Inland Northern American English

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This map shows, with red circles, the exact cities identified within the Inland North dialect region, according to Labov et al.'s (2006) ANAE. Inland North Map.jpg
This map shows, with red circles, the exact cities identified within the Inland North dialect region, according to Labov et al.'s (2006) ANAE .
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Speech example
An example of a female speaker from the Milwaukee area.
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Speech example
An example of a male speaker from the Buffalo area.
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Inland Northern (American) English, [1] also known in American linguistics as the Inland North or Great Lakes dialect, [2] is an American English dialect spoken primarily by White Americans in a geographic band reaching from the major urban areas of Upstate New York westward along the Erie Canal and through much of the U.S. Great Lakes region. The most distinctive Inland Northern accents are spoken in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. [3] The dialect can be heard as far west as eastern Iowa and even among certain demographics in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. [4] Some of its features have also infiltrated a geographic corridor from Chicago southwest along historic Route 66 into St. Louis, Missouri; today, the corridor shows a mixture of both Inland North and Midland American accents. [5] Linguists often characterize the western Great Lakes region's dialect separately as North-Central American English.

Contents

The early 20th-century accent of the Inland North was the basis for the term "General American", [6] [7] though the regional accent has since altered, due to the Northern Cities Vowel Shift: its now-defining chain shift of vowels that began in the 1930s or possibly earlier. [8] A 1969 study first formally showed lower-middle-class women leading the regional population in the first two stages (raising of the TRAP vowel and fronting of the LOT/PALM vowel) of this shift, documented since the 1970s as comprising five distinct stages. [6] But evidence since the mid-2010s suggests a retreat from the Northern Cities Shift's features in many Inland Northern cities. [9] [10] [11] Various common names for the accent exist, often based on city, for example: Chicago accent, Detroit accent, Milwaukee accent, etc.

Geographic distribution

Three isoglosses identifying the NCVS. In the brown areas STRUT is more retracted than LOT. The blue line encloses areas in which DRESS is backed. The red line encloses areas in which TRAP is diphthongized to [e@] even before oral consonants. The areas enclosed by all three lines may be considered the "core" of the NCVS; it is most consistently present in Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago. Adapted from Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 204. Northern Cities Vowel Shift.svg
Three isoglosses identifying the NCVS. In the brown areas STRUT is more retracted than LOT. The blue line encloses areas in which DRESS is backed. The red line encloses areas in which TRAP is diphthongized to [eə] even before oral consonants. The areas enclosed by all three lines may be considered the "core" of the NCVS; it is most consistently present in Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago. Adapted from Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006) , p. 204.

The dialect region called the "Inland North" consists of western and central New York State (Utica, Ithaca, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Binghamton, Jamestown, Fredonia, Olean); northern Ohio (Akron, Cleveland, Toledo), Michigan's Lower Peninsula (Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing); northern Indiana (Gary, South Bend); northern Illinois (Chicago, Rockford); southeastern Wisconsin (Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee); and, largely, northeastern Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley/Coal Region (Scranton and Wilkes-Barre). This is the dialect spoken in part of America's chief industrial region, an area sometimes known as the Rust Belt. Northern Iowa and southern Minnesota may also variably fall within the Inland North dialect region; in the Twin Cities, educated middle-aged men in particular have been documented as aligning to the accent, though this is not necessarily the case among other demographics of that urban area. [4]

Linguists identify the "St. Louis Corridor", extending from Chicago down into St. Louis, as a dialectally remarkable area, because young and old speakers alike have a Midland accent, except for a single middle generation born between the 1920s and 1940s, who have an Inland Northern accent diffused into the area from Chicago. [12]

Erie, Pennsylvania, though in the geographic area of the "Inland North" and featuring some speakers of this dialect, never underwent the Northern Cities Shift and often shares more features with Western Pennsylvania English due to contact with Pittsburghers, particularly with Erie as their choice of city for summer vacations. [13] Many African Americans in Detroit and other Northern cities are multidialectal and also or exclusively use African-American Vernacular English rather than Inland Northern English, but some do use the Inland Northern dialect.

Social factors

The dialect's progression across the Midwest has stopped at a general boundary line traveling through central Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and then western Wisconsin, on the other sides of which speakers have continued to maintain their Midland and North Central accents. Sociolinguist William Labov theorizes that this separation reflects a political divide and a controlled study of his shows that Inland Northern speakers tend to be more associated with liberal politics than those of the other dialects, especially as Americans continue to self-segregate in residence based on ideological concerns. [14] President Barack Obama, for example, has a mild Inland Northern accent. [14]

Phonology and phonetics

The monophthongs of Southern Michigan on a vowel chart, typical of the Northern cities vowel shift, though not to the extreme. Adapted from Hillenbrand (2003). Southern Michigan English monophthongs chart.svg
The monophthongs of Southern Michigan on a vowel chart, typical of the Northern cities vowel shift, though not to the extreme. Adapted from Hillenbrand (2003).
The diphthongs of Southern Michigan on a vowel chart, adapted from Hillenbrand (2003). Southern Michigan English diphthongs chart.svg
The diphthongs of Southern Michigan on a vowel chart, adapted from Hillenbrand (2003).
Vocalic phonemes of INAE
Front Central Back
tenselaxlaxtense
Close i ɪ ʊ u
Close-mid eɪ ə oʊ
Open-mid æ ɛ ʌ
Open ɑ ɔ
Diphthongs aɪ ɔɪ aʊ
All vowels of the Inland Northern dialect
Pure vowels (Monophthongs)
English diaphoneme Inland Northern realizationExample words
/æ/æə~eə~ɪəbath, trap, man
/ɑː/a~äblah, father, spa
/ɒ/†lot, bother, wasp
/ɔː/ɒ~ɑdog, loss, off
all, bought, saw
/ɛ/ɛ~ɜ~ɐdress, met, bread
/ə/əabout, syrup, arena
/ɪ/ɪ~ɪ̈hit, skim, tip
/iː/ɪi~ibeam, chic, fleet
/ʌ/ʌ~ɔbus, flood, what
/ʊ/ʊbook, put, should
/uː/u~ɵufood, glue, new
Diphthongs
/aɪ/ae~aɪ~æɪride, shine, try
ɐɪ~əɪ~ʌɪ bright, dice, fire
/aʊ/äʊ~ɐʊnow, ouch, scout
/eɪ/eɪlame, rein, stain
/ɔɪ/ɔɪboy, choice, moist
/oʊ/ʌo~oʊ~ogoat, oh, show
R-colored vowels
/ɑːr/aɻ~ɐɻbarn, car, park
/ɪər/iɻ~iɚfear, peer, tier
/ɛər/eəɻ~eɻbare, bear, there
/ɜːr/əɻ~ɚburn, doctor, first,
herd, learn, murder
/ər/
/ɔːr/ɔɻ~oɻhoarse, horse, war
/ʊər/uɻ~oɻpoor, tour, lure
/jʊər/jɚcure, Europe, pure
† Footnotes
When followed by /r/, the historic /ɒ/ is pronounced entirely differently by Inland North speakers as [ɔ~o], for example, in the words orange, forest, and torrent. The only exceptions to this are the words tomorrow, sorry, sorrow, borrow and, for some speakers, morrow, which use the sound [a~ä̈]. This is all true of General American speakers too.
Based on Labov et al.; averaged F1/F2 means for speakers from the Inland North. Note that /ae/ is higher and fronter than /e/ , while /^/ is more retracted than /a/. Inland North IPA.PNG
Based on Labov et al.; averaged F1/F2 means for speakers from the Inland North. Note that /æ/ is higher and fronter than /ɛ/, while /ʌ/ is more retracted than /ɑ/.

A Midwestern accent (which may refer to other dialectal accents as well), Chicago accent, or Great Lakes accent are all common names in the United States for the sound quality produced by speakers of this dialect. Many of the characteristics listed here are not necessarily unique to the region and are oftentimes found elsewhere in the Midwest.

