Dialects and Accents

• Major regional dialects in American English
• African-American English

Objectives

• Define regional dialect and ethnic (social) dialect
• List the language information used to distinguish among dialects
• List the major dialect regions in the United States
• Define "r-dropping" and identify some r-dropping dialects in the U.S.
• List the dialect used by most natives of New Mexico and give two phonetic characteristics of that dialect
• Briefly explain the two hypotheses regarding the development of African-American English (AAE)
• List some phonetic features of AAE

Resources

• American Dialects
• Dialect Map of American English
• Do You Speak American?
• Vowels in American and British English
• Atlas of North American English
• IDEA archive - dialects of English
• Features of African-American English