West Virginia
Languages
With little foreign immigration and with no effect from the original Iroquois and Cherokee Indians, West Virginia maintains Midland speech. There is a secondary contrast between the northern half and the southern half, with the former influenced by Pennsylvania and the latter by western Virginia.
The basic Midland speech sounds the /r/ after a vowel as in far and short, and has /kag/ for keg, /greezy/ for greasy, sofy instead of sofa, and nicker in place of neigh. The northern part has /yelk/ for yolk, /loom/ for loam, an /ai/ diphthong so stretched that sat and sight sound very much alike, run for creek, and teeter(totter) for seesaw. The southern half pronounces here and hear as /hyeer/, aunt and can't as /aint/ and /kaint/, and uses branch for creek, and tinter for teeter.
In 2000, 1,661,036 West Virginians—97.3% of the population five years of age or over (virtually unchanged since 1990)—spoke only English at home.
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 Indic languages" includes Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, and Romany. The category "Other Asian languages" includes Dravidian languages, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, and Turkish.
| LANGUAGE | NUMBER | PERCENT |
| Population 5 years and over | 1,706,931 | 100.0 |
| Speak only English | 1,661,036 | 97.3 |
| Speak a language other than English | 45,895 | 2.7 |
| Speak a language other than English | 45,895 | 2.7 |
| Spanish or Spanish Creole | 17,652 | 1.0 |
| French (incl. Patois, Cajun) | 5,693 | 0.3 |
| German | 5,040 | 0.3 |
| LANGUAGE | NUMBER | PERCENT |
| Speak a language other than English (continued) | ||
| Italian | 2,815 | 0.2 |
| Chinese | 1,634 | 0.1 |
| Arabic | 1,563 | 0.1 |
| Japanese | 1,135 | 0.1 |
| Tagalog | 970 | 0.1 |
| Greek | 912 | 0.1 |
| Other Indic languages | 806 | 0.0 |
| Other Asian languages | 784 | 0.0 |
| Polish | 763 | 0.0 |
| Korean | 581 | 0.0 |