North American English Dialects, Based
on Pronunciation Patterns
Web-Based Survey A group of linguists are gathering data on North American English dialects using a web-based survey. As of June, 2011, they had about 2500 responses but would like a few thousand more. This survey is distinct from the information on this page, but they have asked for our help. If you would like to take this survey, it can be found at: pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3/NorthAmericanDialects. Adj. 21-Oct.-2011 |
This is just a hobby of mine, that I thought might be interesting to a lot of people. Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins. I collect dialects. Please let me know what you think of this page. - Rick Aschmann (Last updated: January 16, 2012.) Please be patient! I have worked through well over half of the e-mails I have received since the huge jump in popularity of this site over the 2010 Christmas break, due to a number of web forums about it! Thanks to all of you who have written expressing appreciation for the page! I don’t promise to respond to every e-mail, but I am still trying to answer all those who sent in a sample or other information, or even a complaint. Unfortunately, my life has been very busy the last few months, so I have barely been able to keep up with current correspondence about this page. But I’ll keep trying! Adj. 28-Nov.-2011 There are 8 major
English dialect areas in North America, listed below the map at left. These
are shown in blue, each with its number, on the map and in the Dialect Description Chart below, and are
also outlined with blue lines on the map. The first 6 of these begin at the eastern seaboard and proceed west,
reflecting western settlement patterns. The many subdialects
are shown in red on the map and in the chart, and are outlined with red lines
on the map. All of these are listed in the margins of the map as well.
In the Dialect Description Chart additional
features not shown on the map are provided for distinguishing the dialects. What’s New? All additions or changes within the last two or three months are marked with “ New! ” and the date, or with “ Adj. ” (for “Adjusted”.) To see this new information, simply search for these words. Recent additions • I have marked two areas (Dallas-Fort Worth and Little Rock, Arkansas, as border areas where native speakers may speak either Lowland Southern or Inland Southern depending on social class. See Possible Southern Class Distinction? Adj. 2-Jan.-2012 • Continuing survey: please help! I only discovered this year (2011) that many if not most Americans pronounce the “l” in words like “calm” and other words ending in “alm”, which surprised me very much, since I don’t. Some also pronounce the “l” in “folk”, and even a few may pronounce the “l” in “talk”. See the new section The Pronunciation of “alm” and “olk” and “alk” for more details. I would love to know if you do or do not pronounce the “l” in such words, and where you grew up! Adj. 12-Dec.-2011 • I have made major changes in the path of the cot-caught line in Nebraska and Kansas, making it a bit less twisty. New! 15-Nov.-2011
Web Forums: There are several web forums or blogs that refer to my map. The most recent ones that I know of are: Adj. 12-Dec.-2011 this one, set up on December 5, 2011, primarily for German speakers New! 12-Dec.-2011 this one, set up on November 15, 2011 There are several much older ones, which are mostly no longer active: Adj. 28-Nov.-2011 this one, set up on December 31, 2010 this one (specifically for actors and dialect coaches), set up on December 31, 2010 this one, set up on January 1, 2011 this one, set up on December 30, 2010 this one, set up on December 27, 2010. this one, set up on June 7, 2010 this one, set up on November, 2009. I have made a few adjustments based on comments made in these, and added some sound samples. However, the main complaint, that the map is too complicated and confusing, I can’t really fix: the subject is complicated, and I am well aware that I have tried to include too many features. However, if people have ideas on how to make the map or web page less confusing, I am all ears! 9-Apr.-2011 |
|
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
The small map below is the same as the Full-Scale Dialect Map that follows, but shows the entire width of the map (on most monitors). 24-Aug.-2010
Click on any part of this map to move to the equivalent part of the Full-Scale Dialect Map. (For now this only moves to the far left or the far right of the Full-Scale Dialect Map, so unfortunately it doesn’t work well for the middle portions, and you will just have to scroll over.) 24-Aug.-2010
Instructions
For many of the cities or towns on this map, you can listen to an audio or video sample of speech of a native (more specifically, someone who was raised there, though not necessarily born there, and whose dialect clearly represents that place). All of the cities or towns with a green center have such an audio or video sample that can be listened to (and a few of the ones with pink centers do also). I will continue adding new audio and video samples, so check back from time to time. So far there are over 700 samples listed, more and more of which are from contributors! Thanks! 20-Apr.-2011
Use the scroll bars to move around on this map, or, even simpler, start at the tiny map above and click the country (U.S. or Canada) that you want to look at. This will take you to the Small-Scale Dialect Map. Click again to zoom in further on your location. (For now this only moves to the far left or the far right of the Full-Scale Dialect Map, so unfortunately it doesn’t work well for the middle portions, and you will just have to scroll over.) 24-Aug.-2010
Finally! Now the entire map is
clickable, taking you to the list of samples for that state or province. Only
those locations with green centers, and a few
with pink centers, have a sample so far. If
there aren’t any of these samples yet for a particular state or province, then
it will not be clickable, since there is no data to go to! Place the mouse over
a particular state or province to see if it currently has any samples. (The map guides, showing the meaning of all
the colors, are on the top right and bottom left of the map.) 1-Nov.-2010
Help! For many places I haven’t found an audio sample yet. If you know of an audio or video sample on the Internet that features a speaker who was raised in a particular place, and whose dialect clearly represents that place, please let me know, whether that place is currently listed or not! Although many of the people in these samples are prominent people, I actually prefer ordinary local people, but anyone at all will do, as long as their pronunciation represents the local dialect. (The ones I especially need, and cannot find, are those with an orange-yellow center.) Also, if you think that one of the audio examples does not truly represent the local dialect, please let me know in the same way. (Oh, but please keep the samples clean. I have a policy of not using a sample if it uses a word you can’t say on TV in the U.S.!) I will normally list your name as the contributor, to make this more of a community project, unless you’d rather I didn’t, in which case I will use initials. However, I will not publish anyone’s e-mail address. 10-May-2011
Numbered Locations: Thanks to
enthusiastic contributor Eli K., much of Kentucky and
Tennessee and neighboring areas are about as thoroughly mapped as they
possibly can be. That’s the kind of help needed to really fill out this map! In
fact, I was forced to go to a numbering system
for such areas, since the scale of map is already big enough! I put the key to
the numbers off the east coast of Canada. 24-Aug.-2010
|
|
|
|
|
Data from the Atlas of North American English (ANAE)
I am grateful to the Atlas of North American English (ANAE) by William Labov, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg, for a good part of the data on which this map was based. Specifically, much of the information on the map above and in the Dialect Description Chart below was obtained from ANAE chapter 11 (a draft version available on the Internet), as well as from many other chapters of the same work, with a few ideas from a much older version of the same: ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/home.html. (The Table of Contents of the draft version of the atlas can be seen at: www.ling.upenn.edu/phonoatlas/ANAE_ToC.pdf, but this does not link directly to the chapters.)
However, the names of a number of the dialects are my own, and I have made many adjustments to their borders (especially Inland and Lowland South, West Midland, and Allegheny Midland). Also, a lot of the data is from my own research and analysis. - Rick Aschmann
I have only recently discovered that much or all of the audio data upon which the atlas was based is now available on the Internet, on this website (select North American English Dialects). (Replaced bad link.) I will be adding samples from this site as I have time, marked as “ANAE info and audio”. Adj. 31-Dec.-2011
The following notes refer to numbers on the map, and show the corresponding section of the ANAE:
1: Pin-pen merger: See Map 9.5 in ANAE chapter 9 and www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map3.html. This is the only feature in which I find myself in significant disagreement with the ANAE: I have found that the pin-pen merger area is much larger than they show, especially in the west.[1] (See The Pin-Pen Merger, The Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Texas Cattle Drives below.) 6-Aug.-2011
2: Long /ō/ [oʊ] fronting: See Map 20.2 in ANAE chapter 20. 2: The boundary between central-back and central-front (the yellow dots) was used by the ANAE to define the boundary between North and Midland, but this line then extends into the West. The deep dip that it takes southwards in Utah and Nevada would seem to indicate settlement of these areas by Northerners, probably represented by the Mormon settlement. Thus this dip corresponds to a large degree to the “Mormon Corridor”. Many of these settlers were originally from the Palmyra, New York, area and from Kirtland, Ohio. Another northern contribution may have been the early northeastern organized crime influence in Las Vegas. Now I’m not saying that people in these areas sound like northeasterners: they don’t, they sound like westerners, with this one feature being dragged south because of this origin. 20-Jan.-2010
3: R-dropping: See Map 7.1 in ANAE chapter 7. R-droppers are also called non-rhotic English speakers, though I find this term rather obscure and academic. There are two types of r-droppers, which I call Systematic R-droppers and Simple R-droppers. Adj. 2-Jan.-2012
Systematic R-droppers are found in the northeastern U. S., in much of England, and in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, much of the Caribbean, and other places. Systematic R-droppers have linking and intrusive r’s. John F. Kennedy is an excellent example of a Systematic r-dropper. In a speech he gave prior to being elected, he says “The hungry children I sawr in West Vaginia.” This quote has one intrusive r, and one dropped r, both highlighted in red. In another speech during the Cuban missile crisis he says, starting at 4:55: “...Soviet foreign minister Gromyko told me in my office that he was instructed to make it cleah once again, as he said his govament had already done, Soviet assistance to Cubar, and I quote, ...”, which again has one intrusive r, and two dropped r’s, again highlighted in red. 2-Apr.-2011
Simple R-droppers are found in parts of the Lowland South. As a general rule, they do not have linking and intrusive r’s. All of the areas in the South marked as r-droppers on my map are Simple R-dropper areas.
Numerous examples of both kinds of r-droppers are given in the audio samples below. This pattern is receding, so occasionally only much older speakers retain the r-dropping in a given location. These are surrounded on the map by a dotted green circle, and in the chart below will be indicated with the phrase “Older r-dropper:”. 3-Apr.-2010
4: Canadian and Tidewater raising: See Map 15.5 in ANAE chapter 15, noting only the info for the /ou/ [aʊ] vowel (which he writes /aw/), not the /ī/ [aɪ] vowel (which he writes /ay/). For Tidewater I have gleaned the info from various sources, including stray comments in ANAE. 3-July-2010
5: Bite-bout line: See Map 14.1 in ANAE chapter 14.
6: “On” line: See Map 14.2 in ANAE chapter 14. This is the only lexical item included in this analysis, but it seems to correlate with the phonological data. Why it turns north at its western end in the Dakotas and does some contortions is unclear. (The ANAE did not have Mitchell, SD or Ashley, ND, which are the surprises. Actually, Mitchell is not a surprise, or even borderline, but one speaker seems to be anomalous.) Miles City, Montana, an outlier of Western North, is also below the line. In San Francisco the pattern seems to be reversed, with the “don” group possibly representing a later influx of some type. 22-Sep.-2010
|
|
vowel of “lot” almost as much as vowel of “let” |
vowel of “cot” more fronted than vowel of “cut” |
vowel of “too” much more fronted than vowel of “toe” |
Vowel of “far” fronted |
Vowel of “caught” strongly raised |
“hoarse” =“horse”, “mourning” = “morning”, “four”= “for” |
Unique Features |
Chapter and map in ANAE |
|
Chapter and map in ANAE |
||||||||
|
|
yes |
Like Western North, but “cot”=“caught” |
||||||
|
|
yes |
Subtle differences from the rest of the North Central, particularly /th/ [ð] becomes /d/ [d]. |
||||||
|
Mat-Su Valley, Alaska * |
yes |
|
yes |
Strongly like North Central, but with some admixture from the main Alaska dialect. (See Sarah Palin.) |
||||
|
yes |
|
yes |
Vowel of “too” significantly more fronted than vowel of “toe”, “cot”=“caught” |
|||||
|
Alaska |
yes |
|
yes |
Same as West (ANAE chapter 11 says there are significant differences, but does not make clear what they are.) |
||||
|
Silver City, NM |
yes |
|
yes |
Same as West, but “cot”≠“caught” |
||||
|
yes |
very little |
|
yes |
Same as West, plus Canadian vowel shift, vowel of “cat” central, raising of “bite”, “bout” |
||||
|
Atlantic Provinces |
mixed? |
yes |
|
yes |
vowel of “far” fronted (but not “father”) |
|||
|
yes |
yes |
|
yes |
like the Atlantic Provinces, but with a strong Irish component |
||||
|
yes |
|
no |
“far” & “father” fronted, systematic r-dropping, “cot”=“caught”, “father” & “bother” don’t rhyme |
|||||
|
NW New England |
very little |
very little |
yes |
|
yes |
vowel of “far” fronted (but not “father”) , “cot”=“caught” |
||
|
mixed |
mixed |
mostly |
|
almost all |
Back vowels strongly backed, defined as the “cot”≠“caught” area north of the line of yellow dots, except for the St. Louis Corridor.[2] |
|||
|
Western North |
mixed |
mixed |
mostly |
|
yes |
Least distinctive dialect of the North, some sections are “General American” |
||
|
Inland North |
yes |
yes |
mostly |
|
almost all |
Northern Cities Shift: “bat” strongly raised, most short vowels shifted |
||
|
St. Louis Corridor |
yes |
yes |
Mixed |
|
mixed |
Northern Cities Shift: “bat” strongly raised, most short vowels shifted, but many other vowels like Midland |
||
|
Indiana North[3] |
no |
no |
yes |
Very similar to Western North, but separated from it geographically[4]. |
||||
|
Eastern North |
yes |
yes |
very little |
mixed |
yes |
Mostly like Western North, but some similarities to New York City |
||
|
Albany |
yes |
yes |
very little |
yes |
yes |
Many vowels like New York City, but no r-dropping |
||
|
Providence |
yes |
|
no |
vowel of “cat” central, systematic r-dropping, “cart”=“cot”, which is not seen anywhere else in the world! |
||||
|
yes |
yes |
Various unusual vowels, systematic r-dropping, “bad” & “had” don’t rhyme, “father” & “bother” don’t rhyme |
||||||
|
The Hamptons |
|
yes |
A lot like New York City, but more research needed! |
|||||
|
Downtown New Orleans |
|
no? |
More like New York City than anything else, although “bad” & “had” probably rhyme 19-Apr.-2011 |
|||||
|
|
almost all |
In many ways is intermediate between Northern and Southern[5] |
||||||
|
Central Midland |
|
almost all |
Least distinctive dialect in the U.S., many sections are “General American” |
|||||
|
Canton, Ohio |
|
yes |
“bat” strongly raised, “on” rhymes with “don”, not “dawn” |
|||||
|
|
yes |
Many vowels are pronounced like New York City, “pin”≠“pen”, unlike the surrounding area[6] |
||||||
|
West Midland * |
|
yes |
“cot”=“caught” |
(19) |
||||
|
Allegheny Midland[7] |
|
yes |
“cot”=“caught” |
|||||
|
Pittsburgh |
|
yes |
Pittsburgh vowel shift: “out” is pronounced [ˈat], with no diphthong, the way a Bostonian says “art”. |
|||||
|
Oklahoma City * [8] |
|
yes |
Like the parts of the Central Midland south of the pin-pen line |
|||||
|
East Midland * |
yes |
yes |
Like the Central Midland, with influences from Atlantic Midland |
|||||
|
Atlantic Midland[9] |
yes |
yes |
“bad” does not rhyme with “had”, like New York City |
|||||
|
North Florida |
|
yes |
Like the Central Midland, “pin”=“pen” |
|||||
|
South Florida |
|
yes |
Like the Central Midland, “pin”≠“pen” |
|||||
|
El Paso |
|
yes |
“cot”≠“caught”, “pin”=“pen” |
|||||
|
Corpus Christi |
|
yes |
Mixture of Southern and Northern features (but no Southern shift), “pin”=“pen” |
|||||
|
Galveston * |
|
yes |
Very similar to East Midland, or even to Atlantic Midland, except that “bad” rhymes with “had” |
|||||
|
yes |
yes |
Very similar to East Midland, or even to Atlantic Midland, except that “bad” rhymes with “had” |
(11) |
|||||
|
|
mixed |
Partial to full Southern shift: vowels of “ride” and “buy” have no diphthong: long /ī/ is [a]. |
||||||
|
Lowland South |
|
mixed |
Partial Southern shift: vowels of “ride” and “buy” have [a], with no diphthong, but “right” does ([aɪ]), “pin”=“pen”. |
|||||
|
|
mixed |
Outlined in dark green rather than red, a catch-all for all R-dropping dialects in the South, includes or cuts across some of the dialects below. |
||||||
|
|
mixed |
Outlined in pink rather than red, a catch-all for those parts of the coastal south that have the Tidewater raising, as explained on the map. It actually includes two areas that lack the Southern shift, Down East & Outer Banks and Charleston. |
||||||
|
Savannah |
|
yes |
R-dropping, “pin”≠“pen” |
|||||
|
|
yes |
East is R-dropping, west apparently not, “pin”=“pen”, French influence, th > t,d. |
||||||
|
New Orleans, Mid City |
|
no? |
See New Orleans inset on map and the New Orleans section below |
|||||
|
New Orleans, Irish Channel |
|
no? |
See New Orleans inset on map and the New Orleans section below |
|||||
|
Inland South |
|
almost all |
Full Southern shift: vowels of “ride”, “buy”, and “right” all have [a], with no diphthong, “pin”=“pen” |
|||||
|
Anomalous peripheral areas that resisted the Southern shift: |
|
|||||||
|
Charleston |
|
yes |
No Southern shift, R-dropping, vowels of “bait” and “boat” are not diphthongs, but simple [e] and [o]. |
|||||
|
Down East & Outer Banks * |
|
|
|
|
|
yes |
No Southern shift, long /ī/ [aɪ] vowel often almost like /oi/ [ɔɪ], “pin”=“pen”[11] 11-July-2011 |
|
|
Chesapeake Islands * |
|
|
|
|
|
yes |
No Southern shift, long /ī/ [aɪ] vowel less like /oi/ [ɔɪ] than Down East & Outer Banks, “pin”≠“pen” |
|
* Those dialects marked with an asterisk are not in the Atlas of North American English (ANAE).
|
Colors: |
|
|
Transitional areas within
main dialects |
Distinctive or innovative features of a given dialect |
|
Transitional areas
outside main dialects |
Intermediate or partial features |
I have added and adjusted a lot of the information on the
map based on the following audio and non-audio data. - Rick Aschmann
Regional non-audio data
|
Location |
Source |
|
English, French, and indigenous mother-tongue areas of
Canada |
atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/peopleandsociety/lang/languages2001/mt |
|
French mother-tongue areas of Maine |
|
|
Indigenous languages |
|
|
the eastern boundary of Inland North |
|
|
Greater New York City |
|
|
Eastern boundary between Eastern New England and Providence |
ling.upenn.edu/~johnson4/pwpl_draft.pdf 30-Mar.-2010 |
Multiple-region audio samples found on the Internet
|
Location |
Source |
Comment |
|
Samples from almost all U. S. states |
Few indications are given as to whether the speakers are
natives of the area in which they were interviewed, or if they represent well
the local dialect. Also, locations are often limited, and often only urban
locations are given. Even so, in many cases the data is useful, and I have
used it (see the next chart), especially when clearer indications are given
of “nativeness”. If anyone finds any of these that I have left out and
shouldn’t have, please let me know!
25-Feb.-2011 |
|
|
Samples only from north-central U. S. |
Again, not always clear if the speakers are natives of the
area in which they were interviewed, or if they represent well the local
dialect. However, includes rural speakers, which can help fill in holes. Used
occasionally. If anyone finds any of these that I have left out and shouldn’t
have, please let me know! 25-Feb.-2011 |
Guide to the Sounds of North American English
In many places on this web page the pronunciation of a name or other word will be given after it. These pronunciation guides will have two forms: a phonemic guide between slashes / /, based on the Traditional Dictionary Pronunciation System (TDPS) that is found in many dictionaries, and a phonetic guide (providing the phonetic details) between square brackets [ ], based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). (Thanks, Maria Mikkonen![12])
The advantage of the phonemic guide is that it allows different dialects to use the same pronunciation key and get the right result for each dialect. For this guide I have used the system used in the American Heritage Dictionary, rather than the one used by Merriam-Webster, since it is more complete and applies to more dialects.
However, I have included the phonetic guide as well, partly to give a more precise phonetic pronunciation of local variants, and partly because many have complained that they prefer the IPA or are familiar only with it. (I recently realized that to do this consistently, I also needed to include aspiration on voiceless consonants, which is conditioned by stress and word position. I have now added these, though I may have missed a few! I also realized that I had left off primary stress on many monosyllabic words, and have added these also, as well as making other adjustments to the phonetic spellings, in particular the phonetic realization of /r/. However, it would be impractical to represent all the fine detail, such as the rounding that many English consonants have, or the differences between “clear l” [l] and “dark l” [ɫ].) 10-Mar.-2011
In the phonemic guide I have followed the American Heritage Dictionary system to the letter, except for a few minor adjustments in the vowel system, and the following differences:
1. I write the syllable with primary stress using bold and underline, and syllables with secondary stress with just bold, rather than using an apostrophe after it like the AHD. In other words, I show the pronunciation of “underneath” as /ŭndərnēth/, whereas the AHD does it as /ŭn'dər-nēth'/.
2. I do not separate syllables with a hyphen except when absolutely necessary, as in “cartridge” /kärtrij/ versus “cartwright” /kärt-rīt/, or “mission” /mĭshən/ versus “mishap” /mĭs-hăp/; although technically in these two cases the underlining of the primary-stressed syllable gives enough information, even so the hyphens help to clarify.
3. I
show the pronunciation of words like “needle” and “sudden” as /nēdəl/ and /sǔdən/, rather than
treating them as having syllabic /l/ or /n/, which they clearly have
phonetically: [ˈniɾl̩, ˈsʌdn̩]. Adj. 2-Jan.-2012
The ANAE does not use
either the TDPS or
the IPA, but instead uses a completely different
transcription system, described in ANAE chapter 2. This
system is phonemic, like the TDPS.[13] 3-July-2010
How Many Vowels are there in American English?
No, the answer is not: “Five: a, e, i, o u.” Granted, in traditional English spelling those are the vowel letters, yes, but I’m talking about our spoken language: How many significant vowel sounds are there? Well, if you consult any popular American English dictionary, and study the Pronunciation Key, there will be a long list of vowels. In the Pronunciation Key to the American Heritage Dictionary, 19 different vowel symbols are listed (not counting the ones only used in foreign words)! However, some of these are special vowels that only occur before the /r/ sound, which are “colored” by the /r/, so these can be separated out as special cases. And one of these vowels, /ə/, only occurs in completely unstressed syllables, never in stressed syllables (whether primary stressed or secondary stressed), so it also can be separated out as a special case. This leaves us with 15 vowels that can occur in stressed syllables. Very few North American English speakers have all of these vowels: Many have 14 (lacking the /ä/ vowel), and many have only 13 (lacking both /ä/ and /ô/). New York City has 16 vowels, the 15 in the American Heritage list plus one that is not usually listed in dictionary pronunciation guides, which I have chosen to spell /ăə/! These 16 vowels are listed below in the second column, with sample words shown in the first column. 10-Mar.-2011
The remaining columns show what happens to vowels before final r, showing the “R-colored” vowels used in most of North America, and showing the Southern System in the final column, representing the system used in much of the South, which does not have “R-colored” vowels.
(I have included the IPA equivalents of these vowels in brackets [ ] as well. However, keep in mind that the actual pronunciation of a given phonemic vowel may vary greatly from region to region. For example, the /ŏ/ vowel is pronounced as [a], an open front unrounded vowel, in much of the Inland North, but is pronounced as [ɔ], an open-mid back rounded vowel, in England. A whole gamut of vowel sounds in between these two occurs somewhere in North America: in much of Canada and in some other “cot”=“caught” areas the pronunciation is [ɒ], whereas most others use [ɑ] or [a] or something in between. Many other vowels have similar variants. The most distinctive Southern pronunciation is shown in a separate column. However, keep in mind that I have not listed all possible variants for any region.) 3-July-2010
If anyone finds that any of the symbols in the chart do not display properly on their web browsers, please let me know. Most of them are standard Unicode characters. 25-Feb.-2011
|
Ordinary Stressed Vowels |
|
|
|
“R-colored” Stressed Vowels |
||||||||
|
phonemic |
IPA |
IPA South |
|
|
keepers |
droppers |
Southern System |
|||||
|
beat, bee, fleece |
ē |
[i] |
[ɪi] |
|
|
fear, pier, peer, near |
îr |
[ɪɹ] |
[ɪə] |
intermediate between ē and ĭ |
/ēər/ [ɪiə(ɹ)], rhymes with “skier” |
|
|
bit, fill, kit |
ĭ |
[ɪ] |
[iə] |
|
|
|||||||
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
bait, bay, face |
ā |
[eɪ/e] |
[æɪ] |
|
|
fair, bear, care, square, |
âr |
[eɹ] |
[eə] |
For most speakers, intermediate between ā and ě, but ăər [eə(ɹ)] in areas with ăə. |
/ăr/ [æɹ/æə], “hairy”=“Harry” [ˈhæɹɪ], but “merry” is different. |
|
|
bet, help, dress |
ě |
[ɛ] |
[e] |
|
|
|||||||
|
bat, had, trap |
ă |
[æ] |
[æiə] |
┐ |
|
|||||||
|
bad, man |
ăə |
[eə] |
|
┘ |
(NYC, Atlantic Midland) |
|
||||||
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
father, Bach’s, palm |
ä |
[a/ɑə] |
|
┐ |
(E. New England, NYC) |
|
far, farther, heart, start |
är |
[aɹ/ɑɹ/ɒɹ] |
[a/ɑ/ɒə] |
Everyone has this![14] |
/är/ [ɒ(ɹ)/ɔɹ] |
|
cot, lot, bother, box, |
ŏ |
[a/ɑ/ɒ] |
[ɒ] |
┤ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
caught, thought,
balks, |
ô |
[ɒ/ɔ/oə] |
[ɒʊ] |
┘ |
(Eastern U.S. See map.) |
|
for, horse, morning, |
ôr |
[ɔɹ/oɹ] |
[ɔə/oə] |
Varies a lot! |
[ɒ(ɹ)/ɔɹ/ɒʊ]; /är/ for many speakers, /ôr/ for others |
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
boat, goat, toe |
ō |
[oʊ/o] |
[əʊ] |
|
|
four, hoarse, mourning, |
(ōr) |
[oɹ] |
[oə] |
See ANAE map 8.2 |
/ôər/ [ɒʊə(ɹ)], rhymes with “rawer” |
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
cut, strut, rush, love, rough |
ŭ |
[ʌ] |
[ə] |
|
|
fur, urge, nurse,
term, |
ûr |
[ɝ] |
[ɝ/ɜ/ɜɪ] |
Varies. |
/ûr/ [ɝ] or /ŭr/ [ʌɹ] or /ŏŏy/ [ɜɪ] |
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
foot, took, put, bush |
ŏŏ
* |
[ʊ] |
[ʏ] |
|
|
poor, tour cure, pure |
ŏŏr (yŏŏr)
† |
[ʊɹ], etc. ([jʊɹ]) |
[ʊə], etc. ([jʊə]) |
Many lack this, using /ōōər/, /ōr/, or /ûr/ instead |
/ōōər/
[ |
|
|
boot, goose, true, through |
ōō
* |
[u] |
[ |
|
|
|||||||
|
cue, beauty, you |
(yōō)
† |
[ju] |
[ɪʊ] |
|
|
|||||||
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
bite, by, price |
ī |
[aɪ/ɑɪ] |
[a] |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
bout, mouth, now |
ou |
[æʊ/aʊ/ɑʊ] |
[æə] |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hoyt, noise, choice, boy |
oi |
[ɔɪ] |
[ɒʊɪ/ɔə] |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Unstressed Only Vowel: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
about, item, edible, gallop, circus |
ə |
|
|
|
|
butter, motor, solar |
ər |
[ɚ] |
[ə] |
|
Same |
|
Black: The black vowels are those which all Americans have as distinct vowels.
Red: The red vowels are those which many but not all Americans have, as distinguished from the other vowels. I decided to make /ŏ/ the default vowel of the ä/ŏ/ô group, since for those who make the distinction it is by far the most common. 5-Oct.-2010
Green: The green vowels are those which a small minority of Americans have, as distinguished from the other vowels, in particular regions or dialects.
* These two
sounds are actually spelled as 
and
instead of ŏŏ
and ōō in the AHD and most other dictionary pronunciation systems, but
since there is not a practical way to display such a combination in Unicode,
I have followed the example of this web site. (Technically there is actually a way to do and in
Unicode, as contributor Brian Ewins showed me[15],
but I have tried them in various browsers, and they will not display
consistently.) 25-Feb.-2011
† The /yōō/ sound is not a single sound, but is simply /y/ followed by /ōō/.[16] Thus, there really is no “long /ū/” vowel. Similarly, /yŏŏr/ is simply /y/ followed by /ŏŏr/.
How I Use the IPA (and how I don’t) 2-Feb.-2011
When I show the pronunciation of a place, I try to always show how someone from that place would actually pronounce it. However, occasionally even the natives can’t agree. For instance, apparently most Chicagoans say /shĭkôgō/ [ʃɪˈkʰɒˌɡo] or even /shĭkôgə/ [ʃɪˈkʰɒɡə], but there are also many who say /shĭkŏgō/ [ʃɪˈkʰaˌɡo], and the latter group may be growing. Keep in mind that all of these definitely have “cot”≠“caught”. I have always called it /shĭkŏgō/ [ʃɪˈkʰɑˌɡoʊ], with a couple of slight vowel differences, since I don’t have an Inland North accent!
I have noticed that many people who use the IPA to show the pronunciation of place names on Wikipedia do several things that I have chosen not to do.
For one thing, they often write both [ə] and [ɨ] in showing the pronunciation of the weak vowel /ə/ in American English. Now this is not incorrect, since for me the word “sofa” /sōfə/ would usually be phonetically [ˈsoʊfə], whereas the word “broken” /brōkən/ would be phonetically [ˈbɹoʊkɨn]. However, in actual practice I find I have a lot of variation: for instance, “sofa bed” /sōfə bĕd/ would usually come out [ˈsoʊfɨˌbɛd], and “sofas” /sōfəz/ could come out [ˈsoʊfəz] or [ˈsoʊfɨz] depending on how deliberately I am speaking, or its position in the sentence. And I find that others have the same problem: in the Appalachian Mountains article the pronunciation is given as “/ˌæpəˈleɪʃɨn/ or /ˌæpəˈlætʃɨn/”; for me the vowels shown as [ə] and [ɨ] in these pronunciations are exactly the same for me, probably both [ɨ]. So for strictly practical purposes I am writing both [ə] and [ɨ] as [ə].
Another thing I find people doing is using British phonetic transcription to show the pronunciation of American place names. For instance, in the Lafayette, Indiana article the pronunciation is given as “/ˌlɑːfiːˈɛt/”. Now, in British English there truly are phonetically long and short vowels: “beat” is phonetically [ˈbiːt], where the vowel [iː] is phonetically long, whereas “bit” is phonetically [ˈbɪt], where the vowel [ɪ] is phonetically short. However, in nearly all North American English dialects, this is not the case: both “beat” [ˈbit] and “bit” [ˈbɪt] have vowels which are phonetically the same length, in spite of the fact that the first has what is traditionally called a “long e”, while the second has what is tradtionally called a “short i”. Scottish English is like American English in this respect. In fact, the “/ˌlɑːfiːˈɛt/” pronunciation is wrong for both British and American English: in British it would usually be [ˌlɑːfɪˈɛt], the [ɪ] being short because it is unstressed, whereas in American English (at least in West Lafayette, Indiana) it would be [ˌlɑfiˈɛt].
John Wells’s Lexical Sets
Words in pink in the chart above are from John Wells’s Standard Lexical Sets. Note that he has a sample word for each of the 15 stressed vowel sounds and the 7 stressed r-colored vowel sounds in the American Heritage Dictionary’s list, but not for the more localized /ăə/ vowel. I have included all of the words in John Wells’s list except for the following two words, which we could call Skew Words, since they have different vowels in different regions: 17-July-2010
|
Skew Word |
Most Americans |
|
Southern England |
|
|
bath |
băth [ˈbæθ] |
|
bäth [ˈbɑ:θ] |
(also Eastern New England [baθ]) |
|
cloth |
klôth [ˈkʰlɒθ] |
(for those who distinguish cot, caught) |
klŏth [ˈkʰlɔθ] |
(also possibly New York City??, other places in northeast??) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Compare the above with: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
math |
măth [ˈmæθ] |
|
măth [ˈmæθ] |
|
|
Goth |
gŏth [ˈɡaθ/ɡɑθ/ɡɒθ] |
|
gŏth [ˈɡɔθ] |
|
1-Oct.-2010
This skewing of the /ŏ/ and /ô/ vowels between the British and American systems is typically seen only before the consonant phonemes /f/, /th/, and /g/ ([f], [θ], and [ɡ]), as can be seen in the chart of Other Examples in The Cot-Caught Merger article, comparing the blue items with those in preceding column. 17-Aug.-2010
However, it seems to me that John Wells’s list above was not well selected to show contrasts in a similar environment. Instead, I would draw your attention to all of the words in blue below, all of which end in /t/, and most of which begin with /b/, and also to the words in dark red, which similarly show contrasts in other environments. Thus, my lexical sets would be the following: 1-Oct.-2010
|
Main set: |
beat, bit, bait, bet, bat, cot, caught, boat, cut, foot, boot, bite, bout, Hoyt |
This list lacks only two of the Ordinary Stressed Vowels, /ăə/ and /ä/, which do not occur in native words before /t/ (except where an /r/ has been dropped, as in “part” /pät/ (ENE [ˈpʰat], NYC [ˈpʰɑət]). These two vowels are also lacking in most North American English dialects. I could have used “quoits” in place of “Hoyt”, which is a surname, but I suspect that many more people are familiar with Hoyt than with quoits! |
|
R‑Colored set: |
fear, fair, far, for, four, poor, tour, fur |
For determining how many R-colored vowels a speaker has. (No one has more than 7, though I have listed 8 here. Those who have /ŏŏr/ usually say /tŏŏr, pŏŏr/, but others often do not rhyme these words, many saying them as /tōōər, pōr/ [ˈtʰuɚ, ˈpʰoɹ].) Adj. 2-Jan.-2012 |
|
Skew sets: |
bath, math; Goth, cloth |
For checking for what I call “skewing”. |
|
Other sets: |
had, bad; father, bother; Bach’s, box, balks |
For determining if various pairs of Ordinary Stressed Vowels are distinguished by a given speaker. |
Record Your Own Voice! 26-Mar.-2011
If you want to help me complete this map, or even to provide more sound samples for locations that already have them, there is an easy way: record your own voice and post it on YouTube. Nora Young, host of the program Spark on CBC radio, and a native of Toronto, Ontario, has done a sample recording of her own voice, and has set up a YouTube page where others can do the same.
She did this after interviewing me on her program in March of 2011, where I explained the need for more samples of this kind. To listen to the interview, go to www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/03/spark-142-march-27-30-2011, then scroll down till you see “Youtube Dialects Map”, or search for “Youtube Dialects Map” or “Rick Aschmann”. The interview can be heard by clicking the link below the paragraph.
If you grew up in one particular place in Canada or the U.S., then I would very much like a sample from you. In particular, if you lived in one town for most of your childhood, in particular between the ages of 5 and 15, and speak like people from that place, then you should be a great sample. (That is, unless you tried to consciously change your accent after that: I know a gal who moved from the South to the Midland before her senior year of high school, and she was subjected to so much ridicule that she completely changed her way of speaking.) And obviously, if you moved around a lot throughout your childhood, then you won’t really work for my map.
You can do just a simple recording, like Nora did, as short or as long as you like, just telling a bit about yourself and where you grew up. Or, if you want to be quite thorough about it, or just don’t know what to say, I have prepared a version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (slightly expanded to include certain key words) that you can read. This way if I need to check a particular word to nail down the dialect of your hometown I will be able to. Either way, please be sure to say where you grew up, and if only for part of your childhood, from what age to what age.
All of your clips sent in like this will be labelled “(Self-recording for this site. Thanks!)” in the table below, so that will make them easy to find. 30-Mar.-2011
Note to Canadians: Nora points out that Canadians are currently underrepresented on the map. So, this is your chance to change that! Send in your samples!
Audio Samples of Local Dialects
Here you can hear audio
samples of different local dialects. These are all found on the Internet:
As far as possible these have been restricted to people who were raised in the location, and in many cases have lived there nearly all their lives, and have presumably retained the local dialect, except where indicated. (For most of these people, their birthplace and life history can be found on en.wikipedia.org, or at the links provided.) Items in pink are doubtful as to whether they represent accurately the dialect indicated, or, in the case of the rejected samples at the bottom of the chart, definitely do not represent their local dialect. 1-July-2010
DISCLAIMER: I do not necessarily agree with all of the people speaking here: I have simply selected them as good examples of their dialect! Nor does the fact that many of them are politicians indicate that I particularly like politicians: The fact is that politicians tend to retain their local dialect more than other public professions (actors, artists), to maintain their identity with the locals. Also, they talk in public a lot, so the data is readily available. Country singers and southern gospel singers also tend to be reliable,[17] and I like them better than politicians. Somewhat surprisingly to me, NASCAR racers seem to be very reliable, also: even though they travel a lot for the races, they tend to raise their families in their old home town, from generation to generation, and don’t care in the least how they talk! 4-Aug.-2010
You may also notice that I prefer older people to younger people. This is simply because there has been a lot more dialect mixing among the younger generation than in previous generations.
As mentioned above, the pronunciation
of some of the names is given after the name. If anyone thinks I have the
pronunciation of a place wrong, please let me
know! 3-July-2010
Some of these links may not be current. Please let me know about any bad links. - Rick Aschmann
|
|
Person(s) |
Location |
State or Province |
Source |
|
1
|
Bobby Edwards, country singer |
Anniston |
Alabama |
YouTube video (Clearly Lowland, occasional “northern” long /ī/ [aɪ] vowels) 16-Mar.-2010 |
|
2
|
White male, student, born 1988 |
Auburn |
Alabama |
|
|
3
|
U.S. representative Spencer Bachus |
Birmingham |
Alabama |
YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) Adj. 31-Dec.-2011 |
|
4
|
Bobby Bowden, football coach |
Birmingham |
Alabama |
|
|
5
|
U.S. senator Richard Shelby |
Birmingham |
Alabama |
YouTube video 7-Nov.-2009 |
|
6
|
White male, student, born 1980 |
Brewton |
Alabama |
|
|
7
|
Governor Robert Bentley |
Columbiana |
Alabama |
YouTube video 11-July-2011 |
|
8
|
Charlie Hodge, Elvis associate |
Decatur |
Alabama |
YouTube video 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
9
|
William Bradford Huie, journalist & writer |
Decatur (Hartselle) |
Alabama |
YouTube video (Older speaker retaining Lowland Southern and r-dropping, although younger ones have apparently completely lost it!) New! 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
10
|
Governor Jim Folsom, Sr. |
Elba |
Alabama |
audio links 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
11
|
White male, student, born 1981 |
Elberta |
Alabama |
|
|
12
|
Sam Phillips, record producer |
Florence |
Alabama |
YouTube video 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
13
|
Ron Sparks, Alabama Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries |
Fort Payne |
Alabama |
|
|
14
|
Randy Owen, country singer |
Fort Payne |
Alabama |
YouTube video I could obviously have picked any of 100 other songs, but besides being a cool song this one clearly demonstrates his Inland Southern, also heard in this interview: YouTube video (His clip starts at 3:10.) 12-July-2011 |
|
15
|
Steve Grissom, NASCAR driver |
Gadsden |
Alabama |
YouTube video (clip at 9:30) 16-Mar.-2010 |
|
16
|
Sonny James Loden, country singer |
Hackleburg |
Alabama |
YouTube video 7-Nov.-2009 |
|
17
|
City council meeting |
Hamilton |
Alabama |
YouTube video All speakers clearly Inland North! 7-Nov.-2009 |
|
18
|
Charlie Louvin, country singer |
Henagar |
Alabama |
YouTube video 10-Mar.-2010 |
|
19
|
U.S. representative Bud Cramer |
Huntsville |
Alabama |
YouTube
video 1-June-2009 |
|
20
|
White female, born and raised in Lanett |
Lanett |
Alabama |
IDEA audio (source) 4-Sep.-2010 |
|
21
|
Eugene Walter, writer |
Mobile |
Alabama |
YouTube video 7-Dec.-2009 |
|
22
|
Robert Lightfoot, Marshall Space Flight Center director |
Montevallo |
Alabama |
YouTube video 10-Mar.-2010 |
|
23
|
Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom, Jr. |
Montgomery |
Alabama |
|
|
24
|
Steve Patton, football coach |
Oneonta |
Alabama |
|
|
25
|
Tammy Wynette, country singer |
Redbay |
Alabama |
YouTube video (Clearly Inland, though with some inconsistencies, which is not surprising, given that she grew up right on the border) 23-Feb.-2010 |
|
26
|
Charlie Louvin, country singer |
Section |
Alabama |
|
|
27
|
Jay Barker, football player |
Trussville |
Alabama |
|
|
28
|
William Christenberry, artist |
Tuscaloosa |
Alabama |
YouTube video (Classical Southern, occasional “northern” long /ī/ [aɪ] vowels) 16-Mar.-2010 |
|
29
|
Winton Blount, politician |
Union Springs |
Alabama |
YouTube video 16-Mar.-2010 |
|
30
|
U.S. senator Mark Begich |
Anchorage |
Alaska |
|
|
31
|
John Binkley, politician |
Fairbanks |
Alaska |
|
|
32
|
Jake Metcalfe, politician |
Juneau |
Alaska |
|
|
33
|
Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, V.P. candidate |
Wasilla |
Alaska |
YouTube video (Starts speech at 4:43.) (Replaced dead link.) Sarah Palin talks like she’s from (northern) Minnesota! The original link, now dead, was sent in by Annie Wang (thanks!), but this search link shows the vast amount of discussion on this subject. On another web site it says she talks like she’s from Fargo, North Dakota (actually, like the people in the movie Fargo, actually filmed in Minnesota)! In fact, it turns out that the area of Alaska around Wasilla and Palmer is much more like the North Central dialect than it is like other Alaska dialects. [18] On the web site above linguist James Crippen describes this dialect as Mat-Su Valley English, after the Matanuska-Susitna Valley where it is spoken. James Crippen has now kindly provided me with information that allows me to set its borders fairly accurately. He says that it probably extends no further west than Willow, no farther northeast than Sutton, and is probably dying out in much of the area anyway, because of a continued influx of people from other parts of Alaska. So why do they talk like this? Because this area was almost entirely settled during the Great Depression by people from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan as part of a federal project. Historical info can be found in this Wikipedia article, and on this page sent in by contributor Susan Alexander. Thanks! 23-Apr.-2011 |
|
34
|
Wayne Salmans, realtor |
Wasilla |
Alaska |
YouTube video Another good example of the original Mat-Su Valley English. 4-Mar.-2011 |
|
35
|
Ralph Klein, provincial premier |
Calgary |
Alberta |
YouTube video 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
36
|
Diane Sanbrandt, contributor |
Consort |
Alberta |
YouTube video (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) 30-Apr.-2011 |
|
37
|
Andy Devine, actor |
Kingman |
Arizona |
YouTube video (Chubby guy with odd voice. Also plays Friar Tuck on Disney’s Robin Hood.) 1-Sep.-2009 |
|
38
|
Carlos
Nakai, Native American flutist |
Flagstaff |
Arizona |
YouTube video 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
39
|
U.S. representative Ann Kirkpatrick |
McNary |
Arizona |
YouTube video 1-Sep.-2009 |
|
40
|
Joan Ganz Cooney, Sesame Street creator |
Phoenix |
Arizona |
YouTube video 31-Aug.-2009 |
|
41
|
Transportation Sec. Mary Peters |
Phoenix |
Arizona |
YouTube video 31-Aug.-2009 |
|
42
|
Karen Womack Vold, rodeo trick rider |
Phoenix |
Arizona |
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) 30-Apr.-2011 |
|
43
|
U.S. senator Dennis DeConcini |
Tucson |
Arizona |
YouTube video 31-Aug.-2009 |
|
44
|
Rex Allen, western actor |
Willcox |
Arizona |
YouTube video 31-Aug.-2009 |
|
45
|
Ernest Tsosie, Navajo comedian |
Window Rock |
Arizona |
YouTube video (more info) 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
46
|
Caroline Alfaro, massage student |
Yuma |
Arizona |
YouTube video 23-Sep.-2010 |
|
47
|
Pamela Nacke, contributor |
Damascus |
Arkansas |
Audio (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) Pamela clearly speaks Inland Southern (a more western variety), as expected, though she seems to be most consistent in her long /ī/ [a] vowels in the reading of the Goldilocks story. 23-July-2011 |
|
48
|
White male, born 1980 |
DeVall’s Bluff |
Arkansas |
|
|
49
|
Johnny Cash, country singer |
Dyess |
Arkansas |
YouTube video This interview shows Johnny with his native dialect, which is hard to catch, since in both his songs and his interviews he often seems to suppress it. It is clearly Lowland. This song probably shows it best: YouTube video. 6-Sep.-2011 |
|
50
|
Bear Bryant, football coach |
Fordyce |
Arkansas |
|
|
51
|
Tracy Lawrence, country singer |
Foreman |
Arkansas |
YouTube video Thoroughly Inland except for the word “lifer”, which he pronounces the Lowland way, not surprising considering how close to the border he is! New! 16-Jan.-2012 |
|
52
|
U.S. senator Blanche Lincoln |
Helena |
Arkansas |
YouTube video 23-June-2010 |
|
53
|
U.S. president Bill Clinton |
Hot Springs |
Arkansas |
YouTube
video 13-May-2009 |
|
54
|
Houston Nutt, college football coach[19] |
Little Rock |
Arkansas |
|
|
55
|
Jerry Jones, Dallas Cowboys owner [19] |
Little Rock |
Arkansas |
|
|
56
|
White female, born 1947, medical technician[20] |
Little Rock |
Arkansas |
|
|
57
|
White male, born 1982, student |
Palestine |
Arkansas |
|
|
58
|
Ben Rutledge, Olympic rower |
Cranbrook |
British Columbia |
|
|
59
|
Ian Tyson, singer-songwriter |
Duncan |
British Columbia |
YouTube video 6-Sep.-2011 |
|
60
|
Jay Hill, M.P. |
Fort St. John |
British Columbia |
YouTube video 6-Dec.-2010 |
|
61
|
Nilesh Patel /nĭlĕsh
pətĕl/ [nɪˈlɛʃ pʰəˈtʰɛl],
filmmaker |
Prince George |
British Columbia |
YouTube
video 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
62
|
Cam Clayton, student |
Sechelt /sēshĕlt/ [ˈsiˌʃɛlt] |
British Columbia |
YouTube video (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) 30-Mar.-2011 |
|
63
|
Michael Bublé /bōōblā/
[ˈbuˌbleɪ], big band singer, actor |
Vancouver |
British Columbia |
YouTube
video 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
64
|
Carey Price, pro hockey player |
Anahim Lake |
British Columbia |
|
|
65
|
Lori McCreary, movie producer |
Antioch |
California |
YouTube video 30-Apr.-2011 |
|
66
|
Caitlin Flanagan, author |
Berkeley |
California |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 1-Nov.-2010 |
|
67
|
Alex Skolnick, guitarist |
Berkeley |
California |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 1-Nov.-2010 |
|
68
|
37 year-old male, native Los Angelino, “half white and half American Indian”. Surfer. |
Canoga Park |
California |
IDEA audio (source) (Sent in by M.M. Thanks!) 22-Apr.-2011 |
|
69
|
Dave Brubeck, jazz musician |
Concord |
California |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. (Interview starts at 9:00.) 1-July-2009 |
|
70
|
Lincoln Lageson, film and television producer |
Crockett |
California |
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) “cot”≠“caught”, but they are very close, as might be expected on the very edge of the dialect area, and “on” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”, though you have to listen very close to be sure! 30-Apr.-2011 |
|
71
|
Don Hertzfeldt, short animated film maker |
Fremont |
California |
YouTube video 23-June-2009 |
|
72
|
U.S. representative Jim Costa |
Fresno |
California |
YouTube video 25-Sep.-2010 |
|
73
|
Chuck Poochigian, judge |
Fresno |
California |
YouTube video 25-Sep.-2010 |
|
74
|
Jack Del Rio, pro football coach |
Hayward |
California |
video “On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. 23-June-2009 |
|
75
|
Conor Chinn, pro soccer player |
La Jolla
/lə hoiə/ [lə ˈhɔɪə] |
California |
YouTube video 11-July-2011 |
|
76
|
Various |
Livermore |
California |
|
|
77
|
U.S. representative Jack Kemp |
Los Angeles |
California |
YouTube video (Clip starts at 1:39.) According to contributor M.M., Kemp “would be labelled as standard american/neutral accent by californians themselves”. Contributor Shulamit Widawsky also does not consider him a representative sample. Even so, he clearly has “cot”=“caught”, and retains certain other distinctive California features. 3-June-2011 |
|
78
|
John MacArthur, pastor |
Los Angeles (various close suburbs) |
California |
YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) (more info) Adj. 16-Jan.-2012 |
|
79
|
Kari Byron, Mythbusters host |
Los Gatos /lŏs gătəs/ [ˌlɒs ˈɡæɾəs][21] |
California |
|
|
80
|
Sarah Austin, alternative media |
Mill Valley |
California |
YouTube video 23-June-2009 |
|
81
|
White female, twenties, born 1981, student. Dialect typical of age group. |
Mission Viejo |
California |
IDEA audio (source) (Sent in by M.M. Thanks!) 22-Apr.-2011 |
|
82
|
Kenny Roberts, Sr., motorcycle racer |
Modesto |
California |
YouTube video (more info) 25-Sep.-2010 |
|
83
|
Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder |
Mountain View |
California |
YouTube video (more info) As with several other clips, I had not listened as clearly as I should have, and thought that “cot”=“caught” for him, but it does not! “On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 22-Sep.-2010 |
|
84
|
Frank Chin, writer |
Oakland |
California |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. “Cutting edge”: that is, peculiar and slightly crude. 2-3 minutes are enough! 23-June-2009 |
|
85
|
U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese |
Oakland |
California |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 13-June-2009 |
|
86
|
“Crash Holly” (Mike Lockwood), “pro” wrestler |
Pacifica |
California |
YouTube video 25-Sep.-2010 |
|
87
|
Bill Martin, weatherman |
Paradise |
California |
YouTube video (more info) (Suggested by Noah Zimmerman. Thanks!) 10-Mar.-2011 |
|
88
|
Clint Eastwood, actor |
Piedmont |
California |
YouTube video (Replaced clip.) “On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. Adj. 31-Dec.-2011 |
|
89
|
Ashley Parker Angel, pop singer |
Redding |
California |
YouTube video 25-Oct.-2010 |
|
90
|
Jeff Sutherland, Jeff’s Star Talk |
Richmond |
California |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. (more info Replaced bad link.) 10-May-2011 |
|
91
|
Lynn Anderson, country singer & equestrian |
Sacramento (Fair Oaks) |
California |
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) 22-Apr.-2011 |
|
92
|
Suzanne Somers, actress |
San Bruno |
California |
YouTube video 25-Sep.-2010 |
|
93
|
Rex Walheim, astronaut |
San Carlos |
California |
YouTube video 23-June-2009 |
|
94
|
Dana Carvey, comedian |
San Carlos |
California |
YouTube video 23-June-2009 |
|
95
|
Cathy Scott, author |
San Diego |
California |
YouTube video “pin”≠“pen”, but “any”, “many”, etc. are pronounced “inny”. 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
96
|
Jolene Blalock, actress |
San Diego |
California |
YouTube video “pin”≠“pen”. Replaced bad link. 4-Mar.-2011 |
|
97
|
Jerry Brown, attorney general, etc. |
San Francisco |
California |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. Older |
|
98
|
Pat Brown, governor |
San Francisco |
California |
YouTube
video “On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. |
|
99
|
U.S. senator
Dianne Feinstein |
San Francisco |
California |
YouTube
video “On” rhymes with “Dawn”, not “Don”. |
|
100
|
Benjamin Bratt, actor |
San Francisco |
California |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 28-Sep.-2009 |
|
101
|
U.S. Transp. Sec. Norman Mineta |
San José |
California |
YouTube video 13-June-2009 |
|
102
|
Alicia Silverstone, actress |
San Mateo |
California |
YouTube video “Cot”≠“caught”, “on” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”, but not clear when she moved from San Francisco! 25-Sep.-2010 |
|
103
|
Merv Griffin, television host |
San Mateo |
California |
YouTube video “Cot”≠“caught”, “on” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”.13-June-2009 |
|
104
|
Brad Lewis, movie producer |
San Mateo |
California |
YouTube video, video Oops! Thought had “cot”=“caught”, but “cot”≠“caught”, “on” rhymes with “Don”, not “Dawn”. 25-Sep.-2010 |
|
105
|
Heather Fargo, former mayor of Sacramento |
Stockton |
California |
YouTube video 25-Oct.-2010 |
|
106
|
Ed Rollins, campaign consultant |
Vallejo |
California |
YouTube video 23-June-2009 |
|
107
|
Eric Willett /wǐlĕt/ [wɪˈlɛt], snowboarder |
Breckenridge |
Colorado |
YouTube video (more info) 21-Dec.-2010 |
|
108
|
Rich “Goose” Gossage, pitcher |
Colorado Springs |
Colorado |
|
|
109
|
Ace Young, singer |
Denver |
Colorado |
YouTube video 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
110
|
U.S. representative Tom Tancredo |
Denver |
Colorado |
YouTube video Older |
|
111
|
State representative Randy Fischer |
Fort Collins |
Colorado |
YouTube video 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
112
|
U.S. representative Scott McInnis |
Glenwood Springs |
Colorado |
YouTube video 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
113
|
Dalton Trumbo, film director |
Grand Junction |
Colorado |
YouTube video 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
114
|
Rebecca Dussault, extreme athlete |
Gunnison |
Colorado |
YouTube video 7-Dec.-2009 |
|
115
|
Colleen Piatt, grocery store owner |
Hasty |
Colorado |
video & info (Sent in by Kirk Sniff. Thanks!) She is definitely a native, according to contributor Kirk Sniff. He is not sure about Ralph Hogue, and Ralph’s pronunciation suggests that he might be from somewhere more south and east, since he has more secondary features of Inland Southern, though not technically Inland Southern based on his long /ī/ [a(ɪ)] vowels. 21-Sep.-2011 |
|
116
|
State senator Kenneth Kester |
Cañon City /kănyən sĭtē/ [ˈkʰænjən ˈsɪɾi] |
Colorado |
YouTube video Oops! I had listed him as being from Lamar, but this web site gives the straight scoop! 21-Sep.-2011 |
|
117
|
Scott Elarton, pro baseball player |
Lamar |
Colorado |
YouTube video 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
118
|
Kory Sperry, pro football player |
Pueblo /pwĕblō/ [ˈpʰwɛbloʊ] |
Colorado |
YouTube video 21-Sep.-2011 |
|
119
|
Drew Dix, Medal of Honor winner |
Pueblo |
Colorado |
video & info Oops! For some reason I had listed him as having “pin”≠“pen”, but in listening again I find that he has “pin”=“pen”, just lke the other samples from the Pueblo area! 21-Sep.-2011 |
|
120
|
State representative Wes McKinley |
Walsh |
Colorado |
|
|
121
|
State representative Andrew Roraback |
Goshen |
Connecticut |
YouTube video (more info) (Sent in by Darren Farrington. Thanks!) 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
122
|
State representative Joe Courtney |
Hartford |
Connecticut |
YouTube video (clip at 2:51) 3-Apr.-2010 |
|
123
|
Katharine Hepburn, actress |
Hartford |
Connecticut |
Older r-dropper: YouTube video Drops r’s beautifully, but clearly local, not Mid-Atlantic, since she follows the Providence pattern, with “cart”=“cot”. 3-Apr.-2010 |
|
124
|
Ken Sullivan, Director of utilities |
Jewett City |
Connecticut |
YouTube video Clearly drops r’s, though only partially. 3-Apr.-2010 |
|
125
|
U.S. senator John Warner |
Washington |
D.C. |
YouTube
video (Older speaker retaining Lowland Southern and r-dropping,
although younger ones have apparently completely lost it!) 5-Oct.-2010 |
|
126
|
Governor Ruth Ann Minner |
Milford |
Delaware |
|
|
127
|
Kevin Mench, pro baseball player |
Newark |
Delaware |
YouTube video 19-Feb.-2011 |
|
128
|
Barbara Delledonne, concerned citizen |
Wilmington |
Delaware |
YouTube video (Sent in by Joseph DeSebasco. Thanks!) 14-Apr.-2011 |
|
129
|
State representative Nick Manolakos |
Wilmington |
Delaware |
YouTube video (Sent in by Joseph DeSebasco. Thanks!) 14-Apr.-2011 |
|
130
|
City council member Kevin Kelley |
Wilmington |
Delaware |
YouTube video (Sent in by Joseph DeSebasco. Thanks!) 14-Apr.-2011 |
|
131
|
Mayor John Land |
Apopka |
Florida |
video & info (Older speaker retaining Lowland Southern, although younger ones have apparently completely lost it!) |
|
132
|
Gregg Allman, rock singer |
Daytona Beach |
Florida |
YouTube video 26-Aug.-2009 |
|
133
|
Bill France, Jr., NASCAR executive |
Daytona Beach |
Florida |
YouTube video (His clip is at 1:38.) (Replaced dead link.) 10-Feb.-2011 |
|
134
|
Jonathan Cohn, author & journalist |
Fort Lauderdale |
Florida |
YouTube video 23-July-2009 |
|
135
|
Tom Petty, rock singer |
Gainesville |
Florida |
YouTube video 26-Aug.-2009 |
|
136
|
Marty Raybon, country singer |
Jacksonville |
Florida |
YouTube video 7-Nov.-2009 |
|
137
|
Donnie Van Zant, country singer |
Jacksonville |
Florida |
YouTube video (more info) 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
138
|
State rep. Leonard Bembry |
Jasper |
Florida |
YouTube video 26-Aug.-2009 |
|
139
|
Danny Lipford, TV handyman |
Marianna |
Florida |
YouTube video 5-July-2010 |
|
140
|
Michael Wynne, USAF Secretary |
Melbourne |
Florida |
YouTube video 24-Oct.-2009 |
|
U.S. senator Bill Nelson [22] |
Melbourne |
Florida |
YouTube
video 23-June-2010 |
|
|
141
|
Roy Sekoff, Internet journalist |
Miami |
Florida |
YouTube video 23-July-2009 |
|
142
|
Ron Dermer, Israeli politician |
Miami Beach |
Florida |
YouTube video 23-July-2009 |
|
143
|
Lauren Brooke, “pro” wrestling interviewer |
Orlando |
Florida |
YouTube video 26-Aug.-2009 |
|
144
|
Wilma Burgess, country singer |
Orlando |
Florida |
YouTube video 26-Aug.-2009 |
|
145
|
Clint Daniels, country singer |
Panama City |
Florida |
YouTube video 26-Aug.-2009 |
|
146
|
