97-414: A calico cat ( US English ) is a domestic cat of any breed with a tri-color coat. The calico cat is most commonly thought of as being 25% to 75% white with large orange and black patches; however, they may have other colors in their patterns. Calicoes are almost exclusively female except under rare genetic conditions. A calico cat is not to be confused with a tortoiseshell , who has a black undercoat and
194-698: A cot–caught merger , which is rapidly spreading throughout the whole country. However, the South, Inland North, and a Northeastern coastal corridor passing through Rhode Island, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore typically preserve an older cot–caught distinction. For that Northeastern corridor, the realization of the THOUGHT vowel is particularly marked , as depicted in humorous spellings, like in tawk and cawfee ( talk and coffee ), which intend to represent it being tense and diphthongal : [oə] . A split of TRAP into two separate phonemes , using different
291-520: A pronunciations for example in gap [æ] versus gas [eə] , further defines New York City as well as Philadelphia–Baltimore accents. Most Americans preserve all historical /r/ sounds, using what is known as a rhotic accent . The only traditional r -dropping (or non-rhoticity) in regional U.S. accents variably appears today in eastern New England , New York City , and some of the former plantation South primarily among older speakers (and, relatedly, some African-American Vernacular English across
388-441: A black undercoat and the calico has a white undercoat. One anomaly is that, as a rule of thumb the larger the areas of white, the fewer and larger the patches of ginger and dark or tabby coat. In contrast, a non-white-spotted tortoiseshell usually has small patches of color or even something resembling a salt-and-pepper sprinkling. This reflects the genetic effects on relative speeds of migration of melanocytes and X-inactivation in
485-436: A cat with a striped coat began in the 1690s, and was shortened to tabby in 1774. The notion that tabby indicates a female cat may be due to the feminine proper name Tabby as a nickname of " Tabitha ". The four known distinct patterns, each having a sound genetic explanation, are the mackerel, classic, ticked, and spotted tabby patterns. A fifth pattern is formed by any of the four basic patterns being included as part of
582-418: A certain color ( i.e. orange or black), making the white spots on calico cats. If that is the case, those several genes will be expressed in a blotchy coat of the tortoiseshell or calico kind. But the male, with his single X chromosome, has only one of that particular coat-color gene: he can be not-ginger or he can be ginger (although some modifier genes can add a bit of white here and there), but unless he has
679-544: A chromosomal abnormality he cannot be a calico cat. Currently, it has been very difficult to reproduce the fur patterns of calico cats by cloning . This is shown in Copy Cat , whose genetic donor, Rainbow, was a calico domestic longhair. Copy Cat and Rainbow had different fur patterns. The study of Calico cats may have provided significant findings relating to physiological differences between female and male mammals. Cats with calico coloration are believed to bring good luck in
776-604: A colorful printed Calico fabric, when the term "calico" is applied to cats, it refers only to a color pattern of the fur, not to a cat breed or any reference to any other traits, such as their eyes. Formal standards set by professional and show animal breeders limit the breeds among which they permit registration of cats with calico coloration; those breeds are the Manx cat , American Shorthair , Maine Coon , British Shorthair , Persian cat , Arabian Mau , Japanese Bobtail , Exotic Shorthair , Siberian , Turkish Van , Turkish Angora , and
873-616: A complex phenomenon of "both convergence and divergence": some accents are homogenizing and leveling , while others are diversifying and deviating further away from one another. Having been settled longer than the American West Coast, the East Coast has had more time to develop unique accents, and it currently comprises three or four linguistically significant regions, each of which possesses English varieties both different from each other as well as quite internally diverse: New England ,
970-447: A consonant, such as in pearl , car and fort . Non-rhotic American accents, those that do not pronounce ⟨r⟩ except before a vowel, such as some accents of Eastern New England , New York City , and African-Americans , and a specific few (often older ones) spoken by Southerners , are often quickly noticed by General American listeners and perceived as sounding especially ethnic, regional, or antiquated. Rhoticity
1067-403: A few orange spots on the back of a white cat to a completely orange coloring with no white at all. The orange areas can be darker or lighter spots or stripes, but the white is nearly always solid and usually appears on the underbelly, paws, chest, and muzzle. The face markings are reminiscent of the mackerel or classic tabby and, with orange/white, inclusion of a white spot on the face that covers
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#17328772487871164-475: A light-colored "butterfly" pattern on the shoulders and three thin stripes (the center stripe being the darkest) running along the spine. The legs, tail, and cheeks of a classic tabby have thick stripes, bands, and/or bars. The gene responsible for the coloring of a classic tabby is recessive . Many American shorthair cats demonstrate this pattern. The ticked tabby pattern is due to even fields of agouti hairs, each with distinct bands of colour, which break up
