Misplaced Pages

#185814

112-397: An example of synchronic lenition is found in most varieties of American English , in the form of tapping : the / t / of a word like wait [weɪt] is pronounced as the more sonorous [ ɾ ] in the related form waiting [ˈweɪɾɪŋ] . Some varieties of Spanish show debuccalization of / s / to [ h ] at the end of a syllable , so that a word like estamos "we are"

224-736: A 'good night' lenition is blocked ( nos as a feminine noun normally causes lenition of a following modifier, for example Gwener 'Friday' yields nos Wener 'Friday night'). Within Celtic, blocked lenition phenomena also occur in Irish (for example ao n d oras 'one door', an chéa d d uine 'the first person') and Manx (for example u n d orrys 'one door', yn chie d d ooinney 'the first man') however. Outside Celtic, in Spanish orthographic b d g are retained as [b, d, ɡ] following nasals rather than their normal lenited forms [β, ð, ɣ] . In

336-698: 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

448-410: A in the following syllable ( Germanic a-mutation ) although that had already happened significantly earlier: Another example of a regular change is the sibilant assimilation of Sanskrit in which if there were two different sibilants as the onset of successive syllables, a plain /s/ was always replaced by the palatal /ɕ/ : Lag assimilation to an adjacent segment is tolerably common and often has

560-517: A consonant mutation , which means it is no longer triggered by its phonological environment but is now governed by its syntactic or morphological environment. For example, in Welsh , the word cath "cat" begins with the sound / k / , but after the definite article y , the / k / changes to [ ɡ ] : "the cat" in Welsh is y gath . This was historically due to intervocalic lenition, but in

672-520: 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

784-524: A trill to a tap . The spirantization of Gaelic nasal /m/ to /v/ is unusual among forms of lenition, but it is triggered by the same environment as more prototypical lenition. (It may also leave a residue of nasalization in adjacent vowels.) The orthography shows that by inserting an h (except after l n r ). Some languages which have lenition have in addition complex rules affecting situations where lenition might be expected to occur but does not, often those involving homorganic consonants . This

896-548: A change results in a single segment with some of the features of both components, it is known as coalescence or fusion. Assimilation occurs in two different types: complete assimilation, in which the sound affected by assimilation becomes exactly the same as the sound causing assimilation, and partial assimilation, in which the sound becomes the same in one or more features but remains different in other features. Tonal languages may exhibit tone assimilation (in effect tonal umlaut), but sign languages also exhibit assimilation when

1008-616: 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 ,

1120-525: A consonant mutation in which a consonant changes from one considered weak to one considered strong. Fortition is less frequent than lenition in the languages of the world, but word-initial and word-final fortition is fairly frequent. Italian, for example, presents numerous regular examples of word-initial fortition both historically (Lat. Januarius with initial /j/ > gennaio , with [dʒ] ) and synchronically (e.g., /ˈkaza/ "house, home" → [ˈkaːza] but /a ˈkaza/ "at home" → [aˈkːaːza] ). Catalan

1232-447: 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

SECTION 10

#1732883764186

1344-435: A different test, Read also found that many of the children believed that words like train and chicken both started with /tʃ/ . Anticipatory assimilation at a distance is rare and usually merely an accident in the history of a specific word. However, the diverse and common assimilations known as umlaut in which the phonetics of a vowel are influenced by the phonetics of a vowel in a following syllable, are common and in

1456-463: A distance is rare and usually sporadic (except when part of a broader change, as for the Sanskrit śaśa - example, above): Greek leirion > Lat. līlium "lily". In vowel harmony , a vowel's phonetic features are often influenced by those of a preceding vowel. For example, most Finnish case markers come in two forms, with /ɑ/ (written a ) and /æ/ (written ä ), depending on whether

1568-465: A feminine noun taking the ending -a . The historic development of lenition in those two cases can be reconstructed as follows: Synchronic lenition in Scottish Gaelic affects almost all consonants (except /l̪ˠ/ , which has lost its lenited counterpart in most areas). Changes such as /n̪ˠ/ to /n/ involve the loss of secondary articulation ; in addition, /rˠ/ → /ɾ/ involves the reduction of

1680-536: A following sound, but they may also assimilate to a preceding one. Assimilation most commonly occurs between immediately adjacent-sounds but may occur between sounds that are separated by others. Assimilation can be synchronic , an active process in a language at a given point in time, or diachronic , a historical sound change . A related process is coarticulation in which one segment influences another to produce an allophonic variation, such as vowels becoming nasalized before nasal consonants ( /n, m, ŋ/ ) when

