Western American English

E9144

American English dialect regional dialect group variety of English

Western American English is the group of English dialects spoken in the western United States, characterized by features such as the cot–caught merger and relatively uniform pronunciation across a large geographic area.

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All labels observed (4)

Label	Occurrences
Western American English canonical	7
Pacific Northwest English	5
Western American English region	1
Western U.S. English dialect region	1

Statements (52)

Predicate	Object
instanceOf	American English dialect ⓘ regional dialect group ⓘ variety of English ⓘ
contrastedWith	Midwestern American English ⓘ surface form: Inland North American English New England English ⓘ Southern American English ⓘ
developedFrom	earlier American English dialects brought by settlers ⓘ
emerged	20th century ⓘ
geographicRegion	Alaska ⓘ Hawaii ⓘ Mountain States ⓘ surface form: Mountain states Pacific states ⓘ parts of the Pacific Northwest ⓘ parts of the Southwest ⓘ
hasLexicalFeature	use of "hella" as an intensifier in some areas ⓘ use of "snow machine" for snowmobile in some northern areas ⓘ use of "soda" as common term for carbonated soft drink in many areas ⓘ use of "you guys" as second-person plural pronoun ⓘ
hasPhonologicalFeature	/eɪ/ sometimes slightly monophthongized ⓘ /oʊ/ often fronted and monophthongized for many speakers ⓘ /r/ pronounced in all positions ⓘ /u/ fronting to [ʉ] or [y]-like quality in many environments ⓘ /æ/ often somewhat raised before nasal consonants ⓘ cot–caught merger ⓘ generally lacks the strong Southern drawl ⓘ generally lacks traditional New England non-rhoticity ⓘ generally rhotic pronunciation ⓘ lack of strong regional vowel distinctions compared to other U.S. regions ⓘ relatively uniform pronunciation across large geographic area ⓘ t-flapping between vowels in many words ⓘ weak distinction between "Mary" "merry" and "marry" for many speakers ⓘ weak distinction between "pin" and "pen" only in some subregions ⓘ yod-dropping in words like "tune" and "dune" for many speakers ⓘ
hasStatus	de facto standard regional speech in much of the western U.S. ⓘ
hasSubvariety	Arizona ⓘ surface form: Arizona English California English ⓘ Nevada English ⓘ Western American English self-linksurface differs ⓘ surface form: Pacific Northwest English Utah ⓘ surface form: Utah English
hasSyntacticFeature	tendency to avoid double modals ⓘ use of "be like" as quotative construction ⓘ use of "like" as discourse marker ⓘ
languageBranch	Germanic languages ⓘ
languageFamily	Indo-European language family ⓘ surface form: Indo-European languages
languageSubbranch	West Germanic languages ⓘ
partOf	American English ⓘ English language ⓘ
spokenIn	western United States ⓘ
studiedInField	dialectology ⓘ sociolinguistics ⓘ
usedBy	native speakers in western United States ⓘ
writingSystem	Latin alphabet ⓘ