American English has many accents and dialects, varying from region to region. Dialects incorporate accent and unique phrases. American English can be divided into eight dialects. The accents are influenced by the linguistic roots of the area’s first settlers. American English distinguishes its speakers but also creates walls between them.
With a population of around 300 million and a language that has borrowed from nearly every other language in the world, American English has dozens of accents and dialects. Some vary from region to region, state to state, county to county, and even neighborhood to neighborhood. George Bernard Shaw’s Professor Henry Higgins would have a great time fixing them all.
An accent generally refers to how words are pronounced. The dialect is more of a mini-language, incorporating accent, but adding unique phrases and sentences. American English can be roughly divided into the following dialects: New England, Mid-Atlantic, Southern, Midwestern, Upper Midwestern, Western, Northwestern, and Californian.
American English often takes its dialects and accents from the linguistic roots of the area’s first settlers. There is something very British about the way people from Massachusetts or Pennsylvania pronounce certain words. Those from New York sound perhaps more guttural, due to their strong German and Eastern European influences.
Southerners mostly sound similar to non-Southern ears, but a native has no trouble distinguishing a mountain accent from one originating from the Tidewater area of Virginia. The Southern accent is deceptively complex, borrowing from the British accent, Scottish “burr” and Irish “brogue,” the Cherokee language, and blended with jumbled French intonations and spiky, detached Spanish with African-American speech.
The Midwestern accent is generally considered to be the most “correct” of the accents in American English, as it lacks a great deal of specific inflection and sounds “flat.” Upper Midwestern English gets its sound from the Scandinavian accents of those who first settled there.
The Western accent of American English has Southern inflections, mixed with the Midwestern accent of those settlers who made the journey by wagon train. Residents of the Pacific Northwest have Western accents tinged with those of their Canadian neighbors in Alberta and British Columbia just across the border. Californians tend to have a less specific “accent” than other Americans, although when they do, it sounds more Western. Southern Californians, like those who grew up in New York City, tend to be fast-talkers and mix in the newer slang.
American English is so distinctive that it distinguishes its speakers wherever they are. Many citizens of the world who have never traveled to the United States know an American immediately. Some people can even hazard a guess as to where in the US an American lives with an accent.
However, American English dialects and accents also create walls between its speakers. American citizens are often stereotyped with each other because of how they talk. Speech coaches make a lot of money teaching actors to speak properly, not because they don’t speak clearly, but because they use an unacceptable accent. Some Americans are considered ignorant or uninformed by their fellow countrymen due to their particular type of American English.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
