American English regional differences
Encyclopedia
North American English regional phonology is the study of variations in the pronunciation of spoken English
by the inhabitants of various parts of North America
. North American English
can be divided into several regional dialect
s based on phonological
, phonetic
, lexical
, and some syntactic
features. North American English includes American English
, which has several highly developed and distinct regional varieties, along with the closely related Canadian English
, which is more homogeneous. American English (especially Western dialects) and Canadian English have more in common with each other than with the many varieties of English outside North America.
The most recent work documenting and studying the phonology of North American English dialects as a whole is the Atlas of North American English by William Labov
, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg, on which much of the description below is based, following on a tradition of sociolinguistics
dating to the 1960s; earlier large-scale American dialectology focused more on lexical variation than on phonology.
s in North America are most strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard
. The distinctive speech of important cultural centers like Boston, Massachusetts (see Boston accent
); Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
and New Orleans, Louisiana
imposed their marks on the surrounding areas. The Connecticut River
is usually regarded as the southern/western extent of New England speech, while the Potomac River
generally divides a group of Northern coastal dialects from the beginning of the Coastal Southern dialect area (distinguished from the Highland Southern or South Midland dialect treated below, although outsiders often mistakenly believe that the speech in these two areas is the same); in between these two rivers several local variations exist, most famous among them the variety that prevails in New York City
.
Dialect
s on the East Coast of the continent are most diverse chiefly because the East Coast has been populated by English-speaking people longer than any other region. Western speech is much more homogeneous because it was settled by English speakers more recently, and so there has been less time for the West to diversify into a multiplicity of distinctive accents. A reason for the differences between (on the one hand) Eastern and (on the other hand) Midwestern and Western accents is that the East Coast areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of British English at a time when those varieties were undergoing changes
. The interior of the country was settled by people who were no longer closely connected to England, as they had no access to the ocean during a time when journeys to Britain were always by sea, and so Western and inland speakers did not imitate the changes in speech from England.
African American Vernacular English
contains many distinctive forms that are more homogeneous from region to region than the accents of white speakers, but African-American speakers are subject to regional variation also.
(RP) has historically been the standard, prestigious variant of the English language
in England
; rather, accents with different features can all be perceived as General American provided they lack certain non-standard features.
One feature that General American is generally agreed to include is rhotic
pronunciation, which maintains the coda [ɹ] in words like pearl, car, and court. Unlike RP, General American is characterized by the merger of the vowels of words like father and bother, flapping, and the reduction of vowel contrasts before historic /ɹ/
. General American also has yod dropping after alveolar consonant
s.
The widespread Mary–marry–merry merger and the wine–whine merger are complete in most regions of North America and very common at least in informal and semi-formal varieties of others; however, the most formal varieties tend to be more conservative in preserving these phonemic distinctions. Other phonemic mergers present in some speakers in certain regions include the cot–caught merger and the pin–pen merger (a conditional merger).
One phenomenon apparently unique to American accents is the irregular behavior of words that in RP have /ɒrV/ (where V stands for any vowel). Words of this class include, among others: origin, Florida, horrible, quarrel, warren, borrow, tomorrow, sorry, and sorrow. In General American there is a split: the majority of these words have /ɔɹ/, but the last four words of the list above have /ɑɹ/. In the New York accent, through New Jersey and Philadelphia, and in the Carolinas
, most or all of these words are pronounced /ɑɹ/ by many speakers (Shitara 1993). In Canadian English, however, all of the words in this class are pronounced /ɔɹ/.
west of the Appalachian Mountains
begins the broad zone of what is generally called "Midland" speech. In older and traditional dialectological research, this is divided into two discrete subdivisions: the "North Midland" that begins north of the Ohio River
valley area and the "South Midland" dialect area. In more recent work such as the Atlas of North American English, the former is designated simply "Midland" and the latter is reckoned as part of the South. The (North) Midland is arguably the major region whose dialect most closely approximates "General American".
The North Midland and South Midland are both characterized by having a distinctly fronter realization of the /oʊ/ phoneme (as in boat) than many other American accents, particularly those of the North; the phoneme is frequently realized with a central nucleus, approximating [əʊ]. Likewise, /aʊ/ has a fronter nucleus than /aɪ/, approaching [æʊ]. Another feature distinguishing the Midland from the North is that the word on contains the phoneme /ɔ/ (as in caught) rather than /ɑ/ (as in cot). (Obviously this only applies to Midland speakers not subject to the cot–caught merger, on which see below.) For this reason, one of the names for the North-Midland boundary is the "'On' line".
In some areas of the Midland, words like "roof" and "root" (which in many other dialects have the vowel uː) are pronounced with the vowel of "book" and "hoof" ʊ.
A common non-phonological feature of the greater Midland area is so-called positive anymore
: it has become possible to use the word anymore with the meaning 'nowadays' in sentences without negative polarity
, such as Air travel is inconvenient anymore.
, central Indiana, central Illinois
, Iowa
, and northern Missouri
, as well as Nebraska
and northern Kansas
where it begins to blend into the West. Major cities of this dialect area include Columbus
, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis
. This area is currently undergoing a vowel merger of the "short o" /ɑ/ (as in cot) and 'aw' /ɔ/ (as in caught) phonemes. Many speakers show transitional forms of this so-called cot–caught merger, which is complete in approximately half of the rest of North America.
The /æ/ phoneme (as in cat) shows most commonly a so-called "continuous" distribution: /æ/ is raised and tensed toward [eə] before nasal consonant
s and remains low [æ] before voiceless
stop consonant
s, and other allophone
s of /æ/ occupy a continuum of varying degrees of height between those two extremes.
in a generally southwesterly direction, moving across from Kentucky
, southern Indiana, and southern Illinois to southern Missouri, Arkansas
, southern Kansas, and Oklahoma
, west of the Mississippi river
. Although historically more closely related to the North Midland speech, this region shows dialectal features that are now more similar to the rest of the South than the Midland, most noticeably the smoothing of the diphthong /ɑɪ/ to [aː], and the second person plural pronoun "you-all" or "y'all." Unlike the coastal South, however, the South Midland has always been a rhotic dialect, pronouncing /r/ wherever it has historically occurred. South Indiana is the northernmost extent of the South Midland region, forming what dialectologists refer to as the "Hoosier
Apex" of the South Midland; the accent is locally known there as the "Hoosier Twang".
The phonology of the South Midland is discussed in greater detail in the section on the South below.
is historically one among several (North) Midland cities, but it has developed some unique features of its own distinguishing it from the rest of the Midland.
is, for many purposes, an eastern extension of the North Midland. Like the Midland proper, the Western Pennsylvania accent features fronting of /oʊ/ and /aʊ/, as well as positive anymore. The chief distinguishing feature of Western Pennsylvania as a whole is that the cot–caught merger is complete here, whereas it is still in progress in most of the Midland. The merger has also spread from Western Pennsylvania into adjacent West Virginia
, historically in the South Midland dialect region.
The city of Pittsburgh is considered a dialect of its own often known as Pittsburghese
. This region is additionally characterized by a sound change that is unique in North America: the monophthongization of /aʊ/ to [aː]. This is the source of the stereotypical Pittsburgh pronunciation of downtown as "dahntahn". Pittsburgh also features an unusually low allophone of /ʌ/ (as in cut); it approaches [ɑ] (/ɑ/ itself having moved out of the way and become a rounded vowel in its merger with /ɔ/).
es all largely coincide, despite not being directly structurally related to each other. Dialectologists in the first half of the 20th century distinguished the North from the Midland on the basis of a large collection of lexical isoglosses, mostly dealing with differences in agricultural terms that are now largely obsolete (such as the use of ko-day in the north versus sheepie in the Midland to call sheep from the pasture). Despite the obsolescence of these lexical differences, the boundary between the North and Midland is maintained in the same place by phonological and phonetic isoglosses.
The North is also separated from the Midland by the presence of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS), on which see below; although the NCVS is not found in all parts of the North, it is present in the part of the North most closely adjacent to the Midland and thus helps to define the boundary.
in the mid-20th century. However, it has been recently modified by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift
, which is the main feature of this dialect region. Today the Inland North proper is regarded as the sub-region of the North where the NCVS predominates.
