American Language Supplement 2 (36 page)

Save for a few terms borrowed from the Chinook jargon,
⁴
the speech of Oregon does not depart noticeably from the vocabulary of General American, and in phonology it sticks to the same normalcy. There are, of course, some pockets of different speech, mainly created by accidents of immigration. One such pocket is in the hills of Wallowa county, in the northeastern corner of the State. This inhospitable region was settled by fugitives from the Ozarks, and they brought with them the speech of Appalachia, with some traces of Lowland Southern. Says T. Josephine Hausen, the only observer to report upon it:
⁵

Miss Hausen reports a number of borrowings from the argot of the cattlemen,
e.g., pino
, a pony;
buckaroo
, a rider of wild horses;
to wrangle
, to round up cattle, and
bascal
, a Spanish cowhand.
¹

Pennsylvania, as a whole, belongs to the domain of General American, but its speech shows many peculiarities, not only in vocabulary and pronunciation but also in intonation, and in the Pennsylvania German area there is a dialect that has influenced not only the speech of the whole State, but also that of other States. The home territory of this dialect is coterminous with that of Pennsylvania German itself – a region described by Marcus Bachman Lambert as embracing 17,500 square miles, “or considerably more than twice the area of the State of Massachusetts.”
²
Its base runs a little south of the Mason and Dixon line from the Delaware river to the longitude of Altoona and it extends northward to the vicinity of Williamsport on the west branch of the Susquehanna.
³
Its influence upon the local English has been heavy in vocabulary, but even heavier in intonation and syntax.
⁴
The early German settlers, when they began to acquire English, translated their native idioms, and in many cases those translations survive, and have been picked up by non-German natives, though not infrequently they do violence to accepted English usages, especially in the matter of prepositions. A familiar example is provided by the use of
all
in such phrases as “The soup is
all
(Ger.
alle
) – a form that, like
smear
case, has been carried by Pennsylvania German immigrants, as we have seen, to many other States. Another is to be found in the substitution of
dare
for
may
, as in “
Dare
I go out?,” which was obviously suggested by the German
darf
, of Somewhat similar sound. A third lies in the redundant use of
once
, as in “Come here
once
,” which parallels the German use of
einmal
. I take the following additional examples from Tucker and Kurath, from papers on the subject by William Prettyman,
¹
W. H. Allen,
²
B. A. Heydrick,
³
L. Sprague de Camp,
⁴
E. K. Maxfield
⁵
and Claude M. Newlin,
⁶
and from reports by various correspondents:

In the predominantly German areas, radiating out from Lancaster and York, this list might be considerably prolonged, and there are signs of German influence almost everywhere in the State. The speech of Philadelphia, investigated by Tucker, is essentially a variety of General American, but it shows both German and Scotch-Irish traces. In it, he says,
¹
“final and preconsonantal
r
is rather generally pronounced, though not with so much emphasis as in upstate New York and the Middle West.” He goes on:

Tucker notes only a few peculiarities of vocabulary,
e.g., square
for
a city block, in the road
for
in the way, this after
for
this afternoon, spigot
for
faucet, to serve
for
to carry
or
deliver, well?
for
what?
in asking for the repetition of a remark or question, and
any more
in the sense of
now
, as in “Mary goes to high-school
any more.”
²
He notes that some of the local terms are shared by New
York City; he might have added Baltimore for others,
e.g., square
and
spigot
. Rejecting the usual assumption that
any more
shows German influence, he suggests that it may have a Welsh source. Also, he points out importations from the Southern Piedmont. “Rather odd,” he says, “is the intonation in short sentences beginning with
yes
and
no
, where there is a rising and falling pitch accent, in addition to special stress, on the last word: ‘Yes it îs,’ ‘No we hâven’t.’ ” This Philadelphia dialect extends into the three adjoining Pennsylvania counties, into northern Delaware (including Wilmington), and into New Jersey (including the shore resorts from Cape May to Atlantic City).

The speech of southwestern Pennsylvania, below the Allegheny river, has been studied by Maxfield.
¹
This region was once a part of Virginia, and traces of Southern influence are still visible in its dialect. There is also a considerable sediment of German expressions. But the Scotch-Irish influence is predominant. The local speech-tune “is characterized by odd curves of pitch and tone, a question, for example, rising when one would expect it to fall, and descending at the most unexpected places.” Maxfield lists a number of words and phrases that do not seem to be recorded elsewhere,
e.g., huthering
, a state of disorder;
all-day
, a sewing party lasting all day;
pine-tree
, any evergreen, and
to lend
, to borrow.
To neb
, to be inquisitive, and
to sleep in
, to sleep late, are also recorded for West Virginia, but whether they were taken there from Pennsylvania or
vice versa
is not known.
To want out
and
to want in
are in common use. The head of a family is the
mister
. The Appalachian
poke
, a small bag, is heard frequently.
Can
is used as an auxiliary, as in “I don’t think I
will can
.” So is
get
, as in “I didn’t
get to go
.”
On
is used in the dative, as in “His wife died
on
him” and “I wear white shoes
on
my baby,” but is sometimes displaced by
for
, as in “The cow died
for
me,” meaning “I lost my cow.” The dialect of this region in
pioneer days has been studied by Newlin,
¹
using certain writings of the Whiskey Rebellion era, 1793–94, as material. His conclusion is that “at least four widely different types of English” were then spoken there – “Scottish English, Irish English, backwoods English and standard English.”

De Camp, in reporting on the dialect of Scranton,
²
says that it should be “classed as a kind of General American,” but that it has “distinctive features.” He finds that the
r
following the
e
of
yet
, as in
very
, is clearly pronounced, that the vowel in such words as
ask, last
and
afternoon
“appears to be identical with that in
cat
,” that the
u
in
new, tube, due, assume, blue
, etc., seldom shows a preceding
y
-sound, and that the two sounds of
th
are often changed to
t
and and
d
. Allen’s material came from the Reading region and Heydricks’s from Adams, York, Lancaster, Lebanon and Schuylkill counties, all within the Pennsylvania German
Sprachgebiet
. Allen reported the peculiar intonation before noticed: “the voice,” he said, “is raised at the beginning of a question and lowered at the end.”
³
He went on: