California English
| California English | |
|---|---|
| Region | California |
|
Indo-European
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
California English (or Californian English) collectively refers to American English in California, particularly an emerging youthful variety, mostly associated with white speakers of urban and coastal California. California is home to a highly diverse population, which is reflected in the historical and continuing formation of California English, whose emergent vowel shift was only first noted by linguists in the 1980s, best researched in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay area of Northern California. Since that time, unique California speech has been mostly associated in American popular culture with adolescent and young-adult speakers of coastal California; the possibility that it is, in fact, an age-specific variety of English is one hypothesis that has been proposed though not confirmed. Other documented California English includes a "country" accent associated with rural and inland white Californians as well as unique California varieties of Chicano English associated with Mexican Americans.
English was first spoken on a wide scale in the area now known as California following the influx of English-speakers from the United States, Canada, and Europe during the California Gold Rush. The English-speaking population grew rapidly with further settlement, which included large populations from the Northeast, South and the Midwest. The dialects brought by these pioneers were the basis for the development of the modern language: a mixture of settlers from the Midwest and the Border South produced the rural dialect of Northern California, whereas settlers from the Lower Midwest and the South, (especially Missouri and Texas), produced the rural dialect of Southern California.
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