The Inland North is centered on the area south of the Great Lakes
, and consists of two components: to the east, central and western New York State (including Syracuse
, Binghamton
, Rochester
, and Buffalo
); and to the west, much of Michigan
's Lower Peninsula (Detroit, Grand Rapids
), Toledo
, Cleveland, Chicago
, Gary
, and Southeastern Wisconsin
(Milwaukee, Racine
, Kenosha
).
These two regions are separated by a region of northwestern Pennsylvania, including the city of Erie
, which is not today part of the linguistic Inland North. Although Erie was historically part of the greater Northern dialect region, and is on the southern shore of Lake Erie halfway between Buffalo and Cleveland, it has not undergone the NCVS; instead, as a result of heavy influence from Pittsburgh, the cot–caught merger has taken place in Erie.
The NCVS is not uniform throughout the Inland North; it is most advanced in Western New York and Michigan, and less developed in Cleveland. At the eastern fringes are areas in which most speakers display NCVS features only in weak forms if at all, including northeastern Pennsylvania
and some communities in northern and eastern New York. Northern Indiana
and part of Minnesota
show the first stage of the NCVS, tensing of /æ/, without any of the other stages.
involving movements of six vowel phonemes:
This shift is in progress across the region, though not necessarily completed. So, any individual speaker may display some of these six shifts without displaying the others. On the whole, though, the shifts occur in the order listed above, so speakers who display advanced forms of the later changes will generally be advanced in the earlier changes as well.
westward across northern Minnesota
and North Dakota
and into eastern Montana
. Although the Atlas of North American English does not include the North Central region as part of the North proper, it shares all of the features listed above as properties of the North as a whole. The North Central is a linguistically conservative region; it participates in few of the major ongoing sound changes of North American English.
The movie Fargo, which takes place in the North Central region, famously features an exaggerated version of this accent.
, western Massachusetts
, and Vermont
, has close historical ties to the Inland North: it is from Western New England that the westward migration began that led to the settlement of most upstate New York
and the rest of the Inland North. The linguistic boundary between Western and Eastern New England has been recognized at least since the 1940s; Western New England differed from Eastern New England then in being rhotic, possessing the Mary–marry–merry merger, and not being subject to the caught–cot merger, among other features. Historically, Western New England is distinguished from Eastern New England in that it consists principally of communities settled from the Connecticut
and New Haven
colonies, rather than the Massachusetts Bay
and Plymouth
colonies.
Today, Western New England shares in the principal linguistic features listed above as characteristic of the North. Connecticut and western Massachusetts in particular show the same general phonological system as the Inland North, and some speakers show a general tendency in the direction of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift—for instance, an /æ/ that is somewhat higher and tenser than average, an /ɑ/ that is fronter than /ʌ/, and so on. The caught–cot merger has taken hold comparatively recently in Vermont, merging to an unrounded vowel [a] (unlike in Eastern New England, where the merged cot-caught vowel is back and rounded). In Connecticut /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ remain distinct, although the merger shows some evidence of being in progress advancing southward from Vermont.
have distinctive accents that cover smaller regions than the broad "North" and "Midland" categories of the Midwest, reflecting the greater dialect diversity of the Northeast. These dialects are not all closely related to each other, but subsets of them share several unusual features, such as non-rhoticity
or a split of /æ/ into two separate phonemes.
One feature shared by all of them is resistance to the Mary–marry–merry merger. Similarly, these dialects retain a distinction between historical short o and long o before intervocalic /ɹ/, so that, for example, orange, Florida, and horrible have a different stressed vowel than story and chorus.
dialect area encompasses Maine
, New Hampshire
, and eastern Massachusetts
(including Greater Boston
). The dialect spoken here shares features with the greater North dialect region, including Canadian raising
of /aɪ/ and minimal fronting of /aʊ/ and /oʊ/, but it possesses enough distinctive features of its own to distinguish it from the North as a separate dialect system. Southern New Hampshire has been reported as retreating from some of the more distinctive features of the Eastern New England dialect region.
This region of the United States historically had more contact with British varieties of English (being nearer to the Atlantic coast) and looked to England as a standard of prestige for their speech. Hence, the Eastern New England dialect has in some respects more similarities with British English
than many other dialects of American English have. Most famously, Eastern New England accents (with the exception of Martha's Vineyard
) are traditionally non-rhotic
.
The Eastern New England accent is seemingly unique in North America for not having undergone the so-called father–bother merger: in other words, the stressed vowel phonemes of father and bother remain distinct as /aː/ and /ɒː/, so that the two words do not rhyme as they do in most American accents. Many Eastern New England speakers also have a class of words with "broad A"—that is, /aː/ as in father in words that in most accents contain /æ/, such as bath, half, and can't. Broad A is another feature that Eastern New England shares with southern England. On the other hand, unlike dialects of England, the Eastern New England dialect is subject to the cot–caught merger, merging the cot and caught classes to a back rounded vowel, [ɒː].
As mentioned above, Eastern New England retains the distinction between the vowel phonemes of marry, merry, and Mary. Likewise, many Eastern New England speakers preserve the distinctions between /iː/ and /ɪ/ before intervocalic /ɹ/ (as in nearer and mirror), as well as the distinction between /ʌ/ and /ɝ/ before intervocalic /ɹ/ (as in hurry and furry).
The distinction between the vowels of horse and hoarse is maintained in traditional non-rhotic New England accents as [hɒːs] for horse (with the same vowel as cot and caught) vs. [hoəs] for hoarse. Thus, the horse–hoarse merger does not occur. Like some other east-coast accents as well as AAVE
, some accents of eastern New England merge /oɹ/ and /uɹ/, making homophones of pairs like pour/poor, more/moor, tore/tour, cores/Coors etc.
Eastern New England has a so-called nasal short-a system. In other words, the /æ/ phoneme has highly distinct allophone
s before nasal consonant
s.
is traditionally grouped with the Eastern New England dialect region, both by the dialectologists of the mid–20th century and by the Atlas of North American English; it shares Eastern New England's traditional non-rhoticity and nasal short-a system. A key linguistic difference between Rhode Island and the rest of the Eastern New England, however, is that Rhode Island is subject to the father–bother merger and not the cot–caught merger. Indeed, Rhode Island shares with New York and Philadelphia an unusually high and back allophone of /ɔ/ (as in caught), even compared to other communities that do not have the cot–caught merger.
In the Atlas of North American English, the city of Providence
(the only community in Rhode Island sampled by the Atlas) is also distinguished by having the backest realizations of /uː/, /oʊ/, and /aʊ/ in North America.
, the accents of New York City
and adjoining New Jersey
cities are traditionally non-rhotic. The vowels of cot /kɑt/ and caught /kɔt/ are distinct; in fact the New York dialect has the highest realizations of /ɔ/ in North American English, approaching [oə] or even [ʊə]. The vowel of cart is back and rounded [kɒːt] instead of fronted as it is in Boston.
The accent is well attested in American movies and television shows, especially ones about American mobsters
. It is often referred to more narrowly as the "Bronx" or "Brooklyn accent", although in fact research has found no variation between the different boroughs
of New York per se. Bugs Bunny
and Groucho Marx
both speak with a Brooklyn accent in their films. The accent is often exaggerated, but nevertheless still exists to some degree among Brooklyn natives. The English used in the popular television show The Sopranos
, set in Essex County, New Jersey, is often more close to a Brooklyn accent, than that of New Jersey, mainly regarding the rhotic feature. Furthermore, the dialect portrayed on this television show does not apply to citizens of the entire state; it is a particular socio-ethnic accent.
, New Jersey
, Delaware
, and Maryland
, is probably the original ancestor of General American. It is one of the few coastal accents that is rhotic
, and one of the first to merge the historical /or/ of hoarse, mourning with the /ɔr/ of horse, morning. It also maintains the cot–caught contrast, unlike New England and western Pennsylvania. Nevertheless there are differences between modern Philadelphia speech and General American, some of which, as described in Labov, Ash, & Boberg (2006) and Labov (2001), will be outlined here.
, the Dust Bowl
and World War II
have caused mass migrations throughout the United States. Southern American English as we know it today began to take its current shape only after World War II. Some generalizations include:
The South Midland dialect follows the Ohio River
in a generally southwesterly direction, moves across Arkansas
and Oklahoma
west of the Mississippi
, and peters out in West Texas
. It is a version of the Midland speech that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms, most noticeably the loss of the diphthong [ɑɪ], , which becomes [ɑː], and the second person plural pronoun "you-all" or "y'all."