1792-482: A frequent assimilation of /kt/ and /bt/ was rather reinterpreted as reflecting /tt/. The structural sequence /kt/ is now all but absent in Italian, since all items in popular speech underwent the same restructuring, /kt/ > /tt/. On the rare occasion that Italian /kt/ is encountered, however, the same assimilation that triggered the restructuring can occur at the phonetic level. For example, the medical term ictus 'stroke',

1904-593: A language has no obstruents other than voiceless stops, other sounds are encountered, as in Finnish, where the lenited grade is represented by chronemes , approximants , taps or even trills . For example, Finnish used to have a complete set of spirantization reflexes for /p t k/ , though these have been lost in favour of similar-sounding phonemes. In the Southern Ostrobothnian , Tavastian and southwestern dialects of Finnish, /ð/ mostly changed into /r/ , thus

2016-586: 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,

2128-636: 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

2240-428: A nonadjacent one. Those radical asymmetries might contain hints about the mechanisms involved, but they are not obvious. If a sound changes with reference to a following segment, it is traditionally called "regressive assimilation". Changes with reference to a preceding segment are traditionally called "progressive". Many find those terms confusing, as they seem to mean the opposite of the intended meaning. Accordingly,

2352-475: A post-alveolar affricate instead, resulting in the all-postalveolar consonant clusters [tʃɹ] and [dʒɹ] . This phenomenon also occurs in /str/ , resulting in the all-postalveolar consonant cluster [ʃtʃɹ] . The affrication of /tr, dr/ has been seen in American English, British English, Australian English, and New Zealand English. It is suspected that this change has occurred due to assimilation. One of

SECTION 20

#1732883764186

2464-475: 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

2576-408: A relatively recent direct borrowing from Latin, is usually pronounced [ˈiktus] in deliberate speech, but [ˈittus] is frequent in more casual registers. There has been a notable change recognized across a variety of English dialects regarding the pronunciation of the /tr/ and /dr/ consonant clusters . Starting around the mid-20th century, the alveolar stop in /tr, dr/ has slowly been replaced by

2688-657: 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

2800-433: A stronger sound becomes a weaker one. Lenition can be seen as a movement on the sonority hierarchy from less sonorous to more sonorous, or on a strength hierarchy from stronger to weaker. In examples below, a greater-than sign indicates that one sound changes to another. The notation [t] > [ts] means that [t] changes to [ts] . The sound change of palatalization sometimes involves lenition. Lenition includes

2912-514: 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

3024-495: A type of assimilation of the consonant to the surrounding vowels, in which features of the consonant that are not present in the surrounding vowels (e.g. obstruction, voicelessness) are gradually eliminated. Some of the sounds generated by lenition are often subsequently "normalized" into related but cross-linguistically more common sounds. An example would be the changes [b] → [β] → [v] and [d] → [ð] → [z] . Such normalizations correspond to diagonal movements down and to

3136-453: 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

3248-473: A variety of alternative terms have arisen, not all of which avoid the problem of the traditional terms. Regressive assimilation is also known as right-to-left, leading, or anticipatory assimilation. Progressive assimilation is also known as left-to-right, perseveratory, preservative, lagging, or lag assimilation. The terms anticipatory and lag are used here. Occasionally, two sounds (invariably adjacent) may influence each other in reciprocal assimilation. When such

3360-489: A voiceless obstruent: This does not apply across word boundaries, so that the placename Grodzisk Wielkopolski is pronounced [ˈɡrɔdʑizɡ vjɛlkɔˈpɔlskʲi] , not [ˈɡrɔdʑisk fjɛlkɔˈpɔlskʲi] . In that context, /v/ patterns with other voiced obstruents. Because of a similar process, Proto-Indo-Iranian * ćw became sp in Avestan : Old Avestan aspa 'horse' corresponds to Sanskrit aśva Lag assimilation at

3472-499: Is a palato-alveolar sound; its palatal feature is derived from /j/ while its alveolar is from /t/. Another English example is ‘would you’ -> /wʊd ju/ -> [wʊdʒu]. There are examples in other languages, such as Chumburung where /ɪ̀wú ɪ̀sá/ -> /ɪ̀wúɪ̀sá/ becomes [ɪ̀wɪ́sá] - ‘three horns’. In this case, /ɪ/ is retained in the coalescence and the rising tone on /u/ appears on the coalesced sound. There are two major types of coalescence: reductive and unreductive. Reductive coalescence

