Thus it is true that these dialects preserve some English forms that are rare elsewhere, such as afeared, yourn, hisn, and et, holp, and clome as the past of eat, help, and climb. But so does every variety of American English, including the standard one. Many so-called Americanisms were in fact carried over from England, where they were subsequently lost. For example, the participle gotten, the pronunciation of a in path and bath with a front-of-the-mouth “a” rather than the back-of-the-mouth “ah,” and the use of mad to mean “angry,” fall to mean “autumn,” and sick to mean “ill,” strike the
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