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 dialects 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 English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... North American redirects here. ... North American English is a collective term used for the varieties of the English language that are spoken in the United States and Canada. ... For dialects of programming languages, see Programming language dialect. ... Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound or voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... Look up lexicon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see American English (disambiguation). ... Canadian English (CanE) is the variety of North American English used in Canada. ... This is a list of varieties of the English language. ...

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. Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from an article revision dated 2006-02-04, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context on the way language is used. ...

Defining Regions of North American Speech

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, most famous among them the variety that prevails in New York City. For dialects of programming languages, see Programming language dialect. ... Categories: US geography stubs ... Boston redirects here. ... The Boston accent is found not only in the city of Boston, Massachusetts itself but also much of eastern Massachusetts. ... Nickname: City of Brotherly Love, Philly, the Quaker City Motto: Philadelphia maneto (Let brotherly love continue) Location in Pennsylvania Coordinates: Country United States State Pennsylvania County Philadelphia Founded October 27, 1682 Incorporated October 25, 1701 Mayor John F. Street (D) Area    - City 369. ... Nickname: Motto: Aedes Mores Juraque Curat (She cares for her temples, customs, and rights) Location of Charleston in South Carolina. ... NOLA redirects here. ... The Connecticut River as seen from the French King Bridge in western Massachusetts. ... The Potomac River flows into the Chesapeake Bay, located along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States (USA). ... The New York dialect of the English language is spoken by most European Americans who were raised in New York City and much of its metropolitan area including the lower Hudson Valley, western Long Island, and in northeastern New Jersey. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ...

Dialects 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. For dialects of programming languages, see Programming language dialect. ... Sound change or phonetic change is a historical process of language change consisting in the replacement of one speech sound or, more generally, one phonetic feature by another in a given phonological environment. ...

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. Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Famous speakers of North American English dialects

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 Midland speech is familiar to those who have heard Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, 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. For other persons named Ted Kennedy, see Ted Kennedy (disambiguation). ... The Boston accent is found not only in the city of Boston, Massachusetts itself but also much of eastern Massachusetts. ... For other persons named Jimmy Carter, see Jimmy Carter (disambiguation). ... Charles Ellis Chuck Schumer (born November 23, 1950) is the senior U.S. Senator from the state of New York, serving since 1999. ... This article is about the former American astronaut. ... For other persons named John Glenn, see John Glenn (disambiguation). ... William Jefferson Bill Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III[1] on August 19, 1946) was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. ... This article is about the former Vice President of the United States. ... Robert Carlyle Byrd (born November 20, 1917) is the senior United States Senator from West Virginia and a member of the Democratic Party. ... Mel Brooks (born June 28, 1926) is an Academy Award-winning American director, writer, comedian, actor and producer best known as a creator of broad film farces and comedy parodies. ... Raymond Romano (born December 21, 1957 in Queens, New York) is an Emmy Award-winning and Golden Globe-nominated, American actor and comedian best known for his starring role on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. ... This article is about the state. ... Jack Black (born Thomas J. Black, Jr. ... Pauly Shore (born February 1, 1968) is an American actor and comedian, perhaps best known for starring in a series of comedy films in the 1990s. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ...

General American

Main article: 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 Pronunciation (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. Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ...

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 consonants. Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Phonemic differentiation is the phenomenon of a language maximizing the acoustic distance between its phonemes, presumably to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding. ... This page discusses a phonological phenomenon. ... The English language has undergone a number of phonological changes before the historic phoneme . ... Yod-dropping is the elision of the sound , the term comes from the Hebrew letter ×™, Yod, pronounced as . ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ...

Other phonemic mergers present in some speakers include the cot-caught merger, the pin-pen merger (a conditional merger). The widespread Mary-marry-merry merger and the wine-whine merger are complete in some regions 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. The areas enclosed by the green line are those where most speakers have completely merged the vowels of cot and caught. ... The merger of pin and pen in American English. ... The English language has undergone a number of phonological changes before the historic phoneme . ... The wine-whine merger is a merger by which the sound or sequence (spelled wh) becomes ; it occurs in the speech of the great majority of English speakers. ...

