California English

California English
Region	California
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Anglo–Frisian Anglic English American English California English
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None

California English (or Californian English) is a variety of Western American English documented among some native English speakers throughout California, with its most advanced forms reported among younger, urban, and coastal speakers. California is home to a highly diverse population, which is reflected in the historical and continuing formation of California English, whose uniquely developing sound shift was only first noted by linguists in the 1980s, best researched in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay area of Northern California. Since that time, California speech has been mostly associated in American popular culture with adolescent and young-adult speakers of coastal California; the possibility that it is, in fact, an age-specific variety of English has been proposed though not confirmed.

History

English was first spoken on a wide scale in the area now known as California following the influx of English-speakers from the United States, Canada, and Europe during the California Gold Rush. The English-speaking population grew rapidly with further settlement, which included large populations from the Northeast, South and the Midwest. The dialects brought by these pioneers were the basis for the development of the modern language: a mixture of settlers from the Midwest and the Border South produced the rural dialect of Northern California, whereas settlers from the Lower Midwest and the South, (especially Missouri and Texas), produced the rural dialect of Southern California.

Before World War I, the variety of speech types reflected the differing origins of these early inhabitants. A distinctly Southwestern drawl could be heard in Southern California. When a collapse in commodity prices followed World War I, many bankrupted Midwestern farmers migrated to California from Nebraska, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa contributing to a new homogenized speech in urban sprawl, where teachers banned "ain't", 'awl' (oil), and "ahll" (I'll). Subsequently, incoming groups with differing speech, such as the speakers of Highland Southern during the 1930s, have been absorbed within a generation. The Great Depression's Dust Bowl migration re-introduced a purer Southwestern accent to the West Coast in the 1920s and 30s. A California accent with notable Southern features is still spoken by some Californians of the Central Valley, especially around Kern County (centered on Bakersfield), an area historically associated with California "Okies."

California's status as a relatively young state is significant in that it has not had centuries for regional patterns to emerge and grow (compared to, say, some East Coast or Southern dialects). Linguists who studied English as spoken in California before and in the period immediately after World War II tended to find, few if any, distinct patterns unique to the region.

However, several decades later, with a more settled population and continued immigration from all over the globe, a noteworthy set of emerging characteristics of California English had begun to attract notice by linguists from the late 20th century onward. As more people moved into the state, all those groups, ranging from a diverse variety of backgrounds, began to pick up different elements of spoken language from one another.

Phonology

The typical California English pure vowels, based here on nine Southern California speakers, are similar to General American English, though /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ are considerably lower, whereas /u/ and /ʊ/ are slightly fronter.

California English diphthongs.

Differences in Californian versus General American vowels
English diaphoneme	California	General American	Example words
/ɒ/ (LOT set)	[ä~ɑ] ( listen)	[ä~ɑ]	bother, lot, top
/ɒ/ (CLOTH set)		[ɒ(ː)] ( listen) or [ɑ~ɒ] ( listen)	cloth, loss, off
/ɔː/			all, bought, saw
/ɛ/	[ɛ~æ] ( listen)	[ɛ] ( listen)	dress, said, breath
/ɪ/	[ɪ~ɛ] ( listen)	[ɪ] ( listen)	hit, skim, tip
/ʊ/	[ʊ~ʊ̈]	[ʊ] ( listen)	book, put, should
/u/	[u~ʉ] ( listen)	[u] ( listen)	food, glue, new

Several phonological processes have been identified as being particular to California English, but they are neither universal within nor limited to the California area.