Northern Cities vowel shift

Northern Cities Shift as a vowel chart, based on image in Labov, Ash, and Boberg (1997)'s "A national map of the regional dialects of American English". Northern Cities shift.svg
Northern Cities Shift as a vowel chart, based on image in Labov, Ash, and Boberg (1997)'s "A national map of the regional dialects of American English".

The Northern Cities vowel shift or simply Northern Cities shift is a chain shift of vowels and the defining accent feature of the Inland North dialect region, though it can also be found, variably, in the neighboring Upper Midwest and Western New England accent regions.

Tensing of TRAP and fronting of LOT/PALM

The first two sound changes in the shift, with some debate about which one led to the other or came first, [16] are the general raising and lengthening (tensing) of the "short a" (the vowel sound of TRAP, typically rendered /æ/ in American transcriptions), as well as the fronting of the sound of LOT or PALM in this accent (typically transcribed /ɑ/) towards [ ä ] or [ a ]. Inland Northern TRAP raising was first identified in the 1960s, [17] with that vowel becoming articulated with the tongue beginning higher than before, and then gliding back toward the center of the mouth, thus producing a centering diphthong of the type [ɛə], [eə], or at its most extreme [ɪə]; e.g. naturally [ˈneətʃɹəli] ⓘ . As for LOT/PALM fronting, it can go beyond [ ä ] to the front [ a ], and may, for the most advanced speakers, even be close to [ æ ]—so that pot or sod come to be pronounced how a mainstream American speaker would say pat or sad; e.g. coupon [ˈkʰupan] ⓘ .

Lowering of THOUGHT

The fronting of LOT/PALM vowel leaves a blank space in Inland North speakers' pronunciation that is filled by lowering the "aw" vowel in THOUGHT ([ ɔ ] in General American varieties that resist the cot–caught merger), which comes to be pronounced with the tongue in a lower position, closer to [ɑ] or [ɒ]. As a result, for example, people affected by the shift may pronounce caught the way speakers without the shift say cot, with both using the vowel [ɑ]. However, a cot–caught merger is robustly avoided in many parts of Inland North, due to the prior fronting of /ɑ/. In other words, cot is [kʰat] and caught is [kʰɒt]. [18] Even so, however, there is a definite scattering of Inland North speakers who are in a state of transition towards a cot–caught merger; this is particularly evident in northeastern Pennsylvania. [19] [20] Younger speakers reversing the fronting of /ɑ/, for example in Lansing, Michigan, also approach a merger. [9]

Backing or lowering of DRESS

The movement of /æ/ to [ɛə], in order to avoid overlap, presumably initiates further backing, lowering, or a combination of both, with regard to the original /ɛ/ vowel (the "short e" in DRESS, [ ɛ ] in General American) toward either [ɐ], the near-open central vowel, or almost [æ]. [9]

Backing of STRUT

The next change is the movement of /ʌ/ (the STRUT vowel) from [ ɜ ] a central position toward a very far back position [ɔ]. People with the shift pronounce bus so that it sounds more like boss to people without the shift.

Backing or lowering of KIT

The final change is the backing and lowering of /ɪ/, the "short i" vowel in KIT, toward the schwa /ə/. Alternatively, KIT is lowered to [ e ], without backing. This results in a considerable phonetic overlap between /ɪ/ and /ə/, although there is no phonemic KIT–COMMA merger because the weak vowel merger is not complete ("Rosa's" /ˈroʊzəz/, with a morpheme-final mid schwa [ ə ] is distinct from "roses" /ˈroʊzɪz/, with an unstressed allophone of KIT that is phonetically near-close central [ ɨ ]). [21]

