Talk:Central Pennsylvania dialect

message: It bears little resemblance to the Southeastern Pennsylvania accent spoken in the Philadelphia area, which is more similar to New York-New Jersey English than to accents spoken in the rest of Pennsylvania. For the most part, the speech of Central Pennsylvania is an accent, but there are enough distinguishing features for one to argue that it is not just an accent, but a dialect.
The problem with this statement is that it only mentions one influence of the Southeastern Pennslyvania dialect. In this quote, it's similar to New York-New Jersey English. That's partly true, however, the most relevant accent to the Philadelphia dialect (most of southeast PA is in Delaware Valley) is the accent spoken in the Mid-Atlantic.
Also, to say people in Southeastern Pennsylvania have a similar accent to New Jersey, in the context it's used, may not be correct. It says New Jersey speaks an accent similar to New York, yet much of New Jersey, including the southwestern and central-west parts of NJ in the Delaware Valley, already has the same accent to Philadelphia.
 
Read these this quote from the intro of the Philadelphia dialect Wikipedia page.
Unlike the dialects found in much of the rest of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia dialect shares some unusual features with the New York dialect and Southern American English, although it is a distinct dialect region.
Now read this quote from the  intro of the Central Pennsylvania accent.
Central Pennsylvania speech is closely related to Western Pennsylvania speech, which is generally referred to as Pittsburgh English, although the speech extends beyond just the city of Pittsburgh, and also is closely related to the Southern accent, spoken in the Southeastern United States.
So if Philadelphia has features influenced by Southern American English, and the Yinzer which is closely related to the southern accent is similar to Central Pennsylvania's, wouldn't it mean that both places have similarities to Southern American English? Therefore, wouldn't there be a flaw in saying that Southeastern Pennsylvania's accent is not relevant to the rest of Pennsylvania's?
The Philadelphia dialect is, however, in most respects similar to the dialects of Wilmington, Delaware and Baltimore, together with which it constitutes what Labov describes as the "Mid-Atlantic Dialect".
This is also a quote from the intro part of the Philadelphia dialect page. In other words, while southern American English and the New York accent may have similarities to the Philadelphia/Southeastern PA accent, it's most relevant to the Mid-Atlantic (Delaware/Maryland/D.C/Northern Virginia).
I'm sure many of you who've studied dialects of Pennsylvania have studied various parts and may live in this state. Therefore, I'm sure you saw the Coatesville fires.
If you didn't, you could find it on Youtube. They interview many people who's homes were burnt. Coatesville is at the end of Chester county, which is branching towards the end of Southeastern PA and going into more of the 
Susquehanna type dialect, but I don't know if that's technically apart of Central Pennsylvania.
My point in watching those people who were being interviewed (I watched on Fox Philly), these people sounded very similar and resembled various lingual traits to both the central Pennsylvania, Yinzer, the southern United States and Mid-West. Honestly, it sounded even more relevant to that than it did to the Mid-Altantic accent. But this dialect in no way resembled the New York-North Jersey dialect, nor any other accent you may see in the Northeastern United States, excluding Northeastern Pennsylvania and South/Central New Jersey.
So here's what I'll be doing. I'll be resturcturing and adding to the quote on the intro part of this article, based on the evidence I've shown.
It bears little resemblance to the Southeastern Pennsylvania accent spoken in the Philadelphia area, which is more similar to New York-New Jersey English than to accents spoken in the rest of Pennsylvania.
I'll change it to this:
Although Southerneastern and Central Pennsylvania both have accents related to Southern American English, the Central Pennsylvania accent bears little resemblance to the Southeastern Pennsylvania accent. The accent spoken in the Philadelphia is more similar to Mid-Atlantic English and New York-New Jersey English than to accents spoken in the rest of Pennsylvania.
I know the explanation was long, but I figured it was important since it's on the intro of the article, which is what people see when coming on here.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.73.230.11 (talk) 20:43, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adding and changing quote that's not fully explained 

message: I went through and did some major revisions to the Features section, bringing it more in line with linguistic norms. For example, I added IPA pronunciations and made some terminology changes. I've not added any sources, though, but just edited what was already there. This might help with making it easier to find sources for it. 207.255.35.246 (talk) 07:25, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major revision to the "Features" section. 

message: It has been a while since I checked the status of article. I must ask in all seriousness: What was the purpose of removing the sentence examples? To make the article less useful? More boring? Boringness is not a Wikipedia requirement. The examples made the piece come alive and made it useful to visitors to Central Pennsylvania who otherwise would be mystified by local speech. My brother-in-law recounts, even after 20 years, the first time someone asked him the  incomprehensible "Where younz at?". If he had read this article (old version), he would have known to answer "Over yonder."
Many of us do not prefer IPA conventions and IPA is certainly not useful for lay readers. There is no harm in retaining the simplified phonetics of the original piece or in using any of the other formal phonetic conventions that are more familiar to the non-specialist reader such as respelling systems used by major doctionaries.
I applaud the link to the linguistics map and continue to wish someone had time to go over to State and look up more references. They exist but they are not online. (And no, I can't do it I live on another continent.)
 
Parsnip13 (talk) 02:48, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boring Boring and not useful to the lay reader 

message: I have mixed feeling about this article.  There isn't one reference in the whole thing - so there's no special reason to believe it.  Except it sounds reasonable, perhaps the "wisdom of the crowds" has come through where no academic or even journalist has published anything.  According to current rules, this WP:OR doesn't belong here.  It also sounds a bit like "those ignorant rustics - see how funny they talk" which is a pretty ignorant attitude in itself.  Well I won't ask that the article be deleted as long as it strikes me as providing some good information, but others likely will, and they'll have a good case unless somebody finds some sources.  Smallbones (talk) 05:31, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. This is definetly WP:OR. I think it should be deleted. Gerry D (talk) 00:55, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

text: Let me see what Dr. Labov of Penn and Dr. Johnstone of Carnegie-Mellon have, if anything, on the particular region.  While there very well could be significant original research here, in my view the Central PA dialect is significantly different from Pittsburgh English to be something separate--only Pittsburghers turn "ow" into "ah" ("downtown" famously becomes /dɒntɒn/--"dahntahn"), while (I think only) Central PA people pronounce "color" as /kɛlr/ ("keller"); Pittsburghers, Philadelphians, and Baltimoreans certainly don't.  It is otherwise quite different from Philiadelphia English and Baltimore English.  Central PA people do not pronounce "water" as /wʊɾər/ ("wooder") like Philadelphians and Northern Baltimoreans.  The 2nd person plural pronoun is /yʊnz/ ("yunz") in Central PA as opposed to "youse guys" for Philadelphians and generally "you" for Baltimoreans (and /yɪnz/ ("yinz") for Pittsburgers).  Central PA people do not front their vowels, unlike Philadelphians (/oʊ/ shifts to [ɜʊ] and /uː/ shifts to [ʉu]) and unlike Baltimoreans ([oʊ] shifts to [eʊ])--they also wouldn't be caught dead shouting "eeeeʊʊʊʊʊ!" for the "Oh" in "Oh! Say does that Star Spangled Banner..." during the National Anthem, thank God!  Weyandt (talk) 16:54, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Improvements and expansion are very welcome. Note, too, that since July 2011 the original research has been removed and reliable sources added (difference between versions). Cnilep (talk) 02:44, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interesting, probably correct, but Original Research 

message: As someone born in the heart of Central PA  --the geographic center of the Commowealth is Axeman near Milesburg-- I found this article delightful.  You've but scratched the surface but it was kind of validating reading this article.  Remember "strubly" means unkempt.  Keep workin' it.User:JCHeverly 09:54, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Goin' with???