Texan English is the array of American English dialects spoken in Texas, primarily falling under Southern U.S. English. As one nationwide study states, the typical Texan accent is a "Southern accent with a twist". The "twist" refers to features of inland Southern U.S., declining coastal Southern U.S., and South Midland U.S. accents combining in different ways throughout the state as a result of Texas's settlement history. In fact, there is no single accent that covers all of Texas and few dialect features are unique to Texas alone. The newest and most innovative Southern U.S. accent features are best reported in Lubbock, Odessa, somewhat Houston and variably Dallas, though general features of this same dialect are found throughout the state, with several exceptions:Labov et al., 2006, p. 126-131. Abilene and somewhat Austin, Corpus Christi, and El Paso appear to align more with Western or Midland U.S. accents than Southern ones.
History After Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, Mexican Texas legally permitted an influx of American settlers mainly from the Southern United States,Walsh, Harry, and Victor L. Mote. "A Texas Dialect Feature: Origins and Distribution." American Speech, 49.1-2 (1974). 40-53. who within a decade outnumbered Hispanics in Texas,"Texas English." Do you speak American?. 6 Sept 2012 making English as common as Spanish in central and north Texas. After Texas became an independent republic in 1836, English, with its distinct Southern influences, became the predominant language.
Research Some linguists draw dialect boundaries based upon phonological (sound-pattern) differences and others on lexical (word-usage) differences, leading to various views on how to classify dialects in Texas, often by dividing the state into an eastern versus a western dialect region.Underwood, Gary N. (1990), "Scholarly Responsibility and the Representation of Dialects: The Case of English in Texas", Journal of English Linguistics 23: 95-112. 20th-century lexical research delimited Texas into two "layers": a southern Texas layer along the Mexican border with several Spanish loanwords and a central Texas layer settled by speakers of German and other European languages amidst a dominant Anglo-American settlement.Walters, Keith. "Dialects". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Web. 14 August 2012Carver, Craig M. (1987), American regional dialects : a word geography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 21st-century phonological research reveals accents in Texas grouped in a way not easy to demarcate in terms of simple geographical boundaries,Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg Charles (2006). Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. and ongoing research reveals an urban–rural divide within Texas becoming more significant than a region-wide divide.
Some linguists propose that urbanization, geographic and social mobility, and the mass media have homogenized the speech of the United States to a national norm.Bailey, Guy. "Directions of Change in Texas English." Journal of American Culture 14.2 (1991): 125-134. Due to rapid urbanization, increasing dominance of high tech industries, and massive migrations, Texan speech has been reshaped as well, especially since 1990. The general tendency in the phonology of Texas English is that mergers expand at the expense of distinctions, although traditional Southern-style Texan English preserved older phonemic distinctions. Since much of the traditional regional vocabulary concerned farming and rural life, these terms are now disappearing or being replaced by technical terms.
Urban–rural contrast As stated above, an internal rural–urban split is emerging within Texan English, meaning that most traditionally Southern (or stereotypically Texan) features remain strong in rural areas but tend to disappear in large urban areas and small cities. The urban-rural linguistic split mainly affects Southern-style phonological phenomena like the pen-pin merger, the loss of the offglide in /aɪ/, and upgliding diphthongs, all of which are now recessive in metropolitan areas. Meanwhile, some traditional grammatical features like y'all and fixin' to are expanding to non-natives in metropolitan areas as well as to the Hispanic population.
Phonology
Essentially all Texas English phonologically falls under the Southeastern super-dialect region of the United States and often specifically the Southern dialect region, though noticeably not the cities of El Paso, Abilene, and Austin, and not particularly Houston and Corpus Christi. Moreover, as of 21st-century research, the accents of Dallas show enormous variability. Of the three possible stages of the Southern Vowel Shift, the first two stages occur throughout Texas, except in El Paso, Abilene, Austin, and Corpus Christi—the first stage alone appears in Houston.Labov et al., 2006, p. 61. This means monophthongization of in many contexts ( → ) and lowering of → (the two of which also result in Southern drawling: /æ/ → [ɛ(j)ə]) and /ɛ/ → [e(j)ə]). Monophthongization of in all contexts, even before voiceless consonants, is a linguistic innovation concentrated in the Texas Panhandle and North Texas: the whole northern half of the state (except Abilene).Labov et al., 2006, p. 129. This makes words like mite, rice, life, type, etc. sound like , , , and .Feagin, Crawford. "Vowel Shifting in the Southern States." English in the Southern United States. Ed. Stephen J. Nagle and Sara L. Sanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 126-140. A study of Texas Triangle English shows a strong orientation of primarily young, female, and urban speakers towards a diphthongization of /aɪ/ in all contexts. In fact, the monophthongization of /aɪ/ has left Texas Triangle speech almost entirely.Jung, Natalie A. (2011) "Real-Time Changes in the Vowel System of Central Texas English". "Texas Linguistics Forum" 54:72-78. 89% of the speakers born in the 1980s use diphthongal realizations of /aɪ/, whereas only 11% use monophthongal or intermediate realizations of /aɪ/. The cot-caught merger of the two historical vowels sounds and , in words like caught and cot or stalk and stock, is becoming increasingly common throughout the United States, thus affecting Southwestern and even many Southeastern dialects, towards a merged vowel .Bailey, Guy. "Directions of Change in Texas English.".Journal of American Culture 14.2 (1991): 125-134. The ANAE reports a completed merger in Amarillo, Odessa, and variably El Paso, but the rest of Texas is also rapidly transitioning towards the merger. A few younger speakers realize the vowel , unlike typical Southerners, as open front , which is more in line with the Western U.S. dialect. This lowering occurs only in speakers with the cot-caught merger, and is not yet as common as in California and Canada. Three mergers before /l/ are recorded in some Texas English: the fill–feel merger (most concentrated from the Panhandle down to San Antonio),Labov et al., 2006, p. 71. the fell–fail merger, and the full–fool merger. Non-rhoticity has reversed on a massive scale, as in most of the Southern U.S., and is now only heard in some older speakers.
