California English

{{short description|Dialect of English spoken in California}} {{Infobox language | name = California English | nativename = | region = United States<br>(California) | speakers = ? | familycolor = Indo-European | fam2 = Germanic | fam3 = West Germanic | fam4 = Ingvaeonic | fam5 = Anglo–Frisian | fam6 = Anglic | fam7 = English | fam8 = North American English | fam9 = American English | fam10 = Western American English | ancestor = Old English | ancestor2 = Middle English | ancestor3 = Early Modern English | isoexception = dialect | ietf = en-u-sd-usca | glotto = none | notice = IPA }}

'''California English''' (or '''Californian English''') is the collection of English dialects native to California, traditionally classified under General or Western American English.<ref>{{cite book |orig-date=1973 |last=Van Riper |first=William R. |chapter=General American: An Ambiguity |title=Dialect and Language Variation |publisher=Elsevier |editor1-last=Allen |editor1-first=Harold B. |editor2-last=Linn |editor2-first=Michael D. |year=2014 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NYKLBQAAQBAJ&q=%22various+labels+have+been+applied%22 |isbn=978-1-4832-9476-6 |pages=128–9}}</ref><ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Labov|Ash|Boberg|2006|p=148}}</ref>

==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.<ref name=PBS>{{cite web | url=https://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/californian/ | title=Do you speak American? - California English | publisher=PBS | access-date=October 28, 2013}}</ref> Overall, linguists who studied English around World War II tended to find few, if any, patterns unique to the state.<ref name="wolfram">{{cite book |editor=Walt Wolfram and Ben Ward|year=2006 |title=American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast |url=https://archive.org/details/americanvoicesho00wolf |url-access=limited |pages=[https://archive.org/details/americanvoicesho00wolf/page/n153 140], 234–236 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing |location=Malden, MA |isbn=978-1-4051-2108-8}}</ref><ref name="Do You"/> 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.<ref name="de Gruyter">Gordon, Matthew J. (2004). "The West and Midwest: phonology." Kortmann, Bernd, Kate Burridge, Rajend Mesthrie, Edgar W. Schneider and Clive Upton (eds). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=mtd3a-56ysUC& A Handbook of Varieties of English].'' Volume 1: Phonology, Volume 2: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 347.</ref> 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.<ref>Podesva, Robert J., Annette D'Onofrio, Janneke Van Hofwegen, and Seung Kyung Kim (2015). "Country ideology and the California Vowel Shift." ''Language Variation and Change'' 48: 28-45. Cambridge University Press.</ref><ref name="Do You">"[https://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/californian/# California English]." ''Do You Speak American?'' PBS. Macneil/Lehrer Productions. 2005.</ref> The possibility that this is, in fact, an age-specific variety of English is one hypothesis;<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Ward|2003|p=41}}: "fronted features in the young speakers seems to indicate a nascent chain shift in progress, [but] the lack of a true generational age range in the study precludes too strong of a conclusion. Alternatively Hinton et al. also suggest that possibility that the age-specific pattern could also be a function of age-grading, where the faddish speech style of California adolescents is adopted for its prestige value, only to be abandoned as adolescence wanes."</ref> however, certain features of this accent are intensifying and spreading geographically.<ref>Nycum, Reilly (May 2018). "In Defense of Valley Girl English". ''The Compass'' Vol. 1, No. 5, p. 28.</ref>

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,<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Bucholtz|first1=Mary <nowiki>et al</nowiki>|title=Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal|journal= Journal of English Linguistics|language=en|doi=10.1177/0075424207307780|s2cid=64542514|page=337|year=2007|volume=35|issue=4|url = http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6492j904}}</ref> particularly regarding the northern use of ''hella,'' and southern (but now nationally widespread) use of ''dude'', ''bro'', and ''like''.<ref>Bucholtz et al., 2007, 343.</ref>

