Pacific Northwest English

Pacific Northwest English (also known, in the United States, as Northwest English)[1] is a variety of North American English, and is geographically defined within the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon, sometimes including Idaho and the Canadian province of British Columbia.[2] The area contains a highly diverse and mobile population, which is reflected in the historical and continuing development of the variety. Current studies remain inconclusive about whether Pacific Northwest English is a complete dialect of its own, separate from Western American English or even California English and Standard Canadian English,[3] with which it appears to share its major phonological features.[4]

History

The linguistic traits that flourish throughout the Pacific Northwest attest to a culture that transcends boundaries. Historically, this hearkens back to the early years of colonial expansion by the British and Americans, when the entire region was considered a single area and people of all different mother tongues and nationalities used Chinook Jargon (along with English and French) to communicate with each other. Until the Oregon Treaty of 1846, it was identified as being either Oregon Country (by the Americans) or Columbia (by the British).[5] As a result of the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush, the culture of the Pacific Northwest expanded northward into Yukon and Alaska, carried along by the thousands of people who were attracted to the gold fields in the north. Today, the English variety common to this shared culture can be heard by people from Eugene, Oregon to Fairbanks, Alaska.[6]

Linguists immediately after World War II tended to find few patterns unique to the Western region, as among other things, Chinook Jargon and other "slang words" (despite Chinook Jargon being an actual separate language in and of itself, individual words from it like "salt chuck", "muckamuck", "siwash" and "tyee" were and still are used in Pacific Northwest English) were pushed away in favour of having a "proper, clean" dialect.[7] Several decades later, linguists began noticing emerging characteristics of Pacific Northwest English, although it remains close to the standard American accent.

Phonology

The Pacific Northwest English vowel space. Based on TELSUR data from Labov et al. The /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are indistinguishable in the F1/F2 means for three speakers from Vancouver, British Columbia, two speakers from Seattle, and three from Portland, Oregon

As in most varieties of North American English, Pacific Northwest English is rhotic, which is historically a significant marker in differentiating global English varieties.

Commonalities with both Canada and California

Commonalities with Canada

These commonalities are shared with Canada and the North Central United States which includes the Minnesota accent.

Commonalities with California

Miscellaneous characteristics

Words and phrases

Pacific Northwest English and British Columbian English adopted a huge number of words from Chinook Jargon, as before the beginning of the 1900s essentially the entire population was at least slightly bilingual in the language. There are also several terms of English origin that originated in or are distinct to the region.

See also

Notes

  1. Riebold, John M. (2014). "Language Change Isn't Only Skin Deep: Inter-Ethnic Contact and the Spread of Innovation in the Northwest" (PDF). Cascadia Workshop in Sociolinguistics 1 at University of Victoria. University of Washington. p. 7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-10-23.
  2. Riebold, John M. (2012). "Please Merge Ahead: The Vowel Space of Pacific Northwestern English" (PDF). Northwest Linguistics Conference 28. University of Washington. p. 2. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-09-28.
  3. Ward (2003:87): "lexical studies have suggested that the Northwest in particular forms a unique dialect area (Reed 1957, Carver 1987, Wolfram and Shilling-Estes 1998). Yet the phonological studies that could in many ways reinforce what the lexical studies propose have so far been less confident in their predictions".
  4. Ward (2003:43–45)
  5. Meinig, Donald W. (1995) [1st pub. 1968]. The Great Columbia Plain (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Classic ed.). University of Washington Press. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-295-97485-9.
  6. Lang, George (2008). Making Wawa: The Genesis of Chinook Jargon. Vancouver: UBC Press. pp. especially 127–128. ISBN 978-0-7748-1526-0.
  7. Wolfram and Ward 2006, pg. 140
  8. Ward (2003:93)
  9. Conn, Jeff (2002). An investigation into the western dialect of Portland Oregon. Paper presented at NWAV 31, Stanford, California. Archived from the original on 2015-11-21.
  10. Ward (2003:44)
  11. Labov, Ash, Boberg 2006
  12. Labov et al. 2006. p. 68.
  13. Champagne, Reid (2013-02-08). "Solar neighborhood projects shine in 'sunbreak' Seattle". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on 2015-11-21. Retrieved 2013-05-29. [I]n this part of the world . . . sunshine is more frequently reported as ‘sunbreaks’.
  14. 1 2 Raftery, Isolde (2014-12-23). A brief history of words unique to the Pacific Northwest. KUOW. Archived from the original on 2015-09-21. Duff = The decaying vegetable matter, especially needles and cones, on a forest floor.
    Fish wheel = A wheel with nets, put in a stream to catch fish; sometimes used to help fish over a dam or waterfall.
  15. Do You Speak American? § Pacific Northwest. PBS. Archived from the original on 2015-07-23. As Portlanders continue to front their back vowels, they will continue to go to the coast (geow to the ceowst), not the beach or the shore, as well as to microbrews, used clothing stores (where the clothes are not too spendy (expensive), bookstores (bik‑stores) and coffee shops (both words pronounced with the same vowel).
  16. DeLange, Greg (2012-10-22). What Do You Call Your Vehicle?. Richland, Washington: KORD-FM. Archived from the original on 2015-09-12. This causes confusion sometimes when one of us calls everything with four wheels a ‘rig’

References

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/3/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.