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 the New York accent and through New Jersey and Philadelphia, most or all of these words are pronounced as [-ɑɹ-] by many speakers (Shitara 1993). In Canadian English, however, all of the words in this class are pronounced [-ɔɹ-]. The New York dialect of the English language is spoken by most European Americans who were raised in New York City and much of its metropolitan area including the lower Hudson Valley, western Long Island, and in northeastern New Jersey. ...

The Midland

The region of the Midwestern United States 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". This article is about the Midwestern region in the United States. ... The Appalachian Mountains are a vast system of mountains in eastern North America. ... View of Pittsburgh, the largest metropolitan area on the Ohio River, where the Allegheny River (left) and the Monongahela River (right) join at Point State Park to form the Ohio River Cincinnati, Ohio is a well known city along the Ohio River, historically known for its riverboats. ...

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". The areas enclosed by the green line are those where most speakers have completely merged the vowels of cot and caught. ...

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.^{[citation needed]}

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. In linguistics polarity item is an expression which is sensitive to the presence, in the same sentence, of certain other expressions that are somehow negative. Polarity items divide into those who must co-occur with a somehow negative expression (negative polarity item, NPI) and those who cannot (positive polarity item...

(North) Midland

The North Midland region stretches from east to west across central and southern Ohio, 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. This article is about the U.S. State. ... The geography of the U.S. State of Indiana is both diverse and fascinating. ... State nickname: Land of Lincoln, The Prairie State Other U.S. States Capital Springfield Largest city Chicago Governor Rod Blagojevich Official languages English Area 149,998 km² (25th)  - Land 143,968 km²  - Water 6,030 km² (4. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... For other uses, see Nebraska (disambiguation). ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Nickname: Location in the state of Ohio, USA Coordinates: , Country State Counties Franklin, Fairfield, Delaware Government  - Mayor Michael B. Coleman (D) Area  - City 212. ... Cincinnati, Ohio viewed from the SW, across the Ohio River from Kentucky. ... The Indianapolis skyline Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana. ... Phonemic differentiation is the phenomenon of a language maximizing the acoustic distance between its phonemes, presumably to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding. ... The areas enclosed by the green line are those where most speakers have completely merged the vowels of cot and caught. ...

The /æ/ phoneme (as in cat) shows most commonly a so-called "continuous" distribution: /æ/ is raised and tensed toward [eə] before nasal consonants and remains low [æ] before voiceless stop consonants, and other allophones of /æ/ occupy a continuum of varying degrees of height between those two extremes. // Trap-bath split The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English (including Received Pronunciation), in the Boston accent, and in the Southern Hemisphere accents (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), by which the Early Modern English phoneme was lengthened... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ...

South Midland

The South Midland dialect region follows the Ohio River in a generally southwesterly direction, moving across from Kentucky, southern Indiana, and southern Illinois to 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 [ɑː], 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". View of Pittsburgh, the largest metropolitan area on the Ohio River, where the Allegheny River (left) and the Monongahela River (right) join at Point State Park to form the Ohio River Cincinnati, Ohio is a well known city along the Ohio River, historically known for its riverboats. ... Official language(s) English[1] Capital Frankfort Largest city Louisville Area  Ranked 37th  - Total 40,444 sq mi (104,749 km²)  - Width 140 miles (225 km)  - Length 379 miles (610 km)  - % water 1. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ... For other uses, see Oklahoma (disambiguation). ... For the river in Canada, see Mississippi River (Ontario). ... This article is about the use of the term Hoosiers. For the small town in Indiana, see Hoosier, Indiana. ...

The phonology of the South Midland is discussed in greater detail in the section on the South below.

St. Louis and vicinity

St. Louis, Missouri 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. St. ...

• 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 the stereotypical exaggeration of the St. Louis accent as "Interstate Farty-Far".
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• Some younger speakers have picked up features of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, 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 Chicago 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.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Interstate 44 Interstate 44 (abbreviated I-44) is an interstate highway in the central United States. ... Three isoglosses identifying the NCVS. In the brown areas is more retracted than . ... For other uses, see Chicago (disambiguation). ...

Western Pennsylvania

The dialect of Western Pennsylvania 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. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... The areas enclosed by the green line are those where most speakers have completely merged the vowels of cot and caught. ... Official language(s) none (de facto English) Demonym West Virginian Capital Charleston Largest city Charleston Largest metro area Charleston metro area Area  Ranked 41st in the US  - Total 24,230 sq mi (62,755 km²)  - Width 130 miles (210 km)  - Length 240 miles (385 km)  - % water 0. ...

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 monopthongization of /aʊ/ to [a:]. 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/). City nickname: The Steel City Location in the state of Pennsylvania Founded 1758 Mayor Tom Murphy (Dem) Area  - Total  - Water 151. ... Pittsburgh English, popularly known as Pittsburghese, is the dialect of American English spoken by many residents of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and surrounding Western Pennsylvania. ... In phonetics, vowel height refers to the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth in a vowel sound. ...

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 isoglosses 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. Isoglosses on the Faroe Islands An isogloss is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, e. ...

• Where the Midland has fronting of /aʊ/ and /oʊ/, in the North the nucleus of /aʊ/ is further back than than that of /aɪ/ and /oʊ/ remains a back vowel. Similarly, although /u:/ 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 /u:/ after non-coronal consonants remains back. Indeed, in part of the north (much of Wisconsin and Minnesota), /u:/ remains back in all environments.
• Where the Midland has /ɔ/ (as in dawn) in on, the North has /ɑ/.
• Canadian raising 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.

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. Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Capital Saint Paul Largest city Minneapolis Largest metro area Minneapolis-St. ... Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which diphthongs are raised before voiceless consonants (e. ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ...

Inland North

Main article: Inland Northern American English

The Inland North dialect region was once considered the "standard Midwestern" speech that was the basis for General American 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 Dialect of American English was 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. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Three isoglosses identifying the NCVS. In the brown areas is more retracted than . ...

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), Cleveland, Chicago, Gary, and Southeastern Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Racine). The Great Lakes from space The Laurentian Great Lakes are a group of five large lakes in North America on or near the Canada-United States border. ... State nickname: Empire State Other U.S. States Capital Albany Largest city New York Governor George Pataki Official languages None Area 141,205 km² (27th)  - Land 122,409 km²  - Water 18,795 km² (13. ... Nickname: Location of Syracuse within the state of New York Coordinates: , City Government  - Mayor Matthew Driscoll (D) Area  - City 66. ... This article is about the City of Binghamton, New York. ... This article is about the city of Rochester in Monroe County. ... Nickname: Location of Buffalo in New York State Coordinates: , Country State County Erie First Settled 1789 Founded 1801 Incorporated (City) 1832 Government  - Mayor Byron Brown (D) Area  - City 52. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ... Motto: Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes - this motto was adopted after the disastrous 1805 fire that devastated the city) Nickname: The Motor City and Motown Location in Wayne County, Michigan Founded Incorporated July 24, 1701 1815  County Wayne County Mayor... Grand Rapids is the name of several places in the United States of America: Grand Rapids, Michigan Grand Rapids, Minnesota Grand Rapids, Ohio Grand Rapids, Wisconsin is the former name of Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin Grand Rapids is also the name of a town in Canada: Grand Rapids, Manitoba. ... Cleveland redirects here. ... For other uses, see Chicago (disambiguation). ... Gary redirects here. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... This article is about Milwaukee in Wisconsin. ... Racine is a city in Racine County, Wisconsin, United States, located beside Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Root River. ...

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. “Erie” redirects here. ... City nickname: The Steel City Location in the state of Pennsylvania Founded 1758 Mayor Tom Murphy (Dem) Area  - Total  - Water 151. ...

This map shows the approximate extent of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, and thus the approximate area where the Inland North dialect predominates. Note that the region surrounding Erie, Pennsylvania is excluded.

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. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... “Erie” redirects here. ... Northeast Pennsylvania English is the local dialect of American English spoken in northeastern Pennsylvania, specifically in the Wyoming Valley area, which includes Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. ... For other uses, see Indiana (disambiguation). ... Capital Saint Paul Largest city Minneapolis Largest metro area Minneapolis-St. ...

The Northern Cities Vowel Shift

Main article: Northern Cities Vowel Shift

The NCVS is a chain shift involving movements of six vowel phonemes: Three isoglosses identifying the NCVS. In the brown areas is more retracted than . ... In the study of phonetic changes, a chain shift is a type of sound shift in which a group of sounds all change at about the same time, with some sounds taking the place of others. ...

