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Yooper English, also known as Upper Peninsula (U.P.) English,〔〕 is a variety of American English native to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (locally abbreviated as "U.P." and the basis for the endonym "Yooper"). Yooper English is considered a subset of North Central (or Upper Midwestern) English, an American regional dialect, or set of dialects, in transition. Although spoken throughout the U.P., it is primarily spoken in the western U.P., and not all residents use these features. Equally important is the fact that many of these features are found throughout the Upper Midwest, especially in northern Wisconsin and northern Minnesota and to a degree in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan. Yooper differs from standard English primarily because of the linguistic background of settlers to the area. The majority of people living in the Upper Peninsula are of either Finnish, French Canadian, Cornish, Scandinavian, German, or Native American descent. Yooper is so strongly influenced by these areas' languages that speakers from other areas may have difficulty understanding it. The Yooper dialect is also influenced by the Finnish language making it similar in character to the so-called "Rayncher speek" of the Mesabi Iron Range in northeast Minnesota. Almost half the Finnish immigrants to the U.S. settled in the Upper Peninsula, some joining Scandinavians who moved on to Minnesota. ==Phonology and phonetics== The Yooper accent follows the local North Central (Upper Midwest) pronunciation system, but with the following noticeable additions: *Tendency towards intonation that stresses the first syllable of each word, which is an influence of Finnish spoken by many immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. * sometimes becomes , for example, for Keweenaw. This is an example of language transfer, where immigrant languages have affected the variety of English spoken in the area. This feature is especially found among residents born before 1950 and in the western region of the U.P. *Replacement of dental fricatives, and , like in "this" and "thigh," with alveolar stops and , so ''then'' () becomes ''den'' (), etc. *The word "about" is sometimes pronounced as (a-boat) with a short a. *Replacing the "-ing" at the end of certain words with "-een" (doing becomes "do-een", happening becomes "happen-een", something becomes "some-theen"), or with the Cornish characteristic of just "-n" and ins "cook'n" or "walk'n". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Yooper English」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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