Vowels before /r/

Before /r/, only /ɑ/ undergoes the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, so that the vowel in start/start/ varies much like the one in lot/lat/ described above. The remaining /ɔ/, /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ retain GenAm-like values in this position, so that north/nɒrθ/, merry/ˈmɛri/ and near/nɪr/ are pronounced [noɹθ,ˈmɛɹi,niɹ], with unshifted THOUGHT (though somewhat closer than in GenAm), DRESS and KIT (as close as in GenAm). Inland Northern American English features the north-force merger, the Mary-marry-merry merger, the mirror–nearer and /ʊr/–/ur/ mergers, the hurry-furry merger, and the nurse-letter merger, all of which are typical of most General American English. [22]

History of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift

William Labov et al.'s Atlas of North American English (2006) presents the first historical understanding of the order in which the Inland North's vowels shifted. Speakers around the Great Lakes began to pronounce the short a sound, /æ/ as in TRAP, as more of a diphthong and with a higher starting point in the mouth, causing the same word to sound more like "tray-ap" or "tray-up"; Labov et al. assume that this began by the middle of the 19th century. [23] After roughly a century following this first vowel change—general /æ/ raising—the region's speakers, around the 1960s, then began to use the newly opened vowel space, previously occupied by /æ/, for /ɑ/ (as in LOT and PALM); therefore, words like bot, gosh, or lock came to be pronounced with the tongue extended farther forward, thus making these words sound more like how bat, gash, and lack sound in dialects without the shift. These two vowel changes were first recognized and reported in 1967. [6] While these were certainly the first two vowel shifts of this accent, and Labov et al. assume that /æ/ raising occurred first, they also admit that the specifics of time and place are unclear. [24] In fact, real-time evidence of a small number of Chicagoans born between 1890 and 1920 suggests that /ɑ/ fronting occurred first, starting by 1900 at the latest, and was followed by /æ/ raising sometime in the 1920s. [16]

During the 1960s, several more vowels followed suit in rapid succession, each filling in the space left by the last, including the lowering of /ɔ/ as in THOUGHT, the backing and lowering of /ɛ/ as in DRESS, the backing of /ʌ/ as in STRUT (first reported in 1986), [25] and the backing and lowering of /ɪ/ as in KIT, often but not always in that exact order. Altogether, this constitutes the Northern Cities Shift, identified by linguists as such in 1972. [14]

Possible motivations for the Shift

Migrants from all over the Northeastern U.S. traveled west to the rapidly industrializing Great Lakes area in the decades after the Erie Canal opened in 1825, and Labov suggests that the Inland North's general /æ/ raising originated from the diverse and incompatible /æ/ raising patterns of these various migrants mixing into a new, simpler pattern. [26] He posits that this hypothetical dialect-mixing event, which initiated the larger Northern Cities Shift (NCS), occurred by about 1860 in upstate New York, [27] and the later stages of the NCS are merely those that logically followed (a "pull chain"). More recent evidence suggests that German-accented English helped to greatly influence the Shift, because German speakers tend to pronounce the English TRAP vowel as [ɛ] and the LOT/PALM vowel as [ä~a], both of which resemble NCS vowels, and there were more speakers of German in the Erie Canal region of upstate New York in 1850 than there were of any single variety of English. [28] There is also evidence for an alternative theory, according to which the Great Lakes area—settled primarily by western New Englanders—simply inherited Western New England English and developed that dialect's vowel shifts further. 20th-century Western New England English variably showed NCS-like TRAP and LOT/PALM pronunciations, which may have already existed among 19th-century New England settlers, though this has been contested. [28] Another theory, not mutually exclusive with the others, is that the Great Migration of African Americans intensified White Northerners' participation in the NCS in order to differentiate their accents from Black ones. [29]

Reversals of the Shift

Recent evidence suggests that the Shift has largely begun to reverse in many cities of the Inland North, [9] [10] such as Lansing, [9] Ogdensburg, Rochester, Syracuse, [10] [30] [31] Detroit, Buffalo, Chicago, and Eau Claire. [11] In particular, /ɑ/ fronting and /æ/ raising (though raising is persisting before nasal consonants, as is the General American norm) have now reversed among younger speakers in these areas. Several possible reasons have been proposed for the reversal, including growing stigma connected with the accent and the working-class identity it represents. [32]

