It is necessary to note the difference between articulation disorders and dialectical variations. There are several dialects of English spoken in the United States, influenced by socioeconomic status, geographic isolation, and other languages either brought to the U.S. by settlers or indigenous languages of the Native Americans. These social dialects are rule-governed and are not to be considered lesser than, but simply different from standard English. Examples of dialectical features that may be mistaken for articulation disorders include the 'r-lessness' of New York City speech in words like floor, here, and paper as well as the reduction of consonant clusters in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). If a word ends with two or more consonants such as in "cold", and is followed by another word that begins with a consonant such as "cuts", "cold" is shortened to "col", producing "col cuts". These features alone should not be treated as articulation disorders to be 'cured' by speech therapy. However, it is possible for a child with a dialectal variation to also have a communication disorder. It is important for a speech pathologist to be able to tell the difference (Oyer 170).