1261-499: A link between a cat's behavior and its coat pattern; however, it suggested that any differences were just how they were being perceived, i.e. people perceive orange cats as "friendly" and white cats as "shy", and then look for confirmation of these perceptions. Since the tabby pattern is a common wild type, it might be assumed that medieval cats were tabbies. However, one writer believed this to be untrue, at least in England. Sometime after
1358-586: A merger with the THOUGHT ( caught ) set. Having taken place prior to the unrounding of the cot vowel, it results in lengthening and perhaps raising, merging the more recently separated vowel into the THOUGHT vowel in the following environments: before many instances of /f/ , /θ/ , and particularly /s/ (as in Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often, etc.), a few instances before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long, wrong ), and variably by region or speaker in gone , on , and certain other words. Unlike American accents,
1455-507: A mostly mottled coat of black/red or blue/cream with relatively few to no white markings. However, outside North America, the calico pattern is more commonly called tortoiseshell and white . Calicoes with diluted coloration (blue tortoiseshell and white) have been called calimanco or clouded tiger . Occasionally, the tri-color calico coloration is combined with a tabby patterning, called tortoiseshell tabby with white. A calico-patched tabby cat may be referred to as caliby . Derived from
1552-636: A nice day , for sure); many are now distinctly old-fashioned (swell, groovy). Some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey , boost, bulldoze and jazz , originated as American slang. American English has always shown a marked tendency to use words in different parts of speech and nouns are often used as verbs . Examples of nouns that are now also verbs are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, hashtag, head, divorce, loan, estimate, X-ray, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, bad-mouth, vacation , major, and many others. Compounds coined in
1649-510: A patched pattern. A patched tabby is a cat with calico or tortoiseshell markings combined with patches of tabby coat (such cats are called caliby and torbie, respectively, in cat fancy ). All five patterns have been observed in random-bred populations. Several additional patterns are found in specific breeds and so are not as well known. For example, a modified classic tabby is found in the Sokoke breed. Some of these rarer patterns are because of
1746-504: A poem for children also known as "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat". On August 31, 2021, Google launched a role-playing browser game called Doodle Champion Island Games . The player character is a calico cat named Lucky. American English American English , sometimes called United States English or U.S. English , is the set of varieties of the English language native to
1843-475: A process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in Britain. English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and Africa. Additionally, firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English (particularly in contrast to
1940-417: A ring or concentric stripes on its sides. The ticked tabby pattern is a result of a different allele at the same gene locus as the mackerel and classic tabby patterns and this allele is dominant over the others. So a T T genotype as well as T T and T T genotypes will be ticked tabbies. The ticked tabby coat essentially masks any other tabby pattern, producing a non-patterned, or agouti tabby (much like
2037-657: A series of other vowel shifts in the same region, known by linguists as the " Inland North ". The Inland North shares with the Eastern New England dialect (including Boston accents ) a backer tongue positioning of the GOOSE /u/ vowel (to [u] ) and the MOUTH /aʊ/ vowel (to [ɑʊ~äʊ] ) in comparison to the rest of the country. Ranging from northern New England across the Great Lakes to Minnesota, another Northern regional marker
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#17328772487872134-487: A sound genetic explanation, are the mackerel, classic or blotched, ticked, and spotted tabby patterns. "Tabby" is not a breed of cat but a coat pattern found in many cat breeds. It is very common amongst non-pedigree cats around the world. The tabby pattern occurs naturally and is connected both to the coat of the domestic cat's direct ancestor and to those of its close relatives: the African wildcat ( Felis lybica lybica ),
2231-514: A survey, completed in 2003, polling English speakers across the United States about their specific everyday word choices, hoping to identify regionalisms. The study found that most Americans prefer the term sub for a long sandwich, soda (but pop in the Great Lakes region and generic coke in the South) for a sweet and bubbly soft drink , you or you guys for the plural of you (but y'all in
2328-453: A variation of American English in these islands. In 2021, about 245 million Americans, aged 5 or above, spoke English at home: a majority of the United States total population of roughly 330 million people. The United States has never had an official language at the federal level, but English is commonly used at the federal level and in states without an official language. 32 of the 50 states, in some cases as part of what has been called
2425-642: Is also associated with the United States, perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South. American accents that have not undergone the cot–caught merger (the lexical sets LOT and THOUGHT ) have instead retained a LOT – CLOTH split : a 17th-century distinction in which certain words (labeled as the CLOTH lexical set ) separated away from the LOT set. The split, which has now reversed in most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent CLOTH set into
