Talk:California English/Archive 1

message: Thanks for everyone who's edited this page...this was my first wikipedia article and your additions and changes have helped a lot--your changes look great...I plan on adding more text soon and will follow precedence with your format changes, which have contributed to a more esthetically pleasing and informative article. Svenska84 21:59, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Being from Massachusetts, I've only heard "trippy" used here in California, after I've moved here, so I added mention of it. - Beland 4 July 2005 21:55 (UTC)
:I think it's died off now... I really shouldn't be responding to this as it's exactly a year old now and should probably be in an archive. Theshibboleth 14:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trippy 

message: After reading this article, I'm still not quite sure what the distinguishing features of this dialect sound like.  I have taken linguistics, so I suppose I could plow through the phonological descriptions in detail, but a spoken or even written example of some typical speech patterns (both in phonology and grammar) would be quite helpful. -- Beland 4 July 2005 22:06 (UTC)
:Sounds good. There are indeed many ways this article could be expanded, as there's research and information out there to find and report on. I think I could at least look for some audio clips to link to, and maybe find some transcriptions of Californian speech. Svenska84 10:10, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expansion request: Examples 

message: I know New York gets most of the credit for hybridizing Yiddish with English, but has there been any attention paid to the amount of Jews in the SoCal entertainment industry and the influence they might have on TV scripts and the like? jengod 23:38, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Has any research been published on the question? We can't use original research or speculation. --Angr/ 04:18, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Yiddishism

message: The article says:
:Front vowels are raised before velar nasal , so that the near-open front unrounded vowel  and the near-close near-front unrounded vowel  are raised to a close-mid front unrounded vowel  and a close front unrounded vowel  before. This change makes for minimal pairs such as king and keen, both having the same vowel , differing from king  in other varieties of English.
I'm from SoCal myself, and I can't say I really hear these two sounds merging, although the vowel in "king" definitely does come closer to  than it does in other dialects. What I do hear a lot, though, is people pronouncing words like "king" with the vowel having undergone that pre-velar mutation, but then pronouncing the  as , so that the only difference between "king", "keen", and "kin" is in the vowel sound (and these three are all distinct). However, I don't believe that anyone I know who does this does it across the board: sometimes it will come out  and sometimes . And I don't know if it only affects i/ɪ, or if it affects everything that comes before /ŋ/. Is there some documentation of this phenomenon that's better researched than me listening to my friends talking? -Branddobbe 08:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not a matter of /i/ and /ɪ/ "merging" in any way: there are no minimal pairs of /i/ and /ɪ/ before /ŋ/. It is simply a case of a shift of /ɪ/ to /i/ before /ŋ/. This change is identified by Eckert on her web site as being peculiar to California: "/i/ The vowel in him, sit, and bid is moving in two directions. Before ng, it shifts towards the vowel in beam, bean. Example: think sounds like theenk". I can also vouch for the existence of this shift, as I have the shift, and I was born and raised in San Jose. In my own speech, "king" and "keen" are minimal pairs. It is not because I have merged /i/ and /ɪ/ in any way: it is simply the case that in my internal lexicon, the phonemes of "king" are /kiŋ/, not /kɪŋ/. Same with /æ/ shifting to /e/ before /ŋ/: "bang" and "bane" are minimal pairs for me, their phonemic representation being /beŋ/ and /ben/, respectively. Nohat 08:50, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I know exactly what you're talking about, but I just don't think it's by any means a trait to Californian English.  As I said before, it sounds more southern.  --LakeHMM 23:34, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just because it's a feature of California English doesn't mean that every single Californian will pronounce it as such.  I'm from central California and it's a feature of my speech.  I'd also like to note that I didn't even realize there was a difference between my speech in this regard and other dialects until it was pointed out to me. AEuSoes1 03:14, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Obviously not everyone has to have it, but nobody I know has it, and I don't associate it with a Californian accent at all.  --LakeHMM 09:02, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, Eckert does, and she's a professor of linguistics who has done actual research on the topic. Your anecdotal (lack of) evidence does not provide a very strong counterargument to scholarly research. Nohat 11:55, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh ouch.  --LakeHMM 23:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, as the preface to that section states, those are features which have been identified as being in Californian speech but it does not mean that everyone who speaks English in California has those features, nor are all of those features restricted to California. I personally have the /ɪŋ/ --> [iŋ] (I consider [i] to be a same-morpheme pre-/ŋ/ allophone /ɪ/) raising described by Eckert ("sink" and "seen" have the same vowel as I say them) and hear it commonly in the speech of those around me. I've spent a lot of time (and lived) in both Northern and Southern California, and I've heard this feature from people in both areas. My parents are Bay Area natives and while they don't have it to the extent I do, it is present in their speech. It appears the feature has been spreading in terms of speakers that have it and instances in which it shows up. Svenska84 06:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: What part of California do you live in? AEuSoes1 09:15, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Los Angeles.  --LakeHMM 01:38, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe it's an age thing too?  I don't think I do it, I'm in my 30's, but one of my students got confused because I used 'king' for the [I] vowel, and she said, 'but it's keeng!' Lingprof 00:59, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: King/keen