David Eckstein, pro baseball player |
Sanford |
Florida |
|
|
147
|
Emilie Richards, author |
St. Petersburg |
Florida |
video & info 23-July-2009 |
|
148
|
Lynne Koplitz, comedienne |
Sarasota |
Florida |
YouTube video 23-July-2009 |
|
149
|
Will Kirby, TV doctor |
Tallahassee |
Florida |
YouTube video 26-Aug.-2009 |
|
150
|
U.S. representative Kathy Castor |
Tampa |
Florida |
YouTube video 23-July-2009 |
|
151
|
Kyle Minor, author |
West Palm Beach |
Florida |
YouTube video 23-July-2009 |
|
152
|
Jerry Reed, country singer |
Atlanta |
Georgia |
YouTube video 12-June-2010 |
|
153
|
Art Williams, billionaire |
Cairo /kārō/ [ˈkʰeɪˌɹoʊ] |
Georgia |
YouTube video 24-Mar.-2010 |
|
154
|
Lari Goss, southern gospel singer |
Cartersville |
Georgia |
YouTube video (more info) 4-Sep.-2010 |
|
155
|
Mallory Hope, country singer |
Cohutta /kəhŭtə/ [kʰəˈhʌɾə] |
Georgia |
YouTube video Inland! New! 1-Nov.-2011 |
|
156
|
Zac Brown, country singer |
Cumming |
Georgia |
YouTube video 23-July-2011 |
|
157
|
Bill Elliott, NASCAR driver |
Dawsonville |
Georgia |
|
|
158
|
Josh & Dana Shields, southern gospel singers |
Flintstone |
Georgia |
|
|
159
|
Luke Bryan, country singer |
Leesburg |
Georgia |
YouTube video 23-July-2011 |
|
160
|
Lewis Grizzard, humor columnist |
Newnan (Moreland) |
Georgia |
YouTube
video 13-May-2009 |
|
161
|
Col. Joe Jackson, Air Force pilot |
Newnan |
Georgia |
YouTube
video 13-May-2009 |
|
162
|
Alan Jackson, country singer |
Newnan |
Georgia |
YouTube video He is clearly Lowland Southern, with no apparent r-dropping in spite of being on the edge of the Classical Southern region. YouTube video In this song he sings consistent Lowland Southern, with no apparent r-dropping. YouTube video In this song he mixes Inland and Lowland; it seems to me that the only word he seems to drop the r in is “southern”. 23-July-2011 |
|
163
|
U.S. president Jimmy Carter |
Plains |
Georgia |
YouTube video 7-Dec.-2009 |
|
164
|
U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Carter |
Plains |
Georgia |
YouTube video 7-Dec.-2009 |
|
165
|
Sonny Seiler, famous dog owner |
Savannah |
Georgia |
YouTube video 26-Nov.-2009 |
|
166
|
Hinton Mitchem, Alabama state senator |
Watkinsville |
Georgia |
YouTube video (more info) 7-Dec.-2009 |
|
167
|
U.S. senator Mike Crapo |
Idaho Falls |
Idaho |
|
|
168
|
Dale Harwood, saddle maker |
Soda Springs |
Idaho |
YouTube video (more info) 30-Nov.-2010 |
|
169
|
State Sen. Gary Gorby |
Anna |
Illinois |
YouTube video 22-July-2009 |
|
170
|
Buddy Ebsen, actor |
Belleville |
Illinois |
YouTube video 31-Aug.-2009 |
|
171
|
Tommy Johnagin, comedian |
Benton |
Illinois |
YouTube video 8-Jan.-2011 |
|
172
|
Bill Grammer, Country Singer |
Benton |
Illinois |
YouTube video 8-Jan.-2011 |
|
173
|
Various residents |
Brookport |
Illinois |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
174
|
Shawn Watson, football coach |
Carbondale |
Illinois |
|
|
175
|
Alison Krauss, country singer |
Champaign |
Illinois |
YouTube video 12-Nov.-2010 |
|
176
|
Richard M. Daley, mayor |
Chicago /shĭkôgə/ [ʃɪˈkʰɒɡə] or /shĭkôgō/ [ʃɪˈkʰɒˌɡo], minority /shĭkŏgō/ [ʃɪˈkʰaˌɡo] |
Illinois |
YouTube video (See How I Use the IPA for a discussion of the pronunciation of this city.) 10-Feb.-2011 |
|
177
|
George Gobel, comedian |
Chicago |
Illinois |
YouTube video 1-Jan.-2010 |
|
178
|
Dick Van
Dyke, actor |
Danville |
Illinois |
YouTube video Replaced dead video link! 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
179
|
James Loewen, sociologist |
Decatur |
Illinois |
YouTube video 12-Nov.-2010 |
|
180
|
U.S. president Ronald Reagan |
Dixon |
Illinois |
YouTube video (more info) 19-Oct.-2010 |
|
181
|
Jimmy Kite, NASCAR driver |
Effingham |
Illinois |
YouTube video 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
182
|
Matt Hughes, mixed martial artist |
Hillsboro |
Illinois |
YouTube video Role model: “I want my kids to look at me and do as I do, say as I say.” 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
183
|
Jerry Barber, pro golfer |
Jacksonville |
Illinois |
YouTube video :34-1:12 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
184
|
Transportation Sec. Ray LaHood |
Peoria |
Illinois |
YouTube video 31-Aug.-2009 |
|
185
|
D. A. Weibring, golfer |
Quincy |
Illinois |
|
|
186
|
John Spring, mayor of Quincy, IL |
Rock Island |
Illinois |
MSNBC video, NPR audio (Sent in by Y.I. Thanks!) 24-June-2010 |
|
187
|
Mayor Timothy Davlin |
Springfield |
Illinois |
YouTube video 9-Jan.-2010 |
|
188
|
Bob Woodward, reporter & author |
Wheaton |
Illinois |
video & info (scroll down to video) 9-May-2011 |
|
189
|
Alan Baumler, author |
Wheaton |
Illinois |
YouTube video (Speech starts at 2:25) (Sent in by Alan Baumler. Thanks!) New! 16-Dec.-2011 |
|
190
|
Bill Gaither, southern gospel singer |
Alexandria |
Indiana |
|
|
191
|
Orville Redenbacher, popcorn producer |
Brazil |
Indiana |
YouTube video (Kinda short, but “pin”=“pen”!) 1-Mar.-2010 |
|
192
|
Jamie Hyneman, Mythbuster |
Columbus |
Indiana |
YouTube video 25-Sep.-2010 |
|
193
|
Gary Nabhan, ethnobotanist |
Gary |
Indiana |
YouTube video 15-Dec.-2010 |
|
194
|
Don Williams, astronaut |
Green Hill |
Indiana |
YouTube video (His clips: 17:55-19:15 and 20:15-21:38) This seems to be the top left corner of the “pin”=“pen” area! 2-Feb.-2011 |
|
195
|
Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel |
Evansville |
Indiana |
YouTube video 20-Jan.-2010 |
|
196
|
Mayor Tom Henry |
Fort Wayne |
Indiana |
YouTube video 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
197
|
U.S. senator Richard Lugar |
Indianapolis |
Indiana |
YouTube video 6-Feb.-2010 |
|
198
|
State representative Jackie Walorski |
South Bend |
Indiana |
YouTube video 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
199
|
Dean Schwartz, ceramic artist |
Cedar Rapids |
Iowa |
YouTube video Both his /ou/ [aʊ] vowel and his /ō/ [oʊ] vowel are so far back that I initially thought that Cedar Rapids was above the bite-bout line and above the pink dots, even though the ANAE had put it below those lines, but on listening again I realize that they are just barely below them! 21-Dec.-2010 |
|
200
|
Donna Reed, actress |
Dennison |
Iowa |
YouTube video 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
201
|
Pamela Gorman, politician |
Des Moines |
Iowa |
YouTube video 1-Nov.-2010 |
|
202
|
Dayton Duncan, producer |
Indianola |
Iowa |
YouTube video 1-Nov.-2010 |
|
203
|
Dr. William Lane Craig, theologian |
Keokuk |
Iowa |
|
|
204
|
Phil Vischer, co-creator of VeggieTales |
Muscatine /mǔskətēn/ [ˌmʌskəˈtʰin] |
Iowa |
YouTube video 21-Dec.-2010 |
|
205
|
Mike Johanns, Nebraska governor |
Osage |
Iowa |
YouTube video New! 28-Oct.-2011 |
|
206
|
Mayor Dale Uehling |
Ottumwa /ətǔmwə/
[əˈtʰʌmwə] |
Iowa |
video & info (Sent in by Kevin McMillin. Thanks!) 2-Feb.-2011 |
|
207
|
Carol Morris, Miss Universe 1956 |
Ottumwa |
Iowa |
|
|
208
|
Everly Brothers, rock singers |
Shenandoah |
Iowa |
YouTube video When these guys sing, they use a clear Inland Southern accent (e.g. YouTube video), but when they speak, as in the interview above, it’s clearly Iowa. The one southernism they have is that “pin”=“pen”, but this is also from this part of Iowa, as seen by the following sample. 12-July-2011 |
|
209
|
Charlie Haden, musician |
Shenandoah |
Iowa |
YouTube video. 12-July-2011 |
|
210
|
U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower |
Abilene |
Kansas |
YouTube video I found this better clip of him, and realized that he has “cot”≠“caught”! His brother (below) does too. Even so, I would like to find other samples from Abilene to confirm this, since it makes the lines twist quite a lot! Adj. 18-Nov.-2011 |
|
211
|
Milton Eisenhower, university president, War Relocation Authority director |
Abilene |
Kansas |
YouTube video. Adj. 18-Nov.-2011 |
|
212
|
Mark Schultz, contemporary Christian singer/songwriter |
Colby |
Kansas |
YouTube video New! 6-Jan.-2012 |
|
213
|
Archbishop Charles Chaput /shəpōō/ [ʃəˈpʰu] |
Concordia |
Kansas |
YouTube video I had not listened as clearly as I should have, and thought that “cot”=“caught”, but it does not, thereby providing a bridge to Hays and Plainville! 18-Sep.-2010 |
|
214
|
David A. R. White, actor, producer |
Dodge City |
Kansas |
YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) Adj. 6-Jan.-2012 |
|
215
|
Chuck Reed, mayor of San Jose, CA |
Garden City |
Kansas |
|
|
216
|
Victor Ortiz, boxer |
Garden City |
Kansas |
|
|
217
|
John L. Allen,
Jr., Journalist |
Hays |
Kansas |
YouTube video 18-Sep.-2010 |
|
218
|
Various locals |
Hugoton /hyōōgətən/? [ˈhjuɡətən]? |
Kansas |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 3-Dec.-2009 |
|
219
|
Billy Drago, actor |
Hugoton |
Kansas |
YouTube
video 3-Dec.-2009 |
|
220
|
Scott Heim, novelist |
Hutchinson |
Kansas |
|
|
221
|
Ed Asner, actor |
Kansas City |
Kansas |
|
|
222
|
Wantha Davis, jockey |
Liberal |
Kansas |
YouTube video (Her clip starts at 3:40) (more info) She’s back! For a long time this web site was offline, and the video was unavailable, but both are now available again! This is very good, because she is one of only two samples for Liberal, which is the only clear case of Inland Southern in Kansas. Adj. 27-Oct.-2011 |
|
223
|
Kasey Hayes, bull rider |
Liberal |
Kansas |
YouTube video Slightly inconsistent on his long /ī/ [a(ɪ)] vowels, but clearly Inland South. (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
224
|
Caucasian male |
Oskaloosa |
Kansas |
|
|
225
|
Darren Bousman, film director |
Overland Park |
Kansas |
|
|
226
|
U.S. representative Jerry Moran |
Plainville |
Kansas |
YouTube video 18-Sep.-2010 |
|
227
|
Marlin Fitzwater, former White House press sec. |
Salina |
Kansas |
|
|
228
|
Mitch Holthus, football announcer |
Smith Center |
Kansas |
YouTube video I replaced the video I had with this one which is much better, and realized that “cot”≠“caught” for him. This opens up the narrow bridge to Hays and Plainville, which makes more sense. Adj. 15-Nov.-2011 |
|
229
|
Martina McBride, country singer |
Sharon |
Kansas |
YouTube video Replaced bad link. 31-May-2011 |
|
230
|
Andy McKee, guitarist |
Topeka |
Kansas |
|
|
231
|
U.S. senator Pat Roberts |
Topeka |
Kansas |
YouTube video New! 6-Jan.-2012 |
|
232
|
Jason Crabb, southern gospel singer |
Beaver Dam |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 11-July-2009 |
|
233
|
Jimmy Wolford, singer songwriter, descendant of the feudin’ McCoys |
Belfry |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (first clip at 1:00, but reappears throughout) 30-Apr.-2010 |
|
234
|
County schools personnel |
Benton |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) Oops! This video has been removed. In any case, I now suspect that Benton is very much a mixed area (which should not be surprising seeing the complexity of the map in that area), since I had a conversation with a native, and she definitely spoke Lowland Southern. Adj. 27-Oct.-2011 |
|
235
|
Jason Lambert, web entrepreneur |
Bowling Green (Scottsville) |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (more info) 11-July-2009 |
|
236
|
David Williams, Kentucky Senate president |
Burkesville |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 11-July-2009 |
|
237
|
Loretta Lynn, country singer |
Butcher Holler (officially Hollow) |
Kentucky |
YouTube video, YouTube
video, I have finally decided that for Loretta, “cot”≠“caught”. The
problem is that she is inconsistent: In both an early
and a recent version
of of “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, she always says /dǒtər/ [ˈdɑɾɚ], using exactly the same vowel
sound as in “lot” later on in the song, never /dôtər/ [ˈdɑʊɾɚ], the typical Southern
pronunciation. This was what made me think that she had “cot”=“caught”, along
with the fact that she grew up very close to the “cot”=“caught” area.
