Talk:North American English regional phonology

message: Where is Alaska in this? 14/12/05
:If you have any published sources on English in Alaska you'd like to cite, you're welcome to add information about it to this page. --Angr (t·c) 08:35, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Please someone add something! Why can't I find anything? I'm from the Northwest (Portland metro area), know Seattle pretty well, and have family in northern Washington, near the Canadian border. In addition, I've been to Vancouver and Victoria, B.C. on several occasions. I may be misguided, but, having listened to Sarah Palin in the past few weeks, and reading of other Alaskan anecdotes after googling upon the subject - I can assure you, this is definitely not to be lumped in with the Northwestern dialect of American. It (or at least Palin's idiolect) sounds more "Fargo" and and a little like Sasakatchewan & Prairie Canada (I'm using the t.v. show "Corner Gas" as reference, so forgive me). All in all though, it has a uniqueness to it. Please someone, elucidate us all on Alaskan English! Khirad (talk) 06:11, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alaska 

message: Can anyone provide any insights into the nasalization patterns in American English? I think they're pretty distinctive of Am.E. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 171.64.133.51 (talk • contribs) 23:54, 17 January 2006  (UTC)
I found the following comment online: "Americans and Australians may wish to try to pronounce Anglo-Saxon without the nasalization that distinguishes their accents from British accents; this is hard, but Anglo-Saxon should sound English, and absence of nasalization makes a big difference."  I think the article should address the nasal quality of (at least some) American accents. Or is it addressed in another article? (In which case a link would be sufficient.) Starple (talk) 13:14, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nasalization patterns in American English 

message: I came here looking for a discussion of English dialects that say "I wish I had" vs "I wish I would have" but all that's here is a lot of accent stuff. Accents are linguistically interesting (a lot more interesting if they are presented phonologically, though) but there is more to dialect than lexicon, morphology, and phonology. I have studied a LOT more linguistics than the average person (easy, because the average person hasn't studied any) so I know that's what these articles are missing, but I'm not enough of a linguist to answer the questions, so ... i'm sorry. Brassrat 19:21, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  phonology vs grammar 

message: I don't think it is constructive to have the current alert cluttering this article requesting sources. While much of the information here is obviously based on primary-source observations (people who have visited or lived in regions and are familiar enough to write on this topic), I think that if anything, this article needs MORE information, which will also have to come from un-sourced observations from locals and knowledgeable travelers. I am obviously not opposing the use of available citations when possible, but one of the great things about wikipedia is the availability of information that isn't to be found in books or elsewhere.Wbbigtymer 06:00, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, No original research and Verifiability are policy that hold in every article, including this one. Anything based on primary-source observations that cannot be confirmed with reliable, cited sources has to go. Angr (talk • contribs) 06:48, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Look, no offense, but spare me of the dogmatic wikipedia policy crap. I can tell you right now that this article is for the most part reliable, but almost completely without any sort of citation and will remain that way if the quality of the information is to be preserved. Almost any "real" encyclopedia uses primary source information whenever possible, but they are very limited in what they can do when they don't include previously unpublished knowledge to at least use for consideration in their article. I'm sure wikipedia policy supports what you are saying, but frankly that policy has its own limitations and is limiting what quality contributers can do on wikipedia. If you fully believe what you are saying and un-sourced info “has to go” then you've just called for one less article on wikipedia, because this article loses all its meat when you only include cited material.Wbbigtymer 14:31, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The difference between "real" encyclopedias and Wikipedia, of course, is that "real" encyclopedia are written by experts who can be trusted to get their facts straight. The only way Wikipedia will ever have a shred of credibility is to insist on the policies I mentioned. I for one would not shed a tear if all the unsourced, unverifiable information in this article was scrapped, even if that meant that only a stub remained. Angr (talk • contribs) 18:30, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: request for citations

message: No mention of the Chicago accent? I am outraged? ex: "huner" insted of "hunter" -wasp
:Hear, hear.  Chicago is special, and I would like to know more about it.  I once performed what I thought was a reasonable Chicago accent in a play, only to receive a left-handed compliment from the director: "I didn't know you could do a New York accent...." :-) D A Patriarche (talk) 23:34, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Chicago:  lack of information

