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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)
The article says "Similarly, Northern California outsiders are likely to mark themselves as such by referring to San Francisco as anything other than San Francisco or the City." Is a 'not' missing, or ? - R. S. Shaw 3 July 2005 23:35 (UTC)
How about "People from Northern California have only two names for San Francisco, San Francisco and the City; people from outside the region are likely to mark themselves as such by using other names like San Fran or Frisco."? -- Angr/ tɔk tə mi 4 July 2005 05:19 (UTC)
I'm liable to hurt someone if they refer to the city as "Frisco." Frisco is the name of any of four towns in Texas, Colorado, North Carolina, and Alabama. -- Anonymous Californian
Anyone who was born and raised in the city (San Francisco) knows that it is almost an unspoken rule that you do not call the city "frisco". calling the city frisco is a dead giveaway that you're not from the area. And it really makes you sound ghetto.- S.F. Native
It's actually been my experience that nobody from "the city" calls it San Francisco. It is merely, "the city". Also "the city" is the originating point for new lexicon such as "cutty", and skrilla(actually i believe thats east bay)
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)
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)
It's tweeker, dude, not tweaker, and lots of people use "trippy". Maybe not in YOUR exalted neighborhood, but plenty of other places qualify as California, ya know? Cbdorsett 8 July 2005 06:26 (UTC)
One thing that might be worth adding is the predominant use of the word "Hella" by Northern Californians to substitute for the words "A lot," or "Extremely." For example, at a crowded restaurant, one might say, "There are hella people here." Its root seems to be a contracton of "A hell of a lot of," although it is also used as a quantifier, often in the phrase "That hella sucks," or, "That's hella awesome, dude." Younger folks who don't want to get in trouble with their parents for swearing will often substitute "Hecka." The word is not used at all in Southern California and is looked down upon as a sign of a NorCal foreigner trying to invade Southern California. About the only time a Southern Californian will utter "Hella" is to deride Northern Californians with a statement along the lines of, "Nor Cal Hella Sucks." Some Southern Californians will use the words "Mass," or "A Mass" instead, words which are not used in Northern California. An example statement would be, "Sorry I'm late brah, but there were mass cars on the 405," though "Mass" does not work as a quantifier in the same way as "Hella" and does not seem to be a crucial part of the Southern California lexicon in the same way that "Hella" is for Northern Californians.
Also, Southern Californians prefer using the word "Bro" (Oftentimes pronounced "Brah") to refer to their friends, wheras Northern Californians will more often use "Dude." Both of these terms are gender neutral, and can be used to refer to either man or woman friends. For example, Southern Californians will greet friends with, "What's up brah?" And Northern Californians will state, "What's up, dude?" Also, potentially worth noting is that "Bro" and "Dude" can be used in a challenging sort of way. If someone somewhat-accidentally pushes you, or somesuch, a common response might be, "What was that about brah?" Or just simply, "Dude?" Both Northern and Southern Californians will also make use of the word "Man" to substitute for "Dude" and "Bro," but Man seems to be slightly more used in Northern California than in Southern California.
I dunno, I just feel that if you are going to be talking about the Californian dialect, it just seems fitting to include these terms which are so strongly entrenched in the vernacular, and seemingly unique to the state. —the preceding unsigned comment is by 208.29.250.2 ( talk • contribs) 00:14, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
I don't know about Dixon but in Napa (and Solano) the word "Hella" is used alot and by no means is a "fad" word. As J3ff said, I think it's much more likley that it's a Bay Area word and after discussing it with about 5 people, for about 8-15 minutes in late 03 we seemed to all agree it was either Napa-Solano, or Bay Area word (depending on which one you asked). I definently think it's unique to California because I recently moved to Arkansas and no one uses it, Arkansas is only one example of but... Bucket I've heard but never seemed an integral part of the lexicon. If any words should be added I would say "fool," "puto," and "sick" (many Arkansans look at me like "WTF?" when I saw it and that's all to often). Taboo Tongue 00:09, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
I learned about "hella" right here. Never heard it in actual speech. I have lived in the Sacramento area for the past 20 years; this sounds like a Bay Area thing to me. 24.10.78.185 23:19, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
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)
My guess is that there is very little direct Yiddish influence on California English ; what Yiddish influence there is comes from Northeastern American English and specifically New York English. While Jews have been present in California since it became a state, the Jews who migrated to Los Angeles in the 20th century - not necessarily due to the entertainment industry, although many did - tended to speak the English of where they came from, generally Northeastern US varieties of English (especially those from the New York and Philadelphia areas, due to the large numbers of Jews there and the US Jewish population historically being concentrated in those cities). The Jewish population of 20th century Los Angeles tended to be natives of the Northeast U.S. (although with a substantial minority coming from the Great Lakes area, and others coming from Europe) or their children, and it was these people who had formerly dominated the entertainment industry and still have some influence. —the preceding unsigned comment is by 4.231.179.82 ( talk • contribs) 19:54, December 6, 2005 (UTC)
