Download or read book Do You Speak American written by Robert Macneil and published by Nan A. Talese. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is American English in decline? Are regional dialects dying out? Is there a difference between men and women in how they adapt to linguistic variations? These questions, and more, about our language catapulted Robert MacNeil and William Cran—the authors (with Robert McCrum) of the language classic The Story of English—across the country in search of the answers. Do You Speak American? is the tale of their discoveries, which provocatively show how the standard for American English—if a standard exists—is changing quickly and dramatically. On a journey that takes them from the Northeast, through Appalachia and the Deep South, and west to California, the authors observe everyday verbal interactions and in a host of interviews with native speakers glean the linguistic quirks and traditions characteristic of each area. While examining the histories and controversies surrounding both written and spoken American English, they address anxieties and assumptions that, when explored, are highly emotional, such as the growing influence of Spanish as a threat to American English and the special treatment of African-American vernacular English. And, challenging the purists who think grammatical standards are in serious deterioration and that media saturation of our culture is homogenizing our speech, they surprise us with unpredictable responses. With insight and wit, MacNeil and Cran bring us a compelling book that is at once a celebration and a potent study of our singular language. Each wave of immigration has brought new words to enrich the American language. Do you recognize the origin of 1. blunderbuss, sleigh, stoop, coleslaw, boss, waffle? Or 2. dumb, ouch, shyster, check, kaput, scram, bummer? Or 3. phooey, pastrami, glitch, kibbitz, schnozzle? Or 4. broccoli, espresso, pizza, pasta, macaroni, radio? Or 5. smithereens, lollapalooza, speakeasy, hooligan? Or 6. vamoose, chaps, stampede, mustang, ranch, corral? 1. Dutch 2. German 3. Yiddish 4. Italian 5. Irish 6. Spanish

Download or read book Speaking American written by Josh Katz and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2020-09 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did you know that your answers to just a handful of questions can predict the zip code of where you grew up? Speaking American offers a visual atlas of the American vernacular--who says what, and where they say it--revealing the history of our nation, our regions, and the language that divides and unites us.

Download or read book Dialects of American English written by Carroll E. Reed and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Dialects written by Lewis Herman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This standard text, now in paperback for the first time-- the companion volume to Foreign Dialects-- AmericanDialects offers representative dialects of every major section of the United States. In each case, a general description and history of the dialect is given, followed by an analysis of vowel and consonant peculiarities, of its individual lilt and rhythm, and of its grammar variations. There are also lists of the idioms and idiomatic expressions that distinguish each dialect and exercises using them. American Dialects also includes musical inflection charts and diagrams showing the placement of lips, tongue, and breath.

Download or read book American Talk written by Robert Hendrickson and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entertaining and colorful celebration of American dialect as it is spoken today.

Download or read book Discovering American Dialects written by Roger W. Shuy and published by Champaign, Ill. : National Council of Teachers of English. This book was released on 1967 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Atlas of North American English written by William Labov and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-07-14 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Atlas of North American English provides the first overall view of the pronunciation and vowel systems of the dialects of the U.S. and Canada. The Atlas re-defines the regional dialects of American English on the basis of sound changes active in the 1990s and draws new boundaries reflecting those changes. It is based on a telephone survey of 762 local speakers, representing all the urbanized areas of North America. It has been developed by Bill Labov, one of the leading sociolinguists of the world, together with his colleagues Sharon Ash and Charles Boberg. The Atlas consists of a printed volume accompanied by an interactive CD-ROM. The print and multimedia content is also available online. Combined Edition: Book and Multimedia CD-ROM The book contains 23 chapters that re-define the geographic boundaries of North American dialects and trace the influence of gender, age, education, and city size on the progress of sound change; findings that show a dramatic and increasing divergence of English in North America; 139 four color maps that illustrate the regional distribution of phonological and phonetic variables across the North American continent; 120 four color vowel charts of individual speakers. The multimedia CD-ROM supplements the articles and maps by providing a data base with measurements of more than 100,000 vowels and mean values for 439 speakers; the Plotnik program for mapping each of the individual vowel systems; extended sound samples of all North American dialects; multimedia applications to enhance classroom presentations. Online Version: Book and CD-ROM content plus additional data The online version comprises the contents of the book and the multimedia CD-ROM along with additional data. It presents a wider selection of data, maps, and audio samples that will be recurrently updated; proffers simultaneous access to the information contained in the book and on the multimedia CD-ROM to all users in the university/library network; provides students with easy access to research material for classroom assignments. For more information, please contact Mouton de Gruyter: [email protected] System Requirements for CD-ROM and Online Version Windows PC: Pentium PC, Windows 9x, NT, or XP, at least 16MB RAM, CD-ROM Drive, 16 Bit Soundcard, SVGA (600 x 800 resolution) Apple MAC: OS 6 or higher, 16 Bit Soundcard, at least 16MB RAM Supported Browsers: Internet Explorer, 5.5 or 6 (Mac OS: Internet Explorer 5.1)/Netscape 7.x or higher/Mozilla 1.0 or higher/Mozilla Firefox 1.0 or higher PlugIns: Macromedia Flash Player 6/Acrobat Reader

