Utah English
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Utah English, sometimes humorously referred to as "Utahnics", is a dialect of the English language spoken in the U.S. state of Utah. Influences are as varied as ancestries of its immigrants, from Scottish to Mexican Spanish. Since the field of sociolinguistics is relatively new to academia, very little research has been done on the dialect. However, a research team at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah has begun a comparative project on the topic.[1]
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[edit] Distinctions of the dialect
[edit] Vowel shifts
- The merger of /ɑɹ/ and /ɔɹ/, such that "born" may be pronounced "barn" and the town of "American Fork" becomes "American Fark."
[edit] Introduction, removal, and morphing of stops and plosives
- Introduction of a "T" into certain words: "teacher" pronounced /ˈtit.ʧɚ/; "preacher" as /ˈpɹit.ʧɚ/; other examples include between the sounds "L" and "S" ("Nelson" and "Wilson" pronounced as /ˈnɛlʦən/ and /ˈwɪlʦən/).
- Shortening of some words from several syllables to one or two (different from general consonant cluster reduction): "corral" as /kɹɑl/, "probably" to /ˈpɹɑbli/, /ˈpɹɑli/, or /ˈpɹɑ.i/.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Rainey, Virginia, (2004) Insiders' Guide: Salt Lake City (4th ed.), The Globe Pequot Press, ISBN 0-7627-2836-1
- Brigham Young University Linguistics Department Research Teams
- BYU "Utah English" Research Team's Homepage
- Article about "Utahnics" (social satire)
- "How We Talk: American Regional English Today" by Allan A. Metcalf, 2000, Houghton Mifflin.
- "Utahnics", segment on All Things Considered, National Public Radio February 16, 1997.