2522-637: Is also home to a creole language known commonly as Hawaiian Pidgin , and some Hawaii residents speak English with a Pidgin-influenced accent. American English also gave rise to some dialects outside the country, for example, Philippine English , beginning during the American occupation of the Philippines and subsequently the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands ; Thomasites first established
2619-476: Is common in most American accents despite being now rare in England because, during the 17th-century British colonization, nearly all dialects of English were rhotic, and most North American English simply remained that way. The preservation of rhoticity in North America was also supported by continuing waves of rhotic-accented Scotch-Irish immigrants, most intensely during the 18th century (and moderately during
2716-399: Is most easily distinguishable under bright light in the early stages of kittenhood and on the tail in adulthood. However, the agouti gene primarily controls the production of black pigment, so a cat with an O allele for orange color will still express the tabby pattern. As a result, both red cats and the patches of red on tortoiseshell cats will always show tabby patterning, though sometimes
2813-420: Is often identified by Americans as a "country" accent, and is defined by the /aɪ/ vowel losing its gliding quality : [aː] , the initiation event for a complicated Southern vowel shift, including a " Southern drawl " that makes short front vowels into distinct-sounding gliding vowels . The fronting of the vowels of GOOSE , GOAT , MOUTH , and STRUT tends to also define Southern accents as well as
2910-414: Is possible for them to have the O (orange) allele on one X chromosome and o (black) on the other. This causes both colors to appear in random patches, either with or without the tabby pattern. When paired with the tabby pattern, these cats are known as torbie cats . If there is also white spotting , the cat is known as a caliby (US English). Two distinct gene loci, the agouti gene locus (two alleles) and
3007-529: Is reproduced in each of his cells, a condition referred to as XXY, or Klinefelter syndrome . Such a combination of chromosomes could produce tortoiseshell or calico markings in the affected male, in the same way as XX chromosomes produce them in the female. All but approximately one in ten thousand of the rare calico or tortoiseshell male cats are sterile because of the chromosome abnormality and breeders reject any exceptions for stud purposes because they generally are of poor physical quality and fertility. Even in
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3104-483: Is the common language at home, in public, and in government. Tabby cat A tabby cat , or simply tabby , is any domestic cat ( Felis catus ) with a distinctive M-shaped marking on its forehead, stripes by its eyes and across its cheeks, along its back, around its legs and tail, and characteristic striped, dotted, lined, flecked, banded, or swirled patterns on the body: neck, shoulders, sides, flanks, chest, and abdomen. The four known distinct patterns, each having
3201-463: Is the variable fronting of /ɑ/ before /r/ , for example, appearing four times in the stereotypical Boston shibboleth Park the car in Harvard Yard . Several other phenomena serve to distinguish regional U.S. accents. Boston , Pittsburgh , Upper Midwestern , and Western U.S. accents have fully completed a merger of the LOT vowel with the THOUGHT vowel ( /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ , respectively):
3298-598: The Arabic term عتابية / ʿattābiyya . This word is a reference to the Attabiya district of Baghdad , noted for its striped cloth and silk; itself named after the Umayyad governor of Mecca Attab ibn Asid . Such silk cloth became popular in the Muslim world and spread to England, where the word "tabby" became commonly used in the 17th and 18th centuries. Use of the term tabby cat for
3395-476: The English-only movement , have adopted legislation granting official or co-official status to English. Typically only "English" is specified, not a particular variety like American English. (From 1923 to 1969, the state of Illinois recognized its official language as "American", meaning American English.) Puerto Rico is the largest example of a United States territory in which another language – Spanish –
3492-664: The European wildcat ( Felis silvestris ), and the Asiatic wildcat ( Felis lybica ornata ), all of which have similar coats, both by pattern and coloration. One genetic study of domestic cats found at least five founders. The English term tabby originally referred to "striped silk taffeta ", from the French word tabis , meaning "a rich watered silk ". This can be further traced to the Middle French atabis (14th century), which stemmed from
3589-608: The Mid-Atlantic states (including a New York accent as well as a unique Philadelphia–Baltimore accent ), and the South . As of the 20th century, the middle and eastern Great Lakes area , Chicago being the largest city with these speakers, also ushered in certain unique features, including the fronting of the LOT /ɑ/ vowel in the mouth toward [a] and tensing of the TRAP /æ/ vowel wholesale to [eə] . These sound changes have triggered
3686-544: The Native American languages . Examples of such names are opossum , raccoon , squash , moose (from Algonquian ), wigwam , and moccasin . American English speakers have integrated traditionally non-English terms and expressions into the mainstream cultural lexicon; for instance, en masse , from French ; cookie , from Dutch ; kindergarten from German , and rodeo from Spanish . Landscape features are often loanwords from French or Spanish, and