The article says:
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 [i] 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 /ŋ/ as [n], 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 [n] and sometimes [ŋ]. 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)
I disagree with that part of the article. I'm a Californian, born and raised, and I do not associate king and keen as being minimal pairs at all. That seems like more of an Massachusetts or (moreso) Southern thing, but not in the least Californian. Where did this come from? I differentiate the vowels i and ɪ completely. I and everyone I know pronounce king [kɪŋ]. -- LakeHMM 08:02, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
My dad's from Iowa and he merges king/keen. I remember once mentioning to him how wierd I found it that Californians merge it (I grew up in CO), and he said something along the lines of "you mean you don't pronounce them with the same vowel?!" I remember another conversation a while later in which I found he merges rain/rang. I don't think this is just a California thing... Linguofreak 23:51, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
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)
I'd like to point out that I have lived in northern California my entire life, and I have NEVER heard the phrase "flip a bitch." -- Annonymous Californian.
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)
As a Los Angeles native (1950) who moved north 25+ years ago, one of the differences most obvious to me between speech then and speech now is in how people refer to the freeways. In the south part of the state, where freeways are generally named for destinations, the freeway names were generally used then rather than the numbers. When I moved to San Jose, I quickly learned that most people didn't even know the names of the freeways (generally named for people) and referred to them by number only. I'm not sure when usage changed in Southern California, but it's clear that things are different now. Whether it merits inclusion in the article or not, usage has definitely changed over the past 25 years. The most reliable way to check might be going into (way) back issues of the LA Times. 24.10.78.185 23:19, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
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!
Ummmm nope. No tolls on the Long Island Expressway. No tolls on any of NY's roads actually. No tolls on I-80 either in NJ. And yes, there are real interstates! Its a west coast thing - trust me! Nobody in the northeast, the south, florida - noobody uses it! People from Cali don't believe me its hilarious! You really think all highways are tolled in NY? Yea right!
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)
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 ʌ and ɝ used when it looks like ɜ and ɚ, 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)
I'm going to remove this section in a couple of days if none of the assertions in it can be substantiated by reliable sources. I added a NPOV tag to the section, as well. -- AaronS 02:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
That's an interesting article. But, the discussion is really rather irrelevant, since the "influence" section assumes that California English is being exported through TV, movies, and radio. We all know that only a fraction of the television shows and movies filmed in California are actually set in California. Unless there is some scholarly or reliable source that can back up all of the strange and, in my opinion, unverifiable assumptions in this section, I think that it should be removed entirely. It serves no purpose other than pure fanboy cruft. -- AaronS 18:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
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)
The origin of "bolth" remains a mystery. It sporadically occurs throughout the United States and has been noted to occur sporadically in California, Illinois, Michigan, and New Jeresey.
Just thought I'd throw out a few more differences in pronunciation, although they may just be more prevalent in NorCal English. (My wife's family is from NY and they've pointed these out -- repeatedly...). - milk pronounced as "melk" - were pronounced as "war" - man pronounced as "mon," especially when used in place of dude or brah -- although that may just be an ironic fakey-jamaikey accent....
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)
The Bay Area has a much larger population than San Diego metro.
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)
i agree. although Californians do share ligutisic siliarities. Northern California and southern California are TWO SEPARATE AREAS. in fact the should be two different states!
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)
I also raise it when I drop the G in -ing forms, so even if there's no /ŋ/ there I raise as well. So I wind up saying stuff like "dreenkeen" (sampa = /dr\iNkin/) for drinking —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.0.136.131 ( talk) 01:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
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))
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)
User:A Doon just removed without explanation a bunch of facts about the difference between Northern and Southern California, most notably the fact that "the" is not used with highway numbers in Northern California ("the 5" and so on) and the Northern-California shibboleth "hella". Why? These are both well-known and notable facts about California English.