message: Please anyone can find and post a map of the differents english american dialects, see the situation, i'm spanish and very interested in this theme of the dialects, i have a medium knowledge of USA geography but i'm highly confused about the differents places where each variant is dominant. Imagine anyone with a worst initial position.
Thanks
-Fco
:Here's one detailed map that shows different dialects:
:*
:I haven't been able to find any other maps which seem detailed and accurate, and it would be useful if someone who's good at making maps could create a free map for this article. --Apollo1758 (talk) 03:10, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: I think that it is not factual to list the whole of Minnesota as being part of this very unrealistic dialect of American English.  I don't think I've met one person in my whole life living in Minnesota that speaks in this way normally.  This is why I'm changing it to say "Northern Minnesota" instead of "Minnesota".  I think that the metropolitan area and southern Minnesota speaks General American English or Standard Midwestern.  Believe me, I am a Minnesotan.
Alcarinquë 20:39, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, took almost two years for this reply.  But yeah, I've traveled outside the state much more than a lot of people from Minnesota.  Believe me, people from the Metro area and Southern Minnesota do have that Northern Midwest twang. You just have to travel outside the state to get a good juxtaposition.  I grew up in the shadow of Downtown Minneapolis and every time I go out of town, people can usually tell I grew up in Minnesota, even though my accent is considered thin to many Minnesotans. 
ColdRedRain (talk) 00:16, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: North Central American English - Minnesota

message: I know that people who are not from New York automatically assume that when you say you're from New York that you're from NYC.  Upstate New York English is a whole world different from NYC/NJ English.  Why isn't Upstate NY English included? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Clutch414 (talk • contribs) 17:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Upstate New York? 

message: This portion of the article ignores the fact that the great majority of residents who are not northern transplants, and who actually were born and raised in this part of Florida speak something much closer to American Broadcast English.
24.186.185.41 (talk) 14:26, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Central/ South Florida 

message: This is a meaningless statement that is repeated several times in the article, as the whole premise of the American English regional differences article is that there are regional differences in pronunciation. One of those differences is that dawn and don themselves have varying regional pronunciations and indeed can have exactly the same pronunciation -- that being the case, nothing can rhyme with one "rather than" the other. It's like saying, rhymes with "here" rather than "hear." The statement is confounding to many native speakers of American English, let alone those who speak different dialects entirely. 
Langrel 23:01, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. A. P. Herbert wrote an article in Punch many years ago entitled Do you rhyme dawn with morn - I wish I had a copy, cannot find on web even in archives so no cite.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by D A Patriarche (talk • contribs) 01:41, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: rhymes with ''dawn'' rather than ''don''

message: I have lived in this region my entire life, and I have never heard a native say 'caught' as 'cot'. In fact in my experience, the 'aught' tends to be exaggerated.  Guldenat 18:26, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the Philadelphia area has a distinction between caught and cot. ...So? AJD 18:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Philadelphia / Delaware Valley 

message: This article mentions the Connecticut River as the western border of the New England dialect. Vermont has an accent distinct from Eastern New England; pronouncing the long "i" as "oy", for example. I added a short section describing some specific differences of Vermont from the rest of New England, and cited a reference. Why were they deleted? If this contribution needs improvement, please improve it. Dlaub (talk) 13:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I deleted it because the things you listed as Vermont features were variously unmentioned in your reference (long "i" as "oy"), meaningless (pronouncing monophthongs like "ow" as diphthongs: "ow" is already a diphthong), or non-regional features found throughout the United States ("-ing" as "-in", glottalizing the T in words like "button"). The article you cited was non-scholarly, and described the features it did describe so vaguely that it was nearly impossible to tell what it was referring to. I'm sure there are interesting features of Vermont English, but you need to have them better described and better sourced. I'd look at the research of Julie Roberts at the University of Vermont to get a start on this; I would do so myself, but I'm on vacation this week and don't have access to my sources. AJD (talk) 18:15, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for correcting my errors. A Google search gave me Roberts's paper:  which discusses the fronting of vowels (thanks again for the correct terminology), but I'm sure she has better sources. DLaub (talk) 18:36, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Vermont

message: This article would really be improved by someone uploading files to clarify the differences. 172.206.225.81 (talk) 12:36, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sound files 

