page_title: Inland Northern American English
section_title: Phonology and phonetics
hierarchical_section_title: Inland Northern American English / Phonology and phonetics
caption_attribution_description: English: Based on Labov et al.; averaged F1/F2 means for speakers from the Inland North.
context_page_description: Inland Northern English, also known in American linguistics as the Inland North or Great Lakes dialect, is an American English dialect spoken primarily by White Americans in a geographic band reaching from Central New York westward along the Erie Canal, through much of the U.S. Great Lakes region, to eastern Iowa. The most innovative Inland Northern accents are spoken in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. A geographic corridor reaching from Chicago southwest along historic Route 66 into St. Louis, Missouri, has also been infiltrated by features of the Inland Northern accent, with the corridor today showing a mixture of both Inland Northern and Midland accents. Linguists often characterize the western Great Lakes region's dialect as the separate North-Central American English.
  The early 20th-century accent of the Inland North was the basis for the term "General American", though the regional accent has since altered, due to its now-defining chain shift of vowels that began as late as the 1930s.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: 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/.
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