On the other hand, the fact that San Franciscans don't refer to their city by cute nicknames doesn't seem to me to be a particularly interesting or notable fact. Lots of cities are referred to as "the city". AJD 23:36, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
[[Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg -->|thumb|right|The San Francisco Warriors' "the City" logo]]
I strongly protest A Doon's deletion of "bucket" and "trippy," based on his/her not hearing these in 8 years California experience. I have lived in California about six times that long, and I know these terms to be correct, especially "trippy," which I would even say is common and ordinary. "Bucket" is also correct, but I will concede, less common. Fluffbrain 28 August
I don't know the arguments going about North and South variations, but there are significant differences between NorCal and SoCal language. There needs to be mention of this. For example, statements about how Californians refer to freeways with the word the is only a SoCal method, and is simply wrong for NorCal. Also, phrase-abbreviate words such as Hyphy and Hella is a phenomenon of NorCal. Fcsuper 05:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
"...California State Route 1, which runs down the coast, is called "Highway 1" or simply "one" in Northern California, but "PCH" (for Pacific Coast Highway) in Southern California, sometimes pronounced as "peach" but much more often as "the PCH"."" I was born and raised in SoCal and I never heard anyone refer to PCH as "The PCH". It is pretty much always called simply PCH or, sometimes, Coast Highway. The "The" designation is always used for freeways, not highways. For example, in "I Love LA", Randy Newman rolls down Imperial Highway, not "The Imperial Highway". And these highway names are not nicknames, they are actually legally defined routes that are separate from the numbered highway. For example, most of Imperial Highway is synonymous with Highway 90. But part of Hwy 90 runs separately as The Marina Freeway, while Imperial Hwy continues along a different route. Part of Pacific Coast Highway is not signed as Hwy 1 near the San Diego County line. And many parts of Hwy 1 have different names. In much of West LA and Santa Monica, it is actually Sepulveda Blvd. and Lincoln. People in NorCal don't call it PCH because it isn't called that there. From Santa Barbara to San Francisco it is mostly called Cabrillo Highway. North of San Francisco it is Shoreline Highway. This is true for freeways, too, "The Hollywood Freeway" is a confusing term for many because it actually runs along several different numbered freeways. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.181.152.165 ( talk) 05:42, 25 April 2007 (UTC).
As a third generation Southern Californian, I can attest that people in So Cal DO use THE in front of freeway numbers (it is correct to say the 101, the 405, etc.) As far as I know, Northern Californians do NOT. The information given in this article is incorrect. Also, PCH is just PCH. No THE. The information given directly above is correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.217.166.226 ( talk) 21:34, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
"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)
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)
Is this a SoCal thing? I ain’t never heard it — Wiki Wikardo 11:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
'Hapa' is certainly catching on in the SF Bay area. It's tied in part to the frequent use of race-specific census and fill-out-this-form questions, when so many respondents are now of mixed race. Also with the celebrity of various mixed-race individuals.
Overall, I agree with the article's linguistic contentions, but must admit I am not familiar with the scientific symbols. This may be anecdotal, but it's based upon my family living in the SF Bay Area for a full century. -Paul Carlson
Ive lived in SoCal all my life and I`ve heard it only a few times. All of them, it was a half asian or pacific islander and half european decent person saying it. My conclusion: valid, just like mulatto and mezcla; said only rarely, but stil valuable as a cultural associational term. Neotribal42 18:59, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
The passage as it now stands says that hapa can apply to FOBs. Eh? I'm guessing that it formerly said "hapa meaning half-Islander and FOB meaning Asian immigrant", and the hapa part got expanded without enough attention to making the rest of the sentence make sense. — Tamfang ( talk) 22:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
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)
--I deleted Long Beach as being part of SoCal's "South Bay". Long Beach is never considered "South Bay" here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.88.201.100 ( talk) 21:12, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
The text about Norcal, Socal and Frisco is relevant and factually correct. There was no reason to delete it. Similarly, there was no reason to substitute "Sactown" for "Sacto", since the list says explicitly, "and other nicknames. I've heard Sacto, but not Sactown - how about a cite? Until then, I'm putting it back the way it was. I'm using the revert procedure because it's easier, not because I'm accusing anyone of vandalism. And no, I'm not one of the no-revert-rule people. Cbdorsett 07:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I changed it to "sactown," because that nickname is used more frequently than "sacto." And if anyone complains, I'll change it to Sacramento's REAL nickname: nutSac. You can add sacto if you want, but sactown needs to stay. catgirl667 4/25/2007
i have heard scaramneto called suck a tomato. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.37.139.5 ( talk • contribs) 21:01, 30 December 2007
This is about slang. What is the significance of slang to California English, if there is such a thing? Rlitwin ( talk) 22:23, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
my two cents two years later: as i understand it, 'sacto' is the postal abbreviation from ages ago. badmachine ( talk) 07:14, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
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)
"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)
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)
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)
DISCLAIMER: I am neither a liguistic nor a historian so please interpret these comments accordingly.