1. The first stage of the shift is the raising, tensing, and diphthongization of /æ/ towards [ɪə]. This results in words like "cat" being pronounced more like "kyat." This change occurs for the phoneme /æ/ in all contexts, in contrast with other American dialects in which phonetically similar "æ-tensing" occurs only before nasal consonants, or as part of a phonemic split of /æ/ into two phonemes, one tensed and the other still lax.
2. The second stage is the fronting of /ɑ/ to [a:]. 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.
3. 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/.
4. The fourth stage is the backing and sometimes lowering of /ɛ/, toward either [ə] or [æ].
5. 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.
6. 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. In phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... In the sociolinguistics of English, æ-tensing is a process that occurs in some accents of American English by which the vowel is raised and lengthened or diphthongized in various environments. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... In phonetics, vowel backness is the position of the tongue relative to the back of the mouth in a vowel sound. ... The areas enclosed by the green line are those where most speakers have completely merged the vowels of cot and caught. ... In phonetics, vowel backness is the position of the tongue relative to the back of the mouth in a vowel sound. ... The merger of pin and pen in American English. ...

North Central

Main article: North Central American English

The North Central dialect region extends from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan 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. This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is the northern of the two major land masses that comprise the U.S. state of Michigan. ... Capital Saint Paul Largest city Minneapolis Largest metro area Minneapolis-St. ... Official language(s) English Demonym North Dakotan Capital Bismarck Largest city Fargo Area  Ranked 19th in the US  - Total 70,762 sq mi (183,272 km²)  - Width 210 miles (340 km)  - Length 340 miles (545 km)  - % water 2. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ...

The movie Fargo, which takes place in the North Central region, famously features characters with this accent. Fargo is a 1996 dramatic and dark comedy film created by Joel and Ethan Coen. ...

• 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 accent 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 Norwegian.^{[citation needed]}
• Older speakers in the region may merge /w/ and/v/, making well sound like "vell".^{[citation needed]}
• Older and rural speakers may also merge /ð/ into /d/ and /θ/ into /t/.^{[citation needed]} This feature and the foregoing one are again associated with the Scandinavian linguistic substratum, in that most Scandinavian languages do not possess /w/, /ð/, or /θ/ phonemes.

Pitch accent is a kind of accent system employed in many languages around the world. ... The North Germanic languages (also Scandinavian languages or Nordic languages) is a branch of the Germanic languages spoken in Scandinavia, parts of Finland and on the Faroe Islands and Iceland. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Western New England

Western New England, encompassing most of Connecticut, 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. Official language(s) none (de facto English) Demonym Connecticuter or Connecticutian[2] Capital Hartford Largest city Bridgeport[3] Largest metro area Hartford Metro Area[4] Area  Ranked 48th in the US  - Total 5,543[5] sq mi (14,356 km²)  - Width 70 miles (113 km)  - Length 110 miles (177 km... Western Massachusetts is a loosely defined geographical region of the state of Massachusetts which contains the Berkshires and the Pioneer Valley. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... The areas highlighted in YELLOW and GREEN are those which are considered to be a bona fide part of Upstate New York from the perspective of New York City. ... In linguistics, rhotic can refer to: a rhotic consonant such as IPA a rhotic accent such as General American an r-colored vowel such as IPA This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The English language has undergone a number of phonological changes before the historic phoneme . ... The areas enclosed by the green line are those where most speakers have completely merged the vowels of cot and caught. ... A map of the Connecticut, New Haven, and Saybrook colonies. ... The New Haven Colony was an English colonial venture in Connecticut in North America from 1637 to 1662. ... A map of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Capital Charlestown, Boston History  - Established 1629  - New England Confederation 1643  - Dominion of New England 1686  - Province of Massachusetts Bay 1692  - Disestablished 1692 The Massachusetts Bay Colony (sometimes called the Massachusetts Bay Company, for the institution that founded it) was an English settlement on... Seal of Plymouth Colony Map of Plymouth Colony showing town locations Capital Plymouth Language(s) English Religion Puritan, Separatist Government Monarchy Legislature General Court History  - Established 1620  - First Thanksgiving 1621  - Pequot War 1637  - King Philips War 1675–1676  - Part of the Dominion of New England 1686–1688  - Disestablished 1691...

