhere else. Appalachian dialect is different from a southern accent. I have been made fun of because of the way I talk. I get comments on my accent some of which are verbally whereas some are silent. It can be either be “Aw, your accent it so cute or it can be you’re a hillbilly.”

At home, my parents taught me the Nigerian way of life. I ate Nigerian food and learned about Nigerian history, and I also tried to learn the language of Nigeria, Yoruba, with limited success. However, at school, I was immersed in the American way of life. I ate American food, such as hot dogs or cheeseburgers at school instead of the Nigerian food, I ate at home and I learned about US history instead of Nigerian history. After living in California for a year, we moved to Texas, where I was exposed to the Southern culture. After a year in Texas, I was already saying "Y'all" and I had adopted some of the Southern traditions, such as being very respectful and using “Ma’am” and “Sir” when talking to

Do you ever think about the way you speak and why? Well, Paul Robert does an excellent job explaining why people use the dialect they use in Speech Communities. He discusses that people change their use of language throughout their lives to conform to either society or to what kind of person they want to be, or to just conform to who they need to be at a particular moment, in which I agree. People’s choice of language, including myself, are affected by many of their surroundings, such as where they live and grow up at, their peers, and a person’s work place.

People in “American Tongues” shared a very present and negative opinion about different accents present in the United States. With regards to southern accents, people saw this accent as being one of “hillbillies” and the “worst accent.” I feel like this is a view that is still seen today and it is one I grew seeing on TV. For the New York/Boston accent, the speakers were seen as having “nasal problems” and also as being the “worst” accent. I have not had much exposure to this accent or the views still associated with it, but I’m sure that these opinions continue in the present. As for other accents shown in the film, such as the “Dutchified”

It seems that dialects all boil down to early childhood language development and who a child’s first influences are when they learn to speak. These influences primarily come from a child’s immediate care giver which is usually their parents. The New York dialect therefore is passed down from one generation to the next in a traditional sense. I will make a mental note to resist correcting other people’s English, which is a bad habit of

There are pockets of North Carolina which hold on to peculiarities of English speech. According to (Burke, 1971, pp. 289-300) Ocracoke is one such pocket where dialect and language still contain English influenced speech. Part of the reason this holds true is that Ocracoke, as a barrier island remains isolated from the rest of the North Carolina and has held onto specific turns of phrase and pronunciation. For example, the words abreast (to the side of) comforter (for quilt) squall (for storm) curtain (in place of blind or roller shade) and whicker (the sound a horse makes.)

The Conference on College Composition and Communication discusses two very important and controversial questions within their article “Students’ Right to Their Own Language”: “What should the schools do about the language habits of students who come from a wide variety of social, economic, and cultural backgrounds?” (2), and “Should the schools try to uphold language variety, or to modify it, or to eradicate it?” (2). While for academic writing purposes students should be expected to use standard American dialect, it is important to respect the diversity and various heritages throughout the country by allowing students to use the dialect they choose when speaking.

Stranded from worries, yet surrounded by inspiring stories and diverse culture. Great Southern Land manipulates the audience through various language techniques used perspicaciously in order to assure positive light on Australia’s perception in the listener’s mind making it a definite for Australian advertising. What are these features you many ask? The first technique seen as a vital part to this manipulation is repetition of the noun groups “Great Southern Land” and “standing at the limit of an endless ocean. groups these are used to reinforce and emphasize the point at stake. “Great Southern land is repetitioned in order to reinforce the standing of great in the listeners mind therefore making them remember Australia as great, this is

United States of America, small in history but large in diversity continues to face new challenges with language as time continues to turn. In the documentary “Do You Speak American?” Robert MacNeil analyzes the English language and reveals many dialects that culturally defines us. Regional dialect is one of the many strongholds of all cultures and now it has reached its’ zenith and today it is slowly declining because it does not possess the human nature of advancement. Optimistically, it allows people to learn how to cooperate with each other. In order to advance and adopt a person has to change; I believe that the acceptance of cultural adaptations, diversity, and industrialization can prove that the decline of speech does not cause a

The United States of America is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations. Even though there is not an official national language, most Americans speak Standard American English (SAE). However, the most prevalent native English vernacular dialect in the United States is African American Vernacular English (AAVE). According to Sharon Vaughn, AAVE is “a dialect used by some African Americans” (110). In order to examine AAVE, one must explore the origins, grammatical features, and prominent resolutions, which created a precedent for educating students that speak dialects other than Standard American English.

Verbal -s is a linguistic phenomenon that occurs both in African American Dialects and within the Northern Subject Rule. In the NSR, it consists of two separate constraints: the subject type and proximity type rule. The subject type rule states that when a subject is a pronoun, no verbal -s will be used, that is unless it is used in a third person singular. The proximity type rule states that that when the subject of a sentence is not located directly next to the verb, then the presence of verbal -s will be present. An example of the proximity rule is the sentence “I usually goes to the store.” There is an s following the word “go” because of this rule. Its presence in AAVE is much more complex and less researched; in class, we looked at three papers that all discussed the use of verbal -s and its use in several African American Dialects from all around the United States.

African American English is diverging from Standard American English. As shown in Do You Speak American (2005), AAE originates from the time of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. English was introduced to trade ports in Africa by colonialists, resulting in the creation of pidgin - a mixture of English and African languages that is still in use today. More recently, African Americans who have moved from the South to the North have been more segregated, creating greater divergence between AAE and SAE. As many African Americans maintain ties to the South, such as continued contact with friends or family in the south, similarities between AAE and southern dialects remain. However, each group have selected features that are important, such as maintaining ‘r’ in the North or keeping certain features as a way of preserving history, resulting in different dialect patterns between the North and the South to develop.

AAVE is a variation of what is commonly referred to as Standard English, and is predominantly spoken by African American communities across the United States. Unlike many other variations of English, AAVE is not regional so African Americans speak more or less the same way all across the country. These sociolinguistic parallels are because African Americans are “oriented to a sense of ethnic solidarity and nation wide cohesiveness” due to their extensive history of fighting in unity for the same victories (Fought, 2003). The possibility that AAVE

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety previously known as Black English Vernacular or Vernacular Black English by sociolinguists, and commonly called Ebonics outside the academic community. However, some characteristics of AAVE are seemingly unique in its structure. It also includes a number of standard and nonstandard English varieties are spoken by the US and the Caribbean people. AAVE has been the core of many public debates and also the analysis of this variety has encouraged and sustained debates amongst sociolinguists.  Some speakers may use some special aspects of pronunciation and vocabulary. Nevertheless, the grammatical features are not connected with the variety. Several sociolinguists would reserve the term AAVE for varieties which are marked by the existence of specific distinctive grammatical features and some of them are discussed below. The history of AAVE and what language varieties it is related to are also a matter of argument. Some scholars confirm that AAVE developed out a connection between speakers of West African languages and speakers of vernacular English varieties. According to such an opinion, West Africans learnt English on plantations in the southern Coastal States from very few native speakers. Some say that this led to the development of a rudimentary pidgin, a very simple language which has been extended through a process of colorization later.