• California (Vowel) Shift: Most noticeably, typical California English is characterized by a lowering chain shift of the front vowel sounds in words like bit, bet, and sometimes bat; additionally, certain innovative speakers of California English, particularly in Northern California and the San Fernando Valley (stereotyped as "Valleyspeak"), show fronting of the back vowel sounds in words like butt, boat, bush, and boot.
  • Context-specific vowel changes: Many California English speakers exhibit the following vowel characteristics, nearly identical to the Canadian Shift:
    • /ɛ/ (as in bet, wretch, head, etc.) has a fairly open pronunciation (for example, with car wreck and kettle drum in California English sounding to a General American speaker more like car wrack and cattle drum), as indicated in the vowel chart here.
    • /ɪ/ (as in bit, itch, quick, etc.) has a fairly open pronunciation (for example, with pick and Missy sounding more like peck and messy), as indicated in the vowel chart here.
    • /æ/ (as in bat, rag, quack, etc.) is slightly more open pronunciation than in General American (something like the open front a sound in Spanish or Italian); however, before /n/ or /m/ (as in ran or ram), /æ/ is raised and diphthongized to [eə] or [ɪə] before nasal consonants, a widespread shift throughout most American English.
  • Context-free vowel changes: The following changes are much newer and not typical of mainstream California speakers, but are often associated with youthful California stereotypes. They are usually more observable in younger Northern Californian and "Valleyspeak" accents. Imitation of peers and other sociolinguistic phenomena play a large part in determining the extent of this part of the vowel shift in a particular speaker.
    • /ʊ/ may be fronted towards [ʌ] (so that, for example, book and should could sound more like buck and shud)
    • /ʌ/ may be fronted beyond [ɜ] (mud, glove, what, etc. may sound more like Southern American English)
    • /u/ may be fronted beyond [ʉ] (rude and true approach reed and tree but with rounded lips)
    • /oʊ/ may be fronted beyond [ə] (cone and stoke are approach cane and steak but with rounded lips).

The more innovative variant of the California Shift occurring in Northern California, according to Penelope Eckert's research; also associated with Valleyspeak.

• Front vowels are raised before /ŋ/: The sounds of the traditional "short a" /æ/ (as in bat) and "short i" /ɪ/ (as in bit) are raised to the sounds of the "long a" [e] (as in bait) and "long ee" [i] (as in beat), respectively when they occur before the ng sound /ŋ/; in other words, rang may have the same vowel as "rain" and king the same vowel as keen. However, that pronunciation is not spread evenly, and the more common American pronunciation of [kʰɪŋ] (where "king" has the same vowel sound as "kin") still exists in many areas of California.
• Cot–caught merger: Most California speakers do not distinguish between /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ (the vowel sounds, for example, in caught versus cot), and thus have completed the cot–caught merger. The merged vowel is typically a centralized ä. A notable exception may be found within the San Francisco Bay Area.
• Pin–pen merger in some areas: it is complete only in and around Kern County and northern Los Angeles County; however, speakers in Sacramento do perceive or produce the pairs /ɛn/ and /ɪn/ close to each other.

Lexical characteristics

The popular image of a typical California speaker often conjures up images of the so-called Valley girls popularized by the 1982 hit song by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa, or "surfer-dude" speech made famous by movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High. While many phrases found in these extreme versions of California English from the 1980s may now be considered passé, certain words such as awesome, totally, fer sure, harsh, gnarly, and dude have remained popular in California and have spread to a national, even international, level. The use of the word like for numerous grammatical functions or as conversational "filler" (such as in place of thinking sounds "uh" and "um") has also remained popular in California English and is now found in many other varieties of English.

A common example of a Northern Californian colloquialism is hella (from "hell of a (lot of)", euphemistic alternative, hecka) to mean "many", "much", "so" or "very". It can be used with both count and mass nouns: "I haven't seen you in hella long"; "There were hella people there"; or "This guacamole is hella good." Pop culture references to "hella" are common, as in the song "Hella Good" by the band No Doubt, from Southern California, and "Hella" by the band Skull Stomp, from Northern California.