Lenition - Misplaced Pages Continue

3584-448: Is also a form of lenition. An example with geminate consonants comes from Finnish , where geminates become simple consonants while retaining voicing or voicelessness (e.g. katto → katon , dubbaan → dubata ). It is also possible for entire consonant clusters to undergo lenition, as in Votic , where voiceless clusters become voiced, e.g. itke- "to cry" → idgön . If

3696-642: 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

3808-637: 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

3920-638: Is among numerous Romance languages with diachronic word-final devoicing ( frigidus > */ˈfɾɛd/ > fred [ˈfɾɛt] . Fortition also occurs in Catalan for /b d ɡ/ in consonant clusters with a lateral consonant (Lat. populus > poble [ˈpɔbːɫə] or [ˈpɔpːɫə] . Word-medially, /lː/ is subject to fortition in numerous Romance languages, ranging from [ɖː] or [dː] in many speech types on Italian soil to [dʒ] in some varieties of Spanish. American English American English , sometimes called United States English or U.S. English ,

4032-418: Is colloquially known as 'blocked lenition', or more technically as 'homorganic inhibition' or 'homorganic blocking'. In Scottish Gaelic, for example, there are three homorganic groups: In a position where lenition is expected due to the grammatical environment, lenition tends to be blocked if there are two adjacent homorganic consonants across the word boundary. For example: In modern Scottish Gaelic this rule

4144-526: 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

4256-447: Is diachronic in the sense that the developments took place over time and displaced [b, d, g] as the normal pronunciations between vowels. It is also synchronic in an analysis of [β̞ ð̞ ɣ̞] as allophonic realizations of /b, d, g/ : illustrating with /b/ , /bino/ 'wine' is pronounced [bino] after pause, but with [β̞] intervocalically, as in [de β̞ino] 'of wine'; likewise, /loba/ → [loβ̞a] . A similar development occurred in

4368-420: 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

4480-436: Is often pronounced / ˈ h æ m b æ ɡ / in rapid speech because the [ m ] and [ b ] sounds are both bilabial consonants , and their places of articulation are similar. However, the sequence [ d ] - [ b ] has different places but similar manner of articulation ( voiced stop ) and is sometimes elided , which sometimes causes the canonical [n] phoneme to assimilate to [m] before

4592-498: Is only productive in the case of dentals but not the other two groups for the vast majority of speakers. It also does not affect all environments any more. For example, while aon still invokes the rules of blocked lenition, a noun followed by an adjective generally no longer does so. Hence: There is a significant number of frozen forms involving the other two groups (labials and velars) and environments as well, especially in surnames and place names: Though rare, in some instances

Lenition - Misplaced Pages Continue

4704-560: Is pronounced [ehˈtamoh] . An example of diachronic lenition can be found in the Romance languages , where the / t / of Latin patrem ("father", accusative ) has become / d / in Italian and Spanish padre (the latter weakened synchronically / d / → [ ð̞ ] ), while in Catalan pare , French père and Portuguese pai historical / t / has disappeared completely. In some languages, lenition has been grammaticalized into

4816-466: Is pronounced [hæŋkɚtʃif] , handbag in rapid speech is pronounced [hæmbæɡ] ). In Italian , voiceless stops assimilated historically to a following /t/ : Italian otto , letto and sotto are examples of historical restructuring: otto and letto no longer contain /kt/ pronounced [tt], and sotto is no longer the structure /bt/ subject to the partial assimilation of devoicing of /b/ and full assimilation to produce [tt]. Over time, phonetic [tt] as

4928-458: Is realized [ʒ] between vowels, and in typical speech of Central Tuscany, the voiceless stops /p t k/ in the same position are pronounced respectively [ɸ θ x/h] , as in /la kasa/ → [laˈhaːsa] 'the house', /buko/ → [ˈbuːho] 'hole'. Diachronic lenition is found, for example, in the change from Latin into Spanish , in which the intervocalic voiceless stops [p t k] first changed into their voiced counterparts [b d ɡ] , and later into

5040-482: Is the common language at home, in public, and in government. Assimilation (linguistics) Assimilation is a sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants or vowels ) change to become more similar to other nearby sounds. A common type of phonological process across languages, assimilation can occur either within a word or between words. It occurs in normal speech but becomes more common in more rapid speech . In some cases, assimilation causes

5152-635: Is the set of varieties of the English language native to 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

