North-Central American English

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North–Central American English
RegionUpper Midwest
Early forms
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
Glottolognort3317

North-Central American English is an

Inland Northern dialect situated more in the eastern Great Lakes region.[1] 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 (excluding Wisconsin's Milwaukee metropolitan area). It is considered to have developed in a residual dialect region from the neighboring Western, Inland Northern, and Canadian dialect regions.[2]

If a strict

eastern ridges and lowlands.[4]

History and geography

U.S. in 2000
, by county, with Scandinavian heritage; note Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin.
Percentage of the U.S. in 2000, by county, with Finnish heritage; note the upper regions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

The appearance of

Scots-Irish or other British dialects that maintain such forms. The fact that the monophthongs also appear in Canadian English
may lend support to this account since Scots-Irish speech is known as an important influence in Canada.

People living in the

Scandinavian, German, and/or Native American descent. The North-Central dialect is so strongly influenced by those areas' languages and by Canada that speakers from other areas may have difficulty understanding it. Almost half the Finnish immigrants to the U.S. settled in the Upper Peninsula, and some joined Scandinavians who moved on to Minnesota. Another sub-dialect is spoken in Southcentral Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley because it was settled in the 1930s (during the Great Depression) by immigrants from the North-Central dialect region.[6][7]

Phonology

This section 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.

Not all of these characteristics are unique to the North-Central region:

Vowels

  • /u/ and /oʊ/ are "
    Scots-Irish or other British dialects that maintain such forms.[citation needed] The fact that the monophthongs also appear in Canadian English
    may lend support to this account since Scots-Irish speech is known as an important influence in Canada.
  • Some or partial evidence of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, which normally defines neighboring Inland Northern American English, exists in North-Central American English. For example, /æ/ may be generally raised and /ɑ/ generally fronted in comparison to other American English accents.[9]
  • Some speakers exhibit extreme raising of /æ/ before voiced velars (/ɡ/ and /ŋ/), with an up-glide, and so bag sounds close to beg or is even raised like the first syllable of bagel. Other examples are the words flag and agriculture.[2]
  • Raising of /aɪ/ is found in the region and occurs before some voiced consonants. For example, many speakers pronounce fire, tiger, and spider with the raised vowel.[10] Some speakers in this region raise /aʊ/ as well.[11]
  • The onset of /aʊ/ if it is not subject to raising is often quite far back and results in pronunciations like [ɑʊ].
  • The cot–caught merger is common throughout the region,[2] and the vowel can be quite forward: [ä].
  • The words roof and root may be variously pronounced with either /ʊ/ or /u/; that is, with the vowel of foot or boot, respectively. That is highly variable, however, and the words are pronounced both ways in other parts of the country.
  • The North-Central accent shows certain
    Canadian shift.[2]

Consonants

Word-initial

pitch accent as in Swedish and Norwegian
persist in some areas of heavy Norwegian or Swedish settlement and among people who grew up in those areas, some of whom are not of Scandinavian descent.

Phonemic incidence

Certain phonemes appear in particular words and set the North-Central dialect apart from some other American English:[12]

  • absurd often uses /z/ (rather than /s/)
  • across may end with a final /st/ and rhyme with cost, particularly in Wisconsin
  • anti often uses /aɪ/ (rather than /i/)
  • aunt often uses /ɑ/ (rather than /æ/)
  • roof often uses /ʊ/ (rather than /u/)[13]
  • turbine often uses /ən/ (rather than /aɪn/) and so has the same pronunciation as turban
  • Words spelled with ag, such as bag or ragged, use /eɪ/ or /ɛ/ (rather than /æ/)
  • Final -ing in nouns and
    g-dropping is [ˈmoɹnin][14]

Grammar

In this dialect, the

Irish English), and that feature likely came from languages spoken by some immigrants, such as Scandinavian (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian), German, or Dutch and Luxembourgish, all of which have the construction, like Danish and Swedish kom med or German komm mit.[15][16]

The adverb "yet" may be used in a phrase such as "I need to clean this room yet" to mean "still," particularly around Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula. "Shut the lights" may mean "shut off the lights," particularly in the same places.[12]

Vocabulary

Sub-varieties

A North-Central "

Fenno-Scandinavian immigration to those areas around the beginning of the twentieth century. Iron Range English is sometimes called "Rayncher" English (an eye spelling of "Ranger").[23]

Upper Peninsula English

English of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,[24] plus some bordering areas of northeast Wisconsin,[25] colloquially known as U.P. or "Yooper" English,[26] or Yoopanese,[27] is a North-Central sub-variety with some additional influences from Finnish-speaking immigrants to the region. However, younger speakers may be starting to align closer to nearby Standard Canadian English, according to a recent study of Marquette County.[24]

