United States

General American

also: Standard American English

The broad accent associated with national US broadcasting and most of the inland north and west. A reference point rather than a single regional variety.

Southern American English

also: Southern Drawl

The dialects of the US South, characterised by the Southern Vowel Shift, the pin-pen merger, and a distinct lexical tradition.

African American Vernacular English

also: AAVE, Black English, Ebonics

A widespread English variety with a coherent grammatical system, including aspectual habitual "be" and the zero copula. Spoken across the African American community throughout the United States.

New York English

also: NYC English, New Yorkese

The English of New York City and surrounding areas. Marked by the famous tense-lax split of short-a, raised /ɔ/, and (historically) non-rhoticity.

Eastern New England English

also: Boston English

The traditional English of Boston and eastern New England. Non-rhotic in conservative speech, with the cot-caught merger and the famously Boston-broad short-a.

Appalachian English

The English of the Appalachian mountains across West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and western North Carolina. Preserves several archaic Scotch-Irish features lost in other US varieties.

Cajun English

The English of the Cajun communities of southern Louisiana, descended from generations of French-English bilingualism. Distinguished by intonation, vowel realisations, and lexical borrowings from Cajun French.

Chicano English

also: Mexican-American English

A native English variety spoken in Mexican-American communities of the US Southwest, particularly Los Angeles. Despite its name, most speakers are monolingual English speakers.

Hawaiian Pidgin

also: Hawaii Creole English, Pidgin

An English-based creole that emerged on the plantations of Hawaiʻi in the late 19th century. Now native to a substantial share of the Hawaiʻi-born population, with influences from Hawaiian, Portuguese, Cantonese, and Japanese.

Chicano Spanish

also: Mexican-American Spanish, US Spanish

The Spanish of Mexican-American communities across the US Southwest. Diverse and bilingual; shaped by long contact with English and characterised by code-switching (Spanglish).

Cuban-American Spanish

also: Miami Spanish

The Spanish of the Cuban-American community of Florida, especially Miami. A Caribbean Spanish variety with substantial English contact features and a distinctive bilingual code-switching register.

Cajun French

also: Louisiana French, Français cadien

The French of the Cajun communities of southern Louisiana, descended from 18th-century Acadian settlers expelled from the Maritimes. Endangered, with active revitalisation through CODOFIL and the Louisiana French immersion programme.

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi

also: Hawaiian

The indigenous Polynesian language of the Hawaiian Islands. Co-official with English in Hawaiʻi and the focus of an ongoing revitalisation movement after near-extinction in the 20th century.

Diné Bizaad

also: Navajo

A Southern Athabaskan (Na-Dené) language spoken across the Navajo Nation in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. The most-spoken Indigenous language north of Mexico, with around 170,000 speakers.

Central Ojibwe

also: Anishinaabemowin, Chippewa

The largest Ojibwe variety, spoken across Ontario, Manitoba, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. An Algonquian language with a continuous oral tradition and recent literary growth.

Lakota

also: Lakȟótiyapi, Teton Sioux

A Western Siouan language spoken across the Sioux nations of the Great Plains, with major communities at Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Standing Rock. Distinct from Dakota in core vocabulary and pronouns.

Dakota

also: Dakhótiyapi, Santee-Sisseton

The eastern Siouan language closely related to Lakota. Spoken by the Santee, Sisseton-Wahpeton, and Yankton communities across Minnesota, the Dakotas, and southern Manitoba.

Mandan

also: Nuʼeta

A highly divergent Siouan language of the upper Missouri River, latterly spoken on the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota. Died with Edwin Benson in 2016, after Indrek Park's multi-year documentation with him; heritage teaching continues within the MHA Nation.

Eastern Cherokee

also: Kituwah, Tsalagi (Eastern Band)

The Cherokee of the Eastern Band in western North Carolina. Descended from the communities that escaped the 1838 Trail of Tears removal; spoken in the Qualla Boundary.

Western Cherokee

also: Otali, Cherokee Nation

The Cherokee of Oklahoma, descended from the communities forcibly removed from the Southeast in 1838. The basis of the modern Cherokee Nation's language programme and the Cherokee syllabary press.

Central Alaskan Yupʼik

also: Yugtun

The largest Yupʼik language, spoken across south-western Alaska. A sister language to Inuktitut within the Eskaleut family, with around 10,000 speakers.

Hopi

A Northern Uto-Aztecan language of the Hopi people of north-eastern Arizona. Around 5,000 speakers; the language famously analysed by Whorf in his work on linguistic relativity.

Shoshone

A Numic Uto-Aztecan language of the Great Basin, spoken by Shoshone communities across Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and California.

Seke

also: Tangbe

A Tamangic (Tibeto-Burman) language of five villages in Upper Mustang, Nepal, with roughly 700 speakers worldwide. A sizeable share of the community now lives in New York City, where about half of the diaspora speakers are concentrated in a single Brooklyn apartment building.

Choctaw

also: Chahta anumpa

A Muskogean language with two surviving communities — the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, descendants of the Trail-of-Tears removal. Around 10,000 speakers.

Muscogee (Creek)

also: Mvskoke

A Muskogean language of the Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole nations of Oklahoma and Florida. The historical lingua franca of the Southeastern Indigenous confederacy before forced removal.

Chickasaw

also: Chikashshanompa

A Muskogean language of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. Closely related to Choctaw; critically endangered with active revitalisation through the Chickasaw Nation Language Department.

Western Apache

also: Ndee biyáti

A Southern Athabaskan (Na-Dené) language of east-central Arizona, closely related to Navajo. Around 14,000 speakers across the White Mountain and San Carlos Apache reservations.

Tlingit

also: Lingít

A Na-Dené language of the Tlingit people of south-eastern Alaska and adjacent British Columbia and Yukon. Famous for its complex consonant system, including ejective fricatives.

Eyak

The sole non-Athabaskan member of the Athabaskan-Eyak branch of Na-Dené, spoken around the Copper River delta near Cordova, Alaska. Died with Marie Smith Jones in 2008; thoroughly documented by Michael Krauss, whose materials now support a second-language revival.

Yuchi

also: Euchee, Tsoyaha

A language isolate of north-eastern Oklahoma, around Sapulpa within the Muscogee Nation, originally spoken in the south-eastern United States before removal. At most a handful of elderly native speakers remain; the Yuchi immersion school is again raising children with the language.

Miʼkmaq

also: Mikmawisimk

An Eastern Algonquian language of the Miʼkmaq Nation across the Maritime provinces of Canada, Quebec, and Newfoundland, plus eastern Maine. Around 8,000 speakers, with a long oral and hieroglyphic tradition.

Blackfoot

also: Siksiká

A Plains Algonquian language of the Blackfoot Confederacy across southern Alberta and northern Montana. Around 5,000 speakers; one of the most divergent Algonquian languages.

Cheyenne

also: Tsėhésenėstsestȯtse

A Plains Algonquian language of the Northern and Southern Cheyenne tribes, in Montana and Oklahoma. Around 1,700 speakers; subject of substantial linguistic documentation since the 19th century.

Munsee

also: Munsee Delaware, Lunaape

An Eastern Algonquian language of the Lenape (Delaware), originally spoken around the lower Hudson, including present-day New York City. The last native-speaker community is the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown in south-western Ontario, where a single elderly first-language speaker was reported in the 2020s alongside a growing circle of second-language learners.

Lushootseed

also: Puget Salish

A Salishan language of the Coast Salish peoples around Puget Sound in western Washington. Critically endangered; subject of an active revitalisation through the Tulalip and Muckleshoot tribes.