American English

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

American English (AmE, AE), also known as United States English or U.S. English is a dialect of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. It is estimated that approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States.^[1]

The use of English in the United States has been inherited from British colonization. The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America in the 17th century. During that time, there were also speakers in North America of Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Finnish, as well as numerous Native American languages.

Contents 1 Phonology 2 Differences between British English and American English 3 Vocabulary 3.1 Creation of an American lexicon 3.2 Morphology 3.3 English words that survived in the United States 4 Regional differences 5 See also 6 Further reading 7 Sources 8 Notes 9 External links

Phonology

In many ways, compared to British English, American English is conservative in its phonology. Dialects in North America are most distinctive on the East Coast of the continent partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of British English at a time when those varieties were undergoing changes^{[citation needed]}. Also, many speech communities on the East Coast have existed in their present locations longer than others. The interior of the United States, however, was settled by people from all regions of the existing U.S. and, as such, developed a far more generic linguistic pattern.

Most North American speech is rhotic, as English was in most places in the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English, Scottish English, and West Country English. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter "R" is a retroflex or alveolar approximant rather than a trill or a tap. The loss of syllable-final r in North America is confined mostly to the accents of eastern New England, New York City and surrounding areas, South Philadelphia, and the coastal portions of the South. Dropping of syllable-final r sometimes happens in natively rhotic dialects if r is located in unaccented syllables or words and the next syllable or word begins in a consonant. In England, lost 'r' was often changed into [ə] (schwa), giving rise to a new class of falling diphthongs. Furthermore, the 'er' sound of fur or butter, is realized in American English as a monophthongal r-colored vowel (stressed [ɝ] or unstressed [ɚ] as represented in the IPA). This does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech.

Some other British English changes in which most North American dialects do not participate:

• The shift of /æ/ to /ɑ/ (the so-called "broad A") before /f/, /s/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, /v/ alone or preceded by a homorganic nasal. This is the difference between the British Received Pronunciation and American pronunciation of bath and dance. In the United States, only eastern New England speakers took up this innovation, although even there it is becoming increasingly rare.
• The realization of intervocalic /t/ as a glottal stop [ʔ] ( as in [bɒʔəl] for bottle). This change is not universal for British English and is not considered to be a feature of Received Pronunciation). This is not a property of most North American dialects. Newfoundland English is a notable exception.

On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound changes not found in Britain, especially not in standard varieties. Many of these are instances of phonemic differentiation and include:

• The merger of [ɑ] and [ɒ], making father and bother rhyme. This change is nearly universal in North American English, occurring almost everywhere except for parts of eastern New England, hence the Boston accent.
• The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut vowel in most utterances of the words was, of, from, what, everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody, because, and in some dialects want.
• The merger of [ɒ] and [ɔ]. This is the so-called cot-caught merger, where cot and caught are homophones. This change has occurred in eastern New England, in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, and from the Great Plains westward.
• Vowel merger before intervocalic /r/. Which vowels are affected varies between dialects. One such change is the laxing of /e/, /i/ and /u/ to /ɛ/, /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ before /ɹ/, causing pronunciations like [pɛɹ], [pɪɹ] and [pjʊɹ] for pair, peer and pure. The resulting sound [ʊɹ] is often further reduced to [ɝ], especially after palatals, so that cure, pure, mature and sure rhyme with fir.
• Dropping of [j] after alveolar consonants so that new, duke, Tuesday, suit, resume, lute are pronounced /nuː/, /duːk/, /tuːzdeɪ/, /suːt/, /ɹɪzuːm/, /luːt/.
• æ-tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent; for example, for many speakers, /æ/ is approximately realized as [eə] before nasal consonants. In some accents, particularly those from Philadelphia to New York City, [æ] and [eə] can even contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I can [kæn] vs. tin can [keən].
• The flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before reduced vowels. Thus, for most speakers, pairs such as ladder/latter, metal/medal, and coating/coding are pronounced the same. For many speakers, this merger is incomplete and does not occur after /aɪ/; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with [əɪ] and rider with [aɪ]. This is a form of Canadian raising but, unlike more extreme forms of that process, does not affect /aʊ/.
• Both intervocalic /nt/ and /n/ may be realized as [n] or [ɾ̃], making winter and winner homophones. This does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in entail.
• The pin-pen merger, by which [ɛ] is raised to [ɪ] before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English but is now found in parts of the Midwest and West as well.

Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include:

• The merger of the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/ before 'r', making pairs like horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning etc. homophones.
• The wine-whine merger making pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where etc. homophones, in most cases eliminating /ʍ/, the voiceless labiovelar fricative. Many older varieties of southern and western American English still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading.

Differences between British English and American English

Main article: American and British English differences

American English has some spelling differences from English as used elsewhere (especially British English), some of which were made as part of an attempt to make more rational^{[citation needed]} the spelling used in Britain at the time. Unlike many 20th century language reforms (for example, Turkey's alphabet shift, Norway's spelling reform) the American spelling changes were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary makers. Spelling tendencies in Britain from the 17th century until the present day (e.g. -ise for -ize, programme for program, kerb for curb (noun), skilful for skillful, chequered for checkered, etc.), in some cases favored by the francophile tastes of 19th century Victorian England, had little effect on American English.

The first American dictionary was written by Noah Webster in 1828. At the time the United States was a relatively new country and Webster's particular contribution was to show that the region spoke a different dialect from Britain, and so he wrote a dictionary with many spellings differing from the standard. Many of these changes were initiated unilaterally by Webster.

Webster also argued for many "simplifications" to the idiomatic spelling of the period. Many, although not all, of his simplifications fell into common usage alongside the original versions with simple spelling modifications.

Some words with simplified spellings in American English include center, color, and maneuver, which are spelled centre, colour, and manoeuvre in other forms of English.

American English also has many lexical differences from British English (BrE). American English sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas British English uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE transport or where the British form is a back-formation, such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar).

Vocabulary

North America has given the English lexicon many thousands of words, meanings, and phrases. Several thousand are now used in English as spoken internationally; others, however, died within a few years of their creation.

Creation of an American lexicon

The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as the colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the Native American languages. Examples of such names are opossum, raccoon, squash, and moose (from Algonquian). Other Native American loanwords, such as wigwam or moccasin, describe artificial objects in common use among Native Americans. The languages of the other colonizing nations also added to the American vocabulary; for instance, cookie, cruller, and pit (of a fruit) from Dutch; levee, portage "carrying of boats or goods," and (probably) gopher from French; barbecue, stevedore from Spanish.

Among the earliest and most notable regular "English" additions to the American vocabulary, dating from the early days of colonization through the early 19th century, are terms describing the features of the North American landscape; for instance, run, branch, fork, snag, bluff, gulch, neck (of the woods), barrens, bottomland, intervale, notch, knob, riffle, rapids, watergap, cutoff, trail, timberline, and divide. Already existing words such as creek, slough, sleet, and (in later use) watershed, received new meanings that were unknown in England. Other noteworthy American toponyms are found among loanwords; for example, prairie, butte (French); bayou (Louisiana French); coulee (Canadian French, but used also in Louisiana with a different meaning); canyon, mesa, arroyo (Spanish); vlei, kill (Dutch, Hudson Valley).

The word corn, used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the plant Zea mays, the most important crop in the U.S., originally named Indian corn by the earliest settlers; wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc. came to be collectively referred to as grain (or breadstuffs). Other notable farm related vocabulary additions were the new meanings assumed by barn (not only a building for hay and grain storage, but also for housing livestock) and team (not just the horses, but also the vehicle along with them), as well as, in various periods, the terms range, (corn) crib, lay by (a crop), truck, elevator, sharecropping, and feedlot.

Ranch, later applied to a house style, derives from Mexican Spanish; most Spanish contributions came indeed after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West. Among these are, other than toponyms, chaps (from chaparreras), plaza, lasso, bronco, buckaroo; examples of "English" additions from the cowboy era are bad man, maverick, chuck, and Boot Hill; from the California Gold Rush came such idioms as hit pay dirt or strike it rich. The word blizzard probably originated in the West.

A couple of notable late 18th century additions are the verb belittle and the noun bid, both first used in writing by Thomas Jefferson.

With the new continent developed new forms of dwelling, and hence a large inventory of words designating real estate concepts (land office, lot, outlands, waterfront, the verbs locate and relocate, betterment, addition, subdivision), types of property (log cabin, adobe in the 18th century; frame house, apartment, tenement house, shack, shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium, townhouse, mobile home, multi-family in the 20th century), and parts thereof (driveway, breezeway, backyard, dooryard; clapboard, siding, trim, baseboard; stoop (from Dutch), family room, den; and, in recent years, HVAC, central air, walkout basement).

Ever since the American Revolution, a great number of terms connected with the U.S. political institutions have entered the language; examples are run, gubernatorial, primary election, carpetbagger (after the Civil War), repeater, lame duck, and pork barrel. Some of these are internationally used (e.g. caucus, gerrymander, filibuster, exit poll).