5264-510: Is the type of coalescence where sound segments are reduced after fusion is made. For example, in Xhosa, /i - lˈalaini/ becomes /e - lˈoleni/ (side). The /a-i/ segment in the first form reduces to /e/. On the other hand non-reductive coalescence have no reduction in sound segments even though there is evidence of fusion. For example, in Shona, [v_á] [tengesa] (they sell) becomes [ku] [téngésá] (to sell). Here,

5376-463: 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):

5488-544: Is traditionally called "eclipsis" in Irish grammar). Although nasalization as a feature also occurs in most Scottish Gaelic dialects, it is not shown in the orthography on the whole, as it is synchronic (the result of certain types of nasals affecting a following sound), rather than the diachronic Irish type sonorization (after historic nasals). For example taigh [t̪ʰɤj] "house" → an taigh [ən̪ˠˈd̪ʱɤj] "the house". The phenomenon of consonant gradation in Finnic languages

5600-474: The /k/ of /kasa/ as [ˈkaːsa] casa 'house' in a post-pause realization, [iŋˈkaːsa] in casa 'in (the) house' post-consonant, but [laˈhaːsa] la casa 'the house' intervocalically. Word-internally, the normal realization is also [h] : /ˈbuko/ buco 'hole' → [ˈbuːho] . In the Celtic languages , the phenomenon of intervocalic lenition historically extended across word boundaries. This explains

5712-476: 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 –

SECTION 50

#1732883764186

5824-532: The Gaelic script , fricating lenition (usually called simply lenition ) is indicated by a dot above the affected consonant, and in the Roman script, the convention is to suffix the letter h to the consonant, to signify that it is lenited. Thus, a ṁáṫair is equivalent to a mháthair . In Middle Irish manuscripts, lenition of s and f was indicated by the dot above, and lenition of p , t , and c

5936-563: The Germanic languages is evidenced by Latin-English cognates such as pater , tenuis , cornu vs. father , thin , horn . The Latin words preserved the original stops, which became fricatives in old Germanic by Grimm's law . A few centuries later, the High German consonant shift led to a second series of lenitions in Old High German , chiefly of post-vocalic stops, as evidenced in

6048-608: 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

6160-544: 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

6272-447: The [b] . The pronunciations / ˈ h æ n b æ ɡ / or / ˈ h æ n d b æ ɡ / are, however, common in normal speech. In contrast, the word "cupboard", although it is historically a compound of "cup" / k ʌ p / and "board" / b ɔːr d / , is always generally pronounced / ˈ k ʌ b ər d / , and almost never / ˈ k ʌ p b ɔːr d / . Like in those examples, sound segments typically assimilate to

6384-610: The diphthong /au/ , which was monophthongized , yielding the monophthong /o/ in Modern French. Sometimes a particular example of lenition mixes the opening and sonorization pathways. For example, [kʰ] may spirantize or open to [x] , then voice or sonorize to [ɣ] . Lenition can be seen in Canadian and American English , where /t/ and /d/ soften to a tap [ɾ] ( flapping ) when not in initial position and followed by an unstressed vowel. For example, both rate and raid plus

6496-655: 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

6608-423: The soft palate (velum) opens prematurely or /b/ becoming labialized as in "boot" [bʷuːt̚] or "ball" [bʷɔːɫ] in some accents. This article describes both processes under the term assimilation . The physiological or psychological mechanisms of coarticulation are unknown, and coarticulation is often loosely referred to as a segment being "triggered" by an assimilatory change in another segment. In assimilation,

6720-759: 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

6832-534: 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

SECTION 60

#1732883764186

6944-622: 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

7056-841: The Celtic languages, where non-geminate intervocalic consonants were converted into their corresponding weaker counterparts through lenition (usually stops into fricatives but also laterals and trills into weaker laterals and taps), and voiceless stops became voiced. For example, Indo-European intervocalic * -t- in * teu̯teh₂ "people" resulted in Proto-Celtic *toutā , Primitive Irish * tōθā , Old Irish túath /t̪ʰuaθ/ and ultimately debuccalisation in most Irish and some Scottish dialects to /t̪ʰuəh/ , shift in Central Southern Irish to /t̪ʰuəx/ , and complete deletion in some Modern Irish and most Modern Scots Gaelic dialects, thus /t̪ʰuə/ . An example of historical lenition in

7168-413: 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

7280-474: The English-German cognates ripe , water , make vs. reif , Wasser , machen . Although actually a much more profound change encompassing syllable restructuring, simplification of geminate consonants as in the passage from Latin to Spanish such as cuppa > /ˈkopa/ 'cup' is often viewed as a type of lenition (compare geminate-preserving Italian /ˈkɔppa/ ). All varieties of Sardinian , with

