“American” English Hard To Find Accents in North America continue to grow distinct from each other Television, radio and homogenized entertainment have apparently done nothing to slim America of regional dialects. Although Americans are moving across the country more frequently, thinning out the possibility that any one character walking the streets of New York City could be cast in West Side Story, the belief that accents are history has little foundation. In fact, it’s been found that classically defined “accents” may be getting more pronounced. In June of last year, Matthew Blakeslee of the Los Angeles Times reported on the Telsur Project out of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, headed up by Professor William Labov, an eminent researcher in the field of sociolinguistics. The Telsur Project (www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas) has been a near ten-year mission to document the speech patterns across North America, focusing on characteristic examples designed to set the regional accents apart. Many may assume that the generalized speech heard on television and radio would wipe out regionalisms, but the opposite has been true. As well, regional accents are source of pride for many, so often speakers will cling to them, despite what they hear on television. “Language change has not stopped,” William Labov stated in the LA Times article. “Despite the fact that we all listen to the same radio and television and have such great mobility, regional dialects are actually getting stronger.” In the 1930s, Hans Kurath, a linguist out of the University of Chicago, took a similar approach to identifying the accents of the New England region, employing “foot soldiers” who talked with people face-to-face, necessitating inordinate amounts of time. Technological advancements since the time of Kurath and his partners have allowed the Telsur Project to use the telephone, calling all across the continent to garner samples of American speech, using computers to aid in discrete phonetic feature recognition. Surprisingly, Labov and his team noted that not only are regional dialects still maintained, but the “dialects of New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Saint Louis, Dallas and Los Angeles are now more different from each other than they were 50 or 100 years ago.” Two vocalic linguistic phenomena, mergers and chain shifts, partially explain the findings. An example of a merger is between two [o] sounds: the [o] in “caught” and the [o] as in “cot”. Although originally distinct, if mildly, these two sounds are now undifferentiated for half of America. Throughout the West, mid-West and Eastern New England, the merger of the two sounds is complete. In urban Chicago and New York, the distinction is still made. (The merging vowel sounds in “pin” and “pen” also highlight the trend.) Chain shifts are more remarkable and detail the revolution of vowels through a systematic pattern. Quite simply, vowels trade off with one another, as exemplified in the New England trend for the sound [æ] as in “cad” to move to the position of the [i] in “idea”, rendering the word “[æ]-dea”. Then, the [o] of “cod” shifts to replace the lost [a] in “cad”. It continues as the [oh] of “cawed” steps in for the [o], the [u] of “cud” moves in to replace the [oh], and [e] (like “red”) moves in to replace the [u]. Confused? In sum, the shifts are pandemic, and are very organized. A similar shift began when the Old English word “stân” evolved to become our present-day “stone”. The discussion of “regional accents” and “dialects” implies consideration of the “standard” language. Most linguists are loath to recognize a “standard”, despite the rigorous education devoted to language norms in high school. Ebonics, a term used to describe African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), was hotly debated when standardized in the Oakland Public Schools in the 1990s. The speakers of AAVE advocated recognition while opponents cried foul, that a mere “accent” was being elevated to an undeserved plateau. Regardless of their advocacy, standard languages are anathema to the natural change that takes place both as a linguistic and a biological phenomenon. Just with natural selection, the most successful terminology and dialectology will survive as the norm as long as they are embraced by the speakers. “Whom”, “whence”, “perhaps”, “thou”: These are examples of words either excised from use or on their way out. All four words, however, were once standard language issue. (Note that most words embraced by the upper and aristocratic classes are discarded first; these are also the only classes who hinge themselves to the “standard”.) Standardizing languages tends to turn into “linguistic prescriptivism”, where a minority defines the rules and grammar for the majority, oftentimes alienating them in the process. Standards never thrive outside of textbooks and court proceedings. From localized accents to the literary standard, the spectrum of language is broad and ill-defined as it stands. Acknowledging that what we hear on television and on the radio is not what we hear in our community is only one parcel within the general scope of dialectology and the currency of English. Editor’s note: The term “accent” can often be used derisively. Our intention was to use the term “accent” to denote an elsewhere specified and broadly defined speech characteristic, such as vowel sounds, inflection and/or lexical selection. J. Everett R.