The dialect (方言) regions of the United arc most clearly marked along the Atlantic coast, where the earlier settlements (定居地) were created. There dialects can be defined: Northern, Midland, and Southern.

To some extent these regions save the traditional speech of southeastern and southern England, where most of the early colonists were born. The first settlers that arrived in Virginia (1607) and Massachusetts (1620) soon learned to adapt old words to new uses, but they were also pleased to borrow names from the local Indian languages for unknown trees, such as hickory and persimmon trees, and for unfamiliar animals, such as raccoons and woodchucks. Later they took words from other foreign settlers — the French and the Dutch.

Before the Declaration of Independence (1776), two-thirds of the immigrants (移民) had come from England, but after that date immigrants from Ireland arrived in large numbers. The Great Hunger of 1845-1852 drove 1.5 million Irish to seek homes in the New World, and the European Revolutions of 1848 drove as many Germans to settle in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. After the close of the American Civil War in 1865, millions of Scandinavians, Slavs, and Italians crossed the ocean and eventually settled mostly in the North Central and Upper Midwest states. In some areas of South Carolina and Georgia, Africans working on rice and cotton plantations developed a language called Gullah, which made use of many structural and vocabulary features of their native languages.

The speech of the Atlantic Seaboard shows far greater differences in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary than that of any area in the North Central states, the Upper Midwest, the Rocky Mountains, or the Pacific Coast. Today, urbanization, quick transport, and television have decreased some dialectal differences in the United States. On the other hand, immigrant groups have introduced new varieties in which the influence of their native languages is evident, and some immigrant languages are widely spoken.

Most of time black and white appears as opposites. White means light and purity(纯洁),while black is darkness and evil. But it is not always true. Sometimes the words are used differently.

White hats and black hats represent the traditional meaning of the words. The hats are used to tell the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in American western movies. Now the tradition of white hats and black hats is no longer a part of movie making,but you still hear the expression when people talk about good guys and bad guys. “A black sheep” is a person who does things that are not accepted,who breaks tradition. “A black sheep” is rejected(被排斥)because he brings shame to his group. A family may have a member who is thought of as “a black sheep”,a person who is not welcome at family gatherings.

Black is also used in some expressions that describe good things. Being “in the black” for example,is a good thing for anyone. It is a business expression that means a company is making money. When someone says his business is “in the red”,he means it is losing money.

White usually means something good. A “white collar” job,for example,is the kind of job many people want. It is a job where you work at a desk,using your brain instead of your muscles. Sometimes white is used in an expression that is not good. “Whitewash” is such an expression. At first “whitewash” meant to paint over something with a white paint to make it look better. But now “whitewash” has a different meaning: to hide or cover up mistakes or failures.

Types of Words

There are tens of thousands of words in the English language, and along with social and scientific progress, new words appear frequently.【小题1】But we need not be worried about the impossibility of learning all of them, for only a few thousand words are used by ordinary people for ordinary purpose. These are the most useful words, or the common words, words that form core of the English vocabulary. They are the words we must learn and remember.

【小题2】Among these are political, legal, scientific, technical, business and literary words. It would be good for us to know some very useful words in various fields, and many of the words related to the field we will work in or be associated with.【小题3】

There is another type of words: those used by people who are not well educated or by people of special groups, such as people of a particular region or an age group.【小题4】Some of them may continue to be used, become acceptable to all people and join the common words. Among these words are slang, jargon, dialectal and obsolete words.【小题5】We need to understand them but should avoid using them, unless in special situation.