- Fred jumpedoff ofthe table.
Figure 7.1, put together by William Labov, Sharon Ash, and Charles
Boberg, illustrates the major regional dialects in North America:
How Do Dialects Develop?
When we look at the history of language, we find that all languages fit into spe-
cific language families. The largest of these is Indo-European, which includes
English, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Iranian, and Russian. About half of
the world’s population speaks an Indo-European language as their first language.
Research has shown that Indo-European emerged in the Transcaucus area of
eastern Anatolia about 6,000 years ago. Language itself predates Indo-Euro-
pean by many thousands of years, but we have not been able to look sufficiently
far into the past to trace its history beyond this point. Scholars generally agree
that Cro-Magnon man used language 40,000 years ago, but there is significant
disagreement over whether Neanderthals did. The question of when mankind
DIALECTS 221
FIG. 7.1. Major North American dialects. Reprinted fromThe Atlas of North American
Englishwith permission.