South Midlands speech is characterized by:
ization of the traditional short front vowel
s as in the words pat, pet, and pit: these develop a glide up from their original starting position to [j], and then in some cases back down to schwa
. → [æjə] → [ɛjə] → [ɪjə]
has a very distinctive southern accent that encompasses elements of standard British English and American Southern English, with additional French
-Huguenot
influences. However, given Charleston's high concentration of African-Americans that spoke the Gullah
language, the speech patterns were more influenced by the dialect of the Gullah African-American community. The most distinguishing feature of this accent is the way speakers pronounce the name of the city, to which a standard listener would hear "Chahls-ton", with a silent r. Alone among the various regional Southern dialects, Charlestonian speakers inglide long mid vowels, such as the raising for /aj/ and /aw/. Some attribute these unique features of Charleston's speech to its early settlement by the French Huguenots and Sephardi Jews
, both of which played influential parts in Charleston's development and history.
Perhaps the most distinctive New Orleans accent is locally nicknamed "yat", from a traditional greeting "Where y'at" ("Where are you at?", meaning "How are you?"). One of the most detailed phonetic depictions of an extreme "yat" accent of the early 20th century is found in the speech of the character Krazy Kat
in the comic strip
of the same name by George Herriman
. While such extreme "yat" accents are no longer so common in the city, they can still be found in parts of Mid-City and the 9th ward, as well as in St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans.
The novel A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
is generally considered the best depiction of New Orleans accents in literature.
, although the number has been declining in recent years.
whose first language was English. It contains a rhythm and pronunciation heavily influenced by Spanish
.
is the largest dialect region in the United States, and the one with the fewest distinctive phonological features. These facts can both be attributed to the fact that the West is the region most recently settled by English speakers, and so there has not been sufficient time for the region either to develop highly distinctive innovations or to split into strongly distinct dialectological subregions. There is some evidence, though, that some regions of the West are beginning to diverge from each other linguistically.
California English possesses a new chain vowel shift known as the California vowel shift:
California English also possesses the following features:
. as [eɪ] before /ɡ/, and [æ] as [eɪ] before /ɡ/ and /ŋ/: "leg" and "lag" pronounced [leɪɡ]; "tang" pronounced [teɪŋ].
} is raised and diphthongized to [eə] before nasals by some speakers.
} is lowered in the direction of [a] by some.
; Canadian raising and the Canadian vowel shift are the most distinctive features.
s /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ are "raised" before voiceless consonants. In most varieties of American English pairs such as pouter/powder and rider/writer are pronounced exactly the same. In Canadian English, however, when a diphthong is followed by the voiceless consonants such as /p/ /t/ /k/ /f/ and some others, the starting point of the diphthong raises from an open central vowel to a mid one.
For example, ride is pronounced [raɪd] but with write, because the diphthong is followed by a /t/, the diphthong raises and the word is pronounced [rəɪt]. Most other speakers of American English do not possess these allophonic sounds ([əʊ] and [əɪ]) but the pronunciation is still marked. The Canadian pronunciation of "about the house" may sound like "a boat the hoas" to speakers of dialects without the raising, and in many cases is misheard (or deliberately exaggerated) as "aboot the hoos". Some stand-up and situation comedians, as well as television shows (such as South Park
) exaggerate the pronunciation to *"aboot the hoos" for comic effect. True Canadian raising affects both /aʊ/ and /aɪ/, but a related phenomenon, of much wider distribution throughout the United States, affects only /aɪ/. So, whereas the General American pronunciations of rider and writer are identical ([ɹaɪɾɚ]), those American English speakers whose dialects include either the full or restricted Canadian raising will pronounce them as [ɹaɪɾɚ] and [ɹəɪɾɚ], respectively. Canadian raising is quite strong in most of Ontario and the Maritimes as well as in the Prairies. It is receding in British Columbia, and many of these speakers do not raise /aɪ/ before voiceless consonants. Younger speakers in the Lower Mainland do not even raise /aʊ/.
, mainly found in Ontario, English-speaking Montreal and further west, and led by Ontarians and women; it involves the front lax vowels /æ/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/. It is also found scattered throughout the Western United States.
The vowels in the words cot and caught merge to [ɒ], a low back rounded vowel. The /æ/ of bat is retracted to [a] (except before nasals). Indeed, /æ/ is lower in this variety than almost all other North American dialects; the retraction of /æ/ was independently observed in Vancouver
and is more advanced for Ontarians and women than for people from the Prairies
or Atlantic Canada
and men. Then, /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ are lowered in the direction of [æ] and [ɛ] and/or retracted; studies actually disagree on the trajectory of the shift.
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
by the inhabitants of various parts of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. North American English
North American English
North American English is the variety of the English language of North America, including that of the United States and Canada. Because of their shared histories and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages...
can be divided into several regional dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s based on phonological
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
, phonetic
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
, lexical
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
, and some syntactic
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
features. North American English includes American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
, which has several highly developed and distinct regional varieties, along with the closely related Canadian English
Canadian English
Canadian English is the variety of English spoken in Canada. English is the first language, or "mother tongue", of approximately 24 million Canadians , and more than 28 million are fluent in the language...
, which is more homogeneous. American English (especially Western dialects) and Canadian English have more in common with each other than with the many varieties of English outside North America.
The most recent work documenting and studying the phonology of North American English dialects as a whole is the Atlas of North American English by William Labov
William Labov
William Labov born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist, widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics...
, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg, on which much of the description below is based, following on a tradition of sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
dating to the 1960s; earlier large-scale American dialectology focused more on lexical variation than on phonology.
Defining regions of North American speech
Regional dialectDialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s in North America are most strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
. The distinctive speech of important cultural centers like Boston, Massachusetts (see Boston accent
Boston accent
The Boston dialect is the dialect characteristic of English spoken in the city of Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts. The accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and areas of south-western Nova Scotia...
); Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
and New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...
imposed their marks on the surrounding areas. The Connecticut River
Connecticut River
The Connecticut River is the largest and longest river in New England, and also an American Heritage River. It flows roughly south, starting from the Fourth Connecticut Lake in New Hampshire. After flowing through the remaining Connecticut Lakes and Lake Francis, it defines the border between the...
is usually regarded as the southern/western extent of New England speech, while the Potomac River
Potomac River
The Potomac River flows into the Chesapeake Bay, located along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States. The river is approximately long, with a drainage area of about 14,700 square miles...
generally divides a group of Northern coastal dialects from the beginning of the Coastal Southern dialect area (distinguished from the Highland Southern or South Midland dialect treated below, although outsiders often mistakenly believe that the speech in these two areas is the same); in between these two rivers several local variations exist, most famous among them the variety that prevails in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s on the East Coast of the continent are most diverse chiefly because the East Coast has been populated by English-speaking people longer than any other region. Western speech is much more homogeneous because it was settled by English speakers more recently, and so there has been less time for the West to diversify into a multiplicity of distinctive accents. A reason for the differences between (on the one hand) Eastern and (on the other hand) Midwestern and Western accents is that the East Coast areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of British English at a time when those varieties were undergoing changes
Sound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...
. The interior of the country was settled by people who were no longer closely connected to England, as they had no access to the ocean during a time when journeys to Britain were always by sea, and so Western and inland speakers did not imitate the changes in speech from England.
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
contains many distinctive forms that are more homogeneous from region to region than the accents of white speakers, but African-American speakers are subject to regional variation also.
General American
General American is a notional accent of American English perceived by Americans to be most "neutral" and free of regional characteristics. A General American accent is not a specific well-defined standardized accent in the way that Received PronunciationReceived Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
(RP) has historically been the standard, prestigious variant of the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
; rather, accents with different features can all be perceived as General American provided they lack certain non-standard features.
One feature that General American is generally agreed to include is rhotic
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents
English pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: a rhotic speaker pronounces a rhotic consonant in words like hard; a non-rhotic speaker does not...
pronunciation, which maintains the coda [ɹ] in words like pearl, car, and court. Unlike RP, General American is characterized by the merger of the vowels of words like father and bother, flapping, and the reduction of vowel contrasts before historic /ɹ/
English-language vowel changes before historic r
In the phonological history of the English language, vowels followed by the phoneme have undergone a number of phonological changes...
. General American also has yod dropping after alveolar consonant
Alveolar consonant
Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...
s.