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 coastal Northeast 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. The BosWash or Bosnywash or Boshington or Northeast Corridor or simply Northeast megalopolis is the name for a group of metropolitan areas in the northeastern United States, extending from Boston, Massachusetts, to Washington, D.C., including Providence, Rhode Island; Hartford and New Haven and Stamford, Connecticut; New York, New York... The Midwest is a common name for a region of the United States of America. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In the sociolinguistics of English, æ-tensing is a process that occurs in some accents of American English by which the vowel is raised and lengthened or diphthongized in various environments. ...

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. The English language has undergone a number of phonological changes before the historic phoneme . ...

Eastern New England

Main article: Boston accent

The Eastern New England 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. The Boston accent is found not only in the city of Boston, Massachusetts itself but also much of eastern Massachusetts. ... This article is about the region in the United States of America. ... Official language(s) None (English and French de facto) Capital Augusta Largest city Portland Area  Ranked 39th  - Total 33,414 sq mi (86,542 km²)  - Width 210 miles (338 km)  - Length 320 miles (515 km)  - % water 13. ... For other uses, see New Hampshire (disambiguation). ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Light Blue represents the area in Massachusetts known as Greater Boston, while Dark Blue represents the Metro-Boston area and Red represents Boston proper, the City of Boston Greater Boston is the area of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts surrounding the city of Boston, Massachusetts. ... Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which diphthongs are raised before voiceless consonants (e. ...

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, although this feature is slowly losing ground. British English (BrE, BE, en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere in the Anglophone world. ... Map of Marthas Vineyard. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

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 /a:/ and /ɒ:/, so that the two words do not rhyme as they do in most American accents. Many Eastern New England speakers also retain a class of words with "broad A"—that is, /a:/ 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, [ɒ:]. The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels and that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English (exceptions are accents in Eastern New England (such as the Boston accent), New York-New Jersey English and some varieties of Southern American English) [1], (Wells... The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English, in the Boston accent, and in the Southern Hemisphere accents (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), by which the Early Modern English phoneme was lengthened in certain environments and ultimately merged... The areas enclosed by the green line are those where most speakers have completely merged the vowels of cot and caught. ...

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 /i:/ 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).^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]} The horse-hoarse merger is the merger of the vowels and before r, making pairs of words like horse/hoarse, for/four, war/wore, or/oar, corps/core, morning/mourning etc. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Eastern New England has a so-called nasal short-a system. In other words, the /æ/ phoneme has highly distinct allophones before nasal consonants and before other consonants. In most environments, /æ/ remains [æ], but before nasal consonants it is tensed and raised to [eə], with no other allophones between the two extremes. In the sociolinguistics of English, æ-tensing is a process that occurs in some accents of American English by which the vowel is raised and lengthened or diphthongized in various environments. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ...

Rhode Island

Rhode Island 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. This article is about the U.S. State. ...

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 /u:/, /oʊ/, and /aʊ/ in North America. Providence redirects here. ...

New York City

Main article: New York dialect

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 ([kɔːt]) are distinct, and the vowel of cart is backed to ([kɒːt]) instead of fronted as it is in Boston. The New York dialect of the English language is spoken by most European Americans who were raised in New York City and much of its metropolitan area including the lower Hudson Valley, western Long Island, and in northeastern New Jersey. ... This article is about the region in the United States of America. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ...

The accent is well attested in American movies and television shows, especially ones about American mobsters. 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. 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. Mobsters is a 1991 crime drama detailing the creation of the National Crime Syndicate. ... Bugs Bunny is an animated rabbit/hare who appears in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated films produced by Warner Bros. ... Groucho redirects here. ... This article is about the television series. ...

Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley

Main article: Philadelphia accent

This section does not cite any references or sources. (November 2006) Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

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. City Hall The Philadelphia Dialect is the accent of English spoken in Philadelphia and extending into Philadelphias suburbs in the Delaware Valley and southern New Jersey. ... For other uses, see Philadelphia (disambiguation) and Philly. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... This article is about the U.S. State of Delaware. ... Official language(s) None (English, de facto) Capital Annapolis Largest city Baltimore Largest metro area Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area Area  Ranked 42nd  - Total 12,407 sq mi (32,133 km²)  - Width 101 miles (145 km)  - Length 249 miles (400 km)  - % water 21  - Latitude 37° 53&ac