==Urban coastal California English== Varieties of English most popularly associated with California largely correlate with the major urban areas along the coast. Notable is the absence of a distinct {{IPA|/ɔ/}} phoneme (the vowel sound of ''caught, stalk, clawed,'' etc.), which has completely merged with {{IPA|/ɑ/}} (the vowel sound of ''cot, stock, clod,'' etc.), as in most of the Western United States.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://web.stanford.edu/dept/linguistics/VoCal/dialectology.html|title=The Voices of California Project|website=web.stanford.edu|access-date=2019-03-14}}</ref> {|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;" |+ Vowels of California English ! rowspan="3" | ! rowspan="2" colspan="2" | Front ! colspan="4" | Central ! rowspan="2" | Back |- ! colspan="2" | {{small|unrounded}} ! colspan="2" | {{small|rounded}} |- ! {{small|lax}} ! {{small|tense}} ! {{small|lax}} ! {{small|tense}} ! {{small|lax}} ! {{small|tense}} ! {{small|tense}} |- ! Close | | {{IPA link|i}} | | | | {{IPA link|ʉ|u}} | |- ! Close-mid | {{IPA link|ɪ}} | {{IPA link|e|eɪ}} | {{IPA link|ə}}, {{IPA link|ʌ}} | | {{IPA link|ɵ̞|ʊ}} | {{IPA link|ɵ|oʊ}} | |- ! Open | {{IPA link|æ|ɛ}} | | colspan="2" | {{IPA link|ä|æ}} | | | {{IPA link|ɑ}} |- ! Diphthongs | colspan="7" | {{IPA|aɪ}}   {{IPA|ɔɪ}}   {{IPA|aʊ}} |}

A few phonological processes have been identified as being particular to urban and coastal California English. However, these vowel changes are by no means universal in Californian speech, and any single Californian's speech may only have some or none of the changes identified below. These sounds might also be found in the speech of some people from areas outside of California.<ref name="Conn">Conn, Jeff (2002). "An investigation into the western dialect of Portland Oregon." Paper presented at NWAV31. San Diego, CA.</ref> * Front vowels are raised before {{IPA|/ŋ/}}, so that the traditional "short ''a''" {{IPA|/æ/}} and "short ''i''" {{IPA|/ɪ/}} sounds are raised to the "long ''a''" {{IPA|[eɪ~e]}} and "long ''ee''" {{IPA|[i]}} sounds, respectively, when before the ''ng'' sound {{IPA|/ŋ/}}.<ref name="eckert"/> In other contexts, {{IPA|/ɪ/}} (as in ''bit, rich, quick,'' etc.) has a fairly open pronunciation, as indicated in the vowel chart here. Similarly, a word like ''rang'' {{IPA|/ɹæŋ/}} will often have the same vowel as ''rain'' {{IPA|/ɹeɪn/}} in California English, {{IPA|/ɹeɪŋ/}}, rather than the same vowel as ''ran'' {{IPA|/ɹæn/}} (phonetically articulated as {{IPA|[ɹɛən~ɹeən]}}; see below). In addition, {{IPA|/ɪŋ/}} may be pronounced with a raised vowel {{IPA|[iŋ]}}, or even {{IPA|[in]}} in a nonfinite verb ending,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Eckert |first=Penelope |author-link=Penelope Eckert |date=March 2008 |title=Where do ethnolects stop? |url=http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13670069080120010301 |journal=International Journal of Bilingualism |language=en |volume=12 |issue=1–2 |pages=25–42 |doi=10.1177/13670069080120010301 |s2cid=35623478 |issn=1367-0069|url-access=subscription }}</ref> so that ''thinking'' is pronounced {{IPA|/ˈθiŋkin/}} ('theenkeen'), rather than {{IPA|/ˈθɪŋkən/}} or {{IPA|/ˈθɪŋkɪŋ/}} and ''king'' is pronounced more like {{IPA|/kiŋ/}} ('keeng'), whereas ''bullying'' features two consecutive {{sc2|FLEECE}} vowels: {{IPA|/ˈbʊli.iŋ/}} ''bull-ee-eeng'' or {{IPA|/ˈbʊli.in/}} ''bull-ee-een'' (cf. GenAm {{IPA|/ˈbʊli.ɪŋ/}}, with {{sc2|FLEECE}} followed by {{sc2|KIT}}). As all vowels preceding {{IPA|/ŋ/}} are historically short, this does not lead to a loss of phonemic contrast. * Before {{IPA|/n/}} or {{IPA|/m/}} (as in ''ran'' or ''ram''), {{IPA|/æ/}} is raised and diphthongized to {{IPA|[ɛə]}} or {{IPA|[eə]}} (a widespread shift throughout most of American English). Elsewhere, {{IPA|/æ/}} is lowered and backed as a result of the California vowel shift (see below). * Uptalk, meaning a high-rising intonation in certain declarative sentences, is on the rise, for example in Southern Californian English. One 2014 study found uptalk used equally by Southern Californian men and women in 16% of declarative statements. However, women were twice as likely to use uptalk in order to hold the floor (a linguistic strategy similar to a filler or discourse marker).<ref>{{Cite conference|doi=10.1121/1.4863274|title = The use of high rise terminals in Southern Californian English|pages = 060001|series = Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics|year = 2014|last1 = Ritchart|first1 = Amanda|last2 = Arvaniti|first2 = Amalia|doi-access = free|hdl = 2066/220874|hdl-access = free}}</ref> *In Northern California generally, a tense {{IPA|[eɪ~e]}} is the pronunciation of {{IPA|/ɛ/}} before {{IPA|/g/}} in words such as ''egg, beg, leg'', which can thus be pronounced as /eɪg/ ''ayg,'' /beɪg/ ''bayg,'' /leɪg/ ''layg'', respectively.<ref>Stanley, Joseph A. (2022). Regional patterns in prevelar raising. American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage, 97(3), 374-411.</ref>