The widespread Mary–marry–merry merger and the wine–whine merger are complete in most regions of North America and very common at least in informal and semi-formal varieties of others; however, the most formal varieties tend to be more conservative in preserving these phonemic distinctions. Other phonemic mergers present in some speakers in certain regions include the cot–caught merger and the pin–pen merger (a conditional merger).
One phenomenon apparently unique to American accents is the irregular behavior of words that in RP have /ɒrV/ (where V stands for any vowel). Words of this class include, among others: origin, Florida, horrible, quarrel, warren, borrow, tomorrow, sorry, and sorrow. In General American there is a split: the majority of these words have /ɔɹ/, but the last four words of the list above have /ɑɹ/. In the New York accent, through New Jersey and Philadelphia, and in the Carolinas
The Carolinas
The Carolinas is a term used in the United States to refer collectively to the states of North and South Carolina. Together, the two states + have a population of 13,942,126. "Carolina" would be the fifth most populous state behind California, Texas, New York, and Florida...
, most or all of these words are pronounced /ɑɹ/ by many speakers (Shitara 1993). In Canadian English, however, all of the words in this class are pronounced /ɔɹ/.
The Midland
The region of the Midwestern United StatesMidwestern United States
The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....
west of the Appalachian Mountains
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...
begins the broad zone of what is generally called "Midland" speech. In older and traditional dialectological research, this is divided into two discrete subdivisions: the "North Midland" that begins north of the Ohio River
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...
valley area and the "South Midland" dialect area. In more recent work such as the Atlas of North American English, the former is designated simply "Midland" and the latter is reckoned as part of the South. The (North) Midland is arguably the major region whose dialect most closely approximates "General American".
The North Midland and South Midland are both characterized by having a distinctly fronter realization of the /oʊ/ phoneme (as in boat) than many other American accents, particularly those of the North; the phoneme is frequently realized with a central nucleus, approximating [əʊ]. Likewise, /aʊ/ has a fronter nucleus than /aɪ/, approaching [æʊ]. Another feature distinguishing the Midland from the North is that the word on contains the phoneme /ɔ/ (as in caught) rather than /ɑ/ (as in cot). (Obviously this only applies to Midland speakers not subject to the cot–caught merger, on which see below.) For this reason, one of the names for the North-Midland boundary is the "'On' line".
In some areas of the Midland, words like "roof" and "root" (which in many other dialects have the vowel uː) are pronounced with the vowel of "book" and "hoof" ʊ.
A common non-phonological feature of the greater Midland area is so-called positive anymore
Positive anymore
Positive anymore is the use of the adverb any more in an affirmative context. While any more is typically a negative/interrogative polarity item used in negative, interrogative, or hypothetical contexts, speakers of some dialects of English use it in positive or affirmative contexts, with a meaning...
: it has become possible to use the word anymore with the meaning 'nowadays' in sentences without negative polarity
Polarity item
In linguistics, a polarity item is a lexical element that can appear only in the environment of a certain "licensing context." Polarity items are defined as Negative Polarity Items or Positive Polarity items...
, such as Air travel is inconvenient anymore.
North Midland
The North Midland region stretches from east to west across central and southern OhioOhio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, central Indiana, central Illinois
Central Illinois
Central Illinois is a region of the U.S. state of Illinois that consists of the entire central section of the state, divided in thirds from north to south. It is an area of mostly flat prairie. The western section was originally part of the Military Tract of 1812 and forms the distinctive western...
, Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
, and northern Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, as well as Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
and northern Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
where it begins to blend into the West. Major cities of this dialect area include Columbus
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis
Indianapolis
Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
. This area is currently undergoing a vowel merger of the "short o" /ɑ/ (as in cot) and 'aw' /ɔ/ (as in caught) phonemes. Many speakers show transitional forms of this so-called cot–caught merger, which is complete in approximately half of the rest of North America.
The /æ/ phoneme (as in cat) shows most commonly a so-called "continuous" distribution: /æ/ is raised and tensed toward [eə] before nasal consonant
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
s and remains low [æ] before voiceless
Voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...
stop consonant
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
s, and other allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
s of /æ/ occupy a continuum of varying degrees of height between those two extremes.
South Midland
The South Midland dialect region follows the Ohio RiverOhio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...
in a generally southwesterly direction, moving across from Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
, southern Indiana, and southern Illinois to southern Missouri, Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
, southern Kansas, and Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
, west of the Mississippi river
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
. Although historically more closely related to the North Midland speech, this region shows dialectal features that are now more similar to the rest of the South than the Midland, most noticeably the smoothing of the diphthong /ɑɪ/ to [aː], and the second person plural pronoun "you-all" or "y'all." Unlike the coastal South, however, the South Midland has always been a rhotic dialect, pronouncing /r/ wherever it has historically occurred. South Indiana is the northernmost extent of the South Midland region, forming what dialectologists refer to as the "Hoosier
Hoosier
Hoosier is the official demonym for a resident of the U.S. state of Indiana. Although residents of most U.S. states typically adopt a derivative of the state name, e.g., "Indianan" or "Indianian", natives of Indiana rarely use these. Indiana adopted the nickname "Hoosier State" more than 150...
Apex" of the South Midland; the accent is locally known there as the "Hoosier Twang".
The phonology of the South Midland is discussed in greater detail in the section on the South below.
St. Louis and vicinity
St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
is historically one among several (North) Midland cities, but it has developed some unique features of its own distinguishing it from the rest of the Midland.
- A historical feature of the St. Louis dialect is the merger of the phonemes /ɔɹ/ (as in for) and /ɑɹ/ (as in far), while leaving distinct /oɹ/ (as in four). This merger is less frequently found in younger speakers, and leads to jokes referring to "I farty-farInterstate 44 in MissouriIn the U.S. state of Missouri, Interstate 44 runs northeast from the Oklahoma state line near Joplin to Interstate 55 in downtown St. Louis. It runs for a total of 290 miles in Missouri.-Route description:...
" and "Farest Park". - Some speakers, usually older generations, have /eɪ/ instead of Standard English /ɛ/ before /ʒ/: thus measure is pronounced /ˈmeɪʒ.ɚ/. Wash (as well as Washington) gains a /ɹ/, becoming /wɔɹʃ/ ("warsh").
- The diphthong /ɔɪ/ in standard English becomes more like [ɑːɪ]. For example, words such as "oil" and "joint" are commonly pronounced awyul and jawynt, particularly among older speakers within the city and immediate suburbs.
- The phoneme /ð/ is often replaced with /d/, especially among the white working-class urban populace. For instance, Get in that car over there sounds like Get in dat car over dere. This speech characteristic is common in most large, old cities of the East and Midwest, reinforcing St. Louis's cultural evolution alongside other northern industrial urban centers.
- Some younger speakers have picked up features of the Northern Cities Vowel ShiftNorthern cities vowel shiftThe Northern cities vowel shift is a chain shift in the sounds of some vowels in the dialect region of American English known as the Inland North.-Geography:...
, which is discussed in detail below in the section on the Inland North. This vowel shift causes, among other changes, raising and tensing of the vowel /æ/, so that words like cat /kæt/ to become more like [kɛət]. A corridor of communities between ChicagoChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and St. Louis is the only place that features of the Inland North have penetrated noticeably into the Midland, despite the long boundary the two regions share. However, St. Louis remains a Midland city in other respects. For example on rhymes with dawn rather than don, unlike the North. Indeed, the fact that on rhymes with dawn is more distinctive in St. Louis than in the rest of the Midland, since the cot–caught merger is prevented in St. Louis by the presence of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. - Another feature typical of St. Louis speech is the ostensibly unique pronunciation of sundaeSundaeThe sundae is an ice cream dessert. It typically consists of a scoop of ice cream topped with sauce or syrup, and in some cases other toppings including chopped nuts, sprinkles, whipped cream, or maraschino cherries.-History:...
as sunda /ˈsʌndə/. This does not carry over to any other words, not even SundaySundaySunday is the day of the week between Saturday and Monday. For most Christians, Sunday is observed as a day for worship of God and rest, due to the belief that it is Lord's Day, the day of Christ's resurrection....
. Again, this feature is less common in the speech of younger generations.
Western Pennsylvania
The dialect of Western PennsylvaniaWestern Pennsylvania
Western Pennsylvania consists of the western third of the state of Pennsylvania in the United States. Pittsburgh is the largest city in the region, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic and cultural center. Erie, Altoona, and Johnstown are its...
is, for many purposes, an eastern extension of the North Midland. Like the Midland proper, the Western Pennsylvania accent features fronting of /oʊ/ and /aʊ/, as well as positive anymore. The chief distinguishing feature of Western Pennsylvania as a whole is that the cot–caught merger is complete here, whereas it is still in progress in most of the Midland. The merger has also spread from Western Pennsylvania into adjacent West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
, historically in the South Midland dialect region.
The city of Pittsburgh is considered a dialect of its own often known as Pittsburghese
Pittsburgh English
Pittsburgh English, popularly known by outsiders as Pittsburghese, is the dialect of American English spoken by many especially older residents of Pittsburgh and parts of surrounding Western Pennsylvania in the United States, a group referred to by locals and others as Yinzers.-Overview:Many of the...
. This region is additionally characterized by a sound change that is unique in North America: the monophthongization of /aʊ/ to [aː]. This is the source of the stereotypical Pittsburgh pronunciation of downtown as "dahntahn". Pittsburgh also features an unusually low allophone of /ʌ/ (as in cut); it approaches [ɑ] (/ɑ/ itself having moved out of the way and become a rounded vowel in its merger with /ɔ/).
The North
The dialect area of the United States north of Pennsylvania and the Midland is distinguished from the Midland by a collection of linguistic features whose isoglossIsogloss
An isogloss—also called a heterogloss —is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature...
es all largely coincide, despite not being directly structurally related to each other. Dialectologists in the first half of the 20th century distinguished the North from the Midland on the basis of a large collection of lexical isoglosses, mostly dealing with differences in agricultural terms that are now largely obsolete (such as the use of ko-day in the north versus sheepie in the Midland to call sheep from the pasture). Despite the obsolescence of these lexical differences, the boundary between the North and Midland is maintained in the same place by phonological and phonetic isoglosses.
- Where the Midland has fronting of /aʊ/ and /oʊ/, in the North the nucleus of /aʊ/ is further back than that of /aɪ/ and /oʊ/ remains a back vowel. Similarly, although /uː/ is fronted to the point of being a mid or front vowel in most of the United States and Canada, in the North the allophone of /uː/ after non-coronal consonantCoronal consonantCoronal consonants are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Only the coronal consonants can be divided into apical , laminal , domed , or subapical , as well as a few rarer orientations, because only the front of the tongue has such...
s remains back. Indeed, in part of the north (much of WisconsinWisconsinWisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
and MinnesotaMinnesotaMinnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
), /uː/ remains back in all environments. - Where the Midland has /ɔ/ (as in dawn) in on, the North has /ɑ/.
- Canadian raisingCanadian raisingCanadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which certain diphthongs are "raised" before voiceless consonants...
of /aɪ/—i.e., the use of a raised allophone such as [ʌɪ] or [əɪ] for /aɪ/ before voiceless consonants—is very common in the North but infrequent in most of the Midland. - There is no cot–caught merger in the North (as defined in the Atlas of North American English), although the merger is in progress in the Midland.
The North is also separated from the Midland by the presence of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS), on which see below; although the NCVS is not found in all parts of the North, it is present in the part of the North most closely adjacent to the Midland and thus helps to define the boundary.
Inland North
The Inland North dialect region was once considered the "standard Midwestern" speech that was the basis for General AmericanGeneral American
General American , also known as Standard American English , is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States...
in the mid-20th century. However, it has been recently modified by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift
Northern cities vowel shift
The Northern cities vowel shift is a chain shift in the sounds of some vowels in the dialect region of American English known as the Inland North.-Geography:...
, which is the main feature of this dialect region. Today the Inland North proper is regarded as the sub-region of the North where the NCVS predominates.
The Inland North is centered on the area south of the Great Lakes
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes are a collection of freshwater lakes located in northeastern North America, on the Canada – United States border. Consisting of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, they form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total surface, coming in second by volume...
, and consists of two components: to the east, central and western New York State (including Syracuse
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
, Binghamton
Binghamton, New York
Binghamton is a city in the Southern Tier of New York in the United States. It is near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers...
, Rochester
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
, and Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
); and to the west, much of Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
's Lower Peninsula (Detroit, Grand Rapids
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located on the Grand River about 40 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 774,160 and a combined statistical area, Grand...
), Toledo
Toledo, Ohio
Toledo is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Lucas County. Toledo is in northwest Ohio, on the western end of Lake Erie, and borders the State of Michigan...
, Cleveland, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Gary
Gary, Indiana
Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city is in the southeastern portion of the Chicago metropolitan area and is 25 miles from downtown Chicago. The population is 80,294 at the 2010 census, making it the seventh-largest city in the state. It borders Lake Michigan and is known...
, and Southeastern Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
(Milwaukee, Racine
Racine, Wisconsin
Racine is a city in and the county seat of Racine County, Wisconsin, United States. According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the city had a population of 82,196...
, Kenosha
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Kenosha is a city and the county seat of Kenosha County in the State of Wisconsin in United States. With a population of 99,218 as of May 2011, Kenosha is the fourth-largest city in Wisconsin. Kenosha is also the fourth-largest city on the western shore of Lake Michigan, following Chicago,...
).
These two regions are separated by a region of northwestern Pennsylvania, including the city of Erie
Erie, Pennsylvania
Erie is a city located in northwestern Pennsylvania in the United States. Named for the lake and the Native American tribe that resided along its southern shore, Erie is the state's fourth-largest city , with a population of 102,000...
, which is not today part of the linguistic Inland North. Although Erie was historically part of the greater Northern dialect region, and is on the southern shore of Lake Erie halfway between Buffalo and Cleveland, it has not undergone the NCVS; instead, as a result of heavy influence from Pittsburgh, the cot–caught merger has taken place in Erie.
Northeast Pennsylvania English
Northeast Pennsylvania English is the local dialect of American English spoken in northeastern Pennsylvania, specifically in the Coal Region, which includes the cities of Hazleton, Pottsville, Wilkes-Barre and Scranton....
and some communities in northern and eastern New York. Northern Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
and part of Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
show the first stage of the NCVS, tensing of /æ/, without any of the other stages.
The Northern Cities Vowel Shift
The NCVS is a chain shiftChain shift
In phonology, a chain shift is a phenomenon in which several sounds move stepwise along a phonetic scale. The sounds involved in a chain shift can be ordered into a "chain" in such a way that, after the change is complete, each phoneme ends up sounding like what the phoneme before it in the chain...
involving movements of six vowel phonemes:
- The first stage of the shift is the raising, tensing, and diphthongDiphthongA diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
ization of /æ/ towards [ɪə]. This results in words like "cat" being pronounced more like "kyat." This change occurs for the phonemePhonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
/æ/ in all contexts, in contrast with other American dialects in which phonetically similar "æ-tensing" occurs only before nasal consonantNasal consonantA nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
s, or as part of a phonemic split of /æ/ into two phonemes, one tensed and the other still lax. - The second stage is the fronting of /ɑ/ to [aː]. In some speakers this fronting is so extreme that their /ɑ/ phoneme can be mistaken for /æ/ by speakers of other dialects; thus for example block approaches the way other dialects pronounce black.
- In the third stage, /ɔ/ lowers towards [ɑ], causing stalk to sound more like other dialects' stock. The lowering of the phoneme /ɔ/ is not unique to this region. However, in other regions where such a lowering occurs, it results in the cot–caught merger. The merger does not occur in the Inland North because NCVS speakers front the /ɑ/ phoneme to [a], thus maintaining the distinction between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/.
- The fourth stage is the backing and sometimes lowering of /ɛ/, toward either [ə] or [æ].
- In the fifth stage, /ʌ/ is backed towards [ɔ], so that stuck sounds like stalk in dialects that maintain a [ɔ] sound in the word stalk. In this regard, a sound change occurs in the Inland North that is the reverse of most other American dialects (including the Midland): /ʌ/ is backer than /ɑ/ rather than fronter.
- In the sixth stage, /ɪ/ is lowered and backed. However, it is kept distinct from [ɛ] in all contexts, so, the pin–pen merger does not occur.
This shift is in progress across the region, though not necessarily completed. So, any individual speaker may display some of these six shifts without displaying the others. On the whole, though, the shifts occur in the order listed above, so speakers who display advanced forms of the later changes will generally be advanced in the earlier changes as well.
North Central
The North Central dialect region extends from the Upper Peninsula of MichiganUpper Peninsula of Michigan
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is the northern of the two major land masses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan. It is commonly referred to as the Upper Peninsula, the U.P., or Upper Michigan. It is also known as the land "above the Bridge" linking the two peninsulas. The peninsula is bounded...
westward across northern Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
and North Dakota
North Dakota
North Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America, along the Canadian border. The state is bordered by Canada to the north, Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south and Montana to the west. North Dakota is the 19th-largest state by area in the U.S....
and into eastern Montana
Montana
Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...
. Although the Atlas of North American English does not include the North Central region as part of the North proper, it shares all of the features listed above as properties of the North as a whole. The North Central is a linguistically conservative region; it participates in few of the major ongoing sound changes of North American English.
The movie Fargo, which takes place in the North Central region, famously features an exaggerated version of this accent.
- Unlike most of the rest of the North, the cot–caught merger is prevalent in the North Central region.
- The North Central region is stereotypically associated with a "sing-songy" intonation which is said to derive from the pitch accentPitch accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
pattern of the Scandinavian languages, speakers of which were among the largest immigrant groups to this area during its early settlement. In urban Minnesota, this variation of NCAE is referred to as "Minnewegian," a portmanteau of Minnesota and NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
. - Older speakers in the region may merge /w/ and /v/, making well sound like "vell".
- Older and rural speakers may also merge /ð/ into /d/ and /θ/ into /t/. This feature and the foregoing one are again associated with the Scandinavian linguistic substratumSubstratumIn linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...
, in that most Scandinavian languages do not possess /w/, /ð/, or /θ/ phonemes.
Western New England
Western New England, encompassing most of ConnecticutConnecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, western Massachusetts
Western Massachusetts
Western Massachusetts is a loosely defined geographical region of the U.S. state of Massachusetts which contains the Berkshires, the Pioneer Valley, and some or all of the Swift River Valley. The region is always considered to include Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden counties, and the...
, and Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
, has close historical ties to the Inland North: it is from Western New England that the westward migration began that led to the settlement of most upstate New York
Upstate New York
Upstate New York is the region of the U.S. state of New York that is located north of the core of the New York metropolitan area.-Definition:There is no clear or official boundary between Upstate New York and Downstate New York...
and the rest of the Inland North. The linguistic boundary between Western and Eastern New England has been recognized at least since the 1940s; Western New England differed from Eastern New England then in being rhotic, possessing the Mary–marry–merry merger, and not being subject to the caught–cot merger, among other features. Historically, Western New England is distinguished from Eastern New England in that it consists principally of communities settled from the Connecticut
Connecticut Colony
The Connecticut Colony or Colony of Connecticut was an English colony located in British America that became the U.S. state of Connecticut. Originally known as the River Colony, it was organized on March 3, 1636 as a haven for Puritan noblemen. After early struggles with the Dutch, the English...
and New Haven
New Haven Colony
The New Haven Colony was an English colonial venture in present-day Connecticut in North America from 1637 to 1662.- Quinnipiac Colony :A Puritan minister named John Davenport led his flock from exile in the Netherlands back to England and finally to America in the spring of 1637...
colonies, rather than the Massachusetts Bay
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...
and Plymouth
Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement, which served as the capital of the colony, is today the modern town...
colonies.
Today, Western New England shares in the principal linguistic features listed above as characteristic of the North. Connecticut and western Massachusetts in particular show the same general phonological system as the Inland North, and some speakers show a general tendency in the direction of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift—for instance, an /æ/ that is somewhat higher and tenser than average, an /ɑ/ that is fronter than /ʌ/, and so on. The caught–cot merger has taken hold comparatively recently in Vermont, merging to an unrounded vowel [a] (unlike in Eastern New England, where the merged cot-caught vowel is back and rounded). In Connecticut /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ remain distinct, although the merger shows some evidence of being in progress advancing southward from Vermont.
Northeastern dialects
Most of the major cities of the Northeast MegalopolisNortheast megalopolis
The Northeast megalopolis or Boston–Washington megalopolis is the heavily urbanized area of the United States stretching from the the northern suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts to the southern suburbs of Washington, D.C. On a map, the region appears almost as a perfectly straight line. As of 2000,...
have distinctive accents that cover smaller regions than the broad "North" and "Midland" categories of the Midwest, reflecting the greater dialect diversity of the Northeast. These dialects are not all closely related to each other, but subsets of them share several unusual features, such as non-rhoticity
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents
English pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: a rhotic speaker pronounces a rhotic consonant in words like hard; a non-rhotic speaker does not...
or a split of /æ/ into two separate phonemes.
One feature shared by all of them is resistance to the Mary–marry–merry merger. Similarly, these dialects retain a distinction between historical short o and long o before intervocalic /ɹ/, so that, for example, orange, Florida, and horrible have a different stressed vowel than story and chorus.
Eastern New England
The Eastern New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
dialect area encompasses Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
, New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, and eastern Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
(including Greater Boston
Greater Boston
Greater Boston is the area of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts surrounding the city of Boston. Due to ambiguity in usage, the size of the area referred to can be anywhere between that of the metropolitan statistical area of Boston and that of the city's combined statistical area which includes...
). The dialect spoken here shares features with the greater North dialect region, including Canadian raising
Canadian raising
Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which certain diphthongs are "raised" before voiceless consonants...
of /aɪ/ and minimal fronting of /aʊ/ and /oʊ/, but it possesses enough distinctive features of its own to distinguish it from the North as a separate dialect system. Southern New Hampshire has been reported as retreating from some of the more distinctive features of the Eastern New England dialect region.
This region of the United States historically had more contact with British varieties of English (being nearer to the Atlantic coast) and looked to England as a standard of prestige for their speech. Hence, the Eastern New England dialect has in some respects more similarities with British English
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
than many other dialects of American English have. Most famously, Eastern New England accents (with the exception of Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
) are traditionally non-rhotic
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents
English pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: a rhotic speaker pronounces a rhotic consonant in words like hard; a non-rhotic speaker does not...
.
The Eastern New England accent is seemingly unique in North America for not having undergone the so-called father–bother merger: in other words, the stressed vowel phonemes of father and bother remain distinct as /aː/ and /ɒː/, so that the two words do not rhyme as they do in most American accents. Many Eastern New England speakers also have a class of words with "broad A"—that is, /aː/ as in father in words that in most accents contain /æ/, such as bath, half, and can't. Broad A is another feature that Eastern New England shares with southern England. On the other hand, unlike dialects of England, the Eastern New England dialect is subject to the cot–caught merger, merging the cot and caught classes to a back rounded vowel, [ɒː].
As mentioned above, Eastern New England retains the distinction between the vowel phonemes of marry, merry, and Mary. Likewise, many Eastern New England speakers preserve the distinctions between /iː/ and /ɪ/ before intervocalic /ɹ/ (as in nearer and mirror), as well as the distinction between /ʌ/ and /ɝ/ before intervocalic /ɹ/ (as in hurry and furry).
The distinction between the vowels of horse and hoarse is maintained in traditional non-rhotic New England accents as [hɒːs] for horse (with the same vowel as cot and caught) vs. [hoəs] for hoarse. Thus, the horse–hoarse merger does not occur. Like some other east-coast accents as well as AAVE
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
, some accents of eastern New England merge /oɹ/ and /uɹ/, making homophones of pairs like pour/poor, more/moor, tore/tour, cores/Coors etc.
Eastern New England has a so-called nasal short-a system. In other words, the /æ/ phoneme has highly distinct allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
s before nasal consonant
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
s.
Rhode Island
Rhode IslandRhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
is traditionally grouped with the Eastern New England dialect region, both by the dialectologists of the mid–20th century and by the Atlas of North American English; it shares Eastern New England's traditional non-rhoticity and nasal short-a system. A key linguistic difference between Rhode Island and the rest of the Eastern New England, however, is that Rhode Island is subject to the father–bother merger and not the cot–caught merger. Indeed, Rhode Island shares with New York and Philadelphia an unusually high and back allophone of /ɔ/ (as in caught), even compared to other communities that do not have the cot–caught merger.
In the Atlas of North American English, the city of Providence
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
(the only community in Rhode Island sampled by the Atlas) is also distinguished by having the backest realizations of /uː/, /oʊ/, and /aʊ/ in North America.