The traditional Yooper accent is associated with certain features: the alveolar stops /d/ and /t/ in place of the English dental

question tag eh or hey at the ends of sentences, as in Canadian English; notably raised nuclei in the vowels /aʊ/ and /aɪ/; the word youse as a second-personal plural noun, like you guys in neighboring dialects; and a marked deletion of to the (e.g., "I'm going store," "We went mall," and "We'll go Green Bay"), influenced by Finnish, which does not have any articles corresponding to a, an, or the.[citation needed
]

In popular culture

The Minnesota accent is made conspicuous in the film

Marge Gunderson) and the subsequent television series.[28][29][30]

The accent can be heard from many minor characters, especially those voiced by Sue Scott, in the radio program A Prairie Home Companion. It is also evident in the film New in Town.[citation needed]

Notable lifelong native speakers

See also

Notes

  1. ^
    ISBN 0-8166-0686-2
    .
  2. ^
    ISBN 3-11-016746-8
    .
  3. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 148
  4. ^ "Map: North Central Region". Telsur Project. University of Pennsylvania.
  5. ISBN 0-8223-6494-8
    .
  6. ^
    S2CID 144147617
    .
  7. ^ a b Pinker, Steven (October 4, 2008). "Everything You Heard is Wrong". The New York Times. p. A19.
  8. ISBN 0-8223-6494-8
  9. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:204)
  10. JSTOR 454805
    .
  11. ISBN 0-8173-0129-1
    .
  12. ^ a b c d e f g Jøhndal, Marius et al. (2018) [2004-2006]. "The UWM Dialect Survey". Cambridge University.
  13. ^ Labov et al., 2006, p. 292
  14. ISBN 9780979689505
    . Regional Accents ... A distinguishing characteristic of the Upper Midwestern accent is the tendency to turn the 'ing' sound into 'een,' with a cheerful 'Good morneen!'
  15. ^ Spartz, John M (2008). Do you want to come with?: A cross-dialectal, multi-field, variationist investigation of with as particle selected by motion verbs in the Minnesota dialect of English (Ph.D. thesis). Purdue University.
  16. ^ Stevens, Heidi (December 8, 2010). "What's with 'come with'? Investigating the origins (and proper use) of this and other Midwesternisms". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved September 14, 2013.
  17. ^ a b c Vaux, Bert, Scott A. Golder, Rebecca Starr, and Britt Bolen. (2000-2005) The Dialect Survey. Survey and maps.
  18. ^ a b Cassidy, Frederic Gomes, and Joan Houston Hall (eds). (2002) Dictionary of American Regional English. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  19. ^ Mohr, Howard. (1987) How to Talk Minnesotan: A Visitor's Guide. New York: Penguin.
  20. ^ Lemke, Daphne. "'Ope, sorry!' Where did Midwesterners get this onomatopoeia? Let's ask linguists". Oshkosh Northwestern. Retrieved October 31, 2023.
  21. ^ Brogan, Dylan (September 6, 2021). "Garage versus ramp". Isthmus | Madison, Wisconsin. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
  22. ^ Binder, David (September 14, 1995). "Upper Peninsula Journal: Yes, They're Yoopers, and Proud of it". New York Times. p. A16.
  23. ^ Kalibabky, Mike (1996). Hawdaw Talk rayncher, and Iron range Words of Wisdom. Chisolm, Minnesota: Moonlight Press.
  24. ^
    ISSN 0003-1283. Archived
    from the original on December 28, 2016. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
  25. ^ Jenkins, Richard (May 21, 2015). "Linguistics Professor Provides Insight into 'Yooper' Accent Trends". The Daily Globe. Ironwood, MI. Archived from the original on November 17, 2015. Retrieved November 13, 2015.
  26. ISSN 0003-1283
    . Retrieved November 13, 2015.
  27. OCLC 668112230. Retrieved January 30, 2016 – via Google Books.
    Kleine, Ted (June 18, 1998). "Turning Yoopanese". Chicago Reader. Archived
    from the original on February 5, 2016. Retrieved January 30, 2016.
  28. ^ https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/17/movies/how-frances-mcdormand-got-into-minnesota-nice.html
  29. ^ https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a28265/fargo-tv-series-accents/
  30. ^ https://www.vogue.in/content/richa-moorjani-from-never-have-i-ever-on-playing-a-grim-cop-in-fargos-latest-season
  31. ^ Smith, Candace (2016). "Seth Meyers forced back to work in hilarious ‘Making a Murderer’ spoof." New York Daily News. NYDailyNews.com
  32. ^ Weigel, David (2011). "Michele Bachmann for President!" GQ. Condé Nast.
  33. ^ "What Americans sound like". The Economist. The Economist Newspaper Limited 2011.

References

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