7392-565: 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

7504-560: 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 ,

7616-528: 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

7728-563: 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

7840-662: 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

7952-530: 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

8064-427: 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

8176-592: 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

8288-531: 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

8400-596: 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,

8512-547: 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

8624-505: 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

8736-450: The approximants or fricatives [β̞ ð̞ ɣ̞] : vita > vida , lupa > loba , caeca > ciega , apotheca > bodega . One stage in these changes goes beyond phonetic to have become a phonological restructuring , e.g. /lupa/ > /loba/ (compare /lupa/ in Italian, with no change in the phonological status of /p/ ). The subsequent further weakening of the series to phonetic [β̞ ð̞ ɣ̞] , as in [loβ̞a]

8848-398: The characteristics of neighbouring cheremes may be mixed. Anticipatory assimilation to an adjacent segment is the most common type of assimilation by far, and typically has the character of a conditioned sound change, i.e., it applies to the whole lexicon or part of it. For example, in English , the place of articulation of nasals assimilates to that of a following stop ( handkerchief

8960-406: 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

9072-410: The dialects have a synchronic lenition of an alveolar stop into an alveolar trill /t/ → /r/ . Furthermore, the same phoneme /t/ undergoes assibilation /t/ → /s/ before the vowel /i/ , e.g. root vete- "water" → vesi and vere- . Here, vete- is the stem, vesi is its nominative, and vere- is the same stem under consonant gradation. Fortition is the opposite of lenition:

9184-614: 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

9296-742: 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

9408-523: The first papers that discussed the affrication of /tr, dr/ is "Pre-School Children's Knowledge of English Phonology" by Charles Read, published in 1971. The study discussed in this paper focuses on how children in pre-school analyze the phonetic aspect of language in order to determine the proper spelling of English words. Read noticed that many of the children involved in the study misspelled words that began with /tr, dr/ , spelling words like troubles and dragon as "chribls" and "jragin", respectively. In

9520-510: 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

9632-939: 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

9744-656: 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

9856-438: 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,

9968-401: The loss of a feature, such as deglottalization , in which glottalization or ejective articulation is lost: [kʼ] or [kˀ] > [k] . The tables below show common sound changes involved in lenition. In some cases, lenition may skip one of the sound changes. The change voiceless stop > fricative is more common than the series of changes voiceless stop > affricate > fricative. In

10080-427: 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

10192-439: The modern Celtic languages, lenition of the "fricating" type is usually denoted by adding an h to the lenited letter. In Welsh, for example, c , p , and t change into ch , ph , th as a result of the so-called "aspirate mutation" ( carreg , "stone" → ei charreg "her stone"). An exception is Manx orthography , which tends to be more phonetic, but in some cases, etymological principles are applied. In

10304-617: 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

10416-497: The nature of a sound law. Proto-Indo-European * -ln- becomes -ll- in both Germanic and Italic: * ḱl̥nis "hill" > PreLat. * kolnis > Lat. collis ; > PGmc *hulliz > OE hyll /hyll/ > hill . The enclitic form of English is , eliding the vowel, becomes voiceless when adjacent to a word-final voiceless nonsibilant: it is [ɪtɪz] , that is [ðætɪz] > it's [ɪts] , that's [ðæts] . In Polish , /v/ regularly becomes /f/ after

10528-460: The nature of sound laws. Such changes abound in the histories of Germanic languages , Romance , Insular Celtic , Albanian , and many others. For example, in the history of English , a back vowel became front if a high front vowel or semivowel (*i, ī, j) was in the following syllable, and a front vowel became higher unless it was already high: On the other hand, Proto-Germanic * i and * u > e, o respectively before *

10640-547: The opening type of lenition, the articulation becomes more open with each step. Opening lenition involves several sound changes: shortening of double consonants, affrication of stops, spirantization or assibilation of stops or affricates, debuccalization , and finally elision . The sonorization type involves voicing. Sonorizing lenition involves several sound changes: voicing, approximation, and vocalization. Sonorizing lenition occurs especially often intervocalically (between vowels). In this position, lenition can be seen as

10752-402: 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

10864-426: The phonological patterning of the language, discourse styles and accent are some of the factors contributing to changes observed. There are four configurations found in assimilations: Although all four occur, changes in regard to a following adjacent segment account for virtually all assimilatory changes and most of the regular ones. Assimilations to an adjacent segment are vastly more frequent than assimilations to