The linguistic history on this page I found a bit curious. My understanding is that the original anglophone visitors/settlers in California (even before it was annexed by the U.S.) were predominantly Texans (and others from the southern areas of the U.S.). The Gold Rush, of course, changed things substantially but I have always understood from what I've read that this early history was still influential in California's development. I lived in the SF Bay Area for 4 years back in the 90s. Although most of the people I encountered had fairly neutral accents, most of the people I actually dealt with regularly were actually from other parts of the U.S. To the extent that I did meet people who actually were from families that had lived in California for some generations I tended to hear traits in their speech that are not described here. In particular I had two friends, one from the north bay and one from the Eureka area, both with similar accents (and similar to others I had met in California). Their accents although not "thick" by my standards were very much what I've always thought of as the "western" accent. That is, an accent that has a lot of similarities to the "southern" accents although not quite as distinct (notably these friends grew up saying "y'all" but stopped as they grew into their professional lives). These aspects of the accent and the dialect (and their history) don't seem to be discussed here. I was curious why.
In Southern California, I`ve never heard "Ya`ll" except by ebonics users and people from various Southern states. Also, there is no such thing as a "neutral" or nonexistant accent or dialect, they might not be an identifiable regionl accent, but they still are accents. Neotribal42 19:07, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
75.25.30.9 ( talk) 04:21, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
the overwhelming majority of written work regarding "hella", both by linguists and casual observers of popular culture alike, describe "hella" as characteristic of the Northern California lexicon, and describe the San Francisco Bay Area as it's place of birth. In so far as this word has entered the vocabulary of speakers outside the Bay Area, it has been through diffusion--and the further from the epicenter, the less frequent the usage. Thus, recent deletions of the passage referring to the word hella are not justified, nor has anyone, to my knowledge, referenced a source that would contradict the preponderance of referrable works (including those already cited) which support it's continued inclusion. Triggtay 06:25, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I've also heard (and used) "hell of" (said as one word: "hel-love") as a strictly ironic replacement for "hella" (I've been a Bay Area resident all my life).
As a NorCal resident for the very vast majority of my life, I just wanted to say thank god for those of you who have come out to say that SoCal doesn't use "hella"! I heard that recently from a friend, and I was devastated. Hella is a NorCal thing and should NOT move to SoCal, as I'm very sure most SoCal residents would like as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.135.113 ( talk) 05:32, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
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)
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)
Most insubstantial and useless article ever? 71.131.213.157 09:55, 15 September 2007 (UTC) I totally agree, I've lived in three states and most of America will agree that California and many other states simply don't have an accent. Sure, the surfer "dialect" originated in California, but absolutely no accent exists in more than 1% of the population in many states. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.214.195.138 ( talk) 02:52, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
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)
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)
"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. CüRlyTüRkey Talk Contribs 13:03, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
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:
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)
Are you saying you've never heard the term "NorCal"? I find that hard to believe, if you lived in SF for an extended period of time. "NorCal" and "SoCal" are probably used more by younger speakers, but I'd be surprised if any Bay Area resident hadn't at least heard those terms.