Grammar
Texas English may use many grammatical constructions typically associated with Southern U.S. English, including fixin' to,Pederson, Lee, ed. Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States: Social Pattern for the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. (Shows the term used by 57% of the population of Upper Texas and by 43% in Lower Texas multiple modals like might could and should oughta (reportedly used by every social class and, as of the 1980s Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States, predominately in Upper and Lower East Texas), and plural verbal -s as in Our father and mother helps used by both Black and (somewhat less commonly) white Texans.Bailey, Guy, Natalie Minor, and Patricia Cukor-Avila. "Variation in Subject-Verb Concord in Early Modern English." Language Variation and Change, 1 (1989): 285-300 (Shows that 70% of the black population and 43% of the white population put an –s on the third person plural in folk speech.)
Vocabulary Many of these lexical terms are shared with the Midland and Southern dialects generally: buzzard: vulture blue norther: The term blue norther refers to a weather phenomenon that often appears in the temperate zones all over the world (including Texas). It is a quickly moving autumnal cold front which drops the temperatures rapidly and brings along rain and after a period of blue skies and cold weather. The derivation of this term is unclear. Some people say that the term refers to a norther (borealis/north wind) which sweeps "out of the Panhandle under a blue-black sky" – from the heat to the blue black cold. Others suggest that blue norther denotes the color of the sky that appears after the bad weather front has passed. Yet others say that people associate blue with the cold that the front brings along. Variants of this term are blue whistler, blue darter and blue blizzard. Whereas the term blue whistler is also used in Texas the two latter terms are from out of state. Blue norther, however, is purely Texan. Since Spanish times, the effect of blue norther has been noted in Texas and this phenomenon has often been exaggerated. But contrary to the belief of many people, blue norther is not unique to Texas.Barkley, Roy. "Blue Norther" .2012. Texas State Historical Association. 5 Sept 2012. bowie knife: a long hunting knife (pronounced boo-ee). Named for Alamo hero Jim Bowie. dogie: calf."Texas English". Do you speak American? Web. 14 August 2012 fixin' to: a future-tense modal verb analogous to "about to" or "going to" in much of American English. E.g., "I'm fixin' to leave for school." geddup: outfit (clothing) ["get up" but pronounced with accent meaning an outfit or costume typically meaning an exceptional context and may be negative or positive connotation] howdy: a general greeting; a shortened form of "How do you do?" looker: an attractive woman maverick: stray or unbranded. motte (mot): The term motte or mot refers to a small grove of trees in open grasslands. It was first introduced by Irish immigrants in the 1830s. They brought this term from Ireland where people used to call similar woods this way. In the United States one hears of motte only in Texas. plumb: superlative adjective, equivalent to "absolutely" or "very much". E.g., "He's plumb out of luck." pole cat: a skunk shinnery: a well-known term in western Texas for a shinnery oak or a sand shinnery oak. These trees grow in Texas, western Oklahoma, and eastern New Mexico. The term shinnery can also mean the area or landscape in which shinnery oaks grow. spindletop: a gushing oil well tank: stock pond. varmint: a wild or rascally animal, especially a mammal (sometimes used endearingly). Derivative of vermin. y'all: a second-person plural pronoun; a shortened form of "you all" (over) yonder: an adverbial used to designate a faraway place; analogous to "over there"
South Texas vocabulary acequia (from Spanish acequia): an irrigation ditch. arroyo (from Spanish arroyo): a gulch, ravine, creek bed caliche (from Spanish caliche): a hardened layer of calcium carbonate in the ground. chaparral (from Spanish chaparral): brush-covered terrain frijoles (from Spanish frijol): beans hacienda (from Spanish hacienda): the main house of a ranch