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Whitsoot English is a dialect of American English spoken in the metropolitan area of Whitsoot, Oregon.
Because of the Whitsoot area's historical isolation from larger urban centers like San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, the dialect has developed a number of unusual features over the city's century-and-a-half history, although the larger California English and Pacific Northwest English dialects have also influenced it in recent decades. The dialect is often stereotyped, especially by people from northern Oregon, as provincial and unsophisticated, but it is also associated with positive stereotypes such as being hardworking, thoughtful, and trustworthy.
Phonology
Whitsoot English is distinguished by the following phonological features:
- Like most American English, Whitsoot English is firmly rhotic; /r/ is realized as the typical Western American [ɻ~ɻʷ].
- The California Shift, which has spread upwards from California into much of Oregon and Washington, involves a counterclockwise shifting of multiple front vowel sounds:
- /ɪ/ is lowered to something like [ɛ~ɛ̝].
- /ɛ/ is lowered to [æ].
- /æ/ is lowered to [a].
- The cot-caught merger, through which the vowel sounds /ɑː/ and /ɔː/ merge. This feature is common throughout most of North America besides the Upper Midwest, South, and Northeast. The resulting quality is something like [ɑ~ɒ].
- The pin-pen merger, through which /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ merge before /n/ and /m/. The merged quality also participates in the California Shift, and may be realized anywhere from [ɛ̝] to [æ]. This feature is best known as part of Southern American English, but also exists elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest - see Pacific Northwest English.
- /ʊ/ is fronted to something like [ʊ̈], and /ʌ/ to [ɜ~ə]. This fronting is common elsewhere in the Western and Southern United States.
- /uː/, however, stays fairly backed in the mouth, around [u] or [ʊu] at the furthest front. Within the United States, this feature is mostly reserved to the Upper Midwest and Northeast and to certain ethnicity-specific dialects such as African-American Vernacular English and Chicano English.
- The sew-so split, a feature unique to Whitsoot English, which involves /oʊ/ splitting into two phonemes:
- A fronted vowel whose quality can range from [ɜʊ~əʊ] to [øː~øʉ]. This is used after coronal consonants except before /l/ and labial consonants (soak, note, stoat, dose, joke - but not soul, dope, Toby), in open syllables (sew, mow, row), and in conjugations of these morphologically open syllables (sewed, mown, rows - but not soda, moan, or rose).
- A backed, monophthongized vowel [oː~ɔ̝ː], represented here with the symbol /o/. This is used in all other phonetic environments (boast, loan, roach, cone), in some function words where the fronted vowel would be expected (so, though, ago), and in many foreign or novel words (Osaka, lo mein, Kodak).
- Younger speakers produce a greater phonetic difference between the two phonemes: fronter realizations of /oʊ/ and higher realizations of /o/.
- Some raising of /æ/ before nasals and /g/, but unlike most of the Western United States, it only raises to about [æə] or [ɛ̞ə] at the highest.
- Limited to nonexistent raising of front vowels before /ŋ/ - for example, sing is just [sɛ̝ŋ] instead of [siŋ]. This may be changing with the youngest speakers, however; more research is needed.
- Limited to nonexistent Canadian raising of either /aɪ/ or /aʊ/. This may also be changing with the youngest speakers.
- The Whitsoot Diphthong Shift, a clockwise chain shift of rising diphthongs:
- First, /eɪ/ loses its glide and may raise slightly, to [eː~ɪː]. Second, /aʊ/ raises to [æʊ~eo]. Both of these features are typical in the Western United States.
- Third, however, /aɪ/ fronts to [ai~æɪ]. This feature is rare outside the Upper Midwest.
- Fourth, and most unusually, /ɔɪ/ is unrounded and often lowered to [ʌɪ~ɑi]. A well-known billboard near the edge of Whitsoot, which greets new residents and is a common location for photographs by tourists, says "Movin' to Whitsoot? Ya made a good chice!" The sociolinguistics of this feature are complicated: it is more common among men and the working-classes, but also among younger speakers, and thus it may be increasing in frequency. Field research shows that it is widely seen as a "fun-loving" and "friendly" feature.
- Initial /θ/ often voices to /ð/, especially intervocalically, when the consonant after the next vowel is also voiced. For example, thanks may be pronounced [ðaŋks], which is written "the-anks" or "th'anks" in eye dialect as a hallmark of Whitsoot English. Thick and thin [θɛ̝k ən ðɛ̝n], written as "thick 'n then", is another common shibboleth. However, this is considered a particularly stigmatized feature and is less frequent among younger speakers.
Grammar
Whitsoot English features the following grammatical peculiarities:
- Positive anymore, which is also found throughout much of the southern Midwest and northwestern United States.
- Omission of the verb "to be" in constructions such as "the car needs washed", which has a similar geographic distribution.
- Positive "any", which is a generic quantifier meaning "at least one". It formed in a similar process to positive "anymore", namely by the word "not" in sentences like "I don't go there anymore" being dropped to create a new meaning.
- Compare "She doesn't want any books" to "she wants any books" - the second sentence implies that the person wants a number of books greater than zero (though it does not imply that she is desperate and not picky, as the stressed "she wants any books" would).
- Use of some prepositions like adjectives, such as between ("conflicted, stressed"), along ("prudent, culturally aware, on the right track in life"), without ("ascetic, minimalist"). These novel adjectives can even be conjugated ("He's alonger than he was last year").
- Meena, a modal word derived from "mean to", which implies a weak desire to do something eventually, but not in the near future. It does not conjugate ("She meena visit Hawaii" - She would like to visit Hawaii one day, but it's alright if it never happens).
Vocabulary
Some terms from Chinook Jargon are in use in Whitsoot, but as it lies at the fringe of the Pacific Northwest, they are not as common or as numerous as in northern Oregon and Washington.
However, many slang terms exist that developed independently among the industrial, hunting, fishing, and lumberjack communities of the Whitsoot area. These include:
- ball - okay, satisfactory, average
- berserk - a harmless but loud animal, person, or object, particularly a guard animal that may alert its owner to a person's presence
- cho (/t͡ʃoː/) - angry, violent, animalistic (unknown etymology)
- cough - pay, wages, rations
- to cub - to deceive, to appear superficially safe or nonthreatening
- nervous - exciting, exhilarating (for a situation or activity, not a person or animal)
- normal - barren, denuded, shaven, cleared of foliage or debris
- patrol - a hunter
- scoy - organized, in order, clean, professional (from the Japanese sugoi)
- springy - attractive, cute
Other terminology that groups Whitsoot English with certain regions, and distances it from others, includes:
- soda to refer to a soft drink, as in California, parts of the Midwest, and the Northeast, versus pop in most of the Midwest and Northwest and coke in the South
- you guys to refer to multiple people, as in most of the United States, versus y'all in the South, yinz in Western Pennsylvania, and youse in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York City
- sparky to refer to an insect with a glowing body, versus firefly in most of the West and Northeast and lightning bug in the Midwest and South
- garden to refer to the grassy strip in between the street and sidewalk, versus many other terms around the country