3783-572: The Norwegian Forest cat . Because the genetic determination of coat colors in calico cats is linked to the X chromosome , calicoes are nearly always female, with one color linked to the maternal X chromosome and a second color linked to the paternal X chromosome . In most cases, males are only one color (for instance, black) as they have only one X chromosome. Male calicoes can happen when a male cat has two X chromosomes ( Klinefelter syndrome , with XXY sex chromosomes and generally they are sterile);
3880-474: The T allele; it 'breaks' the lines and thin stripes of a mackerel tabby, creating spots. The spotted gene has a dominant and a recessive allele as well, which means a spotted cat will have an Sp Sp or Sp sp genotype along with at least one T allele and at least one A allele at those alleles’ respective loci. Personality and aggression vary widely from cat to cat, and is multifactorial. A 2015 study from University of California, Davis sought to examine
3977-714: The francophile tastes of the 19th century Victorian era Britain (for example they preferred programme for program , manoeuvre for maneuver , cheque for check , etc.). AmE almost always uses -ize in words like realize . BrE prefers -ise , but also uses -ize on occasion (see: Oxford spelling ). There are a few differences in punctuation rules. British English is more tolerant of run-on sentences , called " comma splices " in American English, and American English prefers that periods and commas be placed inside closing quotation marks even in cases in which British rules would place them outside. American English also favors
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4074-759: The 18th century; apartment , shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium , townhouse , mobile home in the 20th century; and parts thereof ( driveway , breezeway, backyard ) . Industry and material innovations from the 19th century onwards provide distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms through railroading (see further at rail terminology ) and transportation terminology, ranging from types of roads ( dirt roads , freeways ) to infrastructure ( parking lot , overpass , rest area ), to automotive terminology often now standard in English internationally. Already existing English words—such as store , shop , lumber —underwent shifts in meaning; others remained in
4171-534: The 20th century. The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas . The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing
4268-622: The British form is a back-formation , such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar ). However, while individuals usually use one or the other, both forms will be widely understood and mostly used alongside each other within the two systems. While written American English is largely standardized across the country and spoken American English dialects are highly mutually intelligible, there are still several recognizable regional and ethnic accents and lexical distinctions. The regional sounds of present-day American English are reportedly engaged in
4365-413: The East Coast (perhaps in imitation of 19th-century London speech), even the East Coast has gradually begun to restore rhoticity, due to it becoming nationally prestigious in the 20th century. The pronunciation of ⟨r⟩ is a postalveolar approximant [ ɹ̠ ] or retroflex approximant [ ɻ ] , but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the approximant r sound
4462-565: The Inland North. Rather than one particular accent, General American is best defined as an umbrella covering an American accent that does not incorporate features associated with some particular region, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group. Typical General American features include rhoticity , the father–bother merger , Mary–marry–merry merger , pre-nasal "short a " tensing , and other particular vowel sounds . General American features are embraced most by Americans who are highly educated or in
4559-560: The South), sneakers for athletic shoes (but often tennis shoes outside the Northeast), and shopping cart for a cart used for carrying supermarket goods. American English and British English (BrE) often differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a much lesser extent, grammar and orthography. The first large American dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language , known as Webster's Dictionary ,
4656-528: The U.S. Several verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, weatherize , etc.; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, curate, donate, emote, upholster and enthuse). Among syntactic constructions that arose are outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, etc. Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, buddy, sundae , skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in
4753-563: The U.S. are for instance foothill , landslide (in all senses), backdrop , teenager , brainstorm , bandwagon , hitchhike , smalltime, and a huge number of others. Other compound words have been founded based on industrialization and the wave of the automobile: five-passenger car, four-door sedan, two-door sedan, and station-wagon (called an estate car in British English). Some are euphemistic ( human resources , affirmative action , correctional facility ). Many compound nouns have
4850-662: The U.S. are, for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky . A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United States have since disappeared in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots . Terms such as fall ("autumn"), faucet ("tap"), diaper ("nappy"; itself unused in