Other phonetics

Vocabulary

Note that not all of these terms, here compared with their counterparts in other regions, are necessarily unique only to the Inland North, though they appear most strongly in this region: [40]

Individual cities and sub-regions also have their own terms; for example:

Notable lifelong native speakers

See also

Related Research Articles

American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances is the de facto common language used in government, education and commerce. It is also the official language of most US states. Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canadian raising</span> Allophonic rule of vowels prominent in Canada, also found throughout N. American English dialects

Canadian raising is an allophonic rule of phonology in many varieties of North American English that changes the pronunciation of diphthongs with open-vowel starting points. Most commonly, the shift affects or, or both, when they are pronounced before voiceless consonants. In North American English, and usually begin in an open vowel [~], but through raising they shift to, or. Canadian English often has raising in words with both and, while a number of American English varieties have this feature in but not. It is thought to have originated in Canada in the late 19th century.

General American English, known in linguistics simply as General American, is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans, encompassing a continuum rather than a single unified accent. It is often perceived by Americans themselves as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics, though Americans with high education, or from the North Midland, Western New England, and Western regions of the country are the most likely to be perceived as using General American speech. The precise definition and usefulness of the term continue to be debated, and the scholars who use it today admittedly do so as a convenient basis for comparison rather than for exactness. Other scholars prefer the term Standard American English.

Southern American English or Southern U.S. English is a regional dialect or collection of dialects of American English spoken throughout the Southern United States, though concentrated increasingly in more rural areas, and spoken primarily by White Southerners. In terms of accent, its most innovative forms include southern varieties of Appalachian English and certain varieties of Texan English. Popularly known in the United States as a Southern accent or simply Southern, Southern American English now comprises the largest American regional accent group by number of speakers. Formal, much more recent terms within American linguistics include Southern White Vernacular English and Rural White Southern English.

A Baltimore accent, also known as Baltimorese, commonly refers to an accent related to Philadelphia English that originates among blue-collar residents of Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It extends into the Baltimore metropolitan area and northeastern Maryland.

North-Central American English is an American English dialect, or dialect in formation, native to the Upper Midwestern United States, an area that somewhat overlaps with speakers of the separate Inland Northern dialect situated more in the eastern Great Lakes region. In the United States, it is also known as the Upper Midwestern or North-Central dialect and stereotypically recognized as a Minnesota accent or sometimes Wisconsin accent. It is considered to have developed in a residual dialect region from the neighboring Western, Inland Northern, and Canadian dialect regions.

Philadelphia English or Delaware Valley English is a variety or dialect of American English native to Philadelphia and extending into Philadelphia's metropolitan area throughout the Delaware Valley, including southeastern Pennsylvania, counties of northern Delaware, the northern Eastern Shore of Maryland, and all of South Jersey. Other than Philadelphia and arguably Baltimore, the dialect is spoken in cities such as Wilmington, Atlantic City, Camden, Vineland, and Dover. Philadelphia English is one of the best-studied types of English, as Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania is the home institution of pioneering sociolinguist William Labov. Philadelphia English shares certain features with New York City English and Midland American English, although it remains a distinct dialect of its own. Philadelphia and Baltimore accents together fall under what Labov describes as a single "Mid-Atlantic" regional dialect.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western American English</span> Dialect of American English

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Midland American English</span> Variety of English spoken in the United States

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northern American English</span> Class of historically related American English dialects

Northern American English or Northern U.S. English is a class of historically related American English dialects, spoken by predominantly white Americans, in much of the Great Lakes region and some of the Northeast region within the United States. The North as a super-dialect region is best documented by the 2006 Atlas of North American English (ANAE) in the greater metropolitan areas of Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Western and Central New York, Northwestern New Jersey, Northeastern Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio, Northern Indiana, Northern Illinois, Northeastern Nebraska, and Eastern South Dakota, plus among certain demographics or areas within Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont, and New York's Hudson Valley. The ANAE describes that the North, at its core, consists of the Inland Northern dialect and Southwestern New England dialect.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">New York accent</span> Sound system of New York City English

