section_path: Dialects, accents and varieties/North America
section_name: North America
paragraph_text: North America
  
  Due to the relatively strong degree of mixing, mutual accommodation, and koinéization that occurred during the colonial period, North American English has traditionally been perceived as relatively homogeneous, at least in comparison with British dialects. However, modern scholars have strongly opposed this notion, arguing that North American English shows a great deal of phonetic, lexical, and geographic variability. This becomes all the more apparent considering social, ethnolinguistic, and regional varieties such as African American English, Chicano English, Cajun English, or Newfoundland English. American accent variation is increasing at the regional level and decreasing at the very local level, though most Americans still speak within a phonological continuum of similar accents, known collectively as General American English (GA), with differences hardly noticed even among Americans themselves, including Midland and Western American English. In most American and Canadian English dialects, rhoticity (or r -fulness) is dominant, with non-rhoticity (or r -dropping) being associated with lower prestige and social class, especially since the end of World War II. This contrasts with the situation in England, where non-rhoticity has become the standard.
  
  The English language is far and away the most widely used in the United States. Its roots trace back to the British colonial era, which began with the settlement in present-day Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. While German was the predominant language among German immigrants, who arrived primarily in eastern Pennsylvania, English was ultimately widely adopted throughout the Thirteen Colonies that ultimately launched both the American Revolution and American Revolutionary War against the Kingdom of Great Britain, then ruled by King George III and establishing the United States as an independent sovereign nation in September 1783.
  
  Separate from General American English are American dialects with clearly distinct sound systems that have developed over time, including Southern American English, the English of the coastal Northeastern United States —including New York City English and Eastern New England English —and African-American Vernacular English; all of these, aside from certain subdialects of the American South, were historically non-rhotic.
  
  Canadian English varieties, except for those of the Atlantic provinces and perhaps Quebec, are generally considered to fall under the General American English continuum, although they often show raising of the vowels / aɪ / and / aʊ / before voiceless consonants and have distinct norms for writing and pronunciation as well. Atlantic Canadian English, notably distinct from Standard Canadian English, comprises Maritime English (or Maritimer English) and Newfoundland English. It was mostly influenced by British and Irish English, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and some Acadian French. Regions such as Miramichi and Cape Breton Island have a wide variety of phrases and words not spoken outside of their respective regions.
  
  In Southern American English, the most populous American "accent group" outside of General American English, rhoticity now strongly prevails, replacing the region's historical non-rhotic prestige. Southern accents are colloquially described as a "drawl" or "twang", being recognised most readily by the Southern Vowel Shift initiated by glide-deleting in the /aɪ/ vowel (e.g. pronouncing spy almost like spa), the "Southern breaking" of several front pure vowels into a gliding vowel or even two syllables (e.g. pronouncing the word "press" almost like "pray-us"), the pin–pen merger, and other distinctive phonological, grammatical, and lexical features, many of which are actually recent developments of the 19th century or later.
  
  Spoken primarily by working- and middle-class African Americans, African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is also largely non-rhotic and likely originated among enslaved Africans and African Americans influenced primarily by the non-rhotic, non-standard older Southern dialects. A minority of linguists, contrarily, propose that AAVE mostly traces back to African languages spoken by the slaves who had to develop a pidgin or Creole English to communicate with slaves of other ethnic and linguistic origins. AAVE's important commonalities with Southern accents suggest it developed into a highly coherent and homogeneous variety in the 19th or early 20th century. AAVE is commonly stigmatised in North America as a form of "broken" or "uneducated" English, as are white Southern accents, but linguists today recognise both as fully developed varieties of English with their own norms shared by large speech communities.