message: This section really needs some help. There seem to be a lot of people posting their own personal experiences or the difference between themselves and their one friend from the other end of the state. Personally, after 30 years of life in CA, the oonly differences I have heard between my 5 years in LA and 25 in Oakland is "hella" and the "the" before freeways. I'm not sure if SF being called "the city" really merits being in this section, and certainly I've heard about 5000 different ways of saying "u-turn"... and would u-turn really merit it's own discussion? For now, I deleted references to "crazy" because it is not prevalent in southern ca, at least not more prevalent than the rest of the nation. Can we perhaps discuss improving this entire section here instead of editing willy nilly on the main page??Reggaedelgado 21:01, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. The Wikipedia policies of no original research and citing sources apply just as strongly here as anywhere else. If you can't produce published evidence backing up your claims, please don't post them. --Angr (t·c) 21:12, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree as well. The entire section strikes me as mostly anecdotal accounts of slang rather than any serious linguistical distinctions. I don't know enough about the subject myself, but I would suggest someone either find sources that back up the claims of regional differences in phrases such as "flip a bitch," or just scrap the whole section in its entirety. PenguiN42 22:49, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I haven't either. That section needs to either be backed up with evidence or deleted. Svenska84 06:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, I believe that is an accurate description of change that has happened. However, until we find sources to back it up it should probably be deleted, so I will do that. Svenska84 01:39, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Freeways have names? -a south bay resident --63.193.241.64 16:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Northern vs southern 

message: Regarding the use of freeway names in the 1970s:
Larry Niven's 1970s short stories used freeway names, instead of numbers.  Most of Niven's published short stories are set in Southern California and/or distant time periods.  For example, "Cloak of Anarchy" is a short story on pages 111-133 of the Tales of Known Space collection.  "Cloak of Anarchy" mentions the San Diego Freeway.  
Unfortunately, this is just one citation.  While it might be appropriate for a dictionary usage example, I doubt that it demonstrates sufficiently widespread usage to justify the comment in the article.
-- Jasper 08:07, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I believe that is an accurate description of change that has happened. However, until we find sources to back it up it should probably be deleted, so I will do that. Svenska84 01:39, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Freeways have names? -a south bay resident --63.193.241.64 16:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Freeway names

