This standard text, now in paperback for the first time-- the companion volume to Foreign Dialects -- American Dialects offers representative dialects of every major section of the United States. In each case, a general description and history of the dialect is given, followed by an analysis of vowel and consonant peculiarities, of its individual lilt and rhythm, and of its grammar variations. There are also lists of the idioms and idiomatic expressions that distinguish each dialect and exercises using them. American Dialects also includes musical inflection charts and diagrams showing the placement of lips, tongue, and breath.
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Yes, you can access American Dialects by Lewis Herman, Marguerite Shalett Herman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas & Teatro. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
There is a quality to the lilt of most African American speech that defies exact scientific analysis. It is that strange something with which African American speech is endowed. It is a rich, musical quality that gives an effect of softness, lushness, liquidity, and color. And although the lilt of African American speech runs the gamut of musical pitch—for the African American voice ranges, at times, from the cackling, high-pitched falsetto to the full rumbling bass—the same melodious character is still evident.
The syllabic stress in words generally follows that of the region in which the African American lives. Thus, Southern African Americans, in particular, are wont to give initial syllable stress to such words as “hOH:tEHl” (hotel) and “sEE:mint” (cement), although this habit has been frequently heard in the speech of African Americans in the North and other sections.
AFRICAN INFLUENCES
Before discussing the actual dialect changes, it may be enlightening to the student to examine some of the African influences that have contributed to the African American dialect. The Africans who were blackbirded by slave traders to the West Indies and then to the South, as slaves, were almost all members of tribes that spoke some form of Bantu dialect—Bena, Duala, Jaunde, Kongo, Chuana, Shambala, Suto, Teke, Zulu, Luganda, Swahili, Kafir, etc. Thus they had a common background in the production of sounds in their own African language. And they have retained many of these speech habits to the present day.
The African language has more guttural consonants and nasalized vowels than American. As a result, the African American still tends to keep the blade of the tongue higher in the mouth than does the white man. This placement generally makes for closer vowel sounds. The vowels “EE,” “EH,” and “A” are thus colored with an “AY” flavor. It also accounts, in part, for the lax sounding or actual dropping of consonants.
A number of other elements may suggest reasons for certain African American dialect variants. Some of them may indicate that, instead of being completely influenced by white Colonial speech (which, in turn, was influenced by Scottish, Irish and British), the African American may have contributed much to the white Southern speech and may be responsible for many Southern dialect variants.
The extreme nasalization of both Southern and African American speech has no base in the original Scottish, Irish, or British dialects, except in Cockney. But the few Cockneys who came over in Colonial days as indentured servants could hardly have contributed their nasalization to any great degree. Extreme nasalization before “m” or “n” is practically universal in the many-branched African languages. As a matter of fact, its use is important enough to change the meaning of a word. For instance, the African word “dAW” means “belly” in the Ewe dialect. But when nasalized, “dAWn,” it means “to be weak.” The reasons for extreme nasalization of “ain’t” as “AY
” and “can’t” as “kAY
” among African Americans may be found in African conditioning factors.
The dropping of the “n” after “AY” in the above examples may have been the result of another African speech habit. In the Effik dialect the word “he” is pronounced as “AY
yAY,” but in rapid speech the initial “AY” is nasalized and the “n” is dropped, so that actually the word is sounded as “AY
yAY.”
Both the Southern and African American dialects have unstable “EH” and “AY” sounds and “OH” and “AW” sounds. These pairs of sounds each belong to a single phoneme in the Zulu African dialect. They are used interchangeably according to the quality of the vowel sound in the succeeding syllable. The African American may say “bEHd” or “bAYd” (bed), “mAYk” or “mEHk” (make), and so forth. These speech habits, so evident in current African American dialect, may certainly have found their source in earlier African speech.
In the same way, the sounds of “EE” and “i:” in the Effik dialect belong to one phoneme.
Both the Southern and African American dialects tend to drop “l” in such words as “self” and “careful.” When “l” is sounded in Southern speech it is usually a clear “l” suc...