===California vowel shift=== {{also|Low back merger shift}}

[[File:California vowel shift.png|thumb|The California vowel shift. The phoneme transcribed with {{angbr IPA|o}} is represented in this article as {{angbr IPA|oʊ}}.<ref name="eckert">Eckert, Penelope. "[http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/vowels.html Vowel Shifts in California and the Detroit Suburbs]". Stanford University.</ref>|class=skin-invert-image]] One topic that has begun to receive much attention from scholars in recent decades has been the emergence of a vowel-based chain shift in California (with a similar pattern now reported nationwide and known as the low back merger shift). The image in this section illustrates the California vowel shift on a vowel chart. The vowel space of the image is a cross-section (as if looking at the interior of a mouth from a side profile perspective); it is a rough approximation of the space in a human mouth where the tongue is located in articulating certain vowel sounds (the left is the front of the mouth closer to the teeth, the right side of the chart being the back of the mouth). As with other vowel shifts, several vowels may be seen moving in a chain shift around the mouth. As one vowel encroaches upon the space of another, the adjacent vowel in turn experiences a movement in order to maximize phonemic differentiation.

For convenience, California English will be compared with a "typical" General American English, abbreviated "GA". {{IPA|/ɪ/}} is pulled towards {{IPA|[ɛ]}} (''bit'' and ''miss'' are sounding more like how other dialects realize ''bet'' and ''mess''), {{IPA|/ɛ/}} is pulled towards {{IPAblink|æ}} (''wreck'' and ''kettle'' are sounding more like ''rack'' and ''cattle''), {{IPA|/æ/}} is pulled towards {{IPAblink|ä}}, and {{IPA|/ɑ/}} and {{IPA|/ɔ/}} merge (''cot'' and ''stock'' are sounding more like ''caught'' and ''stalk''): the cot-caught merger.

Other vowel changes, whose relation with the shift is uncertain, are also emerging: except before {{IPA|/l/}}, {{IPA|/u/}} is moving through {{IPAblink|ʉ}} towards {{IPAblink|y}} (''rude'' and ''true'' are almost approaching ''reed'' and ''tree'', but with rounded lips), and {{IPA|/oʊ/}} is moving beyond {{IPA|[əʊ]}}. {{IPA|/ʊ/}} is moving towards {{IPAblink|ʌ}} (so that, for example, ''book'' and ''could'' in the California dialect start to sound, to a GA speaker, more like ''buck'' and ''cud''), {{IPA|/ʌ/}} is moving through {{IPAblink|ɜ}}, sometimes approaching {{IPAblink|ɛ}} (''duck, crust, what,'' etc. are sounding like how U.S. Southerners pronounce them, or like how other Americans might pronounce ''deck, crest, wet,'' etc.).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/vowels.html |title=Professor Penelope Eckert's webpage |publisher=Stanford.edu |access-date=2011-12-30}}</ref>

New vowel characteristics of the California shift are increasingly found among younger speakers. For example, while some characteristics such as the close central rounded vowel {{IPA|[ʉ]}} or close front rounded vowel {{IPA|[y]}} for {{IPA|/u/}} are widespread in Californian speech, the same high degree of fronting for {{IPA|/oʊ/}} is found predominantly among young speakers.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://web.stanford.edu/dept/linguistics/VoCal/sounds.html|title=The Voices of California Project|website=web.stanford.edu|access-date=2019-03-14}}</ref>

The effects of the California vowel shift have been noted in varieties of Californian Spanish, particularly in the Bay Area.<ref>{{cite journal|first1=Annie|last1=Helms | date = 22 February 2022 | title = Bay Area Spanish: regional sound change in contact languages | journal = Open Journal of Romance Linguistics | url = https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/isogloss/isogloss_a2022v8n2/isogloss_a2022v8n2a15.pdf | issue = 2 | volume =8 | access-date = 8 September 2023 }}</ref>

==Rural inland California English== One dialect of English, mostly reported in California's rural interior, inland from the major coastal cities,<ref name="Podesva">{{cite book |last1=Podesva |first1=Robert J. |title=Country ideology and the California Vowel Shift Language Variation and Change |date=2015 |publisher=Stanford University}}</ref> has been popularly described as a "country," "hillbilly," or "twang" variety.<ref name="Ornelas"/><ref>{{Harvcoltxt |Geenberg |2014a |p=iv}}</ref> This California English variety is reminiscent of and presumably related to Southern or South Midland U.S. accents,<ref name="Fractal">{{cite book |last1=Podesva |first1=Robert J. |title=The California Vowel Shift and Fractal Recursivity in an Inland, Non-Urban Community |date=September 2014 |publisher=Stanford University |url=https://stanford.edu/class/linguist159/restricted/readings/Podesva_etal_2014}}</ref> mostly correlated with white, outdoors-oriented speakers of the Central Valley. It has been studied even as far north as Trinity County but could possibly extend farther,<ref name=Trinity /><ref name="Ornelas">Ornelas, Cris (2012). "[http://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/kern-county-accent-studied Kern County Accent Studied] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160610180055/http://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/kern-county-accent-studied |date=2016-06-10 }}." 23 ABC News. E. W. Scripps Company.</ref> and as far south as Kern County (metropolitan Bakersfield), possibly extending as far south as eastern San Diego County. Similar to the nonstandard accents of the South Midland and Southern United States, speakers of such towns as Redding and Merced have been found to use the word ''anymore'' in a positive sense and the verb ''was'' in place of the standard English plural verb ''were''.<ref>King, Ed (2012). "[https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/august/california-dialect-linguistics-080612.html Stanford linguists seek to identify the elusive California accent]". ''Stanford Report''. Stanford University.</ref> Related other features of note include the ''pin–pen'' merger,<ref name=Fractal /><ref name=Trinity /><ref name=Geenberg /><ref name="Labov">{{Harvcoltxt|Labov|Ash|Boberg|2006|p=279}}</ref> ''fill–feel'' merger, and ''full–fool'' merger.<ref name="Ornelas"/>

The Great Depression's westward Dust Bowl migrations of settlers into California from the Southern United States, namely from Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas,<ref name="Trinity">{{Harvcoltxt |Geenberg |2014a }}</ref> is the presumable cause of this rural white accent's presence in California's Central Valley.<ref name=Fractal /><ref>{{Harvcoltxt |Geenberg |2014a |pp=4, 14}}</ref> Rural northern California was also settled by Oklahomans and Arkansans, though perhaps more recently in the 1970s and 1980s, due to the region's timber industry boom.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt |Geenberg |2014a |pp=182–3}}</ref> However, even in a single town, any given individual's identification with working and playing outdoors versus indoors appears to be a greater determiner of this accent than the authenticity of the individual's Southern heritage.<ref name="Geenberg">{{Harvcoltxt |Geenberg |2014b}}</ref> For example, this correlates with less educated rural men of northern California documented as raising {{IPA|/ɛ/}} in a style similar to the Southern drawl.<ref name=Trinity /> Overall, among those who orient toward a more town lifestyle, features of the California Vowel Shift are more prominent, but not to the same extent as in urban coastal communities such as San Jose.<ref name=Podesva /> By contrast, among those who orient toward a more country lifestyle, the Southern features are more prominent, but some aspects of the California Vowel Shift remain present as well.<ref name=Fractal /><ref name=Geenberg />

==Mission brogue (San Francisco)== {{anchor|Mission brogue}} The Mission brogue is a disappearing accent spoken within San Francisco, mostly during the 20th century in the Mission District. It sounds distinctly like New York and possibly Boston accents, due to a large number of Irish Americans migrating from those two East Coast cities to the Mission District in the late 19th century.<ref name="DeCamp">{{cite book|title=The Pronunciation of English in San Francisco|last1=DeCamp|first1=David|date=1953|publisher=University of California, Berkeley|pages=549–569}}</ref> It is today spoken only by some of the oldest Irish American and possibly Jewish residents of the city. From before the 1870s to the 1890s, Irish Americans were the largest share of migrants coming to San Francisco,<ref name=DeCamp /> the majority arriving by way of Northeastern U.S. cities like New York and Boston,<ref name="Hall-Lew SF variation">{{cite book |last1=Hall-Lew |first1=Lauren |title=Ethnicity and Phonetic Variation in a San Francisco Neighborhood |date=September 2009 |publisher=Stanford University}}</ref><ref name="SF Myth">{{cite news |last1=Veltman |first1=Chloe |title=Why the Myth of the 'San Francisco Accent' Persists |url=https://www.kqed.org/news/11719871/why-the-myth-of-the-san-francisco-accent-persists |access-date=27 November 2019 |work=KQED News}}</ref><ref name=DeCamp /> thus bringing those cities' ways of speaking with them.<ref name="SF Myth"/> In San Francisco, the Mission District quickly became a predominantly Irish Catholic neighborhood,<ref name="Back East">{{cite book |last1=Hall-Lew |first1=Lauren |title="I went to school back East... in Berkeley"1:San Francisco English and San Francisco Identity |date=2008 |url=https://www.academia.edu/2807255}}</ref><ref name="SF Myth"/> and its local dialect became associated with all of San Francisco as a way to contrast it with the rest of California.<ref name="Back East"/> Sounding like a "real San Franciscan" therefore once meant sounding "like a New Yorker",<ref name="Back East"/> the speakers said to "talk like Brooklynites".<ref name=DeCamp /> Other names included the "south of the Slot" (referring to the cable car track running down Market Street)<ref name="Back East"/> or "south of Market" accent.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Nolte |first1=Carl |title=How to Talk Like a San Franciscan |url=https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/How-to-Talk-Like-a-San-Franciscan-3371767.php |access-date=27 November 2019 |work=SFGATE |date=28 February 2012}}</ref>