4947-530: The U.S. while changing in Britain. Science, urbanization, and democracy have been important factors in bringing about changes in the written and spoken language of the United States. From the world of business and finance came new terms ( merger , downsize , bottom line ), from sports and gambling terminology came, specific jargon aside, common everyday American idioms, including many idioms related to baseball . The names of some American inventions remained largely confined to North America ( elevator [except in
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#17328772487875044-427: The U.S.), candy ("sweets"), skillet , eyeglasses , and obligate are often regarded as Americanisms. Fall for example came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year." Gotten ( past participle of get ) is often considered to be largely an Americanism. Other words and meanings were brought back to Britain from
5141-592: The U.S., especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"), I guess (famously criticized by H. W. Fowler ), baggage , hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently ("currently"). Some of these, for example, monkey wrench and wastebasket , originated in 19th century Britain. The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American (and Irish) English than British English. Linguist Bert Vaux created
5238-531: The United States and the United Kingdom suggest that, while spoken American English deviated away from period British English in many ways, it is conservative in a few other ways, preserving certain features 21st-century British English has since lost. Full rhoticity (or "R-fulness") is typical of American accents, pronouncing the phoneme /r/ (corresponding to the letter ⟨r⟩ ) in all environments, including in syllable-final position or before
5335-524: The United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States ; the de facto common language used in government, education, and commerce; and an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states . Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide. Varieties of American English include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other English dialects around
5432-596: The West and Midwest, and New York Latino English , spoken in the New York metropolitan area . Additionally, ethnic varieties such as Yeshiva English and " Yinglish " are spoken by some American Orthodox Jews , Cajun Vernacular English by some Cajuns in southern Louisiana , and Pennsylvania Dutch English by some Pennsylvania Dutch people. American Indian Englishes have been documented among diverse Indian tribes. The island state of Hawaii , though primarily English-speaking,
5529-400: The X, or female, chromosome. As with humans, female cats have paired sex chromosomes, XX, and male cats have XY sex chromosomes. The female cat, therefore, can have the orange mutant gene on one X chromosome and the gene for a black coat on the other. The piebald gene is on a different chromosome. If expressed, this gene codes for white, or no color, and is dominant over the alleles that code for
5626-411: The Y chromosome does not have any locus for the orange gene, it is not possible for a normal XY male cat to have both orange and non-orange genes together, which is what typically results in tortoiseshell or calico coloring. One rare genetic exception resulting in a male calico is when faulty cell division leaves an extra X chromosome in one of the gametes that produced the male cat. That extra X then
5723-547: The accents spoken in the " Midland ": a vast band of the country that constitutes an intermediate dialect region between the traditional North and South. Western U.S. accents mostly fall under the General American spectrum. Below, ten major American English accents are defined by their particular combinations of certain vowel sounds: In 2010, William Labov noted that Great Lakes, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and West Coast accents have undergone "vigorous new sound changes" since
5820-505: The aeronautical sense ], gasoline ) as did certain automotive terms ( truck , trunk ). New foreign loanwords came with 19th and early 20th century European immigration to the U.S.; notably, from Yiddish ( chutzpah , schmooze, bupkis, glitch ) and German ( hamburger , wiener ). A large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from OK and cool to nerd and 24/7 ), while others have not ( have
5917-570: The concept of X-inactivation: when one of the two X chromosomes inside a female mammal shuts off. She observed this in the coat color patterns of mice. There are two different alleles in Calico cats, one received from each parent, that can determine their fur coloration: each allele is responsible for either orange or black fur. Typically, each allele received would create a solid coat of black and orange fur, but, with Calico cats, Lyonization (commonly known as X-inactivation), occurs at random, which makes for
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#17328772487876014-434: The condition is a chimera , with two different cell types. Some calico cats, called "dilute calicoes", may be lighter in color overall. Dilutes are distinguished by having grey (known as blue), cream, and gold colors instead of the typical colors along with the white. The tri-color coat characteristic of calico cats does not define any breed, but occurs incidentally in cats who express a range of color patterns; accordingly,
6111-406: The country), though the vowel-consonant cluster found in "bird", "work", "hurt", "learn", etc. usually retains its r pronunciation, even in these non-rhotic American accents. Non-rhoticity among such speakers is presumed to have arisen from their upper classes' close historical contact with England, imitating London's r -dropping, a feature that has continued to gain prestige throughout England from
