Inland Northern American English

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ANAE
.
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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This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Inland Northern (American) English,

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
.

The early 20th-century accent of the Inland North was the basis for the term "

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

Detroit, and Chicago. Adapted from Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006)
, p. 204.

The dialect region called the "Inland North" consists of western and central

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]

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

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

vowel chart, typical of the Northern cities vowel shift, though not to the extreme. Adapted from Hillenbrand (2003).[15]
The diphthongs of Southern Michigan on a vowel chart, adapted from Hillenbrand (2003).[15]
Vocalic phonemes of INAE
Front Central Back
tense lax lax tense
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 realization Example words
/æ/ æə~eə~ɪə bath, trap, man
/ɑː/ a~ä blah, father, spa
/ɒ/† lot, bother, wasp
/ɔː/ ɒ~ɑ dog, loss, off
all, bought, saw
/ɛ/ ɛ~ɜ~ɐ dress, met, bread
/ə/ ə about, syrup, arena
/ɪ/ ɪ~ɪ̈ hit, skim, tip
/iː/ ɪi~i beam, chic, fleet
/ʌ/ ʌ~ɔ bus, flood, what
/ʊ/ ʊ book, put, should
/uː/ u~ɵu food, glue, new
Diphthongs
/aɪ/ ae~aɪ~æɪ ride, shine, try
ɐɪ~əɪ~ʌɪ bright, dice, fire
/aʊ/ äʊ~ɐʊ now, ouch, scout
/eɪ/ eɪ lame, rein, stain
/ɔɪ/ ɔɪ boy, choice, moist
/oʊ/ ʌo~oʊ~o goat, oh, show
R-colored vowels
/ɑːr/ aɻ~ɐɻ barn, car, park
/ɪər/ iɻ~iɚ fear, peer, tier
/ɛər/ eəɻ~eɻ bare, bear, there
/ɜːr/ əɻ~ɚ burn, doctor, first,
herd, learn, murder
/ər/
/ɔːr/ ɔɻ~oɻ hoarse, horse, war
/ʊər/ uɻ~oɻ poor, tour, lure
/jʊər/ jɚ cure, 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 /æ/ is higher and fronter than /ɛ/, while /ʌ/ is more retracted than /ɑ/.

A Midwestern accent (which may refer to

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".

The Northern Cities vowel shift or simply Northern Cities shift is a

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,

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 [

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

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

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,

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

See also:
Regional vocabularies of American English § The North

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]

  • boulevard as a synonym for island (in the sense of a grassy area in the middle of some streets)
  • crayfish for a freshwater crustacean
  • drinking fountain as a synonym for water fountain
  • expressway as a synonym for highway
  • faucet for an indoor water tap (not Southern spigot)
  • goose pimples as a synonym for goose bumps
  • pit for the seed of a peach (not Southern stone or seed)
  • pop for a sweet, bubbly soft drink (not Eastern and Californian soda, nor Southern coke)
    • The "soda/pop line" has been found to run through Western New York State (Buffalo residents say pop, Syracuse residents say soda now but used to say pop until sometime in the 1970s, and Rochester residents say either. Eastern Wisconsinites around Milwaukee and some Chicagoans are also an exception, using the word soda.)
  • sucker for a lollipop (hard candy on a stick)
  • teeter totter as a synonym for seesaw
  • tennis shoes for generic athletic shoes (not Northeastern
    sneakers
    , except in New York State and Pennsylvania)

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

  • bubbler, in a large portion of Wisconsin around Milwaukee, for water fountain (in addition to the synonym drinking fountain, also possible throughout the Inland North)
  • cash station, in the
    Chicago area, for ATM
  • Devil's Night, particularly in Michigan, for the night before Halloween (not Northeastern Mischief Night)[41]
  • doorwalls, in Detroit, for sliding glass doors
  • gapers' block or gapers' delay, in Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit; or gawk block, in Detroit, for traffic congestion caused by rubbernecking
  • gym shoes, in Chicago and Detroit, for generic athletic shoes
  • party store
    , in Michigan, for a liquor store
  • rummage sale, in Wisconsin, as a synonym for garage sale or yard sale
  • treelawn, in Cleveland and Michigan; devilstrip or devil's strip in Akron, Ohio;[42] and right-of-way in Wisconsin and parkway in Chicago for the grass between the sidewalk and the street
  • yous(e) or youz, in northeastern Pennsylvania around its urban center of Scranton, for you guys; in this sub-region, there is notable self-awareness of the Inland Northern dialect (locally called by various names, including "Coalspeak").[43] Youse is also found in Chicago and its hinterland, utilized as a second-person plural pronoun (similar to "y'all").

Notable lifelong native speakers

See also

  • List of dialects of the English language
  • List of English words from indigenous languages of the Americas
  • American English regional differences
  • North Central American English
  • Western New England English

References

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Sources

External links
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