The over the hill/up the hill thing is more questionable. Where I grew up in the Berkeley area people would say "over the hill" sometimes to refer to the suburbs on the other side of the Berkeley/Oakland Hills ("Lamorinda") but I've never heard either of these used the way they're described in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.8.59.101 ( talk) 11:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
I've been in "SoCal" for thirty years (LA and San Diego) and have never heard anyone say "NorCal" or "NoCal". Most people just say "up north". I've only heard "SoCal" in advertising, mostly in print, since it's an obvious way to save space, but never in regular conversation. Another variant, "The Southland", I've never heard anyone but LA area newscasters say. 71.103.82.103 ( talk) 03:30, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
is this serious? not only is this a disaster from a linguistic point of view [none of those descriptions would fly in any linguistic paper], but the citation is to tvtropes whos accent pages are even worst than some of the things people get away with on wikipedia. And while i do see where Benwing is coming from, i would presume a fellow linguist to know that its the collection of all these qualities that separate this region from others. -- Sisgreenflag ( talk) 19:19, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
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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)
The article says "Similarly, Northern California outsiders are likely to mark themselves as such by referring to San Francisco as anything other than San Francisco or the City." Is a 'not' missing, or ? - R. S. Shaw 3 July 2005 23:35 (UTC)
How about "People from Northern California have only two names for San Francisco, San Francisco and the City; people from outside the region are likely to mark themselves as such by using other names like San Fran or Frisco."? -- Angr/ tɔk tə mi 4 July 2005 05:19 (UTC)
I'm liable to hurt someone if they refer to the city as "Frisco." Frisco is the name of any of four towns in Texas, Colorado, North Carolina, and Alabama. -- Anonymous Californian
Anyone who was born and raised in the city (San Francisco) knows that it is almost an unspoken rule that you do not call the city "frisco". calling the city frisco is a dead giveaway that you're not from the area. And it really makes you sound ghetto.- S.F. Native
It's actually been my experience that nobody from "the city" calls it San Francisco. It is merely, "the city". Also "the city" is the originating point for new lexicon such as "cutty", and skrilla(actually i believe thats east bay)
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)
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)
It's tweeker, dude, not tweaker, and lots of people use "trippy". Maybe not in YOUR exalted neighborhood, but plenty of other places qualify as California, ya know? Cbdorsett 8 July 2005 06:26 (UTC)
One thing that might be worth adding is the predominant use of the word "Hella" by Northern Californians to substitute for the words "A lot," or "Extremely." For example, at a crowded restaurant, one might say, "There are hella people here." Its root seems to be a contracton of "A hell of a lot of," although it is also used as a quantifier, often in the phrase "That hella sucks," or, "That's hella awesome, dude." Younger folks who don't want to get in trouble with their parents for swearing will often substitute "Hecka." The word is not used at all in Southern California and is looked down upon as a sign of a NorCal foreigner trying to invade Southern California. About the only time a Southern Californian will utter "Hella" is to deride Northern Californians with a statement along the lines of, "Nor Cal Hella Sucks." Some Southern Californians will use the words "Mass," or "A Mass" instead, words which are not used in Northern California. An example statement would be, "Sorry I'm late brah, but there were mass cars on the 405," though "Mass" does not work as a quantifier in the same way as "Hella" and does not seem to be a crucial part of the Southern California lexicon in the same way that "Hella" is for Northern Californians.
Also, Southern Californians prefer using the word "Bro" (Oftentimes pronounced "Brah") to refer to their friends, wheras Northern Californians will more often use "Dude." Both of these terms are gender neutral, and can be used to refer to either man or woman friends. For example, Southern Californians will greet friends with, "What's up brah?" And Northern Californians will state, "What's up, dude?" Also, potentially worth noting is that "Bro" and "Dude" can be used in a challenging sort of way. If someone somewhat-accidentally pushes you, or somesuch, a common response might be, "What was that about brah?" Or just simply, "Dude?" Both Northern and Southern Californians will also make use of the word "Man" to substitute for "Dude" and "Bro," but Man seems to be slightly more used in Northern California than in Southern California.
I dunno, I just feel that if you are going to be talking about the Californian dialect, it just seems fitting to include these terms which are so strongly entrenched in the vernacular, and seemingly unique to the state. —the preceding unsigned comment is by 208.29.250.2 ( talk • contribs) 00:14, July 13, 2005 (UTC)
I don't know about Dixon but in Napa (and Solano) the word "Hella" is used alot and by no means is a "fad" word. As J3ff said, I think it's much more likley that it's a Bay Area word and after discussing it with about 5 people, for about 8-15 minutes in late 03 we seemed to all agree it was either Napa-Solano, or Bay Area word (depending on which one you asked). I definently think it's unique to California because I recently moved to Arkansas and no one uses it, Arkansas is only one example of but... Bucket I've heard but never seemed an integral part of the lexicon. If any words should be added I would say "fool," "puto," and "sick" (many Arkansans look at me like "WTF?" when I saw it and that's all to often). Taboo Tongue 00:09, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
I learned about "hella" right here. Never heard it in actual speech. I have lived in the Sacramento area for the past 20 years; this sounds like a Bay Area thing to me. 24.10.78.185 23:19, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
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)
