Utah Mormon English

Population density of Utah (the Wasatch Front in red).

Utah is the only U.S. state with a majority population belonging to a single religious denomination. Mormon pioneers first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, eventually settling the Utah Territory. Many of these settlers came from New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, where the LDS Church had been based previously,[6] plus from foreign nations, notably including English-speaking immigrants from United Kingdom and Canada, persuaded to Utah as a result of Latter-day Saint missionary work.[7] These already-native English varieties thus adapted to the English of the Utah Mormon community,[6] with Mormon English differences further supported by Latter-day Saints' geographic and social isolation from neighboring communities.[8][7] More recently, an influx of Californians to Utah is affecting speech patterns in Salt Lake and elsewhere along the Wasatch Front.[9] One historical example of Utah Mormons seeking to consciously separate themselves from others linguistically was with Brigham Young's failed Deseret alphabet.[7]

A grammatical feature that seems to have been influenced by, and primarily exists among, members of the church, is the use of the pro-predicate "do" or "done", as in the sentence "I would have done",[7] particularly among middle-aged or older female speakers.[10] This feature is shared with British English and was likely introduced by the influx of English immigrants beginning in 1850 and persisted because of strong, continued English lineage in Utah.[7]

No unique phonetic features of English in Utah have been found,[11] though a well-studied convergence of phonetic possibilities exists. Utah English speakers have been noted, like scatterings of Western U.S. English speakers in general,[12] to lax the tense front vowels before /l/, which results in mergers or near-mergers, thus pronouncing "sale" as sell /sɛl/ or "milk" as melk /mɛlk/.[3][13][3] The Western articulation of /ʊ/, which occurs closer to the front of the mouth, is more pronounced than in the West in general among younger, female Utah speakers.[4] Utahns may use slightly distinct vowel placement and vowel space area during articulation, particularly with young, female speakers documented as pronouncing /æ/ as higher than /ɑ/—the opposite of a typical modern Western accent.[4] The use of a full rather than syllabic pronunciation of /ən/ in the sequence /-tən/, in words like "kitten" or "mountain", is a minor but noted variant among younger, female Utah speakers;[4] thus, kitten as [ˈkʰɪʔən] in addition to more General American [ˈkʰɪʔn̩]. However, this feature has been reported elsewhere in the country too, including California and New Jersey.[11]

Among social factors, age is the most influential in discrepancies between Utah speakers.[14] Gender and population areas also are a significant factor, with small population areas being more likely to produce the stereotypical phonetic and lexical differences from other Western U.S. English.[3] Generally, Utah has been stigmatized as being rural and backward, and that stigmatization of the culture carries over to the dialect, even though many Utah characteristics are also present in other American dialects.[15]

According to The Utah Dialect Project's website, begun in the early 2000s with the purpose of providing "the first overview of spoken Utah English",[2][14] central Utah (below the Wasatch Front) is the most likely to use marked features, though only slightly more so than southern Utah; on the whole, however, these features still remain minority ones throughout Utah, a majority of whose residents otherwise speak the general Western U.S. dialect.[3][14]