California English

California English (or Californian English) is the collection of English dialects native to California, traditionally classified under General or Western American English.

History and overview

As California became more diverse, English speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds began to pick up different linguistic elements from one another and also developed new ones; the result is both divergence and convergence within California English. Overall, linguists who studied English around World War II tended to find few, if any, patterns unique to the state. Studies in the 1950s and 1960s largely only commented on the increasingly common cot–caught merger within the state.

In the 1980s, linguists first noted a distinctive chain shift of vowel sounds, the California Vowel Shift, used by young people in southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area of northern California. This helped to define an accent emerging primarily among youthful, white, urban, coastal speakers, and popularly associated with the valley girl and surfer youth subcultures. The possibility that this is, in fact, an age-specific variety of English is one hypothesis; however, certain features of this accent are intensifying and spreading geographically.

Other documented California English includes a "country" accent associated with rural and inland white Californians, which is also (to a lesser extent) affected by the California Vowel Shift; an older accent once spoken by Irish Americans in San Francisco; and distinctly Californian varieties of Chicano English mainly associated with Mexican Americans. Research has shown that Californians themselves perceive a linguistic boundary between northern and southern California, particularly regarding the northern use of hella, and southern (but now nationally widespread) use of dude, bro, and like.

Urban coastal California English

Varieties of English most popularly associated with California largely correlate with the major urban areas along the coast.