Regional Patterns of American Speech

The Influence of Bilingualism The national idiom grew through contacts between various languages and dialects. Bilingualism with Spanish, French, and German marks the regional patterns of Florida (Spanish), Louisiana (French and German), Pennsylvania (German), and south Texas (German and Spanish). Every large Inland Northern city held a substantial German-American community, and many of them included distinctive Scandinavian and Slavic settlements. For example, the German-American bilingual communities of Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati not only brought thousands of German words into American usage but also extended these features across neighboring territory through the cultural influence of the cities. 39 Gullah, an English-based pidgin, developed in the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. From that source and its West Indian counterparts are derived many varieties of African-American folk speech, reflecting various stages of creolization as the dialects merge with the dominant patterns. Social dialects grew through urban and rural experiences throughout the country, many of these related to the Americanization of European bilinguals in the urban North and the integration of African Americans in all sectors of society. These dialects are further conditioned and refined by formal and situational styles, including slang, ethnic variation, and patterns of usage reflecting socioeconomic class. 40 Before urban American Spanish gained prominence in San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Miami, it had already made large contributions to American English in the West. Besides place names extending from the Rio Grande to Montana, the Spanish vocabulary marks the cattle country with Western words: arroyo, bronc(o), canyon, chaparral, cinch, corral, frijol, hoosegow, lariat, lasso, mesa, mustang, patio, pronto, ranch, remuda, rodeo, sombrero, and tortilla. 41 In bilingual communities, Spanish speakers of English tend to avoid regional dialect forms in favor of terms from the general vocabulary. The same tendency appears among the French in Louisiana, who freely use native loans such as banquette (sidewalk), boudin (blood sausage), fais-dodo (country dance), and jambalaya, as well as loan translations and adaptations such as coffee black, cream cheese (cottage cheese), green beans, (h)armonica, and wishbone, resisting the Southern regionalisms clabber cheese, snap beans, and pulley bone. German, Italian, Scandinavian, Slavic, Spanish, and Yiddish speakers reflect the same trend in the urban North, perhaps through learning from books rather than by simple oral acquisition and perhaps through efforts to translate from their native tongues. In becoming Americans all of these people enriched the national language and culture. If examples are limited to food alone, Germans provided bock beer and pretzels, Italians brought antipasto and pizza, Scandinavians added lingonberries and smorgasbord; Slavs contributed kolacky and kielbasa, Yiddish-speaking Germans and Slavs gave bagels and gefilte fish; and Mexican Spanish provided the base for an endless variety of enchiladas, burritos, and tacos, especially when its cooking entered the fast-food industry. 42 Contributions from African Languages The full impact of African languages through Gullah and Plantation Creole remains to be assessed properly, but evidence suggests the influence is significant. Among certain and probable African loans, these have gained currency in the national language: banana, cola (kola), goober, gumbo, juke (-box, -joint, and -step), okra, voodoo, and yam, as well as, perhaps, boogie-woogie, chigger, gorilla, and tote. Some are regionally restricted to the South: cooter (turtle), cush and cush-cush, and pinder (peanut). Others seem limited to the South Carolina and Georgia Low Country: buckra (white man), det (heavy), as in det rain and det shower, and pinto (coffin). In addition to the loan words from Gullah, the creolization of that auxiliary language may also have left its mark on American English phonology and grammar. 43 As a contact vernacular and a language of business, Gullah provided a medium of communication for African slaves and their American overseers. As a pidgin, it was a language variety native to neither group. In the development of Plantation Creole, the creolized American speech of African-American folk speakers of the plantation cultures, the language acquired highly complex phonological and grammatical rules, as well as a complete vocabulary, both necessary elements of a self-reliant, independent language. General Southern features today include many correspondences with Plantation Creole. 44 Interestingly enough, some features of Plantation Creole have European as well as African correspondences. Southern vowel nasality often replaces nasal consonants in am, been, and bacon, but this feature occurs in Parisian and Louisiana French as well as in Plantation Creole and West African languages. The simplification of consonant clusters, as in des (for desk and desks) or tase (for taste and tastes), is commonplace in all of those languages, as well as in the Scots dialect of Robert Burns, who, like American Southerners, both black and white, often assimilated l after back vowels, as in fa’ (fall) and saut (salt). Similarly, the pervasive deletion of articles, copulas, prepositions, and other function words so characteristic of Gullah and its creolized extensions is a feature regularly associated with the speech of French, German, and Spanish bilinguals. Nevertheless, this fact remains: large numbers of Black and white speakers share those features across the lower South, especially in those areas dominated by the plantation cultures. 45

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