My guess is that there is very little direct Yiddish influence on California English ; what Yiddish influence there is comes from Northeastern American English and specifically New York English. While Jews have been present in California since it became a state, the Jews who migrated to Los Angeles in the 20th century - not necessarily due to the entertainment industry, although many did - tended to speak the English of where they came from, generally Northeastern US varieties of English (especially those from the New York and Philadelphia areas, due to the large numbers of Jews there and the US Jewish population historically being concentrated in those cities). The Jewish population of 20th century Los Angeles tended to be natives of the Northeast U.S. (although with a substantial minority coming from the Great Lakes area, and others coming from Europe) or their children, and it was these people who had formerly dominated the entertainment industry and still have some influence. —the preceding unsigned comment is by 4.231.179.82 ( talk • contribs) 19:54, December 6, 2005 (UTC)
The article says:
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 [i] 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 /ŋ/ as [n], 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 [n] and sometimes [ŋ]. 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)
I disagree with that part of the article. I'm a Californian, born and raised, and I do not associate king and keen as being minimal pairs at all. That seems like more of an Massachusetts or (moreso) Southern thing, but not in the least Californian. Where did this come from? I differentiate the vowels i and ɪ completely. I and everyone I know pronounce king [kɪŋ]. -- LakeHMM 08:02, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
My dad's from Iowa and he merges king/keen. I remember once mentioning to him how wierd I found it that Californians merge it (I grew up in CO), and he said something along the lines of "you mean you don't pronounce them with the same vowel?!" I remember another conversation a while later in which I found he merges rain/rang. I don't think this is just a California thing... Linguofreak 23:51, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
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)
I'd like to point out that I have lived in northern California my entire life, and I have NEVER heard the phrase "flip a bitch." -- Annonymous Californian.
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)
As a Los Angeles native (1950) who moved north 25+ years ago, one of the differences most obvious to me between speech then and speech now is in how people refer to the freeways. In the south part of the state, where freeways are generally named for destinations, the freeway names were generally used then rather than the numbers. When I moved to San Jose, I quickly learned that most people didn't even know the names of the freeways (generally named for people) and referred to them by number only. I'm not sure when usage changed in Southern California, but it's clear that things are different now. Whether it merits inclusion in the article or not, usage has definitely changed over the past 25 years. The most reliable way to check might be going into (way) back issues of the LA Times. 24.10.78.185 23:19, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
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!
Ummmm nope. No tolls on the Long Island Expressway. No tolls on any of NY's roads actually. No tolls on I-80 either in NJ. And yes, there are real interstates! Its a west coast thing - trust me! Nobody in the northeast, the south, florida - noobody uses it! People from Cali don't believe me its hilarious! You really think all highways are tolled in NY? Yea right!
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)
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 ʌ and ɝ used when it looks like ɜ and ɚ, 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)
I'm going to remove this section in a couple of days if none of the assertions in it can be substantiated by reliable sources. I added a NPOV tag to the section, as well. -- AaronS 02:27, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
That's an interesting article. But, the discussion is really rather irrelevant, since the "influence" section assumes that California English is being exported through TV, movies, and radio. We all know that only a fraction of the television shows and movies filmed in California are actually set in California. Unless there is some scholarly or reliable source that can back up all of the strange and, in my opinion, unverifiable assumptions in this section, I think that it should be removed entirely. It serves no purpose other than pure fanboy cruft. -- AaronS 18:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
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)
The origin of "bolth" remains a mystery. It sporadically occurs throughout the United States and has been noted to occur sporadically in California, Illinois, Michigan, and New Jeresey.
Just thought I'd throw out a few more differences in pronunciation, although they may just be more prevalent in NorCal English. (My wife's family is from NY and they've pointed these out -- repeatedly...). - milk pronounced as "melk" - were pronounced as "war" - man pronounced as "mon," especially when used in place of dude or brah -- although that may just be an ironic fakey-jamaikey accent....
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)
The Bay Area has a much larger population than San Diego metro.
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)
i agree. although Californians do share ligutisic siliarities. Northern California and southern California are TWO SEPARATE AREAS. in fact the should be two different states!
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)
I also raise it when I drop the G in -ing forms, so even if there's no /ŋ/ there I raise as well. So I wind up saying stuff like "dreenkeen" (sampa = /dr\iNkin/) for drinking —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.0.136.131 ( talk) 01:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
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))
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)
User:A Doon just removed without explanation a bunch of facts about the difference between Northern and Southern California, most notably the fact that "the" is not used with highway numbers in Northern California ("the 5" and so on) and the Northern-California shibboleth "hella". Why? These are both well-known and notable facts about California English.