message: Can anyone provide any insights into the nasalization patterns in California English? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 171.64.133.51 (talk • contribs) 00:03, 18 January 2006  (UTC)
Hey - you guys do know that the word "freeway" is native to California too, right?  At least thats what I know of. I live on the east coast and I've never heard that word before in my life until I travelled to California on vacation. Everybody else says "highway" or "expressway". The word "freeway" is never used - ever 0% of the time in NY, New England, Maryland, Florida, anywhere in the east. Its so funny for you guys to keep saying how northern californians say freeway and southern californians say freeway, but your both missing the fact that the word freeway is part of your english as well!
:You never use the word because you have to pay toll on your equivilant roadways :) --Stacey Doljack Borsody 19:11, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That must be fairly recent, when I lived in New York State (1970-77 and again 1992-97) I-90 was a toll road. Angr/talk 17:02, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I-90 (The New York State Thruway) is still a toll road, as are parts of I-87 in the Albany area. However, it should be noted that the "free" in the word "freeway" doesn't have anything to do with tolls--it refers to the fact that on a freeway, traffic is free-flowing; that is, traffic on the freeway is not impeded by any traffic control devices (such as stop lights or stop signs) and there is no at-grade cross traffic. Both toll roads and nontoll roads can be "freeways". Nohat 02:32, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nasalization patterns in California English 

message: Words like "drawl" and "twang" are vague and as such are not accurate enough for an article which aims to seriously describe the linguistic features of a particular speech variety. Because of that, in addition to the fact there is no citation for said claims, I think it's better that particular section get deleted. Svenska84 06:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Go for it! --Angr (tɔk) 07:01, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done :) Now I'm busy trying to find sources so we can fill in the remaining citations. One problem is that for the "Influence of California English" section it's not really the domain of scholarly linguistic research to claim any variety is the American "standard." However, sociolinguistically speaking, I have often read in the past about those who perceive Midwestern English to make up the "standard" while others claim California English has largely been filling that role in recent history. Does anyone have any reliable sources which would back up that this debate exists (not that one side is right because it's a fuzzy issue to begin with)? Besides that, the only other remaining missing citation would be the one claiming "For example, according to one former California resident, in the 1970s it was common in Los Angeles to refer to freeways by name instead of by its highway number (i.e., to say "the San Diego Freeway" instead of "the 405" was common in the 1970s)" in the "Northern vs. Southern California" section. While I'm sure this is anecdotally true, this feature does need a citation (and one that's not anecdotal) so I'm wondering what should be done with it Svenska84 08:44, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What does Geyer 2001 have to say? I haven't seen it. --Angr (tɔk) 08:54, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't either. If the person who originally put the source in isn't here anymore, I wonder if I can find the article at my college's library. Svenska84 03:20, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I deleted the remaining two sections of text which remained uncited in the article. They were actually probably true but until we have academic sources for verification they are best left out. Now that there are no more missing citations it would probably be appropriate to remove it from the list of articles missing citations, right? Svenska84 01:48, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, it looks like that's done automatically. Never mind. Svenska84 01:49, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Drawl" paragraph and Citation issues

message: Assuming that the points in the vowel chart in the "Phonology" section accurately represent the vowels used (at least as accurately as possible with all the variation that can occur), why are  and  used when it looks like  and , respectively, are closer? Is this for "historical reasons" like what is described in Open-mid back unrounded vowel? Ardric47 03:55, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Pretty much. It's a convention in English phonology to use the symbol  for the vowel of strut,  for a non-rhotic pronunciation of the vowel of nurse, and to use  and  for the stressed and unstressed versions (respectively) of the rhotic pronunciations of the vowels of nurse and letter. This isn't terribly accurate from a purely phonetic point of view, but it makes comparison with other accents much easier. The values of the IPA vowels characters aren't set in stone anyway; so long as you define how you're using each symbol, and the use is more or less plausible, you have a degree of flexibility. Angr/talk 06:55, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it makes comparison with other accents easier. Another interesting point is that according to this vowel chart /e/ is higher than /ɪ/ (I believe in many/most dialects /e/ is lower than that, or more specifically, /ɪ/ is higher), but for cross-dialectal comparisons it makes sense to use those to make it clear which classes of words are being referred to ("face" and "kit," respectively). Svenska84 08:47, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowel chart 