However, even in this song she uses /ô/ [ɑʊ]
in the word “all”, but /ǒ/ [ɑ]
in the word “holler”, both before /l/, so she clearly has the phoneme
contrast. Similarly, in this early version of “You Ain’t
Woman Enough (To Take My Man)”, the word “ought” is clearly /ǒt/ [ˈɑt], not /ôt/ [ˈɑʊt], but in the same song there are
clear cases of /ô/ [ɑʊ]
in “’cause” and “caught”. 5-Oct.-2010 |
|
238
|
Gatewood Galbraith, politician |
Carlisle |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (more info) 22-Aug.-2009 |
|
239
|
A whole slew of people at a political rally |
Columbus |
Kentucky |
dead link: YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) (Oops, this video has now been removed! Anyone have another one from Columbus?) Hard to evaluate, but several who say they are definitely locals are clearly Inland Southern, including the guy from between Bardwell and Berkley, the lady standing with her husband, and the man with his wife and two babies. 25-Nov.-2009 |
|
240
|
John Michael Montgomery, country singer |
Danville |
Kentucky |
YouTube video, YouTube video 13-May-2009 |
|
241
|
Billy Ray Cyrus, country singer |
Flatwoods |
Kentucky |
YouTube video This is a key sample: Clearly Lowland, though occasional words sound Inland. “Cot”≠“caught”. (more info) 30-May-2011 |
|
242
|
Brice Long, country singer |
Hopkinsville |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 20-Jan.-2010 |
|
243
|
Ernie Brown Jr., turtle man |
Lebanon |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
244
|
“Lardo Moron”, bluegrass artist |
Lexington (Loradale) |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) Lowland Southern, but with occasional lapses into Inland on a few words, like “right”. Compare these with the Little Rock samples. 26-Nov.-2009 |
|
245
|
“Burley Moron”, bluegrass artist |
Lexington (Nicholasville) |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) Like the previous, but with a few more Inland lapses, which we would expect, since he’s from slightly closer to the dialect line. 26-Nov.-2009 |
|
246
|
Brian Littrell, pop singer |
Lexington |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 22-Aug.-2009 |
|
247
|
Silas House, author |
Lily |
Kentucky |
video & info (Sent in by Amanda Warren. Thanks!) 9-May-2011 |
|
248
|
U.S. senator Mitch McConnell |
Louisville |
Kentucky |
|
|
249
|
white male, born 1933, retired farmer |
Marion |
Kentucky |
|
|
250
|
Kevin Skinner, America’s Got Talent winner |
Mayfield |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 26-Nov.-2009 |
|
251
|
Heather French Henry, Miss America 2000 |
Maysville |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 7-Dec.-2009 |
|
252
|
Tim Farmer, TV outdoorsman |
Maysville |
Kentucky |
YouTube video “Cot”≠“caught”, personally confirmed by Tim, thanks! I had thought he sounded more like “cot”=“caught”. (more info) 30-May-2011 |
|
253
|
Kevin Denney, country singer |
Monticello |
Kentucky |
YouTube
video 1-June-2009 |
|
254
|
Dottie Rambo, southern gospel singer |
Morganfield |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 11-July-2009 |
|
255
|
W. Earl Brown, actor, singer |
Murray |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (No need to listen to all of it!) 11-July-2009 |
|
256
|
Darrell Waltrip, NASCAR driver |
Owensboro |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 12-June-2010 |
|
257
|
U.S. senator Wendell Ford |
Owensboro |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (more info) 11-July-2009 |
|
258
|
Bobby Green, NASCAR driver |
Owensboro |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (clip starts at 3:30) New! 31-Dec.-2011 |
|
259
|
U.S. senator and former governor Julian Carroll |
Paducah |
Kentucky |
|
|
260
|
Dr. Herbert
Anderson, M.D. |
Paducah |
Kentucky |
audio link & info 9-May-2009 |
|
261
|
Ron Hagan, flood fighter |
Paducah |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (His clip starts at 1:18.) (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
262
|
Patty Loveless, country singer |
Pikeville |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 20-Jan.-2010 |
|
263
|
Joe Isaacs, bluegrass musician |
Pikeville (Big Hill) |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (more info) 9-Sep.-2010 |
|
264
|
Merle Travis, country singer |
Rosewood |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 18-Oct.-2010 |
|
265
|
Bill Monroe, Bluegrass singer |
Rosine |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 6-Feb.-2010 |
|
266
|
Adam Crowe, web entrepreneur |
Russellville |
Kentucky |
YouTube video (more info) 11-July-2009 |
|
267
|
Tim Elkins, dairy producer |
Smiths Grove |
Kentucky |
YouTube video 18-Dec.-2010 |
|
268
|
Joseph Boudreaux, alligator hunter |
Abbeville |
Louisiana |
YouTube video Cajun English! 23-June-2010 |
|
269
|
Jerry Lee Lewis, Rock singer |
Ferriday |
Louisiana |
YouTube video 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
270
|
Mayor David Camardelle |
Grand Isle |
Louisiana |
YouTube video 12-June-2010 |
|
271
|
Lynne Spears, mother of Britney Spears |
Kentwood |
Louisiana |
YouTube video 9-Jan.-2010 |
|
272
|
Lenis Guillot /lĭnĭs gēŏt/ [ˈlɪnɪs ˈɡiˌɑt], witness |
Lafayette /lăfēĕt/ [ˌlæfiˈɛt] |
Louisiana |
YouTube video Cajun English! 14-Feb.-2011 |
|
273
|
Deborah Chauvin, profession unknown |
New Orleans (Ninth Ward) |
Louisiana |
I have arranged the following New Orleans speakers in a
graduated sequence ranging from almost pure New York City to pure Lowland
Southern. No two of them are at the same point in the sequence! Even so, I
have not separated the last four into separate dialects, pending further data
to determine how large an area talks like the Garden District: YouTube video (Her clip is at the beginning of this video.) Not Southern at all, and sounds very much like New York City, though impossible to tell in this short clip whether “had” rhymes with “bad”, whether “father” rhymes with “bother”, or whether “pin”=“pen”. 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
274
|
“dem two beautiful girls” (self description) |
New Orleans (Irish Channel) |
Louisiana |
YouTube video (Their clip starts at 5:25, and finishes the video.) They sound very much like New York City, hardly Southern at all, but they are Lowland Southern as far as their long /ī/ [a(ɪ)] is concerned. Clearly “pin”≠“pen”! Favorite quotes: “When I want to talk proper, I will”, “Look at dem two beautiful girls, if dey’d shut deir mouts dey’d be great”. 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
275
|
Mayor Mitch Landrieu |
New Orleans (Broadmoor) |
Louisiana |
YouTube video Clearly Lowland Southern, but with many NYC features, “pin”≠“pen”, and he pronounces “father” as [ˈfɑəðə], just like NYC, but pronounces “Thompson” as [ˈtʰampsən], again just like NYC! Thus he evidently has the father-bother distinction, and it is likely that the preceding speakers do also. 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
276
|
Billy Delle, radio host |
New Orleans (Gentilly) |
Louisiana |
YouTube video He is the narrator. (He kindly let me know that he grew up in Gentilly. Thanks!) (Clips: 0:58-1:15, 4:12-4:35, 5:46-5:56) Clearly Classical Southern, with “pin”=“pen”, but /ô/ = [oə], like NYC, and with more other NYC features than Harry Connick. (End credits: YouTube video, his clip is at 0:43.) (more info) 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
277
|
Harry Connick, Jr., jazz composer & singer |
New Orleans (Lakewood) |
Louisiana |
YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) (He speaks first at 1:52) Clearly Classical Southern, with “pin”=“pen”, but /ô/ = [oə], like NYC. However, he does not drop all of his r’s that do not precede vowels. 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
278
|
Roger Villere, Republican Party State Chairman |
New Orleans (Metairie) |
Louisiana |
YouTube video Essentially the same as Harry Connick. (Sent in by Ben Trawick-Smith. Thanks!) 31-May-2011 |
|
279
|
Older gentleman, upper class |
New Orleans (Garden District) |
Louisiana |
YouTube video (His clip starts at 1:40 and again at 2:35.) Clearly the most classic of Classical Southern, “pin”=“pen”, with no NYC features at all, /ô/ = [ɒʊ], like most southerners. My favorite quote: “I just don’t think people from the Garden District have any accent” 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
280
|
Jimmie Davis, country singer & governor |
Quitman |
Louisiana |
YouTube video 23-July-2011 |
|
281
|
Kix Brooks, country singer |
Shreveport |
Louisiana |
YouTube video 31-May-2011 |
|
282
|
Tim Sample, humorist |
Boothbay Harbor |
Maine |
YouTube video (Sent in by Ken Homer. Thanks!) 4-Mar.-2011 |
|
283
|
U.S. senator Susan Collins |
Caribou |
Maine |
YouTube video 8-June-2009 |
|
284
|
Ellis Paul, folk singer |
Fort Kent |
Maine |
YouTube video 8-June-2009 |
|
285
|
Jeremy Van Dyne, lobsterman |
Matinicus Island |
Maine |
YouTube video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
286
|
Ed Muskie, politician |
Rumford |
Maine |
YouTube video 2-June-2009 |
|
287
|
Michael Merchant, “Out of the Wild” volunteer |
Tenants Harbor |
Maine |
YouTube video (Sent in by Kathy Villarreal. Thanks!) He only drops about half of his droppable r’s (the ones not preceding a vowel), but otherwise has a typical Eastern New England accent. (more info) The previous site says he is from Hampden (right next to Bangor /bănggôr/ [ˈbæŋɡɔə]), but he actually grew up in Tenants Harbor before high school. 25-July-2011 |
|
288
|
Ty Babb, lobster fisherman |
Tenants Harbor |
Maine |
YouTube video (Sent in by Jill Miller. Thanks!) He is very similar to the previous. Apparently r’s are creeping into the dialect here! New! 6-Jan.-2012 |
|
289
|
U.S. senator Barbara Mikulski |
Baltimore |
Maryland |
YouTube video 19-Feb.-2011 |
|
290
|
Various politicians[23] |
Baltimore |
Maryland |
|
|
291
|
State senate president Mike Miller |
Clinton |
Maryland |
YouTube video (Older speaker retaining Lowland Southern, although younger ones have apparently completely lost it!) 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
292
|
Chris Rice, Christian singer |
Clinton |
Maryland |
YouTube video 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
293
|
Frank Nethken, politician |
Cumberland |
Maryland |
YouTube video Interesting character! This is also the northernmost example of Southern! 4-Nov.-2010 |
|
294
|
Alex Coblentz, contributor |
Frederick |
Maryland |
YouTube video (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) Pretty solid East Midland, though I was at first in some doubt about whether “pin”=“pen”, but I believe he does distinguish! New! 16-Dec.-2011 |
|
295
|
Chris Shank, state House Minority Whip |
Hagerstown |
Maryland |
|
|
296
|
Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio, state Delegate |
Neavitt |
Maryland |
|
|
297
|
Frank Perdue, chicken producer |
Salisbury |
Maryland |
dead link: YouTube video This was one of his early ads,
before his handlers eradicated much of his Southern accent. Tidewater raising
is also clearly heard. (His clip is at 2:30-3:00.) (This link has been
removed, which is unfortunate, since it was the only one of its kind that I
have found.) 12-Aug.-2010 |
|
298
|
Various residents |
Smith Island |
Maryland |
YouTube video, YouTube video 9-Sep.-2010 |
|
299
|
Mary Ada Marshall, cakemaker |
Smith Island |
Maryland |
YouTube video 9-Sep.-2010 |
|
300
|
Unnamed city counselor |
Boston (Medford) |
Massachusetts |
YouTube video (Sent in by Bryant Garrigus. Thanks!) This is a much better sample of a Boston accent than JFK or Powers below. 2-Apr.-2011 |
|
301
|
Alyssa McBride, contributor |
Boston (Chelsea) |
Massachusetts |
Audio (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) Alyssa is consistent as a systematic r-dropper more than 95% of the time. New! 28-Nov.-2011 |
|
302
|
Boston (Brookline) |
Massachusetts |
YouTube video, YouTube
video, YouTube video (Replaced dead link for second video.) He
only lived in Boston until the age of ten, and then spent most of the
remainder of his youth outside the state (see Wikipedia), and as a result, though he does have a very
definite systematic r-dropper dialect, he is
not really a good example of a Boston accent, as contributor Bryant Garrigus has
pointed out, especially in his pronunciation of the /ä/ vowel in words like
“father” and “park”, which he pronounces more like New York City, though some
of his other vowels are closer to Boston.