The rise of capitalism, the development of industry, and material innovations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries were the source of a massive stock of distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms. Typical examples are the vocabulary of railroading (see further at rail terminology) and transportation terminology, ranging from names of roads (Interstate, freeway, parkway, etc.) to road infrastructure (parking lot, overpass, rest area), and from automotive terminology to public transit (e.g. in the sentence "riding the subway downtown"); such American introductions as commuter (from commutation ticket), concourse, to board (a vehicle), to park, double-park, and parallel park (a car), double decker, or the noun terminal have long been used in all dialects of English.^[3] Trades of various kinds have endowed (American) English with household words describing jobs and occupations (bartender and barkeep, longshoreman, patrolman, hobo, bouncer, bellhop, roustabout, white collar, blue collar, employee, boss (from Dutch), intern, busboy, mortician, senior citizen), businesses and workplaces (department store, supermarket, thrift store, gift shop, drugstore, motel, main street, gas station, hardware store, savings and loan, hock (also from Dutch)), as well as general concepts and innovations (automated teller machine, smart card, cash register, dishwasher, reservation (as at hotels), pay envelope, movie, mileage, shortage, outage, blood bank). Already existing English words—such as store, shop, dry goods, haberdashery, lumber—underwent shifts in meaning; some—such as mason, student, clerk, the verbs can (as in "canned goods"), ship, fix, carry, enroll (as in school), run (as in "run a business"), release, and haul—were given new significations, while others (such as tradesman) have retained meanings that disappeared in England. From the world of business and finance came breakeven, merger, delisting, downsize, disintermediation, bottom line; from sports terminology came, jargon aside, Monday-morning quarterback, cheap shot, game plan (football); in the ballpark, out of left field, off base, hit and run, and many other idioms from baseball; gamblers coined bluff, blue chip, ante, bottom dollar, raw deal, pass the buck, ace in the hole, freeze-out, showdown; miners coined bedrock, bonanza, peter out, and the verb prospect from the noun; and railroadmen are to be credited with make the grade, sidetrack, head-on, and the verb railroad. A number of Americanisms describing material innovations remained largely confined to North America: elevator, ground, gasoline; many automotive terms fall in this category, although many do not (hatchback, compact car, SUV, station wagon, tailgate, motorhome, truck, pickup truck, to exhaust).

In addition to the above-mentioned loans from French, Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Dutch, and Native American languages, other accretions from foreign languages came with 19th and early 20th century immigration; notably, from Yiddish (chutzpah, schmooze, and such idioms as need something like a hole in the head) and German—hamburger and culinary terms like frankfurter/franks, liverwurst, sauerkraut, wiener, deli(catessen); scram, kindergarten, gesundheit;^[4] musical terminology (whole note, half note, etc.); and apparently cookbook, fresh "impudent," and what gives?.

Finally, a large number of common English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin (OK, cool, darn, gnarly, hot, lame, doing great, hang (out), no-brainer, hip, fifty-fifty, gross, doofus, diddly-squat, screw up, fool around, nerd, jerk, nuke, nutball, 24/7, heads-up, thusly, way back), and so are many other English idioms (get the hang of, take for a ride, bark up the wrong tree, keep tabs, run scared, take a backseat, have an edge over, stake a claim, take a shine to, in on the ground floor, bite off more than one can chew, off/on the wagon, for the birds, stay put, inside track, stiff upper lip, bad hair day, throw a monkey wrench, give the hairy eyeball, under the weather, jump bail, come clean, come again?, will the real x please stand up?); some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey, boost, bulldoze, and jazz, originated as American slang.

Morphology

With respect to morphology, American English has always shown a marked tendency to use substantives as verbs and form compound words. Examples of verbed nouns are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, expense, room, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, buffalo, weasel, express (mail), belly-ache, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, merchandise, service (as a car), corner, torch, exit (as in "exit a place"), factor (in mathematics), gun "shoot," author (which disappeared in English around 1630 and was revived in the U.S. three centuries later) and, out of American material, proposition, graft (bribery), bad-mouth, vacation, major, backpack, backtrack, intern, ticket (traffic violations), hassle, blacktop, peer review, dope, and OD. Compounds coined in the U.S. are for instance foothill, sidehill, flatlands, badlands, landslide (in all senses), overview (the noun), backdrop, teenager, brainstorm, bandwagon, hitchhike, smalltime, deadbeat, frontman, lowbrow and highbrow, hell-bent, foolproof, nitpick, about-face (later verbed), upfront (in all senses), split-level, fixer-upper, no-show; many of these are phrases used as adverbs or (often) hyphenated attributive adjectives: non-profit, for-profit, free-for-all, ready-to-wear, catchall, low-down, down-and-out, down and dirty, in-your-face, nip and tuck; many compound nouns and adjectives are open: happy hour, fall guy, capital gain, road trip, wheat pit, head start, plea bargain; some of these are colorful (empty nester, loan shark, ambulance chaser, buzz saw, ghetto blaster, dust bunny), others are euphemistic (differently abled, human resources, physically challenged, affirmative action, correctional facility). Many compound nouns have the form verb plus preposition: add-on, backup (reserve, stoppage, music), stopover, lineup, shakedown, tryout, spinoff, rundown "summary," shootout, holdup, hideout, comeback, cookout, kickback, makeover, takeover, rollback "decrease," rip-off, come-on, shoo-in, fix-up, tie-in, tie-up "stoppage," stand-in. These essentially are nouned phrasal verbs; some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin (spell out, figure out, hold up, brace up, size up, rope in, back up/off/down/out, step down, miss out on, kick around, cash in, rain out, check in and check out (in all senses), fill in "inform," kick in "contribute," square off, sock in, sock away, factor in/out, come down with, give up on, lay off (from employment), run into and across "meet," stop by, pass up, put up (money), set up "frame," trade in, pick up on, pick up after, lose out.^[5] Some verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, itemize, editorialize, customize, notarize, automatize, weatherize, winterize, Mirandize, Manhattanize; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, evolute, curate, donate, emote, upholster, and enthuse). Among syntactical constructions that arose in the U.S. are as of, outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, convince someone to..., not to be about to, and lack for.

Americanisms formed by alteration of existing words include notably pesky (from pest), phony (from fawney), rambunctious (from rumbustious), pry (as in "pry open," from prize), putter (verb, from potter), buddy (from brother), sundae (from Sunday), and skeeter (from mosquito). Adjectives that arose in the U.S. are for example lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, grounded (of a child), punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "through train," or meaning "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky. American blends include motel, guesstimate, infomercial, and televangelist.

English words that survived in the United States

A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that always have been in everyday use in the United States dropped out in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots. Terms such as fall ("autumn"), pavement ("road surface"), faucet, diaper, candy, skillet, eyeglasses, crib (for a baby), gotten (past participle of get), obligate, and raise a child are often regarded as Americanisms. Other words and meanings, to various extents, were brought back to Britain, especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"), quit ("to stop," which spawned quitter in the U.S.), 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 mandative subjunctive (as in "the City Attorney suggested that the case not be closed") is livelier in American English than it is in British English; it appears in some areas as a spoken usage, and is considered obligatory in more formal contexts.

The adjectives mad meaning "angry," smart meaning "intelligent," and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American than British English.

Regional differences

Main article: American English regional differences

Main article: Regional vocabularies of American English

While written American English is standardized across the country, there are several recognizable variations in the spoken language, both in pronunciation and in vernacular vocabulary. General American is the name given to any American accent that is relatively free of noticeable regional influences. It is not a standard accent in the way that Received Pronunciation is in England.

After the Civil War, the settlement of the western territories by migrants from the Eastern U.S. led to dialect mixing and leveling, so that regional dialects are most strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard. The Connecticut River is usually regarded as the southern/western extent of New England speech, which has its roots in the speech of the Puritans from East Anglia who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Potomac River generally divides a group of Northern coastal dialects from the beginning of the Coastal Southern dialect area; in between these two rivers several local variations exist, chief among them the one that prevails in and around New York City and northern New Jersey, which developed on a Dutch substratum after the British conquered New Amsterdam. The main features of Coastal Southern speech can be traced to the speech of the English from the West Country who settled in Virginia after leaving England at the time of the English Civil War, and to the African influences from the African Americans who were enslaved in the South.

Although no longer region-specific^{[citation needed]}, African American Vernacular English, which remains prevalent amongst African Americans, has a close relationship to Southern varieties of American English and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans.

A distinctive speech pattern was also generated by the separation of Canada from the United States, centered on the Great Lakes region. This is the "Inland North" dialect—the "standard Midwestern" speech that was the basis for General American in the mid-20th Century (although it has been recently modified by the northern cities vowel shift). Those not from this area frequently confuse it with the North Midland dialect treated below, referring to both collectively as "Midwestern."

In the interior, the situation is very different. West of the Appalachian Mountains begins the broad zone of what is generally called "Midland" speech. This is divided into two discrete subdivisions, the North Midland that begins north of the Ohio River valley area, and the South Midland speech; sometimes the former is designated simply "Midland" and the latter is reckoned as "Highland Southern." The North Midland speech continues to expand westward until it becomes the closely related Western dialect which contains Pacific Northwest English as well as the well-known California English, although in the immediate San Francisco area some older speakers do not possess the cot-caught merger and thus retain the distinction between words such as cot and caught which reflects a historical Mid-Atlantic heritage. Mormon and Mexican settlers in the West influenced the development of Utah English.