6208-614: The diverse regional dialects of British English) became common after the mid-18th century, while at the same time speakers' identification with this new variety increased. Since the 18th century, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that retain minor influences from waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages, primarily European languages. Some racial and regional variation in American English reflects these groups' geographic settlement, their de jure or de facto segregation, and patterns in their resettlement. This can be seen, for example, in
6305-742: The double quotation mark ("like this") over the single ('as here'). Vocabulary differences vary by region. For example, autumn is used more commonly in the United Kingdom, whereas fall is more common in American English. Some other differences include: aerial (United Kingdom) vs. antenna, biscuit (United Kingdom) vs. cookie/cracker, car park (United Kingdom) vs. parking lot, caravan (United Kingdom) vs. trailer, city centre (United Kingdom) vs. downtown, flat (United Kingdom) vs. apartment, fringe (United Kingdom) vs. bangs, and holiday (United Kingdom) vs. vacation. AmE sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas BrE uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE transport or where
6402-687: The effect has no definitive historical background. However, the existence of patches in calico cats was traced to a certain degree by Neil Todd in a study determining the migration of domesticated cats along trade routes in Europe and Northern Africa. The proportion of cats having the orange mutant gene found in calicoes was traced to the port cities along the Mediterranean in Greece, France, Spain, and Italy, originating from Egypt. The calico has been Maryland's state cat since 1 October 2001. Calico cats were chosen as
6499-458: The embryo. Serious study of calico cats apparently began in 1948 when Murray Barr and his graduate student E. G. Bertram noticed dark, drumstick -shaped masses inside the nuclei of nerve cells of female cats, but not in male cats. These dark masses became known as Barr bodies . In 1959, Japanese cell biologist Susumu Ohno determined the Barr bodies were X chromosomes . In 1961, Mary Lyon proposed
6596-431: The folklore of many cultures. In Germany, the word for a cat with calico coloring is "Glückskatze" or "lucky cat". In the United States, calicoes sometimes are referred to as money cats . In Japan, Maneki-neko figures depict calico cats, bringing good luck. Japanese sailors often kept a calico as their ship's cat to protect against misfortune at sea. In the late nineteenth century, Eugene Field published " The Duel ",
6693-510: The following two centuries) when this ethnic group eventually made up one-seventh of the colonial population. Scotch-Irish settlers spread from Delaware and Pennsylvania throughout the larger Mid-Atlantic region, the inland regions of both the South and North, and throughout the West: American dialect areas that were all uninfluenced by upper-class non-rhoticity and that consequently have remained consistently rhotic. While non-rhoticity spread on
6790-421: The forehead, along with dark lines from the corners of the eyes, one or more crossing each cheek, and of course many stripes and lines at various angles on the neck and shoulder area, on the flanks, and around the legs and tail, marks which are more or less perpendicular to the length of the body part. Mackerel tabbies are also called 'fishbone tabbies,' probably doubly named after the mackerel fish. Mackerels are
6887-939: The hospital , BrE to hospital ; contrast, however, AmE actress Elizabeth Taylor , BrE the actress Elizabeth Taylor ). Often, these differences are a matter of relative preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable since the two varieties are constantly influencing each other, and American English is not a standardized set of dialects. Differences in orthography are also minor. The main differences are that American English usually uses spellings such as flavor for British flavour , fiber for fibre , defense for defence , analyze for analyse , license for licence , catalog for catalogue and traveling for travelling . Noah Webster popularized such spellings in America, but he did not invent most of them. Rather, "he chose already existing options on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology." Other differences are due to
6984-656: The influence of 18th-century Protestant Ulster Scots immigrants (known in the U.S. as the Scotch-Irish ) in Appalachia developing Appalachian English and the 20th-century Great Migration bringing African-American Vernacular English to the Great Lakes urban centers. Any phonologically unmarked North American accent falls under an umbrella known as General American. This section mostly refers to such General American features. Studies on historical usage of English in both
7081-466: The interaction of wild and domestic genes, as with the rosette and marbled patterns found in the Bengal breed. The mackerel, or striped, tabby pattern is made up of thin vertical, gently curving stripes on the sides of the body. These stripes can be continuous or broken into bars and short segments/spots, especially on the flanks and stomach. Three or five vertical lines in an "M" shape almost always appear on
7178-438: The late 18th century onwards, but which has conversely lost prestige in the U.S. since at least the early 20th century. Non-rhoticity makes a word like car sound like cah or source like sauce . New York City and Southern accents are the most prominent regional accents of the country, as well as the most stigmatized and socially disfavored. Southern speech, strongest in southern Appalachia and certain areas of Texas,
