California Dialect

I was born and raised in California. I spent the majority of my life in the southern and eastern San Francisco Bay Area. I wasn’t able to notice the markers of the California dialect until I moved to Utah a few years ago. Although Utahans sounds a lot like Californian speakers, I was still (eventually) able to pick up on many differences. For example, people in the Bay Area (not so much in southern California) say the word “hella” quite often. “That’s hella cool” or “That’s hella funny” is said so often that it’s hardly considered slang. This was the main thing that I constantly had pointed out to me while living in Salt Lake. I don’t really say “hella” anymore as I have gradually and naturally assimilated to the Utah dialect, but I have noticed that it immediately comes back when I visit San Francisco, and it takes months for it to leave my every day vocabulary upon my return.

I believe that the Californian dialect has spread vastly and rapidly due to California’s influence on the rest of the country, mainly through music, television, movies and other forms of pop culture. Hollywood is obviously located in California, and the movies that come out of Hollywood studios are some of the most popular forms of entertainment in the country. Because life reflects art (and visa-versa) the rest of the country simulates what they see in movies and television, and the dialect spreads.