message: Two of my friends from California insert an /l/ into the word "both." (thus "bolth"). Has anyone heard of this? Does anybody know what causes it? (I assume that it must be an assimilation of the off-glide on the o to the /þ/, or something like that.) Also, is there any information on Western US dialects other than Californian? If so could an article be written up on them? There are several features of my Denverese that I'd like to compare to some hard data to see if they're actual Coloradan or whether I'm just crazy.
Linguofreak 06:44, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know what causes it, but I can add that I say it too (I'm from SoCal). I also do the same thing in "oatmeal" ("oltmeal"), but I think that if I didn't eat (and thus say) oatmeal as much as I do, I probably wouldn't have that. I think I have a tendency to do it in "remo(l)te control", but that's most likely due to the influence of "control". -Branddobbe 08:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I typically have /l/ in "both" as well, though I'm not sure this is specific to California. I don't appear to have "intrusive l" in any other positions. Svenska84 09:24, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And apparently some of my friends from other areas have it too. Illinois and Minnesota, if I recall their states of origin correctly. Linguofreak 02:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Illinois has some of this, I've noticed it in a couple of people. However, one of them has a father from california so that may be the cause. -Kode 23:58, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's interesting. I wonder if there is any linguistic research out there concerning "bolth"--it seems to be pretty common here and is pretty much my default pronunciation of the word. In fact, for a language forum I frequent I made an audio recording in response to another participant's audio post and I didn't realize it at the time I was recording it but when I played it over I definitely heard myself saying "bolth." If anyone's curious here's the recording . If you listen in just a little bit before halfway through the recording I say "both" with what sounds to me like "bolth" now when I listen to it over again (tell me if you think it's something different). As far as I can tell I have no "intrusive l" anywhere else, even in the same environment (like "oath"), but of course "both" is a high frequency word whereas something like "oath" isn't. Svenska84 05:27, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I heard Richard Roeper say it on a recent episode of Ebert & Roeper at the Movies. Interestingly, a Google search for "bolth" shows a lot of hits of people using that spelling both self-consciously and un–self-consciously. Here is a couple LINGUIST list postings that mention it:   . Nohat 09:04, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weird sound change 

message: *I live in Southern California and I hear this phrase a lot.  I think it's worth noting that the song "Hella Good" is performed by a Southern Californian band.  Also, regarding "a grip of", I heard this term a lot in high school, but I graduated in 1996 and I rarely hear this term anymore. Danny Lilithborne 03:45, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  hella 

message: Is it just me or is this article overwhelmingly NorCal-centric?  There is very little discussion about the LA basin or San Diego meto, both of which are bigger than the Bay area.  Perhaps, some more discussion of the effects of Spanish on the pronunciation and vocabulary of SoCal.  At the very lease exchange a few of the NorCal examples for SoCal examples, in the interest of equal time.HoratioVitero 15:45, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias? 

message: Nearly all of the content on this page is either about features of Northern California English or of Southern California English.  The page itself is a strong argument that there are two distinct dialects here.  Most of the phonological material is on a vowel-shift that is referred to on its original page as the "Northern California Shift".  Lexical features are subdivided into Northern phenomena and Southern phenomena.  The article doesn't provide any evidence that Northern Californians speak more like Southern Californians than they do like, say, Oregonians, and so there's no grounds for grouping the two dialects into a single article.  Several other articles that link to the page employ constructions such as "southern California English" (for example, English_phonology#Phonemes).  I propose therefore that the article be split into a Northern California English and a Southern California English article.  It may be worthwhile also to have a page on differences between the two, just as there is a page on differences between British English and American English.--Atemperman 20:48, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  This should be two articles 

message: This happens to me, and I live in NW Kansas, isn't this just a General American thing?Cameron Nedland 17:42, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is just anecdotal. Rlitwin (talk) 22:22, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vowel Raising before ŋ 

