"By the test of dialect, which is a reasonable and fair test as far as it goes, there is veritably a West, and it extends from the Alleghenies to the Pacific, from Ohio and Missouri to the Canadian line, with only unimportant islands to interrupt its triumphant oneness. By comparison the dialects of the eastern seaboard are confined and provincial, and even the several variations on southern speech, widespread as they are, reveal themselves as a regional aberration. The speech of the various Wests is the authentic speech of America, purified of the r which soundeth not and the r which belongeth not and the squat a and the other blemishes."
__ Wallace Stegner, in "Why I Love the West", Tomorrow magazine, 1950.