New York City
As in Eastern New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
, the accents of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and adjoining New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
cities are traditionally non-rhotic. The vowels of cot /kɑt/ and caught /kɔt/ are distinct; in fact the New York dialect has the highest realizations of /ɔ/ in North American English, approaching [oə] or even [ʊə]. The vowel of cart is back and rounded [kɒːt] instead of fronted as it is in Boston.
The accent is well attested in American movies and television shows, especially ones about American mobsters
Mobsters
Mobsters is a 1991 crime-drama film detailing the creation of the The Commission. Set in New York City, taking place from 1917 to 1931, it is a semi-fictitious account of the rise of Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.-Plot:This highly dramatized...
. It is often referred to more narrowly as the "Bronx" or "Brooklyn accent", although in fact research has found no variation between the different boroughs
Borough (New York City)
New York City, one of the largest cities in the world, is composed of five boroughs. Each borough now has the same boundaries as the county it is in. County governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county...
of New York per se. Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
and Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...
both speak with a Brooklyn accent in their films. The accent is often exaggerated, but nevertheless still exists to some degree among Brooklyn natives. The English used in the popular television show The Sopranos
The Sopranos
The Sopranos is an American television drama series created by David Chase that revolves around the New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the often conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads...
, set in Essex County, New Jersey, is often more close to a Brooklyn accent, than that of New Jersey, mainly regarding the rhotic feature. Furthermore, the dialect portrayed on this television show does not apply to citizens of the entire state; it is a particular socio-ethnic accent.
Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley
The accent of Philadelphia and nearby parts of PennsylvaniaPennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
, and Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, is probably the original ancestor of General American. It is one of the few coastal accents that is rhotic
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents
English pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: a rhotic speaker pronounces a rhotic consonant in words like hard; a non-rhotic speaker does not...
, and one of the first to merge the historical /or/ of hoarse, mourning with the /ɔr/ of horse, morning. It also maintains the cot–caught contrast, unlike New England and western Pennsylvania. Nevertheless there are differences between modern Philadelphia speech and General American, some of which, as described in Labov, Ash, & Boberg (2006) and Labov (2001), will be outlined here.
- "Water" is sometimes pronounced [wʊɾər], that is, with the vowel of wood
- As in New York City, but unlike General American, words like orange, horrible, etc., are pronounced with /ɑr/. See English-language vowel changes before historic r: "Historic 'short o' before intervocalic r".
- On is pronounced /ɔn/, so that, as in the South and Midland (and unlike New York and the North) it rhymes with dawn rather than don.
- The /oʊ/ of goat and boat is fronted, so it is pronounced [əʊ], as in the Midland and South.
- The phoneme /æ/ undergoes tensing in some words. Fewer words have the tense variant in Philadelphia than in New York City; for instance, mad and sad have different vowels.
- As in New York City and BostonBoston accentThe Boston dialect is the dialect characteristic of English spoken in the city of Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts. The accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and areas of south-western Nova Scotia...
, there is a three-way distinction between Mary, marry, and merry. A recent development is a merger of the vowel of merry with Murray. - Canadian raisingCanadian raisingCanadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which certain diphthongs are "raised" before voiceless consonants...
occurs for /aɪ/ (price) but not for /aʊ/ (mouth) - There is a split of /eɪ/ (face) so at the end of a word (for example, day) it is a wide diphthong similar to that of Australian EnglishAustralian EnglishAustralian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....
, while in any other position (for example, date) it is very narrow and resembles /i/. Commonly confused words include eight and eat, snake and sneak, slave and sleeve.
Other parts of Pennsylvania
Southern American English
Few generalizations can be made about Southern pronunciation as a whole, as there is great variation between regions in the South (see different southern American English dialects for more information) and between older and younger people. Upheavals such as the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, the Dust Bowl
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936...
and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
have caused mass migrations throughout the United States. Southern American English as we know it today began to take its current shape only after World War II. Some generalizations include:
- The conditional merger of [ɛ] and [ɪ] before nasal consonants, the pin–pen merger.
- The diphthong /aɪ/ becomes monophthongized to /aː/.
- Lax and tense vowels often merge before /l/
The South Midland dialect follows the Ohio River
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...
in a generally southwesterly direction, moves across Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
and Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
west of the Mississippi
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
, and peters out in West Texas
West Texas
West Texas is a vernacular term applied to a region in the southwestern quadrant of the United States that primarily encompasses the arid and semi-arid lands in the western portion of the state of Texas....
. It is a version of the Midland speech that has assimilated some coastal Southern forms, most noticeably the loss of the diphthong [ɑɪ], , which becomes [ɑː], and the second person plural pronoun "you-all" or "y'all."
South Midlands speech is characterized by:
- monophthongMonophthongA monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation....
ization of [ai] as [aː], for example, most dialects' "I" → "Ah" in the South. - raising of initial vowel of [au] to [æu]; the initial vowel is often lengthened and prolonged, yielding [æːw].
- nasalization of vowels, esp. diphthongs, before [n].
- raising of [æ] to [e]; can't → cain't, etc.
- Unlike most American English, but like British English, glides ([j], the y sound) are inserted before [u] after the consonants [t], [d], [θ], [s], [z], [n], and [l]; that is to say, yod dropping does not occur.
- South Midlands speech is rhotic. This is the principal feature that distinguishes South Midland speech from the non-rhotic coastal Southern varieties.
Southern Drawl
The Southern Drawl, or the diphthongization/triphthongTriphthong
In phonetics, a triphthong is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel quality to another that passes over a third...
ization of the traditional short front vowel
Front vowel
A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
s as in the words pat, pet, and pit: these develop a glide up from their original starting position to [j], and then in some cases back down to schwa
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
. → [æjə] → [ɛjə] → [ɪjə]
Southern vowel shift
moves to become a high front vowel, and [ɛ] to become a mid front unrounded vowel. In a parallel shift, the /i/ and /e/ relax and become less front.- The back vowels /u/ in "boon" and /o/ in "code" shift considerably forward.
- The open back unrounded vowel /ɑr/ "card" shifts upward towards /ɔ/ "board", which in turn moves up towards the old location of /u/ in "boon". This particular shift probably does not occur for speakers with the cot–caught merger.
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston, South CarolinaCharleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
has a very distinctive southern accent that encompasses elements of standard British English and American Southern English, with additional French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
-Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
influences. However, given Charleston's high concentration of African-Americans that spoke the Gullah
Gullah
The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands....
language, the speech patterns were more influenced by the dialect of the Gullah African-American community. The most distinguishing feature of this accent is the way speakers pronounce the name of the city, to which a standard listener would hear "Chahls-ton", with a silent r. Alone among the various regional Southern dialects, Charlestonian speakers inglide long mid vowels, such as the raising for /aj/ and /aw/. Some attribute these unique features of Charleston's speech to its early settlement by the French Huguenots and Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and...
, both of which played influential parts in Charleston's development and history.
New Orleans
Parallels include the split of the historic short-a class into tense [eə] and lax [æ] versions, as well as pronunciation of cot and caught as [kɑt] and [kɔt]. The stereotypical New York curl–coil merger of "toity-toid street" (33rd Street) used to be a common New Orleans feature, though it has mostly receded today.Perhaps the most distinctive New Orleans accent is locally nicknamed "yat", from a traditional greeting "Where y'at" ("Where are you at?", meaning "How are you?"). One of the most detailed phonetic depictions of an extreme "yat" accent of the early 20th century is found in the speech of the character Krazy Kat
Krazy Kat
Krazy Kat is an American comic strip created by cartoonist George Herriman, published daily in newspapers between 1913 and 1944. It first appeared in the New York Evening Journal, whose owner, William Randolph Hearst, was a major booster for the strip throughout its run...
in the comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
of the same name by George Herriman
George Herriman
George Joseph Herriman was an American cartoonist, best known for his classic comic strip Krazy Kat.-Early life:...
. While such extreme "yat" accents are no longer so common in the city, they can still be found in parts of Mid-City and the 9th ward, as well as in St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans.
The novel A Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel written by John Kennedy Toole, published by LSU Press in 1980, 11 years after the author's suicide. The book was published through the efforts of writer Walker Percy and Toole's mother Thelma Toole, quickly becoming a cult classic, and later a...
by John Kennedy Toole
John Kennedy Toole
John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, best-known for his posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces. He also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected...
is generally considered the best depiction of New Orleans accents in literature.
Acadiana
English speakers in this specific region of southwest Louisiana (also referred to as Cajun country) have carried over many words and phrases from the colonial French (i.e. Québec, Nova Scotia) because of the eviction of early French colonials by the British and their voluntary resettlement in Louisiana. A number of people in this area speak a variety of Cajun FrenchCajun French
Cajun French is a variety or dialects of the French language spoken primarily in Louisiana, specifically in the southern and southwestern parishes....
, although the number has been declining in recent years.
Miami accent
In Miami, a unique accent, commonly called the "Miami accent", is widely spoken. It developed mostly by second- or third-generation HispanicsHispanic and Latino Americans
Hispanic or Latino Americans are Americans with origins in the Hispanic countries of Latin America or in Spain, and in general all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino.1990 Census of Population and Housing: A self-designated classification for people whose origins...
whose first language was English. It contains a rhythm and pronunciation heavily influenced by Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
.
Western Dialect
The Western United StatesWestern United States
.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
is the largest dialect region in the United States, and the one with the fewest distinctive phonological features. These facts can both be attributed to the fact that the West is the region most recently settled by English speakers, and so there has not been sufficient time for the region either to develop highly distinctive innovations or to split into strongly distinct dialectological subregions. There is some evidence, though, that some regions of the West are beginning to diverge from each other linguistically.
California English
There are several phonological processes which have been identified as being particular to California English. However, these shifts are by no means universal in Californian speech, and any single Californian's speech may have only some of the changes identified below, or even none of them. Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon often demonstrate this Californian shift.California English possesses a new chain vowel shift known as the California vowel shift:
- Before /ŋ/, /ɪ/ is raised to [i], so "king" has the same vowel of "keen" rather than "kin". is raised and diphthongDiphthongA diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
ized to [eə] or [ɪə] before nasal consonantNasal consonantA nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
s. So "ban" is pronounced "bay-uhn". - before /ŋ/ it may be identified with the phoneme /e/, so "thank" is pronounced "thaynk".
- Elsewhere /æ/ is lowered in the direction of [a], so "cat" sounds closer to "caht". is moving towards [ʌ], so "put" sounds more like "putt". towards [ɛ], so "putt" can sound slightly similar to "pet". toward [æ], so "kettle" sounds like "cattle". toward [ɔ]: "cot" and "caught" are moving closer to General American "caught".
- The vowels /uː/ ("blue") and /oʊ/ ("mope") are pronounced closer to the front of the mouth.
California English also possesses the following features:
- Traditionally diphthongal vowels such as [oʊ] as in boat and [eɪ], as in bait, have acquired qualities much closer to monophthongMonophthongA monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation....
s. - A notable exception to the cot–caught merger may be found within the city limits of San Francisco, especially by older speakers.
- The pin–pen merger is complete in Bakersfield, and speakers in SacramentoSacramentoSacramento is the capital of the state of California, in the United States of America.Sacramento may also refer to:- United States :*Sacramento County, California*Sacramento, Kentucky*Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta...
either perceive or produce the pairs /ɛn/ and /ɪn/ close to each other.
Pacific Northwest English
Pacific Northwest English is fairly similar to other areas of the West. It possesses features shared in common with California English and West/Central Canadian English, depending on the region. The accent of Southern Oregon shares several features of California English (such as the California vowel shift) , and Northern Washington has some features similar to West/Central Canadian English such as the Canadian ShiftCanadian Shift
The Canadian Shift is a linguistic vowel shift found in Canadian English. It was first described by Clarke, Elms and Youssef in 1995, based on impressionistic analysis....
. as [eɪ] before /ɡ/, and [æ] as [eɪ] before /ɡ/ and /ŋ/: "leg" and "lag" pronounced [leɪɡ]; "tang" pronounced [teɪŋ].
- Further diphthongization of [ɛ] as [ɛɪ]: "egg" and "leg" are pronounced "ayg" and "layg".
- The Pacific Northwest also has some of the features of the California vowel shift and the Canadian vowel shift:
} is raised and diphthongized to [eə] before nasals by some speakers.
} is lowered in the direction of [a] by some.
-
- Other features of the California vowel shift are mostly found in Southern Oregon.
Canadian English
Canadian English (CanE) is the variety of North American English used in Canada. The phonetics and phonology for most of Canada are very similar to that of the Western and Midlands regions of the United States. Canada has relatively less dialectal diversity compared to the United States and other English-speaking countries.West/Central Canadian English
The most common variety of Canadian English the one spoken in West/Central Canada. Overall, the pronunciation of English in most of Canada, and especially in Central and Western Canada, is very similar to the pronunciation of English found in the Western United StatesWestern United States
.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...
; Canadian raising and the Canadian vowel shift are the most distinctive features.
Canadian raising
A number of Canadians have a distinct feature called "Canadian raising" (Chambers 1973). This feature means that the nucleus of the diphthongDiphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ are "raised" before voiceless consonants. In most varieties of American English pairs such as pouter/powder and rider/writer are pronounced exactly the same. In Canadian English, however, when a diphthong is followed by the voiceless consonants such as /p/ /t/ /k/ /f/ and some others, the starting point of the diphthong raises from an open central vowel to a mid one.
For example, ride is pronounced [raɪd] but with write, because the diphthong is followed by a /t/, the diphthong raises and the word is pronounced [rəɪt]. Most other speakers of American English do not possess these allophonic sounds ([əʊ] and [əɪ]) but the pronunciation is still marked. The Canadian pronunciation of "about the house" may sound like "a boat the hoas" to speakers of dialects without the raising, and in many cases is misheard (or deliberately exaggerated) as "aboot the hoos". Some stand-up and situation comedians, as well as television shows (such as South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
) exaggerate the pronunciation to *"aboot the hoos" for comic effect. True Canadian raising affects both /aʊ/ and /aɪ/, but a related phenomenon, of much wider distribution throughout the United States, affects only /aɪ/. So, whereas the General American pronunciations of rider and writer are identical ([ɹaɪɾɚ]), those American English speakers whose dialects include either the full or restricted Canadian raising will pronounce them as [ɹaɪɾɚ] and [ɹəɪɾɚ], respectively. Canadian raising is quite strong in most of Ontario and the Maritimes as well as in the Prairies. It is receding in British Columbia, and many of these speakers do not raise /aɪ/ before voiceless consonants. Younger speakers in the Lower Mainland do not even raise /aʊ/.
Canadian Vowel Shift
The cot–caught merger creates a hole in the short vowel sub-system and triggers a sound change known as the Canadian ShiftCanadian Shift
The Canadian Shift is a linguistic vowel shift found in Canadian English. It was first described by Clarke, Elms and Youssef in 1995, based on impressionistic analysis....
, mainly found in Ontario, English-speaking Montreal and further west, and led by Ontarians and women; it involves the front lax vowels /æ/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/. It is also found scattered throughout the Western United States.
The vowels in the words cot and caught merge to [ɒ], a low back rounded vowel. The /æ/ of bat is retracted to [a] (except before nasals). Indeed, /æ/ is lower in this variety than almost all other North American dialects; the retraction of /æ/ was independently observed in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
and is more advanced for Ontarians and women than for people from the Prairies
Canadian Prairies
The Canadian Prairies is a region of Canada, specifically in western Canada, which may correspond to several different definitions, natural or political. Notably, the Prairie provinces or simply the Prairies comprise the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, as they are largely covered...
or Atlantic Canada
Atlantic Canada
Atlantic Canada is the region of Canada comprising the four provinces located on the Atlantic coast, excluding Quebec: the three Maritime provinces – New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia – and Newfoundland and Labrador...
and men. Then, /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ are lowered in the direction of [æ] and [ɛ] and/or retracted; studies actually disagree on the trajectory of the shift.
See also
- American EnglishAmerican EnglishAmerican English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
- Canadian EnglishCanadian EnglishCanadian English is the variety of English spoken in Canada. English is the first language, or "mother tongue", of approximately 24 million Canadians , and more than 28 million are fluent in the language...
- Old Virginia accentOld Virginia accentThe Old Virginia accent is one that is primarily heard in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Traces of this dialect and its characteristic drawl can also be heard in adjacent states, including words that are pronounced differently, such as "out" and...