message: Should there be a list of the different words or usage of words like gay, retard, emo, and so on. (Recharge330 (talk) 15:39, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: California English is seen by many in other US regions that we're so affluent, we speak "Yupplish" or a kind of English associated with Yuppies, a socioeconomic class between rich and middle-class who work in white-collar professions and Californian words are a "Yuppiefied" English dialect. Not all Californians live in a "Yuppie" lifestyle, but the Los Angeles/SoCal and NoCal/San Fran. bay areas are filled with images of their residents are generally speaking most likely to be depicted as "yuppies" who speak in fast, energetic, trendy, youthful, liberal and professional terms. Californian English may well have a larger share of upper-middle class speakers, but be in mind there are alot more working-class and low-income residents in California. + 71.102.10.169 (talk) 05:49, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Interesting. Citations or anecdotal? Rlitwin (talk) 22:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Words

message: Does the notion of "California English" actually have currency among linguists?  If so, the article doesn't indicate that or offer any support for the claim.  What is written here looks like original research to me; if we can't show that this is a real concept among linguists (or other language experts), we shouldn't invent it here and we should remove this article.  Thoughts? csloat (talk) 05:23, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  original research? 

message: "Southern Californians rarely refer to the South as SoCal, where as Northerners are more likely to use both abbreviations without any derogatory connotations."
I live in Northern California (Oakland to be precise) and the use of the abbreviations "Norcal" and "SoCal" is frowned upon. In fact, it is seen as a shibboleth for those who are not from the area. This is unfortunately original research, and thus inadmissible in an actual edit, but if anyone can help correct this error with admissible support, I'd appreciate it. 71.139.182.90 (talk) 19:16, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's also wrong that Southern Californians rarely refer to their own region as SoCal, I hear it all the time. JuJube (talk) 23:14, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I also live in Southern California and hear and read "SoCal" a lot.  However, I've never heard Southern Californians use "NoCal" or "NorCal" in any way that is derrogatory toward Northern California or Northern Californians.Seashinegirl (talk) 00:53, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, i hear SoCal and NorCal used all the time, rarely as a derogatory. He's thinking of "cali"; that is frowned upon MattTabarnaknaytev (talk) 19:09, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

text:  What is the significance of slang terms like these to an article on California English, if there is such a thing? Rlitwin (talk) 22:27, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  i dont think these terms belong here either. i think 71.139.182.90 brought it up cause of the whole "sacra" thing.  i dont see how abbreviations for regions should be in here, unlike say, regional variations in grammar, which would be true to a dialect. they should be moved to their respective region's pages. MattTabarnaknaytev (talk) 00:07, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Abbreviations

message: The inclusion of Ms. Eckert's research as a general quality of California accents strikes me as a rather unfortunate mistake.  Her research has centered around 10-13 year old girls who are apparently displaying a new pronunciation of certain vowel sounds, but I've neither seen nor heard of any research that would indicate that this is related to a larger vowel shift across California.  The way it's presented in this article, however, makes it seem that Californians as a whole are using such shifted vowels.  Please listen to the NPR interview linked at Ms. Eckert's site for more information, which you can also find here: http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/index.html%3Ci -- KuriosD (talk) 19:37, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: here: http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/californian/  in the 'chicano' paragraph, it says that the same shifts found in the north can be found in southern california. link also provides an explanation to why they centre around the youth.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.1.236 (talk) 07:28, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Penelope Eckert and the California Vowel Shift 

message: Is this a SoCal thing? I ain’t never heard it —Wiki Wikardo 11:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I lived in Sacramento, and we used it there.Jzcrandall (talk) 17:40, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

text: Hapa means half in Hawaiian, and almost always refers to a person with one parent Caucasian and the other parent something else. It is short for "Hapa-Haole" which you still hear from time to time, but most of the time you will just say 'hapa' as in "She looks hapa"  (that 100% hapa made me laugh, it is such a good representation of most people from Hawaii ;) )  Anyway... this is supposed to be a California Dialect page and since the only people I hear use this word have ties to Hawaii, I will go out on a limb and say this word really isn't a candidate for "California English" (just yet anyway)  --Billy Nair (talk) 10:15, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

