Dialect Areas: The Linguistic Atlas of New England, one of a series began by the American Dialect Society, studied three broad dialect areas. What were these areas and the main differences that were found between them?

The three broad dialect areas studied by the American Dialect Society were the Northern, Southern, and Midland dialects. The Northern dialectic society consists of the New England area and all the northern states from Maine to the Pacific Coast. The piedmont areas of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and the eastern part of Texas all make up the Southern dialect area. The largest of the three is the Midland dialect. It covers most of the country from Southern New Jersey into the Carolinas and Georgia, then spreading over all the western states. The size of the Midland are is the main reason for the uniform speech in American language.

One of the major features found in the Southern region is the lost of the final r. The main difference in the Midland section is the combined pronunciation of /p/ and /i/. Words such as cot/caught and don/down sound the same. In the Northern region there is an important boundary along the Connecticut River separating Western and Eastern New England. In the east there is a distinctive accent, the loss of the final postvocalic -r  (Crystal 312).

Works Cited

Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1995.