California, like other Southwestern states, has borrowed many words from Spanish, especially for place names, food, and other cultural items, reflecting the heritage of the Californios. High concentrations of various ethnic groups throughout the state have contributed to general familiarity with words describing (especially cultural) phenomena. For example, a high concentration of Asian Americans from various cultural backgrounds, especially in urban and suburban metropolitan areas in California, has led to the adoption of words like hapa (itself originally a Hawaiian borrowing of English "half"). A person who was hapa was either part European/Islander or part Asian/Islander. Today it refers to a person of mixed racial heritage such as half-Asian/half-European-Americans in common California usage and FOB ("fresh off the boat", often a newly arrived Asian immigrant). Not surprisingly, the popularity of cultural food items such as Vietnamese phở and Taiwanese boba in many areas has led to the general adoption of such words among many speakers.

In 1958, essayist Clifton Fadiman pointed out that Northern California is the only place besides England where the word chesterfield is used as a synonym for sofa or couch, but it is also used in Canadian English.

Freeways

Freeway signs along northbound US 101 at the interchange of Highway 110 in Los Angeles. The leftmost sign for US 101 north lists it name, the Hollywood Freeway, as well as its destination, Ventura.

Freeway signs along northbound US 101 at the interchange of Interstate 80 in San Francisco. The leftmost sign for US 101 north only lists its destination, the Golden Gate Bridge.

Californians sometimes refer to the lanes of a multi-lane divided highway by number, "the number 1 lane" (also referred to as "the fast lane") is the lane farthest to the left (not counting the carpool lane), with the lane numbers going up sequentially to the right until the far right lane, which is usually referred to as "the slow lane". In areas where three and occasionally two lane freeways are more common, the lanes are simply the "fast lane", "middle lane" and "slow lane".

In the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, Inland Empire, Coachella Valley and San Diego, freeways are often referred to either by name or by route number (perhaps with a direction suffix), but with the addition of the definite article "the", such as "the 405 North" or "the 605 (Freeway)". This usage has been parodied in the recurring Saturday Night Live sketch "The Californians". In contrast, typical Northern California usage omits the definite article. When Southern California freeways were built in the 1940s and early 1950s, local common usage was primarily the freeway name preceded by the definite article, such as "the Hollywood Freeway". It took several decades for Southern California locals to start to commonly refer to the freeways with the numerical designations, but usage of the definite article persisted. For example, it evolved to "the 605 Freeway" and then shortened to "the 605". That did not occur in Northern California, where usage of the route numbers was more common.

Sub-varieties

A Southern-influenced "country twang" variety of California English is noted among some speakers of the Kern County (metropolitan Bakersfield) area, who may recognizably demonstrate the pin–pen merger, fill–feel merger, and full–fool merger. Certain varieties of Chicano English are also native to California, sometimes even being spoken by non-Latino Californians. One example is East Los Angeles Chicano English, which has been influenced by both Californian and African American Vernacular English.

See also

• North American English regional phonology
• Boontling
• Chain shift
• Chicano English
• African American Vernacular English
• Hyphy
• Sociolect
• Sociolinguistics
• Spanglish
• Valspeak
• Vowel Shift

References

• Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006), The Atlas of North American English, Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, pp. 187–208, ISBN 3-11-016746-8 
• Ward, Michael (2003), "The California Movement, etc.", Portland Dialect Study: The Fronting of /ow, u, uw/ in Portland, Oregon (PDF), Portland State University, pp. 39–45 

Further reading

• Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages. Peter Ladefoged, 2003. Blackwell Publishing.
• Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Suzanne Romaine, 2000. Oxford University Press.
• How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Allan Metcalf, 2000. Houghton Mifflin.

External links

• PBS.org: "Do you speak American? − California English"
• Stanford.edu: Penelope Eckert Bolg − Vowel Shifts
• Phonological Atlas of North America
• USC.edu: "A hella new specifier" — by Rachelle Waksler, discussing usage of "hella".
• Binghamton.edu: "Word Up: Social Meanings of Slang in California Youth Culture" — by Mary Bucholtz Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara Department of Linguistics, includes discussion of "hella".