text: FOBs (Fresh Off the Boat) can mean anyone from another country, I guess, that has not assimilated, but you rarely hear an Asian called a FOB, it is usually a Polynesian. But if you were born and raised in "the islands" with one white parent (making you hapa) your chances of being FOB-ish are a lot lower than other FOBs. If you are half Samoan half Tongan few people will ever think of you as hapa, yet there is a good chance that if you moved to California in your early adult life you would be called a FOB. Don't agree with hapa being a term for a FOB. --Billy Nair (talk) 20:04, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hapa 

message: Oops, I am terribly embarrassed. I wrongly corrected "The most populous of the United States ...", because I forgot to notice that the United States was being referred to as a collective group of states, not as just one entity. Sorry. Good job Binksternet. 71.178.238.238 (talk) 04:11, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oops 

message: I think this is a valuable article, and should remain.  And even though a lot of people do not realize it, there is a "California Accent".  And many of us can recognize it.  The problem is probably that because of the vast quantity of entertainment and news that comes out of California, most people simply do not recognize it as such when they hear it.  And a lot of people simply do not recognize accents and speech patterns unless they are very distinct, like South-East USA.  And when you think about it, how many people can recognize a Canadian accent?  It is there, it is real, but most people would not recognize it.  Mushrom (talk) 17:43, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Valspeak is absolutely distinct from any other American English dialect, the authentic sound of Southern California in pop culture. The center of Valspeak has been in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley beginning in the 1970s', but has been spoken by teens who grew up to be young adults living in the South Bay, Los Angeles and Orange County communities. + 71.102.7.77 (talk) 08:32, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  California English 

message: "Northern Californians refer to Sacramento the state capital, as "Sac", "Sacto", "Sactown", "Sacra" (by the Chicano community), and various other nicknames."
Yeah.. Where is this happening? In some Midwesterner's mind? Come on now. No one says that.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.126.75.174 (talk) 22:33, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have lived in Sacramento and yes, many locals call it "Sac". The historic downtown is fondly known as "Old Sac."  I have occasionally heard "Sacto".  Perhaps more interesting, linguistically, is the pronunciation of "Sacramento."  It is always "Sacramenno" (no "t"), except among Spanish speakers of course, who use the Spanish pronunciation.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.94.221.66 (talk) 22:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: These are slang terms. What is the significance to an article on a California English dialect, if there is such a thing? RlitwinRlitwin (talk) 22:28, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  There are deleted entries on the article discussed the closer speech patterns of Northern California (esp. north of Sacramento) with the Pacific Northwest, Upper Midwest and New England states. The Inland Empire and desert regions are referred to as the "Desert Southwest", and have more of a Texan, Southwestern and Midwestern influences in local speech. The Sierras and other mountain areas have a history of Appalachian and Mid-Atlantic settlers. + 71.102.7.77 (talk) 06:37, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Sacra(mento)?

message: Something I first noticed in younger Californian and Hawaiian English speakers in the last 20 or 30 years, and now I run into among relatively younger others, is the lengthening of terminal syllables that traditionally have been suppressed. I'm not talking about just stressing terminal elements of words (e.g., what-EVER). I'm referring to making did-unt out of didn't, wood-in out of wooden, would-unt out of wouldn't, etc.--in other words, articulating a final syllable's vowel that the pronunciation guide in Webster's New World College Dictionary renders with just an apostrophe. I don't know what the formal linguistic term for this phenomenon might be, but if it has been discussed in the literature, it may be worth including in this article. Wbkelley (talk) 17:13, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  In this preview for "How we talk: American regional English today", i find exactly what you're talking about, via the Allyn Partin Hernandez bit.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.11.116 (talk) 03:43, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apostrophic vowels in terminal syllables 

message: Though I can't find a source on this, I know from lifelong experience that both northern and southern Californians pronounce the /l/ in words like palm, balm, etc. Can anyone help out on that? Samhuddy (talk) 22:42, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I came across something regarding /l/ in palm,balm, etc in Californian speech a while ago, but cant find it at them moment... I myself use a slight /l/. I must find that file, and go ask someone to say the words so I can hear it myself.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.9.227 (talk) 21:12, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I have heard people in San Fran pronounce the /l/ in words like calm.  I personally have always distinguished bomb and balm, not by pronouncing the /l/ but by using the same vowels as in cot and caught, respectively.  But I'm from Tucson, not CA. Benwing (talk) 04:56, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bomb-Balm divergence 

