New Jersey

European settlers found New Jersey inhabited largely by the Leni-Lenape Indians, whose legacy can still be found in such place-names as Passaic, Totowa, Hopatcong, Kittatinny, and Piscataway.

English in New Jersey is rather evenly divided north and south between Northern and Midland dialects. Special characteristics of some New York metropolitan area speech occur in the northeast portion, such as the absence of /r/ after a vowel, a consonant like /d/ or /t/ instead of the /th/ sounds in this or thin, and pronunciations as coop rhyming with stoop, food with good, and goal and fool; faucet has the vowel of father . Dominant in the southern half are run (small stream), baby coach (baby carriage) in the Philadelphia trading area, winnering owl (screech owl), and eel worm (earthworm). Heard also are out as /aot/, muskmelon as /muskmillon/, and keg rhyming with bag, scarce with fierce, spook with book, and haunted with panted.

In 2000, 5,854,578 New Jerseyites—74.5% of the resident population five years old or older—spoke only English at home, down from 80.5% 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 "Other Asian languages" includes Dravidian languages, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, and Turkish. The category "Other Indic languages" includes Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, and Romany. The category "African languages" includes Amharic, Ibo, Twi, Yoruba, Bantu, Swahili, and Somali.