message: I'd like to move this article to something like Dialects of North American English. "Regional phonology" is clumsy; people looking for this article wouldn't type "regional phonology" into the search box—they'd type "dialects". Thoughts? AJD (talk) 19:52, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Since this article deals only with pronunciation issues, not lexical, morphological, and syntactic issues, Accents of North American English would be more appropriate. —Angr 21:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's true. I don't know if there's a good reason for it not to deal with non-phonological issues, though; I've just mostly refrained from adding them because the title of the article is "regional phonology". I suppose that would open the article to bloat, since there's lots and lots of minor lexical variables that would clutter up the article. On the other hand, I think mentioning things like positive anymore in the Midland might be valuable to this article, and it'd be silly to exclude them just because the title of the page says "phonology". Maybe "Dialect regions of North American English"? The boundaries of dialect regions are principally identified on phonetic and phonological criteria, but in the places where they correlate with other aspects of language (like positive anymore, multiple modals, needs washed) they'd be fair game too. AJD (talk) 22:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As I understand it, originally the boundaries of the dialect regions were defined by lexical criteria, and it's only been relatively recently with the work of Labov et al. that phonological criteria have been examined too. And rather to his surprise, he found that many of the lexical isoglosses that had been drawn in the 30s and 40s held good for phonological differences too, in particular the isogloss between the North and the Midland that groups Erie, PA, together with Pittsburgh rather than with the other cities on Lake Erie, Buffalo and Cleveland. —Angr 06:32, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Your point is largely correct, although the specific example you cite is wrong (the mid–20th century lexical research grouped Erie with the Inland North, and the result that Labov's phonological methodology grouped Erie with Pittsburgh instead was a major exception to the persistence of the boundary lines). But at the same time, most of the lexical isoglosses from the '40s were based on agricultural terms that are now obsolete, and you couldn't draw lines based on those features today. The known present-day lexical isoglosses typically have boundaries that are unrelated to the phonological regions: soda/pop, for instance. AJD (talk) 14:10, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Okay, thanks for the correction. Anyway, I don't mind changing the name to Dialects of North American English if the scope is going to be widened to include lexical information (both old from the 1940s and new, covering things like soda/pop, sneakers/tennis shoes, and positive anymore (which I see is still a red link - I've been vaguely intending to start that article one of these days). —Angr 14:43, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Let's wait a bit to see if there are any other opinions. But for the time being, I'll make Dialects of North American English a redirect to this one. AJD (talk) 15:53, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed move 

message: While including such characteristics of the Southern U.S. English as using "y'all" for second person plural, the New Orleans accent is so unlike the rest of the South and so similar to that of New York City that New Orleanians traveling in other parts of the USA are often mistaken for New Yorkers.
This was not cited by Labov. This is an opinion that someone wrote. This can't be supported by evidence. It is true than many from New Orleans and the area say ya'll. It's even true that there is a uniqueness of the accent. However, I have never heard of someone from New Orleans being mistaken for that of a New Yorker. Many have a southern drawl. And the black population has largely conformed into AAVE which would be undistinguishable from the New York dialect. All New Orleanians (especially the white population) has a southern drawl/ring to their overall tone.
Many pronunciations are surprisingly similar to that found in New York City and northern New Jersey, presumably arising from a similar mix of immigrants.
This hypothesis is also unsupported and has significant flaws. So I'll be deleting that quote. The patterns of immigration in New Orleans are irrelevant to that of the New York City area. The largest European ethnic group are the French, who primarily came in the 1600's and 1700's, as opposed to that most European descendants with New York City roots trace it to mid-to-late 1800's and early-1900's immigration. The largest ancestral background among white's in New York City are Ashkenazi Jews which is low demographically in New Orleans (especially compared to NYC).
If you were to look at the map of where the original Dutch colonized in the New York area (from as south as Hudson County, NJ and Staten Island, NY, as east as Nassau Co., Long Island and as far north as Orange Co., NY), you'd notice the NYC and similar Northern Jersey accent is virtually only prevalent in the places they colonized. This shows that when the English won the war and colonized the area, their mixture with the Dutch influence created the accent. The only groups that similarly immigrated to New Orleans to that of New York City/North Jersey were Irish and Italian immigrants. However, the same could be said to Scranton, PA, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and much of the Midwest and Northeast. All of those accents don't sound similar to the NYC dialect. Tom173.72.121.29 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 00:07, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lack of credibility in unsourced opinion of claiming New Orleanians could be mistaken for New Yorkers ; No source or rationale to support similar immigration patterns 

message: South Philadelphia has been known for r-dropping, even though it has never been a characteristic of the rest of the region.
I deleted this quote because there is no citation. It doesn't seem to have much logic either. Philadelphia's accent has always been widely known to be rhotic. Tom173.72.121.29 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 02:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleting of South Philadelphia being claimed as non-rhotic 

message: 'Case of the Missing 'T'" prominent among young Utah women. I know this article is more of a sociolect thing. I think there is a good need to find how English is used in Utah. Komitsuki (talk) 09:28, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Utah? 