The South Midland or Highland Southern dialect follows the Ohio River in a generally southwesterly direction, moves across Arkansas and Oklahoma west of the Mississippi, and peters out in West Texas. It is a version of the Midland speech that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms (outsiders often mistakenly believe South Midland speech and coastal South speech to be the same).

The island state of Hawaii has a distinctive Hawaiian Pidgin.

Finally, dialect development in the United States has been notably influenced by the distinctive speech of such important cultural centers as Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Charleston, New Orleans, and Detroit, which imposed their marks on the surrounding areas.

See also

• Regional accents of English speakers
• Dictionary of American Regional English
• International Phonetic Alphabet for English
• IPA chart for English
• Dialects: African American Vernacular English, Liberian English (a descendant of American English)
• UK-US Heterologues A-Z
• List of dialects of the English language
• American and British English differences
• North American Regional Phonology

Further reading

• How We Talk: American Regional English Today, Allan Metcalf, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000, softcover, ISBN 0-618-04362-4
  • 1st and 2nd supplements of above.
• Craig M. Carver. American Regional Dialects: A Word Geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1987. ISBN 0-472-10076-9

Sources

• Allen, Harold B. (1973-6). The linguistic atlas of the Upper Midwest (3 Vols). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Bartlett, John R. (1848). Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded As Peculiar to the United States. New York: Bartlett and Welford. 
• Kurath, Hans, et al. (1939-43). Linguistic atlas of New England (6 Vols). Providence: Brown University for the American Council of Learned Societies.
• Mencken, H. L. (1936, repr. 1977). The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (4th edition). New York: Knopf. 
• Mathews, Mitford M. (ed.) (1951). A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
• Pederson, Lee; McDaniel, Susan L.; & Adams, Carol M. (eds.). (1986-93). Linguistic atlas of the gulf states (7 Vols). Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.
• Simpson, John (ed.) (1989). Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Notes

1. ^ Crystal, David (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53032-6. 
2. ^ Labov, William; Sharon Ash; Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 48. ISBN 3-11-016746-8. 
3. ^ A few of these are now chiefly found, or have been more productive, outside of the U.S.; for example, jump "to drive past a traffic signal," block meaning "building," and center "central point in a town" or "main area for a particular activity" (cf. Oxford English Dictionary).
4. ^ The Maven's Word of the Day, Random House. Retrieved February 8, 2007.
5. ^ British author George Orwell (in English People, 1947, cited in OED s.v. lose) criticized an alleged "American tendency" to "burden every verb with a preposition that adds nothing to its meaning (win out, lose out, face up to, etc.)."

External links

• Do You Speak American: PBS special
• Dialect Survey of the United States, by Bert Vaux et al., Harvard University. The answers to various questions about pronunciation, word use etc. can be seen in relationship to the regions where they are predominant.
• Linguistic Atlas Projects
• Phonological Atlas of North America at the University of Pennsylvania
• The American•British British•American Dictionary
• Speech Accent Archive
• World English Organization
• English Speaking Union of the United States
• Australian American British English Lexical Differences In One Table And More
• British, American, Australian English - Lists and Online Exercises
• Listen to spoken American English (midwest}
• Dictionary of American Regional English
• The Great Pop Vs. Soda Controversy

v • d • e Dialects of English
Europe	British · East Anglian · English English · Estuary · Guernsey English · Hiberno-English (Ireland) · Highland · Manx · Mid Ulster · Midlands · Northern · Scottish · Welsh · West Country dialects
North America	United States · African American Vernacular · Appalachian · Baltimorese · Boston · Buffalonian · California · Chicano · Cajun · Maine  · Maine-New Hampshire · New Jersey · New York City · North American · North Central American · Inland Northern American · Pacific Northwest · Pennsylvania Dutch English · Philadelphia · Pittsburgh · Southern American · Utah · Yat · Yooper · Canadian · West/Central Canadian · Maritimer · Newfoundland · Quebec
West Indies	Bermudian · Bahamian · Caribbean · Jamaican
Oceania	Australian · New Zealand · Australian Aboriginal · Hawaiian Pidgin
Asia	Burmese · Hong Kong · Indian · Malaysian · Philippine · Singlish / Manglish · Sri Lankan
Africa	Liberian · Malawian · South African
Miscellaneous	Basic · Commonwealth · International · Mid-Atlantic · Plain · Simplified · Special · Standard