Ozark English

E288119

Ozark English is a regional dialect of American English spoken in the Ozark Mountains, characterized by distinctive pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical features influenced by Southern and Appalachian speech.

All labels observed (1)

Label Occurrences
Ozark English canonical 2

How this entity was disambiguated

Statements (48)

Predicate Object
instanceOf dialect
regional dialect of American English
variety of English
developedFrom migrants from the Appalachian region
settler dialects of the Upland South
hasExampleWord afeared (meaning afraid)
crick (variant of creek)
fixin’ to (meaning about to)
holler (meaning small valley)
poke (meaning paper bag or sack)
yonder (indicating distance)
hasFeature distinctive grammar
distinctive pronunciation
distinctive vocabulary
levelling of verb paradigms
monophthongization of /aɪ/ in some environments
multiple negation
nonstandard past participle forms
nonstandard past tense forms
r-fulness in many positions
regional lexical items
use of a-prefixing on verb participles
use of double modals in some speakers
hasLexicalInfluenceFrom Appalachian English
Southern American English
hasMorphosyntacticFeature a-prefixing on -ing forms (e.g., a-huntin’, a-fishin’)
use of nonstandard past forms like drug for dragged in some speakers
hasOrthography no standardized separate orthography
hasPhonologicalFeature vowel mergers typical of Southern and Midland dialects
hasPronounSystem use of y’all as second person plural pronoun in many speakers
hasSociolinguisticStatus often associated with rural identity
sometimes stigmatized as nonstandard
used as marker of regional solidarity
historicalPeriod emerged in the 19th century
influencedBy Appalachian English
Southern American English
languageFamily English language
mutuallyIntelligibleWith other varieties of American English
partOf American English
spokenIn Ozark Plateau
surface form: Arkansas Ozarks

Ozarks region (partly)
surface form: Missouri Ozarks

Ozark Plateau
surface form: Oklahoma Ozarks

Ozark Plateau
surface form: Ozark Mountains

United States of America
surface form: United States
studiedIn dialectology
sociolinguistics
usedBy rural communities in the Ozark region
working-class speakers in the Ozarks

How these facts were elicited

Referenced by (2)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Scots-Irish English influenced Ozark English