Pronunciation features of this accent included: * Th-stopping<ref name=DeCamp /><ref name="Back East"/> * No cot–caught merger, with {{IPAc-en|ɔː|}} being raised and accompanied with an inglide, so as to produce a vowel sound approximating {{IPA|[oə]}}<ref name=DeCamp /><ref name="Back East"/> * Non-rhoticity<ref name=DeCamp /><ref name="Back East"/> ** The use of {{IPA|[əɪ]}} for {{IPAc-en|ɜːr|}} before unvoiced consonants such that {{sc2|NURSE}} would have almost the same vowel sound as "choice"<ref name=DeCamp /><ref name="Back East"/> * Glottal stop, {{IPAblink|ʔ}}, instead of {{IPAc-en|t|}} before syllabic {{IPAc-en|əl|}} such as in "bottle";<ref name=DeCamp /> this and all the above features were reminiscent of a New York accent * Possible {{sc2|TRAP–BATH}} split, reminiscent of older Boston English<ref name=DeCamp /><ref name="Back East"/>

Overall, starting in the latter half of the 20th century, San Francisco has been undergoing dialect levelling towards the broader regional Western American English,<ref name="Hall-Lew SF variation"/><ref>{{cite news |last1=Graff |first1=Amy |title=Is there a San Francisco accent? The answer may have changed over the years |url=https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-accent-California-speech-dialect-sf-12966260.php |access-date=27 November 2019 |work=SFGATE |date=June 7, 2018}}</ref> for example: younger Mission District speakers now exhibit a full cot–caught merger, show the vowel shift of urban coastal Californians, and front the {{sc2|GOOSE}} and {{sc2|GOAT}} vowels.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hall-Lew |first1=Lauren |title=San Francisco English and the California Vowel Shift |date=August 2015 |publisher=The University of Edinburgh |url=https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/21806704/Hall_Lew_etal_2015_ICPhS_paper.pdf |access-date=27 November 2019}}</ref>

==Other varieties== Certain varieties of Chicano English are also native to California, sometimes even being spoken by non-Latino Californians.<ref>Take Two (2013). "[http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2013/01/17/30118/do-californians-have-an-accent/ Map: Do Californians have an accent? Listen to some examples and add your own]." Southern California Public Radio.</ref><ref>{{Harvcoltxt |Guerrero | 2014 | pp = 56–7 }}</ref> One example is East Los Angeles Chicano English, which has been influenced by both Californian and African American Vernacular English.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt |Guerrero | 2014 | pp = 54 }}</ref>

The coastal urban accent of California traces many of its features back to Valleyspeak: a social dialect arising in the 1980s among a particular white youthful demographic in the San Fernando Valley, including Los Angeles.

Boontling is a jargon or argot spoken in Boonville, California, with only about 100 speakers today.<ref>Rawles, Myrtle R. (1966); "'Boontling': Esoteric Language of Boonville, California." In ''Western Folklore,'' Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 93–103. California Folklore Society [Western States Folklore Society].</ref>

==Lexical overview== The popular image of a typical southern California speaker often conjures up images of the so-called Valley girls popularized by the 1982 hit song by Frank and Moon Zappa, or "surfer-dude" speech made famous by movies such as ''Fast Times at Ridgemont High''. While many phrases found in these extreme versions of California English from the 1980s may now be considered passé, certain words such as ''awesome'', ''totally'', ''for sure'', ''harsh'' (verb), ''gnarly'', and ''dude'' have remained popular in California and have spread to a national, even international, level.