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The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change is a 2006 book that overviews the pronunciation patterns (accents) in all the major dialect regions of the English language as spoken in urban areas of the United States and Canada. It is the result of a large-scale survey by linguists William Labov, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. Speech data was collected, mainly during the 1990s, by means of telephone interviews with individuals in metropolitan areas in all regions of the U.S. and Canada. Using acoustic analysis of speech from these interviews, ANAE traces sound changes in progress in North American English, and defines boundaries between dialect regions based on the different sound changes taking place in them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Standard Canadian English</span> Variety of Canadian English

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In the sociolinguistics of the English language, raising or short-a raising is a phenomenon by which the "short a" vowel, the TRAP/BATH vowel, is pronounced with a raising of the tongue. In most American and many Canadian English accents, raising is specifically tensing: a combination of greater raising, fronting, lengthening, and gliding that occurs only in certain words or environments. The most common context for tensing throughout North American English, regardless of dialect, is when this vowel appears before a nasal consonant.

References

  1. ↑ Gordon (2004), p. xvi.
  2. ↑ Garn-Nunn, Pamela G.; Lynn, James M. (2004). Calvert's Descriptive Phonetics. Thieme. p. 136. ISBN   978-1-60406-617-3.
  3. ↑ Gordon (2004), p. 297.
  4. 1 2 Chapman, Kaila (October 25, 2017). The Northern Cities Shift: Minnesota's Ever-Changing Vowel Space (Thesis). Macalester College. p. 41. The satisfaction of the three NCS measures was found only in the 35-55 year old male speakers. The three male speakers fully participating in the NCS had high levels of education and strong ties to the city
  5. ↑ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 276, Chapter 19.
  6. 1 2 3 Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 190.
  7. ↑ "Talking the Tawk". The New Yorker. November 7, 2005. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
  8. ↑ "Do You Speak American? - Language Change - Vowel Shifting". PBS. 2005.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Wagner, S. E.; Mason, A.; Nesbitt, M.; Pevan, E.; Savage, M. (2016). "Reversal and re-organization of the Northern Cities Shift in Michigan" (PDF). University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. 22 (2). Article 19. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-06-23.
  10. 1 2 3 Driscoll, Anna; Lape, Emma (2015). "Reversal of the Northern Cities Shift in Syracuse, New York". University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. 21 (2).
  11. 1 2 Dinkin, Aaron J. (2022). "Generational Phases: Toward the Low-Back Merger in Cooperstown, New York". Journal of English Linguistics. 50 (3): 219–246. doi:10.1177/00754242221108411. ISSN   0075-4242. S2CID   251892218.
  12. ↑ Friedman, Lauren (2015). "A Convergence of Dialects in the St. Louis Corridor". Selected Papers from New Ways of Analyzing Variation. 21 (2). University of Pennsylvania: 43.
  13. ↑ Evanini, Keelan (2008). "A shift of allegiance: The case of Erie and the North / Midland boundary". University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. 14 (2).
  14. 1 2 3 Sedivy, Julie (March 28, 2012). "Votes and Vowels: A Changing Accent Shows How Language Parallels Politics". Discover. Archived from the original on 2016-01-25. Retrieved 2016-01-24.
  15. 1 2 Hillenbrand, James M. (2003). "American English: Southern Michigan". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 33 (1): 122. doi: 10.1017/S0025100303001221 .
  16. 1 2 McCarthy, Corrine (2010). "The Northern Cities Shift in Real Time: Evidence from Chicago". University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. 15 (2). Article 12.
  17. ↑ Fasold, Ralph (1969). A Sociolinguistic Study of the Pronunciation of Three Vowels in Detroit Speech. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics.
  18. ↑ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 189, Chapter 14.
  19. ↑ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 61.
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