Download or read book A Various Language written by Juanita Virginia Williamson and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dialect Diversity in America written by William Labov and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2012-12-17 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sociolinguist William Labov has worked for decades on change in progress in American dialects and on African American Vernacular English (AAVE). In Dialect Diversity in America, Labov examines the diversity among American dialects and presents the counterintuitive finding that geographically localized dialects of North American English are increasingly diverging from one another over time. Contrary to the general expectation that mass culture would diminish regional differences, the dialects of Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Birmingham, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and New York are now more different from each other than they were a hundred years ago. Equally significant is Labov's finding that AAVE does not map with the geography and timing of changes in other dialects. The home dialect of most African American speakers has developed a grammar that is more and more different from that of the white mainstream dialects in the major cities studied and yet highly homogeneous throughout the United States. Labov describes the political forces that drive these ongoing changes, as well as the political consequences in public debate. The author also considers the recent geographical reversal of political parties in the Blue States and the Red States and the parallels between dialect differences and the results of recent presidential elections. Finally, in attempting to account for the history and geography of linguistic change among whites, Labov highlights fascinating correlations between patterns of linguistic divergence and the politics of race and slavery, going back to the antebellum United States. Complemented by an online collection of audio files that illustrate key dialectical nuances, Dialect Diversity in America offers an unparalleled sociolinguistic study from a preeminent scholar in the field.

Download or read book American English written by Walt Wolfram and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2005-09-02 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a very readable, up-to-date description of language variation in American English, covering regional, ethnic, and gender-based differences. contains new chapters on social and ethnic dialects, including a separate chapter on African American English and more comprehensive discussions of Latino, Native American, Cajun English, and other varieties, includes samples from a wider array of US regions features updated chapters as well as pedagogy such as new exercises, a phonetic symbols key, and a section on the notion of speech community accessibly written for the wide variety of students that enrol in a course on dialects, ranging from students with no background in linguistics to those who may wish to specialize in sociolinguistics

Download or read book American Voices written by Walt Wolfram and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2005-10-14 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Voices is a collection of short, readable descriptions of various American dialects, written by top researchers in the field. written by top researchers in the field and includes Southern English, New England speech, Chicano English, Appalachian English, Canadian English, and California English, among many others fascinating look at the full range of American social, ethnic, and regional dialects written for the lay person

Download or read book American English written by Walt Wolfram and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-10-19 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition of this classic text chronicles recent breakthrough developments in the field of American English, covering regional, ethnic, and gender-based differences. Now accompanied by a companion website with an extensive array of sound files, video clips, and other online materials to enhance and illustrate discussions in the text Features brand new chapters that cover the very latest topics, such as Levels of Dialect, Regional Varieties of English, Gender and Language Variation, The Application of Dialect Study, and Dialect Awareness: Extending Application, as well as new exercises with online answers Updated to contain dialect samples from a wider array of US regions Written for students taking courses in dialect studies, variationist sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology, and requires no pre-knowledge of linguistics Includes a glossary and extensive appendix of the pronunciation, grammatical, and lexical features of American English dialects

Download or read book Books Containing American Local Dialects written by St. Louis Public Library and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Dialect Research written by Dennis R. Preston and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 1993-06-07 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Containing all new material and published for the American Dialect Society's centennial celebration (1889-1989), this volume bings together in one place, as no previously published work has, current approaches to the general problems of language distribution and variation. The several chapters offer accounts of how questions are formulated and how data are collected, stored, and intepreted in the various research traditions of dialectology and sociolinguistics, particularly as they have been carried out by researchers associated with the American Dialect Society. More specifically, this book takes trips to the scholar's laboratory. How is this work done? What pitfalls in fieldwork, processing, and interpretation have been encountered and how have they been overcome? What techniques have been used to get at the facts and underlying explanations of language variety? What does recent work suggest about the most rewarding areas and methods for future investigation?

Download or read book American Regional Dialects written by Craig M. Carver and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Focusing on some 2,000 dialect expressions, [this book] traces cultural and historical forces that have shaped these speech regions and given them their characteristic vocabularies."--Cover

Download or read book Dialects and American English written by Walt Wolfram and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Speaking American written by Richard W. Bailey and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-01-23 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking American shows what the English language looked like from various points on the American continent at crucial points in its linguistic history.