On the other hand, the fact that San Franciscans don't refer to their city by cute nicknames doesn't seem to me to be a particularly interesting or notable fact. Lots of cities are referred to as "the city". AJD 23:36, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
[[Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg -->|thumb|right|The San Francisco Warriors' "the City" logo]]
I strongly protest A Doon's deletion of "bucket" and "trippy," based on his/her not hearing these in 8 years California experience. I have lived in California about six times that long, and I know these terms to be correct, especially "trippy," which I would even say is common and ordinary. "Bucket" is also correct, but I will concede, less common. Fluffbrain 28 August
I don't know the arguments going about North and South variations, but there are significant differences between NorCal and SoCal language. There needs to be mention of this. For example, statements about how Californians refer to freeways with the word the is only a SoCal method, and is simply wrong for NorCal. Also, phrase-abbreviate words such as Hyphy and Hella is a phenomenon of NorCal. Fcsuper 05:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
"...California State Route 1, which runs down the coast, is called "Highway 1" or simply "one" in Northern California, but "PCH" (for Pacific Coast Highway) in Southern California, sometimes pronounced as "peach" but much more often as "the PCH"."" I was born and raised in SoCal and I never heard anyone refer to PCH as "The PCH". It is pretty much always called simply PCH or, sometimes, Coast Highway. The "The" designation is always used for freeways, not highways. For example, in "I Love LA", Randy Newman rolls down Imperial Highway, not "The Imperial Highway". And these highway names are not nicknames, they are actually legally defined routes that are separate from the numbered highway. For example, most of Imperial Highway is synonymous with Highway 90. But part of Hwy 90 runs separately as The Marina Freeway, while Imperial Hwy continues along a different route. Part of Pacific Coast Highway is not signed as Hwy 1 near the San Diego County line. And many parts of Hwy 1 have different names. In much of West LA and Santa Monica, it is actually Sepulveda Blvd. and Lincoln. People in NorCal don't call it PCH because it isn't called that there. From Santa Barbara to San Francisco it is mostly called Cabrillo Highway. North of San Francisco it is Shoreline Highway. This is true for freeways, too, "The Hollywood Freeway" is a confusing term for many because it actually runs along several different numbered freeways. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.181.152.165 ( talk) 05:42, 25 April 2007 (UTC).
As a third generation Southern Californian, I can attest that people in So Cal DO use THE in front of freeway numbers (it is correct to say the 101, the 405, etc.) As far as I know, Northern Californians do NOT. The information given in this article is incorrect. Also, PCH is just PCH. No THE. The information given directly above is correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.217.166.226 ( talk) 21:34, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
"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)
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)
Is this a SoCal thing? I ain’t never heard it — Wiki Wikardo 11:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
'Hapa' is certainly catching on in the SF Bay area. It's tied in part to the frequent use of race-specific census and fill-out-this-form questions, when so many respondents are now of mixed race. Also with the celebrity of various mixed-race individuals.
Overall, I agree with the article's linguistic contentions, but must admit I am not familiar with the scientific symbols. This may be anecdotal, but it's based upon my family living in the SF Bay Area for a full century. -Paul Carlson
Ive lived in SoCal all my life and I`ve heard it only a few times. All of them, it was a half asian or pacific islander and half european decent person saying it. My conclusion: valid, just like mulatto and mezcla; said only rarely, but stil valuable as a cultural associational term. Neotribal42 18:59, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
The passage as it now stands says that hapa can apply to FOBs. Eh? I'm guessing that it formerly said "hapa meaning half-Islander and FOB meaning Asian immigrant", and the hapa part got expanded without enough attention to making the rest of the sentence make sense. — Tamfang ( talk) 22:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
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)
--I deleted Long Beach as being part of SoCal's "South Bay". Long Beach is never considered "South Bay" here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.88.201.100 ( talk) 21:12, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
The text about Norcal, Socal and Frisco is relevant and factually correct. There was no reason to delete it. Similarly, there was no reason to substitute "Sactown" for "Sacto", since the list says explicitly, "and other nicknames. I've heard Sacto, but not Sactown - how about a cite? Until then, I'm putting it back the way it was. I'm using the revert procedure because it's easier, not because I'm accusing anyone of vandalism. And no, I'm not one of the no-revert-rule people. Cbdorsett 07:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I changed it to "sactown," because that nickname is used more frequently than "sacto." And if anyone complains, I'll change it to Sacramento's REAL nickname: nutSac. You can add sacto if you want, but sactown needs to stay. catgirl667 4/25/2007
i have heard scaramneto called suck a tomato. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.37.139.5 ( talk • contribs) 21:01, 30 December 2007
This is about slang. What is the significance of slang to California English, if there is such a thing? Rlitwin ( talk) 22:23, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
my two cents two years later: as i understand it, 'sacto' is the postal abbreviation from ages ago. badmachine ( talk) 07:14, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
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)
"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)
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)
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)
DISCLAIMER: I am neither a liguistic nor a historian so please interpret these comments accordingly.
