Appalachian English

This article has an unclear citation style. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation and footnoting. (April 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Appalachian English
Region	Southern United States, Appalachia
Ethnicity	Appalachians
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Ingvaeonic Anglo–Frisian Anglic English North American English American English Older Southern American English Appalachian English
Early forms	Old English Middle English Early Modern English
Writing system	Latin (English alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	appa1236
Appalachia (in white) overlaid with dialect regions defined by the 2006 ANAE. Southern American English is the dominant dialect in the region.

Appalachian English is American English native to the Appalachian mountain region of the Eastern United States. Historically, the term Appalachian dialect refers to a local English variety of southern Appalachia, also known as Smoky Mountain English or Southern Mountain English in American linguistics.^[1] This variety is both influential upon and influenced by the Southern U.S. regional dialect, which has become predominant in central and southern Appalachia today, while a Western Pennsylvania regional dialect has become predominant in northern Appalachia,^[2] according to the 2006 Atlas of North American English (ANAE). The ANAE identifies the "Inland South", a dialect sub-region in which the Southern U.S. dialect's defining vowel shift is the most developed,^[3] as centering squarely in southern Appalachia: namely, the cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Greenville, South Carolina; and Asheville, North Carolina.^[4] All Appalachian English is rhotic and characterized by distinct phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. It is mostly oral but its features are also sometimes represented in literary works.

Extensive research has been conducted since the 1930s to determine the origin of the Appalachian dialect. One popular theory is that the dialect is a preserved remnant of 16th-century (or "Elizabethan") English in isolation,^[5][6] though a far more accurate comparison would be to 18th-century (or "colonial") English.^[7] Regardless, the Appalachian dialect studied within the last century, like most dialects, actually shows a mix of both older and newer features,^[7] with particular Ulster Scots immigrant influences.^[8]

Appalachian English has long been a popular stereotype of Appalachians and is criticized both inside and outside the speaking area as an inferior dialect, which is often mistakenly attributed to supposed laziness, lack of education, or the region's relative isolation. American writers throughout the 20th century have used the dialect as the chosen speech of uneducated and unsophisticated characters, though research has largely disproven these stereotypes; however, due to such prejudice, the use of the Appalachian dialect is still often an impediment to educational and social advancement.^[9]

Along with these pejorative associations, there has been much debate as to whether Appalachian English constitutes a dialect separate from the American Southern regional dialect, as it shares many core components with it. Research reveals that Appalachian English also includes many grammatical components similar to those of the Midland regional dialect, as well as several unique grammatical, lexical, and phonological features of its own.^[10]