message: The Phonology section looks very nice, technical, and seems good for those who can understand it. Personally, I learned a little bit of that stuff years ago, and it looks like Greek to me now. As a Californian who wants to understand the differences between our own and other's pronunciation, this section was very disappointing! 
Can someone add a simplified description to it? Perhaps more examples for us to contrast? 
This would be extremely appreciated.
Thank you very much! --71.202.135.113 (talk) 05:42, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Phonology" section is too technical, very difficult to understand! 

message: Don't delete the section on freeway nomenclature. It is absolutely correct.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.27.73.102 (talk) 22:09, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Seconded.RaynDrahps (talk) 02:22, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unverified but true 

message: Most insubstantial and useless article ever?71.131.213.157 09:55, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, this article is ridiculous. Regional slang does not constitute a dialect. Nor does a slight accent. The nation has become far too homogenous and mediated by television and other forms of mass media for it to make sense to speak of such a strong regional difference for California English. This article is wishful thinking. Rlitwin (talk) 18:30, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a pretty terrible article. That said, there are serious things to say about California English as a subtype of Western U.S. English (it's different from, say, Utah English, another Western subtype), and sociolinguists such as Penny Eckert at Stanford do serious research on it. However, California itself isn't a linguistically uniform dialect region; this article really should focus on whatever dialect sociolinguists refer to as the California dialect, not all linguistic features that may be found somewhere within California. AJD (talk) 01:23, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Then let's see if we can rewrite the article accordingly. I'd start by weeding out the stuff about slang. It could have a separate article, California Slang, if someone cared to write it. Rlitwin (talk) 22:25, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

text: Worst article ever? I'm sure I could find at least a dozen articles about the dietary habits of obscure cartoon characters if you need some perspective. California English may not be Gullah, but it is also not the most standard American English (that would be Omaha, Nebraska). Whether the dialect is California or Pacific or western is something I'd love to see a credible source of, but it's not absurd to have the article, even if just to indicate that this dialect is not particularly marked and is pretty much just standard american english. 76.126.249.172 (talk) 07:31, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Worst article ever? 

message: I don't have access to the full text of the Buchholtz paper cited as the source for the articles leading assertion that there is a *dialect* of *California English*, but the abstract makes it clear this article is the dialectal boundaries within California. As such it seems an unlikely candidate for demonstrating that there is a dialect of California English distinct from standard american english. An article on California English may make sense even if it doesn't meet the standard definition of a dialect, given in the [dialect] article as "A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology, including prosody). Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, the term accent is appropriate, not dialect." So there are two questions here: 1) is California the relevant distinction, instead of being within a larger geographic region or Northern and Southern California differing from each other more than they differ from their neighbors in other states, and 2) is it a dialect as opposed to an accent and some trivia about highway naming?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.126.249.172 (talk) 07:45, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation for existence of California Dialect 

message: I think that this very first assertion in the article is incorrect. As I understand it, a dialect is a variant of a language which, while it is understandable to other speakers of that language, contains significant unique elements. In no way does what passes for English in California constitute a dialect. This should be stricken from the article, which should serve to further diminish whatever importance this mish-mosh of an article has. Basically, it's a collection of language trivia, not a description of anything of linguistic importance. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 21:09, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So you're saying that California English has no distinctive features? —Tamfang (talk) 22:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed.  Calling it a "dialect" seems like nonsense to me.  More like a few phonetic variations.  Wikidemon (talk) 11:42, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Using that criterion, there would be really few, if any "dialects" of American English at all, since most Americans can understand other Americans with little or no difficulty. Some varieties of American English, such as that spoken by native inhabitants of New York City, may be irritating to listen to, while others, such as what is spoken by some in the rural South, may sound "funny," but even in those cases, usually there is little trouble for any native American English speaker in understand what is being said. 169.199.121.7 (talk) 21:58, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