A common example of a northern Californian<ref>"However, science isn't all that sets northern California apart from the rest of the world," Sendek wrote. "The area is also notorious for the creation and widespread usage of the English slang 'hella', which typically means 'very', or can refer to a large quantity (e.g. 'there are hella stars out tonight')." [https://www.foxnews.com/science/mega-giga-tera-and-now-the-hella]</ref> colloquialism is ''hella'' (from "(a) hell of a (lot of)", and the euphemistic alternative ''hecka'') to mean "many", "much", "so" or "very".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://ling.ucsc.edu/Jorge/waksler.html |title=Jorge Hankamer WebFest |publisher=Ling.ucsc.edu |access-date=2011-12-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051031034539/http://ling.ucsc.edu/Jorge/waksler.html |archive-date=2005-10-31 |url-status=dead }}</ref> It can be used with both count and mass nouns. For example: "I haven't seen you in ''hella'' long"; "There were ''hella'' people there"; or "This guacamole is ''hella'' good". The word can be casually used multiple times in multiple ways within a single sentence. Pop culture references to "hella" are common, as in the song "Hella Good" by the band No Doubt, which hails from southern California, and "Hella" by the band Skull Stomp, who come from northern California.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858843024/ |title=Lyrics | Skull Stomp - Hella |publisher=SongMeanings |date=2008-11-02 |access-date=2011-12-30}}</ref>

California, like other Southwestern states, has borrowed many words from Spanish, especially for place names, food, and other cultural items, reflecting the linguistic heritage of the Californios as well as more recent immigration from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. High concentrations of various ethnic groups throughout the state have contributed to general familiarity with words describing (especially cultural) phenomena. For example, a high concentration of Asian Americans from various cultural backgrounds, especially in urban and suburban metropolitan areas in California, has led to the adoption of the word ''hapa'' (itself originally a Hawaiian borrowing of English "half"<ref>Mary Kawena Pukui, Samuel H. Elbert & Esther T. Mookini, ''The Pocket Hawaiian Dictionary'' (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983)</ref>) to mean someone of mixed European/Islander or Asian/Islander heritage.

In 1958, essayist Clifton Fadiman pointed out that northern California is the only place (besides England and the area surrounding Ontario and the Canadian Prairies) where the word ''chesterfield'' is used as a synonym for ''sofa'' or ''couch''.<ref>Fadiman, Clifton. ''Any Number Can Play''. 1958.</ref>

===Freeways=== In Southern California, freeways are often referred to either by name or by route number but with the addition of the definite article "the", such as "the 405 North", "the 99" or "the 605 (Freeway)". This usage has been parodied in the recurring ''Saturday Night Live'' sketch "The Californians".<ref>{{ cite news | url = http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2012/04/saturday_night_lives_the_calif.html | title = Saturday Night Live's 'The Californians': Traffic's one big soap opera (video) | last = Rose | first = Joseph | newspaper = The Oregonian | location = Portland, Oregon | date = April 16, 2012 | access-date = December 3, 2013 }}</ref> In contrast, typical Northern California usage omits the definite article.<ref>{{cite news |first=Mark |last=Simon |title='The' Madness Must Stop Right Now |url=http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/The-Madness-Must-Stop-Right-Now-2714960.php |work=San Francisco Chronicle |date=2000-06-30 |access-date=2012-11-19 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first=Mark |last=Simon |title=Local Lingo Keeps 'The' Off Road |url=http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Local-Lingo-Keeps-The-Off-Road-Readers-gladly-2714567.php |work=San Francisco Chronicle |date=2000-07-04 |access-date=2012-11-19 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first=Mark |last=Simon |title=S.F. Wants Power, Not The Noise / Brown rejects docking floating plant off city |url=http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Wants-Power-Not-The-Noise-Brown-rejects-2746508.php |work=San Francisco Chronicle |date=July 29, 2000 |access-date=June 13, 2017 }}</ref> When Southern California freeways were built in the 1940s and early 1950s, local common usage was primarily the freeway name preceded by the definite article, such as "the Hollywood Freeway".<ref name="Geyer"/> It took several decades for Southern California locals to start to commonly refer to the freeways with the numerical designations, but usage of the definite article persisted. For example, it evolved to "the 605 Freeway" and then shortened to "the 605".<ref name="Geyer">{{cite journal | journal=American Speech | volume=76 |date=Summer 2001 | pages=221–224 | first =Grant | last=Geyer | title='The' Freeway in Southern California | issue=2 | doi=10.1215/00031283-76-2-221| s2cid=144010897 }}</ref>