The linguistic history on this page I found a bit curious. My understanding is that the original anglophone visitors/settlers in California (even before it was annexed by the U.S.) were predominantly Texans (and others from the southern areas of the U.S.). The Gold Rush, of course, changed things substantially but I have always understood from what I've read that this early history was still influential in California's development. I lived in the SF Bay Area for 4 years back in the 90s. Although most of the people I encountered had fairly neutral accents, most of the people I actually dealt with regularly were actually from other parts of the U.S. To the extent that I did meet people who actually were from families that had lived in California for some generations I tended to hear traits in their speech that are not described here. In particular I had two friends, one from the north bay and one from the Eureka area, both with similar accents (and similar to others I had met in California). Their accents although not "thick" by my standards were very much what I've always thought of as the "western" accent. That is, an accent that has a lot of similarities to the "southern" accents although not quite as distinct (notably these friends grew up saying "y'all" but stopped as they grew into their professional lives). These aspects of the accent and the dialect (and their history) don't seem to be discussed here. I was curious why.
In Southern California, I`ve never heard "Ya`ll" except by ebonics users and people from various Southern states. Also, there is no such thing as a "neutral" or nonexistant accent or dialect, they might not be an identifiable regionl accent, but they still are accents. Neotribal42 19:07, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
75.25.30.9 ( talk) 04:21, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
the overwhelming majority of written work regarding "hella", both by linguists and casual observers of popular culture alike, describe "hella" as characteristic of the Northern California lexicon, and describe the San Francisco Bay Area as it's place of birth. In so far as this word has entered the vocabulary of speakers outside the Bay Area, it has been through diffusion--and the further from the epicenter, the less frequent the usage. Thus, recent deletions of the passage referring to the word hella are not justified, nor has anyone, to my knowledge, referenced a source that would contradict the preponderance of referrable works (including those already cited) which support it's continued inclusion. Triggtay 06:25, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I've also heard (and used) "hell of" (said as one word: "hel-love") as a strictly ironic replacement for "hella" (I've been a Bay Area resident all my life).
As a NorCal resident for the very vast majority of my life, I just wanted to say thank god for those of you who have come out to say that SoCal doesn't use "hella"! I heard that recently from a friend, and I was devastated. Hella is a NorCal thing and should NOT move to SoCal, as I'm very sure most SoCal residents would like as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.135.113 ( talk) 05:32, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
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)
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)
Most insubstantial and useless article ever? 71.131.213.157 09:55, 15 September 2007 (UTC) I totally agree, I've lived in three states and most of America will agree that California and many other states simply don't have an accent. Sure, the surfer "dialect" originated in California, but absolutely no accent exists in more than 1% of the population in many states. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.214.195.138 ( talk) 02:52, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
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)
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)
"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. CüRlyTüRkey Talk Contribs 13:03, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
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:
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)
Are you saying you've never heard the term "NorCal"? I find that hard to believe, if you lived in SF for an extended period of time. "NorCal" and "SoCal" are probably used more by younger speakers, but I'd be surprised if any Bay Area resident hadn't at least heard those terms.
The over the hill/up the hill thing is more questionable. Where I grew up in the Berkeley area people would say "over the hill" sometimes to refer to the suburbs on the other side of the Berkeley/Oakland Hills ("Lamorinda") but I've never heard either of these used the way they're described in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.8.59.101 ( talk) 11:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
I've been in "SoCal" for thirty years (LA and San Diego) and have never heard anyone say "NorCal" or "NoCal". Most people just say "up north". I've only heard "SoCal" in advertising, mostly in print, since it's an obvious way to save space, but never in regular conversation. Another variant, "The Southland", I've never heard anyone but LA area newscasters say. 71.103.82.103 ( talk) 03:30, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
is this serious? not only is this a disaster from a linguistic point of view [none of those descriptions would fly in any linguistic paper], but the citation is to tvtropes whos accent pages are even worst than some of the things people get away with on wikipedia. And while i do see where Benwing is coming from, i would presume a fellow linguist to know that its the collection of all these qualities that separate this region from others. -- Sisgreenflag ( talk) 19:19, 3 July 2013 (UTC)