message: I have lived in Eastern New England my entire life so far, and rarely left. There is, yes, a lot of non-rhotic accents, but there is also, I think, a modified version of General American. The dipthongs aɪ, eɪ, aʊ, ɔɪ and oʊ seem to have become ɑi, ei, oi and ou. And what is the dipthong in can? Is it something like eə? That's my theory. And jimmies (Eeastern New England), for sprinkles, soggies for a king of hot dog (Providence), and wicked, as in wicked awesome (Eastern New England) were missed as regional vocabulary. And the prefix -tion has come to be pronounced as ʃɪn, not ʃən. This is just my opinion, but I think that this has become the case.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Granitehead (talk • contribs) 22:26, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification for Eastern New England 

message: I would like to add that I came here to understand the differences in pronunciation, but there are so few examples, it's pretty much worthless for that purpose, unless of course you're fluent in pronunciation symbols (I'm not).   Can somebody please fill out the remainder that lack examples of "rhymes with" or "sounds like" so that the masses can appreciate the content?  This is a fascinating topic for people not fluent in the symbols.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tconrad (talk • contribs) 03:14, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: request for examples

message: I'm noticing that there is a good bit of IPA on this page that does not follow the standard of Help:IPA for English. My reading of the discussion above is that this should be the standard, notwithstanding minor controversies. I'm going to change some things, such as the inverted r for rhotics. Cnilep (talk) 00:01, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I changed ɹ→r and ɐɪ→ʌɪ but left ɝ and ɚ unchanged, since the help page includes both the single-character and the vowel+rhotic combinations. Cnilep (talk) 00:14, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

text: I have restored your edit.  There's a reason it is called raising. μηδείς (talk) 00:01, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone might want to take a look at Fête's recent contributions to undo similar changes elsewhere. — Æµ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 00:55, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I have reverted this on three pages, but Fete insists it is correct and has restored on at least one. μηδείς (talk) 18:54, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I hesitated to revert Fête myself, since I've undone quite a few of their seemingly good faith edits.  Plus, it's my understanding that  in the context of English often means "whatever the STRUT vowel is" which is often  or , but we don't have to be that phonetically precise, particularly when usage leans toward . — Æµ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 19:23, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope you meant "which is often  or ". STRUT as  would sound like an overdone South African accent. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 12:46, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPA for English 

message: Unfortunately, there are only two vowel trapezoids in this whole article.  And in neither one is the schwa present - and this is said to be the most common phoneme in English (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.33.104 (talk) 02:00, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Schwa isn't really useful in vowel trapezoids because (1) it covers such a large range of the mid central zone and (2) it doesn't really change much from dialect to dialect and doesn't participate in vowel shifts. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:40, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Schwa 

message: It would be helpful to non-professional users such as myself to somehow highlight/define the "Midwest" and relate it to the various Midland regions documented.  Logically, "Midland" is a great improvement on the ambiguous & confusing "Midwest", but unfortunately the latter is by far the commonest term in colloquial use, and what a user is likely to search for.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by D A Patriarche (talk • contribs) 23:20, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: To build on D A Patriarche's comment, "the midwest" is not a well-defined concept, or rather, it is variously used to include any parts of the US not on an ocean coast. Recent changes to headings were mostly good, in that they changed to clearer or more specific descriptions (e.g. "Miami" to "Miami, Florida", "New York City" to "New York City metropolitan area"). But changing "The North" to "The Midwest (Northern Central United States)" is not an obvious improvement, as it is not clear how this is distinct from "North Central". Similarly, changing "North Central" to "Upper Midwest (North-Central)" seems less like an improvement in terminology and more like an ad-hoc solution to distinguishing it from the new "Northern Central United States" descriptor. To my mind, "North" is probably more distinctive to non-specialists (at least it's distinct from "South") than is "Midwest". (It's that place in the middle of the country where they don't have an accent. No, wait, they have Sarah Palin's accent. Or, no, Dan Rather? Um... at least it's not New York or California.) Also, for what it's worth, for many specialists "The North" includes New England as well as Inland North and North Central regions. I guess the parenthesis are an attempt to define the ambiguous "Midwest", but I would say that defining the regions in prose without new ad-hoc descriptors for the headings would be a better – or at least equally good – solution. Cnilep (talk) 01:19, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Defining regions of North American speech 