10976-642: The plural, lenition does not happen, so "the cats" is y cathod , not * y gathod . The change of / k / to [ ɡ ] in y gath is thus caused by the syntax of the phrase, not by the modern phonological position of the consonant / k / . The opposite of lenition, fortition , a sound change that makes a consonant "stronger", is less common, but Breton and Cornish have "hard mutation" forms which represent fortition. Lenition involves changes in manner of articulation , sometimes accompanied by small changes in place of articulation . There are two main lenition pathways: opening and sonorization. In both cases,

11088-409: The preceding vowel is back or front. However, it is difficult to know where and how in the history of Finnish an actual assimilatory change took place. The distribution of pairs of endings in Finnish is not the operation of an assimilatory innovation, but it is probably the outbirth of such an innovation long ago. In the opposite direction, in umlaut , a vowel is modified to conform more closely to

11200-405: The right in the above table. In other cases, sounds are lenited and normalized at the same time; examples would be direct changes [b] → [v] or [d] → [z] . L -vocalization is a subtype of the sonorization type of lenition. It has two possible results: a velar approximant or back vowel, or a palatal approximant or front vowel. In French , l -vocalization of the sequence /al/ resulted in

11312-421: The rise of grammaticalised initial consonant mutations in modern Celtic languages through the loss of endings. A Scottish Gaelic example would be the lack of lenition in am fear /əm fɛr/ ("the man") and lenition in a’ bhean /ə vɛn/ ("the woman"). The following examples show the development of a phrase consisting of a definite article plus a masculine noun (taking the ending -os ) compared with

11424-455: The rules of blocked lenition can be invoked by lost historical consonants, for example, in the case of the past-tense copula bu , which in Common Celtic had a final -t. In terms of blocked lenition, it continues to behave as a dental-final particle invoking blocked lenition rules: In Brythonic languages, only fossilized vestiges of lenition blocking occur, for example in Welsh no s d

11536-509: The sole exception of Nuorese , offer an example of sandhi in which the rule of intervocalic lenition applying to the voiced series /b d g/ extends across word boundaries. Since it is a fully active synchronic rule, lenition is not normally indicated in the standard orthographies. A series of synchronic lenitions involving opening, or loss of occlusion, rather than voicing is found for post-vocalic /p t k/ in many Tuscan dialects of Central Italy . Stereotypical Florentine , for example, has

11648-521: The sound spoken to differ from the normal pronunciation in isolation, such as the prefix in- of English input pronounced with phonetic [m] rather than [n]. In this case, [n] becomes [m] since [m] is more phonetically similar to [p]. In other cases, the change is accepted as canonical for that word or phrase, especially if it is recognized in standard spelling: implosion pronounced with [m], composed of in- + -plosion (as in explosion ). English "handbag" (canonically / ˈ h æ n d b æ ɡ / )

11760-427: The suffix -er are pronounced [ˈɹeɪ̯ɾɚ] . The Italian of Central and Southern Italy has a number of lenitions, the most widespread of which is the deaffrication of /t͡ʃ/ to [ʃ] between vowels: post-pausal cena [ˈt͡ʃeːna] 'dinner' but post-vocalic la cena [laˈʃeːna] 'the dinner'; the name Luciano , although structurally /luˈt͡ʃano/ , is normally pronounced [luˈʃaːno] . In Tuscany, /d͡ʒ/ likewise

11872-570: 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

11984-417: 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

12096-497: The vowel in the next syllable. Coalescence is a phonological situation whereby adjacent sounds are replaced by a single sound that shares the features of the two originally adjacent sounds. In other words, coalescence is a type of assimilation whereby two sounds fuse to become one, and the fused sound shares similar characteristics with the two fused sounds. Some examples in English include ‘don’t you’ -> /dəʊnt ju/ -> [dəʊntʃu]. In this instance, /t/ and /j/ have fused to [tʃ]. /tʃ/

12208-772: 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

12320-609: 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

12432-541: Was indicated by the postposed h ; lenition of other letters was not indicated consistently in the orthography. Voicing lenition is represented by a simple letter switch in the Brythonic languages , for instance carreg , "stone" → y garreg , "the stone" in Welsh. In Irish orthography , it is shown by writing the "weak" consonant alongside the (silent) "strong" one: peann , "pen" → ár bpeann "our pen", ceann , "head" → ár gceann "our head" (sonorization

12544-469: 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

#185814