Texas

The Indians of Texas are mostly descendants of the Alabama-Coushatta who came to Texas in the 19th century. The few Indian place-names include Texas itself, Pecos, Waco, and Toyah.

Most of the regional features in Texas English derive from the influx of South Midland and Southern speakers, with a noticeable Spanish flavor from older as well as more recent loans. Settlers from the Gulf Coast states brought such terms as snap beans (green beans), the widespread pail (here probably of Southern rather the Northern origin), and carry (escort), with a 47% frequency in north Texas and 22% in the south. Louisiana praline (pecan patty) is now widespread, but banquette (sidewalk) appears only in the extreme southeast corner.

Southern and South Midland terms were largely introduced by settlers from Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee; their use ranges from northeast to west, but with declining frequency in the trans-Pecos area. Examples are clabber cheese (cottage cheese), mosquito hawk (dragonfly), croker sack (burlap bag), mouth harp (harmonica), branch (stream), and dog irons (andirons). A dialect survey showed pallet (bed on the floor) with a 90% overall frequency; light bread (white bread) and pullybone (wishbone), each 78%; and you-all, more than 80%. General Midland terms also widespread in the state are sook! (call to calves), blinds (roller shades), piece (a certain distance), and quarter till five (4:45).

Some terms exhibit uneven distribution. Examples include mott (clump of trees) in the south and southwest, sugan (a wool-filled comforter for a cowboy's bedroll) in the west, Midland draw (dry streambed) in the west and southwest, South Midland peckerwood (woodpecker) in most of the state except west of the Pecos, poke (paper bag) in the central and northern areas, and surly (euphemism for bull) in the west. A curious result of dialect mixture is the appearance of a number of hybrids combining two different dialects, such as freeseed peach from freestone and clearseed, fire mantel and mantel board from fireboard and mantel, flapcakes from flapjacks and pancakes, and horse doctor from horsefly and snake doctor . The large sandwich is known as a torpedo in San Antonio and a poorboy in Houston.

Texas pronunciation is largely South Midland, with such characteristic forms as /caow/, and /naow/for cow and now and /dyoo/ for due, although /doo/ is now more common in urban areas. In the German settlement around New Braunfels are heard a few loanwords such as smearcase (cottage cheese), krebbel (doughnut), clook (setting hen), and oma and opa for grandmother and grandfather.

Spanish has been the major foreign-language influence. In areas like Laredo and Brownsville, along the Rio Grande, as many as 90% of the people may be bilingual; in northeast Texas, however, Spanish is as foreign as French. In the days of the early Spanish ranchers, standard English adopted hacienda, ranch, burro, canyon, and lariat; in the southwestern cattle country are heard la reata (lasso), remuda (group of horses), and resaca (pond), along with the acequia (irrigation ditch), pilon (something extra, as a trip), and olla (water jar). The presence of the large Spanish-speaking population was a major factor in the passage of the state's bilingual education law, as a result of which numerous school programs in both English and Spanish are now offered; in a ruling issued in January 1981, US District Judge William Wayne Justice ruled that by 1987, the state must expand such programs to cover all Spanish-speaking students. Legislation enacted in 1995 established a requirement for schools with a certain number of students with limited English proficiency to be required to have bilingual and/or English as a second language programs. About one-sixth of all Texas counties—and a great many cities—are named for Mexicans or Spaniards or after place-names in Spain or Mexico.

In 2000, 13,230,765 Texans—68.8% of the population five years old or older—spoke only English at home, down from 74.6% in 1990.

The following table gives selected statistics from the 2000 census for language spoken at home by persons five years old and over. The category "African languages" includes Amharic, Ibo, Twi, Yoruba, Bantu, Swahili, and Somali. The category "Other Asian languages" includes Dravidian languages, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, and Turkish. The category "Other Indic languages" includes Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, and Romany. The category "Other Slavic languages" includes Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian.