From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

North American regional phonology is the study of variations in the pronunciation of spoken English by the inhabitants of various parts of North America.

In many ways, compared to British English, American English is conservative in its phonology. Dialect in North America is most distinctive on the East Coast of the continent; this is partly because these 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. As such, the inland speech is much more homogeneous than the East Coast speech and did not imitate the changes in speech from England.

[edit] General American

Main article: General American

General American is the accent of American English perceived by Americans to be most "neutral" and free of regional characteristics. The General American accent is not thought of as a linguistic standard in the sense that Received Pronunciation (RP) has historically been the standard, prestige variant in England, but its speakers are perceived as "accentless" by most Americans.

General American includes various features, including 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 /ɹ/. General American also has yod-dropping after alveolar consonants. Other phonemic mergers, including the cot-caught merger, the pin-pen merger, the Mary-marry-merry merger and the wine-whine merger, may be found optionally at least in informal and semiformal varieties; however, the most formal varieties tend to be more conservative in preserving these phonemic distinctions.

One phenomenon apparently unique to General American is the 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-], like Canadian English, but the last four words of the list above have [-ɑɹ-], like New York-New Jersey English, for many speakers (Shitara 1993).

Regional dialects 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; Charleston, South Carolina; 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, chief among them the one that prevails in and around New York City and northern New Jersey.

The sounds of American speech can be identified with a number of public figures: Ted Kennedy speaks with a Boston accent, while Jimmy Carter speaks with a Southern coastal accent. Chuck Schumer speaks with a New York accent. The North Midlands speech is familiar to those who have heard Neil Armstrong, John Glenn and Hillary Clinton, while Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Robert Byrd speak with South Midland accents. Comedians Mel Brooks and Ray Romano retain typical New York accents while Jack Black and Pauly Shore have the standard sound of southern California.

African American Vernacular English (AAVE, commonly known as Ebonics, Black English, etc.) contains many distinctive forms.

[edit] Western Dialect

The Western dialect is distinct from strict General American because it possesses the cot-caught merger. Most speakers except some speakers over 60, produce and perceive words such as cot and caught as having the same vowel sound.

[edit] California English

Main article: 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. California English possesses a new chain vowel shift known as the California vowel shift:

Image:California English vowel chart.png

• Before /ŋ/, /ɪ/ is raised to [i], so king has the same vowel of keen rather than kin.
• /æ/ is raised and diphthongized to [eə] or [ɪə] before nasal consonants. 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".
• /ʊ/ is moving towards [ʌ], so "put" sounds more like "putt".
• /ʌ/ towards [ɛ], so "putt" can sound slightly similar to "pet".
• /ɛ/ toward [æ], so "kettle" sounds like "cattle".
• /ɑ/ 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 monophthongs.
• 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 Sacramento either perceive or produce the pairs /ɛn/ and /ɪn/ close to each other ^[1].

[edit] Utah English

Main article: Utah English

Utah English, sometimes humorously referred to as "Utahnics", is a dialect of the English language spoken in the U.S. state of Utah. Influences are as varied as ancestries of its immigrants, from Scottish to Mexican Spanish. Since the field of Sociolinguistics is relatively new to academia, very little research has been done on the dialect. However, a research team at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah has begun a comparative project on the topic.[1] Utah English consists of the following features:

• The merger of /oʊ/ and /ʊ/ to [ʊ] before /ɫ/, making pairs like bowl and bull pronounced the same.
• Further diphthongization of [ɛ] as [ɛɪ]: "egg" and "leg" are pronounced "ayg" and "layg", "leisure" and "pleasure" pronounced "layzhur" and "playzhur."
• The merger of /ɑr/ and /ɔr/, such that "born" may be pronounced "barn" and the town of "American Fork" becomes "American Fark."

[edit] Pacific Northwest English

Main article: Pacific Northwest English

Pacific Northwest English is fairly similar to other areas of the West. It possess 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 (e.g. Canadian Shift).

• [ɛ] and sometimes [æ] as [eɪ] before /g/: "leg" and "lag" pronounced [leɪg].
• The Pacific Northwest also has some of the features of the California vowel shift and the Canadian vowel shift:
  • /æ/ is raised and diphthongized to [eə] or [ɪə] before nasals by some speakers.
  • /æ/ is lowered in the direction of [a] by some.
  • Other features of the California vowel shift are mostly found in Southern Oregon and in population centers with heavy Californian imigration.

[edit] West/Central Canadian English

Main article: West/Central Canadian English

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 States; Canadian raising and the Canadian vowel shift are the most distinctive features.

[edit] Canadian raising

Main article: Canadian raising

A number of Canadians have a distinct feature called "Canadian raising" (Chambers 1973). This feature means that the nucleus of the diphthongs /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 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/.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Canadian vowel Shift

Main article: Canadian Shift

The cot-caught merger creates a hole in the short vowel sub-system^[2] and triggers a sound change known as the Canadian Shift, mainly found in Ontario, English-speaking Montreal and further west, and lead 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]. 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;^[3] the retraction of /æ/ was independently observed in Vancouver^[4] and is more advanced for Ontarians and women than for people from the Prairies or Atlantic Canada and men.^[5] 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.^[6]

[edit] Midwestern English

The Midwest contains three distinct dialect regions ^[7]: the Northern dialect (including the Inland Northern sub-dialect), the North Central dialect, and the North Midlands dialect.

[edit] Inland Northern

Main article: Inland Northern American English

The Inland North Dialect is the "standard Midwestern" speech that was the basis for General American in the mid-20th Century, though it has been recently modified by the northern cities vowel shift.

This area is centered on the Great Lakes, and consists of western New York State (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse), much of Michigan's Lower Peninsula (Detroit, Grand Rapids), Cleveland, Chicago, Gary, and Southeastern Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Racine).

[edit] Northern Cities Vowel shift

Main article: Northern Cities Vowel Shift

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Inland Northern dialects, this chain shift has been occurring in six stages:

1. The first stage of the shift is the diphthongization of [æ] to [ɪə]. This results in words like "candy" being pronounced more like "kyandy."
2. The second stage is the fronting of [ɑ], which then sounds similar to the former [æ]. "Not" then sounds like "naht."
3. In the third stage, [ɔ] lowers towards [ɑ], causing "stalk" to sound more like "stock".
4. The fourth stage, the lowering of [ɛ], is not unique to this particular vowel shift.
5. During the fifth stage, [ʌ] is backed towards [ɔ]. "Stuck" sounds like "stalk".
6. In the sixth stage, [ɪ] is lowered and backed, although it is kept distinct from [ɛ]. This means that the pin-pen merger does not occur.

Note that this merger is in progress across the region, but that each subsequent stage is a result of the previous one(s), so that an individual speaker may not display all of these shifts, but no speaker will display the last without also showing the ones before it.

[edit] The Midland

West of the Appalachian Mountains begins the broad zone of what is generally called "Midland" speech. This is divided into two discrete subdivisions, the North Midland that begins north of the Ohio River valley area, and the South Midland speech; sometimes the former is designated simply Midland and the latter is reckoned as Highland Southern. The North Midland speech continues to expand westward until it becomes the closely related speech of California, although in the immediate San Francisco area the speech more closely resembles that of the mid-Atlantic region.

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." Unlike Coastal Southern, however, South Midland is a rhotic dialect, pronouncing /r/ wherever it has historically occurred.

Midland dialects cover of the larger parts of Ohio, Indiana, and central Illinois which are not in the Inland North, as well as Missouri, southern Iowa, northern Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska where it begins to blend into the West, and extends into extreme southern parts of Michigan's lower peninsula.

• In some areas, words like "roof" and "root" get the vowel of "book" and "hoof"
• People who pronounce "don" and "dawn" differently pronounce "on" to rhyme with "dawn" and not "don"
• St. Louis has a distinctive accent, see the section on it below.
• South Indiana has a distinctive accent, locally known as the "Hoosier Twang"

South Midlands speech is characterized by:

• monophthongization of 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.

[edit] North Central American English

(Northern Iowa, Minnesota (esp. rural), Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota)

Main article: North Central American English

• As in most North American accents, [ɒ] is merged with [ɑ], so that father rhymes with bother.
• Canadian raising: see section on Canada.
• "roof", "book", and "root" all use the same vowel [ʊ]); "root" and "roof" may be pronounced as rhyming with "scoot," however
• Use of German/Scandinavian "ja", pronounced as either /jaː/ or /jæː/, as an affirmative filler or emphatic; Standard U.S. English "yes" is used in formal settings to answer questions and to start an explanation.
• The word "school" has two syllables, pronounced: "Skoo-ehl".
• Tendency towards a "sing-songy" intonation (the area's earliest European settlers were primarily Scandinavian, and this has influenced the local dialect). More recently, this has been reinforced by an influx of Asians, most of whom speak tonal languages. In urban Minnesota, this variation of NCAE is referred to as "Minnewegian," a portmanteau of Minnesota and Norwegian.
• For a stereotypical example, refer to the movie Fargo. For a more moderate example, Garrison Keillor speaks with a typical Minnesota accent. Accents in the Twin Cities will sound like other midwestern urban centers, and are similar to Milwaukee and Chicago (though the accent is more noticeable in Twin Cities residents born prior to 1950, which had more rural area influences, than those born in the 1980's, which had more influences via television, popular music, and other forms of popular culture). People from other parts of Wisconsin can usually recognize that a person is from the Milwaukee area and vice-versa.
• final /t/ is replaced in the speech of most individuals by /ʔ/, including after nasals, to the extent that a clearly enunciated "can" /kæːn/ in otherwise rapid speech is likely to be confused with "can't." ("Can" is normally pronounced as /kən/, or even with the vowel reduced to a syllabification of the /n/ itself, while "can't" is normally pronounced /kæ̃ːʔ/.)
• collapse of /ð/ with /d/ and /θ/ with /t/: a humorous example would be:
  • • "Yozef? Are you done cleaning da barn?"
    • "No, but it's about two turds [two thirds] done."
• This phoneme collapse is far more prevalent in rural areas. This characteristic is likely due to the large immigrant population (in most cases notably less than a century removed from "the old country"), comprised in great part of speakers of Germanic, Slavic and Finnic languages. One notable exception, giving weight to this theory, is that it is peculiarly absent on Washington Island, in Wisconsin, in the very heart of the prevalence of this trait. Washington Island is home to the most homogeneous Icelander (over 90% of the population) immigrant community in the U.S., and unlike most non-English Germanic languages, the Icelandic language differentiates between the phonemes /ð/ and /d/ and between /θ/ and /t/.
• Older speakers in the region may merge /w/ and/v/ making well sound like vell.
• Perhaps to a greater degree than other parts of the United States, standard American English pronunciation is replacing the regional accent, probably because there is less cultural identity wrapped up in the language than elsewhere

This regional variety has been much popularized, in somewhat satirical fashion, by the popular music group "Da Yoopers" (From "Yooper", a person from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan), singing such songs as Second Week Of Deer Camp, Grandpa Got Run Over By A Beer Truck and Rusty Chevrolet. In addition, it has also been satirized in the form of Coach Z, a character on the Homestar Runner web site, and in numerous skits and sketches by the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

[edit] St. Louis and vicinity

• Some St. Louisans (probably born earlier than 1960) tend to merge the [ɔɹ] sound as in for with the [ɑɹ] sound of far. Interstates 40 and 44, are thus farty and farty-far. Similarly, "corn" is pronounced [kɑɹn]. This accent is otherwise a typical north Midland accent.
• Some younger speakers are picking up the Northern cities vowel shift heard in Chicago, eastern Wisconsin, and much of Michigan, Northeast Ohio and New York State. This vowel shift causes words like cat /kæt/ to become more like [kɛt] and talent /tælənt/ to be more like /tʲælənt/ or /tʲɛlənt/.
• Since this is in the Midland, "on" rhymes with "dawn," and the Northern cities vowel shift makes this more noticeable here than in the rest of the Midland.
• Some speakers, usually older generations, pronounce words like measure as /ˈmeɪʒ.ɚ/, and wash as /wɔɹʃ/, for example, /ˈwɔrʃ.ɪŋ.tən/ for Washington.
• Some speakers, again older speakers more than the younger generations, pronounce mostaccioli as /mʌskɑtʃoliː/.
• 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 substituted 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.

[edit] North Central American English

(Northern Iowa, Minnesota (esp. rural), Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota)

Main article: North Central American English

• As in most North American accents, [ɒ] is merged with [ɑ], so that father rhymes with bother.
• Canadian raising: see section on Canada.
• "roof", "book", and "root" all use the same vowel [ʊ]); "root" and "roof" may be pronounced as rhyming with "scoot," however
• Use of German/Scandinavian "ja", pronounced as either /jaː/ or /jæː/, as an affirmative filler or emphatic; Standard U.S. English "yes" is used in formal settings to answer questions and to start an explanation.
• The word "school" has two syllables, pronounced: "Skoo-ehl".
• Tendency towards a "sing-songy" intonation (the area's earliest European settlers were primarily Scandinavian, and this has influenced the local dialect). More recently, this has been reinforced by an influx of Asians, most of whom speak tonal languages. In urban Minnesota, this variation of NCAE is referred to as "Minnewegian," a portmanteau of Minnesota and Norwegian.
• For a stereotypical example, refer to the movie Fargo. For a more moderate example, Garrison Keillor speaks with a typical Minnesota accent. Accents in the Twin Cities will sound like other midwestern urban centers, and are similar to Milwaukee and Chicago (though the accent is more noticeable in Twin Cities residents born prior to 1950, which had more rural area influences, than those born in the 1980's, which had more influences via television, popular music, and other forms of popular culture). People from other parts of Wisconsin can usually recognize that a person is from the Milwaukee area and vice-versa.
• final /t/ is replaced in the speech of most individuals by /ʔ/, including after nasals, to the extent that a clearly enunciated "can" /kæːn/ in otherwise rapid speech is likely to be confused with "can't." ("Can" is normally pronounced as /kən/, or even with the vowel reduced to a syllabification of the /n/ itself, while "can't" is normally pronounced /kæ̃ːʔ/.)
• collapse of /ð/ with /d/ and /θ/ with /t/: a humorous example would be:
  • • "Yozef? Are you done cleaning da barn?"
    • "No, but it's about two turds [two thirds] done."
• This phoneme collapse is far more prevalent in rural areas. This characteristic is likely due to the large immigrant population (in most cases notably less than a century removed from "the old country"), comprised in great part of speakers of Germanic, Slavic and Finnic languages. One notable exception, giving weight to this theory, is that it is peculiarly absent on Washington Island, in Wisconsin, in the very heart of the prevalence of this trait. Washington Island is home to the most homogeneous Icelander (over 90% of the population) immigrant community in the U.S., and unlike most non-English Germanic languages, the Icelandic language differentiates between the phonemes /ð/ and /d/ and between /θ/ and /t/.
• Older speakers in the region may merge /w/ and/v/ making well sound like vell.
• Perhaps to a greater degree than other parts of the United States, standard American English pronunciation is replacing the regional accent, probably because there is less cultural identity wrapped up in the language than elsewhere

This regional variety has been much popularized, in somewhat satirical fashion, by the popular music group "Da Yoopers" (From "Yooper", a person from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan), singing such songs as Second Week Of Deer Camp, Grandpa Got Run Over By A Beer Truck and Rusty Chevrolet. In addition, it has also been satirized in the form of Coach Z, a character on the Homestar Runner web site, and in numerous skits and sketches by the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

[edit] Eastern Dialects

[edit] Eastern New England

The accents of eastern New England, including those of Boston (see Boston accent), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Maine (also called Down East), are characterized by a number of phenomena that distinguish them from General American (GenAm). Traditionally, these accents (with the exception of Martha's Vineyard) are non-rhotic, but this feature is slowly losing ground, especially with the vowel [ɝ]. Further, most accents in this region have not merged the vowels of father and bother, that is, the two do not rhyme, as they do in GenAm.

In general, these accents undergo the cot-caught merger, making cot and caught homophonous as /kɒt/. They also have a dwindling group of words with broad A, such as past, half, aunt, can't. Among non-rhotic speakers, the broad A is identical to the sound usually spelled ar, so that past/parsed and aunt/aren't can be homophonous pairs.

The distinction between the vowels of horse and hoarse is maintained in traditional non-rhotic New England accents as [hɒs] (with the same vowel as cot and caught) vs. [hoəs].

Words that have [ɒɹV] in RP (where V stands for any vowel), such as origin, Florida, horrible, quarrel, warren, borrow, tomorrow, sorry, sorrow, all have [ɒɹV] in eastern New England, unlike GenAm where most have [ɔɹV] (except the last four in the list, which have [ɑɹV] in GenAm as well).

The eastern New England accents have not undergone many of the vowel mergers before intervocalic [ɹ] found in General American. For example, many accents in this region preserve the distinction between [ɪəɹ] (as in nearer /nɪəɹə/) and [ɪɹ] (as in mirror /mɪɹə/), as well as the distinction between [ʌɹ] (as in hurry /hʌɹi/) and [ɜ] (as in furry /fɜɹi/).

Like some other east-coast accents as well as AAVE, some accents of eastern New England merge [oɹ] and [ʊɹ], making homophones of pairs like pour/poor, more/moor, tore/tour, cores/Coors etc.

[edit] Boston

Main article: Boston accent

The Boston accent has a highly distinctive system of low vowels, even amongst speakers who do not drop syllable-final /r/. Eastern New England is the only region in North America where the distinction between the vowels in words like father and spa on the one hand and words like bother and hot on the other hand is securely maintained: the former contain [aː] ([faːðə] and [haːt] respectively), and the latter [ɒː] ([bɒːðə] and [hɒːt] respectively). While heart and hot remain distinct for these speakers, the accent of nearby New York (as well as some other non-rhotic accents) uses the same or almost the same vowel in both of these classes: [ɑː]. Like Boston English, Received Pronunciation (in England) also distinguishes the classes, though its vowel qualities are slightly different in each case [ɑː] in heart and [ɔ] in hot.

[edit] New York City

Main article: New York-New Jersey English

As in Eastern New England, the accents of New York City and adjoining New Jersey cities are traditionally non-rhotic. But the vowels of cot ([kɑt]) and caught ([kɔət]) are distinct; the former is distinct from that of cart (/kɑət/) only by being short and monophthongal.

The accent is well attested in American movies and television shows, especially ones about American mobsters. Bugs Bunny and Groucho Marx both had a Brooklyn accent. The accent is often exaggerated, but it still does exist to some degree with many Brooklyn natives. A more contemporary version of this can be found on the popular television show The Sopranos, which is set in Essex County, New Jersey. However, it is important to note that the dialect portrayed on this television show does not apply to citizens of the entire state; it is a particular socio-ethnic accent.

[edit] Mid-Atlantic Region

[edit] Northeastern Pennsylvania

The dialect of the Wyoming Valley (including Scranton and Wilkes-Barre) is Northeast Pennsylvania English.

[edit] Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley

Main article: Philadelphia accent

The accent of Philadelphia and nearby parts of Pennsylvania, 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 [oɹ] of hoarse, mourning with the [ɔɹ] 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 will be outlined here.

• "Water" is sometimes pronounced /wʊdɚ/, that is, with the vowel of wood
• As in New York-New Jersey English, but unlike General American, words like orange, horrible, etc., are pronounced with [-ɑɹ-]. See English-language vowel changes before historic r: "Tory-torrent merger".
• 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 [ɞʊ], as in the Midland and South.
• The phoneme [æ] undergoes æ-tensing in some words; fewer words have the tense [eə] in Philadelphia than in New York City.
• As in New York City and Boston, 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 raising 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 sounds like it does in Australia, while in any other position (for example, date) it is pronounced more like [i]. Commonly confused words include eight and eat, snake and sneak, slave and sleeve.
• South Philadelphia has been known for r-dropping, even though it has never been a characteristic of the rest of the region.

[edit] Baltimore, Maryland

See the separate article on Baltimorese

[edit] Pittsburgh

The Pittsburgh English has a number of distinctive features. Please refer to that article for more information.

[edit] Buffalo, New York

The city of Buffalo has some very distinct patterns in English. Please refer to this article, Buffalo English

[edit] Southern American English

Main article: 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 Depression, 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 the World War II. Some generalizations include:

• The merger of [ɛ] and [ɪ] before nasal consonants
• The diphthong /aɪ/ becomes monophthongized.
• Lax and tense vowels often merge before /l/

[edit] Southern Drawl

The Southern Drawl, or the diphthongization/triphthongization of the traditional short front vowels 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.

• /æ/ → [æjə]
• /ɛ/ → [ɛjə]
• /ɪ/ → [ɪjə]

[edit] Southern vowel shift

• [ɪ] 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.

[edit] New Orleans

While including such characteristics of the Southern U.S. English as using "y'all" for second person plural, the New Orleans accent is so unlike the rest of the South and so similar to that of New York City that New Orleanians traveling in other parts of the USA are often mistaken for New Yorkers.

Many pronunciations are surprisingly similar to that found in New York City and northern New Jersey, presumably arising from a similar mix of immigrants. 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 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.

[edit] 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. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia) due to the eviction and resettlement of early French colonials by the British. A number of people in this area speak a variety of Cajun French, although the number has been declining in recent years.

[edit] Central and South Florida

The speech used in the urban and coastal areas of Central and South Florida (everything south of and including Orlando) is noticeable for not being a typical southern accent, because a large proportion of the inhabitants of the area are either natives of the Northeast (and therefore speakers of accents like New York-New Jersey English) or else native Spanish speakers (predominantly from Cuba.) The accents heard in some parts of this region, especially in older communities such as Aventura, Boca Raton, or West Palm Beach, are that of the typical New Yorker. However the southern dialect is still predominantly spoken in the rural and inland areas of Central and South Florida.

In Miami, a unique accent, commonly called the "Miami accent", is widely spoken. It developed by second- or third-generation Hispanics whose first language was English. It is very similar to accents in the Northeast, but contains a rhythm and pronunciation heavily influenced by Spanish. However, a Miami accent is not Spanish-accented English, as many Miami residents who are not Hispanic or do not speak Spanish speak with the Miami accent as well. Although many Miami natives will deny that they have an accent, those outside South Florida will identify a unique accent spoken by Miami residents.

[edit] References

• Shitara, Yuko (1993). "A survey of American pronunciation preferences". Speech Hearing and Language 7: 201–32.
• Mencken, H. L. (1936, repr. 1977). The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (4th edition). New York: Knopf. 
• Rainey, Virginia, (2004) Insiders' Guide: Salt Lake City (4th ed.), The Globe Pequot Press, ISBN 0-7627-2836-1
• Brigham Young University Linguistics Department Research Teams
• BYU "Utah English" Research Team's Homepage
• Article about "Utahnics" (social satire)
• "How We Talk: American Regional English Today" by Allan A. Metcalf, 2000, Houghton Mifflin.
• "Utahnics", segment on All Things Considered, National Public Radio February 16, 1997.
• Chambers, J. K. "Canadian raising". Canadian Journal of Linguistics 18.2 (1973): 113–35.
• Dailey-O'Cain, J. "Canadian raising in a midwestern U.S. city". Language Variation and Change 9,1 (1997): 107-120.
• Labov, W. "The social motivation of a sound change". Word 19 (1963): 273–309.
• Wells, J. C. Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
• McCarthy, John (1993). A case of surface constraint violation. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 38. 169–95.
• Metcalf, Allan (2000), How We Talk, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
• George Mason University. The Speech Accent Archive, 22 September, 2004.

1. ^ Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, 68. ISBN 3-11-016746-8. 
2. ^ Martinet, Andre 1955. Economie des changements phonetiques. Berne: Francke.
3. ^ Labov p. 219.
4. ^ Esling, John H. and Henry J. Warkentyne (1993). "Retracting of /æ/ in Vancouver English."
5. ^ Charles Boberg, "Sounding Canadian from Coast to Coast: Regional accents in Canadian English."
6. ^ Labov et al. 2006; Charles Boberg, "The Canadian Shift in Montreal"; Robert Hagiwara. "Wovel production in Winnipeg"; Rebecca V. Roeder and Lidia Jarmasz. "The Canadian Shift in Toronto."
7. ^ Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, 68. ISBN 3-11-016746-8. 

[edit] See also

• American English
• Canadian English
• American English regional differences