message: While there's a lot of good information here, this article has huge problems with references. There are entire sections on regions which have no citations, and no clear source material. I'm guessing much of this material is from the ANAE but the article does not make this clear. For a specific example, the description of the Southern Shift in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English cites Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006) and A Handbook of Varieties of English. There are no sources for the Southern Shift in this article, or indeed any citations for the entire Southern American English section. There are some sources mentioned in the Bibliography section that are not cited in the text: for example Walsh (1995) appears to be a source for Vermont, and Dailey-O'Cain (1997) for Canadian Raising in the Midwest, but they aren't mentioned in the appropriate sections in the text.
Sources are even less clear when the history or development of NAE or particular dialects are mentioned. It's stated that East Coast dialects had more influence from British English, and inland dialects have diversified less due to more recent settlement. In the Mid-Atlantic section it's stated that the Philidelphia Accent is probably the ancestor to GenAM: this is a pretty strong claim and isn't mentioned in the main Philidephia English article. This historical information is useful, but it's unclear where it comes from. --JordanAMSmith (talk) 18:16, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point.  I agree.  If information is obtained from a source, then there should be an in-text citation for that specific information.  I can fix this but it will take some time.LakeKayak (talk) 00:12, 13 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: References?

message: It seems that Labov et al. do not consider Eastern New England English (ENE English) to be apart of the Northern dialect.  Labov et al. use the absence of the cot–caught merger to be a criterion for the dialect region.  I really stumbled upon this by accident from the page Northern American English which states that, while ENE English is arguably native to the North geographically, it is not apart of the North linguistically.  Any thoughts?LakeKayak (talk) 22:21, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, use "a part" to mean "constituent" and "apart" to mean "separate", otherwise it gets very confusing! If you look at the hierarchy, Eastern New England meets every criterion to be a part of the North (4 or 5 phonological criteria), except for the cot-caught criterion. You can argue that this is enough that it should be its own separate branch, but then we may as well break up the whole Southeastern and Marginal Southeastern region into its component dialects (which I repeatedly discouraged during the whole Midland/Southern/Southeastern debate). This hierarchy is based on phonological closeness and historical relationships, rather than exactness. The relationships between dialects are almost never exact... never simply cut-and-dry. If by "aligned" we mean falling under the strict phonological definition for positive characteristics, then ENE is at least 80% Northern-aligned, according to this page, just as Western Pennsylvania is 75% Midland-aligned and Canada is 100% Western-aligned. Wolfdog (talk) 19:45, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Any justification to put Eastern New England in the North? 

message: The overview for Canadian and Western American accents says that GOAT remains backed, but then the subsection on California says that GOAT-fronting exists in Californian English. These statements are self-contradictory. If a lack of GOAT-fronting is used to define the region, then the English of California (and Oregon and NevadaValerie Fridland, Tyler Kendall; 5. On the Uniformity of the Low-Back-Merger Shift in the U.S. West and Beyond. Publication of the American Dialect Society 1 December 2019; 104 (1): 100–119. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-8032957) isn't a part of the region, and if they must be in the region, then GOAT-fronting or lack thereof can't be used to define the region. What's the solution to this? Tyrui (talk) 06:16, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Not exactly sure, and I doubt the researchers themselves would be sure either. GOAT-fronting is an innovation showing up all over the country. The source that defines the Western dialect region, the Atlas of North American English (Labov et al.) gets its nationwide data from the 1990s, while the California source you provide (Fridland et al.) is much more recent and far narrower in scope. Also, language change does not happen in clear-cut ways that work perfectly well for logical hierarchies and reader-friendly pigeonholes. Speech features in a certain community can innovate in new directions, reverse course back toward earlier forms, stagnate or remain static, or any bizarre combination of these. Wolfdog (talk) 13:39, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  GOAT-fronting