{{Multiple image | direction = horizontal | align = center | image1 = LA freeway 2009.jpg | image2 = Interstate80westernend.jpg | caption1 = Signage at the 110 Freeway interchange in Los Angeles, with the leftmost sign for the 101 freeway north listing both its name, the Hollywood Freeway, as well as its destination, Ventura | caption2 = Signage at the I-80 interchange in San Francisco, with the leftmost sign for US101 north listing only its destination, the Golden Gate Bridge | total_width = 600 | header = Signage along U.S. Route 101 reflects the different lexicon usage between Southern and Northern California. }}

==See also== {{Portal|California}} * Hyphy * North American English regional phonology * Spanglish * Valspeak * Languages of California ** {{annotated link|Spanish language in California}} ** {{annotated link|Chicano English}} ** Caló {{en dash}} Argot of Spanish spoken in the Southwestern United States ** Indigenous languages of California {{en dash}} Native languages spoken in California

== References == === Citations === {{Reflist}}

=== General and cited sources === {{refbegin}} * {{cite book |last1=Geenberg |first1=Katherine |title=The Other California: Marginalization and Sociolinguistic Variation in Trinity County |type=PhD |date=August 2014a |publisher=Stanford University |url=https://purl.stanford.edu/vn017qw5012 }} * {{cite book |last1=Geenberg |first1=Katherine |title=What it means to be Norcal Country: Variation and marginalization in rural California |date=2014b |publisher=Stanford University }} * {{cite journal | last1 = Guerrero | first1 = Armando Jr. | year = 2014 | title = 'You Speak Good English for Being Mexican' East Los Angeles Chicano/a English: Language & Identity | url = http://escholarship.org/uc/item/94v4c08k | journal = Voices | volume = 2 | issue = 1 | pages = 53–62 }} * {{citation |last1=Labov |first1=William |author1-link=William Labov |last2=Ash |first2=Sharon |last3=Boberg |first3=Charles |year=2006 |title = The Atlas of North American English |location=Berlin |publisher=Mouton-de Gruyter |isbn=3-11-016746-8 }} * {{citation |last=Ward|first=Michael |chapter = The California Movement, etc. |title = Portland Dialect Study: The Fronting of /ow, u, uw/ in Portland, Oregon |publisher=Portland State University |year=2003|pages=39–45 |chapter-url = http://www.pds.pdx.edu/Publications/Ward.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070729111520/http://www.pds.pdx.edu/Publications/Ward.pdf |archive-date=2007-07-29 }} {{refend}}

==Further reading == * {{cite book |last=Ladefoged |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Ladefoged |title=Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages |year=2003 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing}} * {{cite book |last=Metcalf |first=Allan |title=How We Talk: American Regional English Today |year=2000 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin}} * {{cite book |last=Romaine |first=Suzanne |author-link=Suzanne Romaine |title=Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics |year=2000 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}

==External links== * [https://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/californian/ PBS.org: "Do you speak American?" − ''California English''] * [http://www.stanford.edu/~eckert/vowels.html Stanford.edu: Penelope Eckert Bolg − Vowel Shifts] * [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/home.html Phonological Atlas of North America] * [https://web.archive.org/web/20051031034539/http://ling.ucsc.edu/Jorge/waksler.html USC.edu: "A ''hella'' new specifier"] by Rachelle Waksler, discussing usage of "hella" * [http://language-culture.binghamton.edu/symposia/7/index.html Binghamton.edu: "Word Up: Social Meanings of Slang in California Youth Culture"] — by Mary Bucholtz Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara Department of Linguistics, includes discussion of "hella"

Category:American English Category:Culture of California Category:Cultural history of California Category:Languages of California Category:Northern California Category:Southern California Category:Vowel shifts