text: A "dialect" is just a variety of a language—the way people in a particular region use the language. AJD (talk) 22:11, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: i agree, dialect at this stage is still quite a stretch, but i disagree that its "just a few phonetic variations"; many linguists find that california english is establishing its own identity and will continue to diverge from GA. MattTabarnaknaytev (talk) 19:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I've studied languages extensively and speak 4 foreign languages including 2 variants of German. California has an accent and regional slang but no dialect, because even people in California do not understand the slang. An accent refers to different pronunciation, but a dialect refers to different vocabulary and grammar. The majority of these "examples" are slang because they are circumstantial and not standard. For instance, "I'm gonna hit the beach" (west coast) and "I'm down the shore" (East coast/NJ/PA) applies only to that situation. "Beach" and "shore" are used exactly the same by both sides of the US in other circumstances. A dialect is largely unintelligible to people who don't speak it, for example Swiss German and High German. True German speakers may understand 40% of any of the 26 Swiss German dialects. For example in High German, "I'm going shopping" could be "Ich gehe einkaufen," but a Swiss dialect would say "I gang gö shoppe." Same with "Hier bin ich noch nie gewesen" becomes dialect "Do bini nonia gsi." The amount of variation is astounding, meaning they are dialects and not merely accents. 76.89.137.125 (talk) 22:05, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Since when is California(n) English a "dialect"? 

message: "In 1958, essayist Clifton Fadiman pointed out that Northern California is the only place besides England where the word chesterfield is used as a synonym for sofa or couch"
This is common in Canadian English. CüRlyTüRkeyTalkContribs 13:03, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Most Americans would probably think of a formerly popular brand of cigarettes if they heard the word "Chesterfield." Of course, many of the younger generation (even those who smoke) have probably never heard of the Chesterfield brand, so they might be more amenable to thinking of it as at least some kind of furniture. 169.199.121.7 (talk) 22:02, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chesterfield 

message: There appears to be a lot of original research in this article, as well as junk that's probably true but of questionable encyclopedicness, like the whole section on freeway nomenclature.  Examples of stuff that I question are:
*"Norcal" or "NoCal"?  Maybe this is an LA thing, but sure as hell not in SF.
*"over the hill, up the hill" etc. as a Bay Area thing?  I understand the reason for these terms but I lived in SF all through the 90's and never heard these terms.
More basically, I'm a linguist and I think a lot of the stuff about California speech is very questionable.  For example, much of the stuff that's supposedly "particular" to California speech, e.g. raising of vowels before "ng", near monophthongization of /ou/ and /ei/, the cot-caught merger, the merry-marry-Mary merger, are actually characteristic of the speech of large parts of the U.S.  Furthermore, as pointed out by an earlier comment, much of the supposed "California vowel shift" is actually very incipient and not characteristic of most speakers.  Some of the vowel movements are present in many speakers, e.g. the fronting of /u/, some are characteristic of certain speakers (e.g. the fronting of /ou/ is traditionally associated with surfers), but many of them appear to be present only in certain groups of young speakers.  It's true that sound changes in process tend to be visible in younger speakers but not older ones, but that still doesn't mean that all changes characteristic of some young speakers are necessarily in the process of being generalized. Benwing (talk) 05:09, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I grew up in the Bay Area (80s and 90s) and never heard "NorCal" or "SoCal" until I moved to the East Coast.  People from the Northeast U.S., not just Southern California, used those terms.  Things may have changed in the past 10 years, but that would be hella fast ( :) ) --Atemperman (talk) 05:44, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: In the 90's, "SoCal" was used occasionally, but only in a joking way, and it was perceived as an LA thing. The opposite was claimed sometimes to be "NoCal" but this was even less common and even more of a joke if/when it was ever heard. "NorCal" didn't exist at all. Possibly these terms existed in the suburbs, but not in the city. Benwing (talk) 05:08, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research etc.