7275-553: The mid-17th century, the natural philosopher John Aubrey noted that William Laud , the Archbishop of Canterbury was "a great lover of Cats" and "was presented with some Cyprus -cats, i.e. our Tabby-Cats". He then claimed that "I doe well remember that the common English Catt, was white with some blueish piednesse [i.e. with grey parts]. The race or breed of them is now almost lost." However, most drawings or paintings of cats in medieval manuscripts do show them to be tabbies. Due to
7372-427: The mid-nineteenth century onwards, so they "are now more different from each other than they were 50 or 100 years ago", while other accents, like of New York City and Boston, have remained stable in that same time-frame. However, a General American sound system also has some debated degree of influence nationwide, for example, gradually beginning to oust the regional accent in urban areas of the South and at least some in
7469-536: The most common among tabbies. The classic tabby, also known as blotched tabby, has the 'M' pattern on the forehead but, rather than primarily thin stripes or spots, the body markings are thick curving bands in whorls or a swirled pattern, with a distinctive mark on each side of the body resembling a bullseye. 80% of modern-day cats have the recessive allele responsible for the classic pattern. Black tabbies generally have dark browns, olives, and ochres that stand out more against their black colors. Classic tabbies each have
7566-423: The most common spotted tabby looks most similar to the mackerel tabby, including the classic marks on the limbs, tail, and head, as well as the 'M' on the forehead. The orange tabby, also commonly called red or ginger tabby, is a color-variant of the above patterns, having pheomelanin (O allele ) instead of eumelanin (o allele). Though generally a mix of orange and white, the ratio between fur color varies, from
7663-617: The most formal contexts, and regional accents with the most General American native features include North Midland, Western New England, and Western accents. Although no longer region-specific, African-American Vernacular English , which remains the native variety of most working- and middle-class African Americans , has a close relationship to Southern dialects and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans, including hip hop culture . Hispanic and Latino Americans have also developed native-speaker varieties of English. The best-studied Latino Englishes are Chicano English , spoken in
7760-580: The mouth, coming to a point around the forehead. Because a masking gene is present on white fur, its inclusion is often asymmetrical , leading to more or less white fur on each paw or side of the face. Roughly 75% of ginger cats are male. Male cats with the gene for orange can be either X°Y ginger or X-Y black or non-ginger tabby. Females with the gene have three possibilities: X-X- black or non-ginger tabby, X°X° ginger, and X-X° tortoiseshell, thus male cats cannot be tortoiseshell unless they have two X chromosomes . Since female cats have two X chromosomes, it
7857-402: The past forms of a few verbs (for example, AmE/BrE: learned / learnt , burned / burnt , snuck/sneaked , dove/dived ) although the purportedly "British" forms can occasionally be seen in American English writing as well; different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (for example, AmE in school, BrE at school ); and whether or not a definite article is used, in very few cases (AmE to
7954-500: The rare cases where a male calico is healthy and fertile, most cat registries will not accept them as show animals. As Sue Hubble stated in her book Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes , The mutation that gives male cats a ginger-colored coat and females ginger, tortoiseshell, or calico coats produced a particularly telling map. The orange mutant gene is found only on
8051-995: The relationship between coat color and behavior in cats. Researchers ran statistical analyses from 1,274 online surveys completed by cat owners. The owners were asked to rank the cats' aggressiveness during interactions with human aggression, handling aggression, and veterinary aggression. The study concluded that, though aggressive behaviors did show up in different levels between different coats, these were relatively minor. The larger differences in aggression seemed to researchers to be sex-linked, rather than related to any coat pattern or coloring: With all coat colors combined, females were identified by their guardians as more aggressive during veterinary visits compared with males ( X² = 10.36, p = .001). Analyses showed that gray-and-white and black/brown/gray tabby females were more aggressive than their male counterparts at veterinarians’ offices ( X² = 9.28, p = .002, and X² = 5.00, p = .025, respectively). A similar study also reported no evidence of
8148-508: The spotted tabby results from a modifier gene that breaks up the mackerel tabby pattern and causes the stripes to appear as spots. Similarly, the classic tabby pattern may be broken by the spotted tabby gene into large spots. One can see both large and small spot patterns in the Australian Mist , Bengal , Serengeti , Savannah , Egyptian Mau , Arabian Mau , Maine Coon , and Ocicat breeds, among others, as well as some crosses. Naturally,
8245-504: The state cat because their white, black, and orange coloring is in harmony with the coloring of the Baltimore oriole (the state bird) and the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly (the state insect). The fabric called " calico " was originally from the city of Calicut in southwestern India. Printed calico was imported into the United States from Lancashire, England, in the 1780s, and a linguistic separation occurred there. While Europe maintained
8342-419: The stripes are muted—especially in cream and blue/cream cats due to the pigment dilution. The mackerel pattern and its T allele at the tabby gene locus is dominant over the classic (or blotched) allele, T . So a cat with a T T or T T genotype sets the basic pattern of thin stripes (mackerel tabby) that underlies the coat, while a T T cat will express a classic tabby coat pattern with thick bands and
8439-402: The tabby locus (three alleles), and one modifier, spotted (two alleles), cause the four basic tabby patterns. The fifth pattern is emergent, being expressed by female cats with one black and one orange gene on each of their two X chromosomes, and is explained by Barr bodies and the genetics of sex-linked inheritance. The agouti gene , with its two alleles, A and a , controls whether or not
8536-411: The tabby pattern is expressed. The dominant A expresses the underlying tabby pattern, while the recessive non-agouti or "hyper-melanistic" allele, a , does not. Solid-color (black or blue) cats have the aa combination, hiding the tabby pattern, although sometimes a suggestion of the underlying pattern can be seen ("ghost striping"). This underlying pattern, whether classic, mackerel, ticked or spotted,
8633-477: The tabby patterning into a salt-and-pepper appearance that makes them look sand-like—thus there are few to no stripes or bands. Residual ghost striping and/or barring can often be seen on the lower legs, face, and belly and sometimes at the tail tip, as well as the standard 'M' and a long dark line running along the spine, primarily in ticked tabbies that also carry a mackerel or classic tabby allele. These types of cats come in many forms and colours. It's thought that
8730-570: The traditional standard accent of (southern) England, Received Pronunciation (RP), has evolved a trap–bath split . Moreover, American accents preserve /h/ at the start of syllables, while perhaps a majority of the regional dialects of England participate in /h/ dropping , particularly in informal contexts. However, General American is also innovative in a number of its own ways: The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as English-speaking British-American colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from
8827-417: The verb-and-preposition combination: stopover, lineup, tryout, spin-off, shootout , holdup, hideout, comeback, makeover , and many more. Some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin ( win out, hold up, back up/off/down/out, face up to and many others). Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive in
8924-529: The very distinct fur coat. Calico cats are almost always female because the locus of the gene for the orange/non-orange coloring is on the X chromosome. In the absence of other influences, such as color inhibition that causes white fur, the alleles present in those orange loci determine whether the fur is orange or not. Female cats, like all female placental mammals , normally have two X chromosomes. In contrast, male placental mammals, including chromosomally stable male cats, have one X and one Y chromosome. Since
9021-449: The wild type agouti coat of many other mammals and the sable coat of dogs), with virtually no stripes or bars. If the ticked allele is present, no other tabby pattern will be expressed. The ticked allele actually shows incomplete dominance: cats homozygous for the ticked allele ( T T ) have less barring than cats heterozygous for the ticked allele ( T T or T T ). The spotted gene is a separate locus theorized to be directly connected to
9118-772: The word corn , used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in the U.S. Most Mexican Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812 , with the opening of the West, like ranch (now a common house style ). Due to Mexican culinary influence, many Spanish words are incorporated in general use when talking about certain popular dishes: cilantro (instead of coriander), queso, tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, burritos, and guacamole. These words usually lack an English equivalent and are found in popular restaurants. New forms of dwelling created new terms ( lot , waterfront) and types of homes like log cabin , adobe in
9215-454: The word calico for the fabric, in the US it was used to refer to the printed design or pattern. These colorful, small-patterned printed fabrics gave rise to the use of the word calico to describe a cat coat of tri-color; "calico" as an adjective being synonymous to "mottled" or "resembling printed calico". In genetic terms, calico cats resemble tortoiseshells in most ways, except the tortoiseshell has
9312-609: The world. Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markers is known in linguistics as General American ; it covers a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. but especially associated with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of there being one single mainstream American accent . The sound of American English continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents having emerged in
9409-469: Was written by Noah Webster in 1828, codifying several of these spellings. Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and do not normally affect mutual intelligibility; these include: typically a lack of differentiation between adjectives and adverbs, employing the equivalent adjectives as adverbs he ran quick / he ran quickly ; different use of some auxiliary verbs ; formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns ; different preferences for
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