2-Apr.-2011 |
|
|
303
|
Dave Powers, JFK special assistant |
Boston (Charlestown) |
Massachusetts |
YouTube video (more info) Powers, on the other hand, lived his entire youth in Charlestown, but even so, his pronunciation of the /ä/ vowel in words like “father” and “park” is more like JFK than it is Boston, as contributor Bryant Garrigus has pointed out. 2-Apr.-2011 |
|
304
|
Rick Starbard /stärbərd/ [ˈstabəd], school committee candidate |
Boston (Lynn) |
Massachusetts |
info and video (His first clip starts at 12:10, with more throughout the video.) (Sent in by Shirley Tessler. Thanks!) 25-Mar.-2011 |
|
305
|
Walter Brennan, actor |
Boston (Lynn) |
Massachusetts |
YouTube video (His clip starts at 5:45.) Originally I had posted this YouTube video as a sample for Walter Brennan. However, contributor Shirley Tessler wrote: “I looked at the YouTube video of Walter Brennan that you provide as an example of a Lynn Massachusetts dialect. Lynn is my home town. Although Mr. Brennan was born in Lynn, he is speaking as an actor in that YouTube video in a dialect of an unschooled farmer from Texas (or similar location very far from Lynn Mass). I suggest that you no longer point to the Walter Brennan video, since it is not a true example of a Lynn dialect.” My initial reaction on her comments was, “No way! He sounds very Eastern New England to me!” That’s because the vowels he uses in words like “farm” and “on” are so ENE as to be unmistakable. No place else in the world are those vowels pronounced precisely that way! Anyone from outside of ENE who knows accents would immediately know he is ENE. In fact, after I started this map, I thought, “Now who was that old actor whose accent I remember so vividly from when I was a kid? He was clearly ENE. Let’s see... He played in ‘The Tycoon’, I remember.” And that’s how I found him. However, I didn’t initially find a clip from ‘The Tycoon’, but posted the second clip instead. However, in listening again to that clip, I realized that Shirley was partly right: in that clip he is trying to do some kind of western farmer accent, but he is doing a very bad job of it: his ENE features keep bleeding through. Even so, certain words, like “about”, do not have ENE vowels at all. I eventually found the first
clip, which is from ‘The Tycoon’,
and shows a more accurate accent. But check out the clip of Rick Starbard
above, for an even better sample for Lynn.
25-Mar.-2011 |
|
306
|
Peter Marciano, youngest brother of pro boxer Rocky Marciano |
Brockton |
Massachusetts |
YouTube video He seems to keep a few more “droppable r’s” than Rocky, but otherwise his accent is pure Eastern New England. I had found a nice clip of Rocky himself, but it has been removed, and I can’t find any others! 7-Apr.-2011 |
|
307
|
State senator Gary LeBeau |
Easthampton |
Massachusetts |
YouTube video 30-Nov.-2009 |
|
308
|
Emeril Lagasse, celebrity cook |
Fall River |
Massachusetts |
YouTube video 24-Oct.-2009 |
|
309
|
Gary Kitmacher, spacecraft designer |
Pittsfield |
Massachusetts |
YouTube video (He talks for the first six minutes of the clip.) (more info) Linguist and Pittsfield native R. Locke wrote in to say that Gary Kitmacher really is representative of Pittsfield, and that James Ruberto is not. He also sent in the Turk Wendell clip below. I am glad, since Ruberto’s accent had really messed up my map! Pittsfield is now firmly back in the Northwestern New England area. 20-Apr.-2011 |
|
310
|
Turk Wendell, pro baseball player |
Pittsfield |
Massachusetts |
YouTube video (Sent in my R. Locke. Thanks!) 20-Apr.-2011 |
|
311
|
June Foray, voice actress for animated films |
Springfield |
Massachusetts |
|
|
312
|
Dr. Timothy Leary, LSD advocate |
Springfield |
Massachusetts |
YouTube
video (Replaced dead link.) 7-Apr.-2011 |
|
313
|
Abbie Hoffmann, radical activist |
Worcester |
Massachusetts |
|
|
314
|
Verne Troyer, actor |
Centreville |
Michigan |
YouTube video 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
315
|
Dan Severn, “pro” wrestler |
Coldwater |
Michigan |
YouTube video 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
316
|
Nancy Skinner, politician |
Detroit |
Michigan |
YouTube video 7-Nov.-2009 |
|
317
|
Josiah Middaugh, extreme athlete |
East Jordan |
Michigan |
YouTube video ( more info) 7-Dec.-2009 |
|
318
|
State senator Tom Casperson |
Escanaba |
Michigan |
YouTube video 29-Dec.-2010 |
|
319
|
U.S. president Gerald Ford |
Grand Rapids |
Michigan |
YouTube video 23-June-2010 |
|
320
|
Coach Tom Izzo |
Iron Mountain |
Michigan |
|
|
321
|
Jason Babin, pro football player |
Kalamazoo |
Michigan |
YouTube video 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
322
|
Larry Page, Google co-founder |
(East) Lansing |
Michigan |
YouTube video 25-Sep.-2010 |
|
323
|
Cathy Guisewite, cartoonist of Cathy |
Midland |
Michigan |
YouTube
video 7-Nov.-2009 |
|
324
|
Jake Cinninger, musician |
Niles |
Michigan |
YouTube video 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
325
|
Joe Marutiak, OPEIU union member |
Owosso |
Michigan |
YouTube video (Sent in by Dave Marutiak. Thanks!) 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
326
|
Terry O’Quinn, actor |
Sault Ste. Marie |
Michigan |
YouTube video 6-Feb.-2010 |
|
327
|
Rob Capriccioso, American Indian journalist |
Sault Ste. Marie |
Michigan |
YouTube video 6-Feb.-2010 |
|
328
|
Paul Colson, George Risser, Celeste Colson, Adam Rasmussen, Amy Dietzler |
Angle Inlet |
Minnesota |
audio & transcript These folks talk like Minnesota, not Canada! 29-Dec.-2010 |
|
329
|
Joseph Jagunich, miner’s son |
Buhl |
Minnesota |
audio & info (Sent in by Adam Jarvi. Thanks!) 25-Mar.-2011 |
|
330
|
Mayor Don Ness |
Duluth |
Minnesota |
YouTube video 1-May-2010 |
|
331
|
Mildred Opacich, miner’s wife |
Duluth |
Minnesota |
audio & info (Sent in by Adam Jarvi. Thanks!) Though apparently born and raised in Duluth, she seems to have a strong Iron Ranges dialect, or else this is simply the accent she learned from her immigant parents. 25-Mar.-2011 |
|
332
|
Anthony Vidmar, miner’s son |
Ely /ēlē/ [ˈili] |
Minnesota |
audio & info (Sent in by Adam Jarvi. Thanks!) 25-Mar.-2011 |
|
333
|
Josephine Scander, miner’s daughter |
Hibbing |
Minnesota |
audio & info, audio & info (Sent in by Adam Jarvi. Thanks!) 25-Mar.-2011 |
|
334
|
Tammy Faye (Bakker /bākər/ [ˈbeɪkɚ]) Messner, controversial Christian television personality |
International Falls |
Minnesota |
YouTube video 29-Dec.-2010 |
|
335
|
Chris Sukalski /səkôlskē/ [səˈkʰɒlski], dairy producer |
Le Roy /lēroi/ [ˈliˌɹɔɪ] |
Minnesota |
YouTube video 13-Jan.-2011 |
|
336
|
Jesse Ventura, politician & “pro” wrestler |
Minneapolis |
Minnesota |
YouTube video (Suggested by Y.I. Thanks!) Also YouTube video (replaced bad link), being interviewed by Dennis Miller: talk about two extremely distinct accents! And points of view! 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
337
|
Brian Burke, Toronto Maple Leafs manager |
Minneapolis (Edina) |
Minnesota |
YouTube video “cot”≠“caught”, but the difference is minimal. This is not unusual for the Western North. 16-Mar.-2010 |
|
338
|
U.S. senator Amy Klobuchar /klōbəshär/ [ˈkʰloʊbəˌʃɑɹ] |
Minneapolis (Plymouth) |
Minnesota |
YouTube video (Sent in by Annie Wang. Thanks!) 27-Sep.-2010 |
|
339
|
Will Steger, arctic explorer |
Minneapolis (Richfield) |
Minnesota |
YouTube video 23-Feb.-2011 |
|
340
|
Governor Tim Pawlenty /pəlĕntē/ [pʰəˈlɛɾ̃i] |
St. Paul |
Minnesota |
YouTube video (Sent in by Annie Wang. Thanks!) 4-Sep.-2010 |
|
341
|
“The Lovelace Family”, southern gospel singers |
Burnsville |
Mississippi |
YouTube video 12-June-2010 |
|
342
|
Don Wildmon, founder, American Family Association |
Dumas |
Mississippi |
audio (If anyone has a better audio or video link for Mr. Wildmon, please let me know.) 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
343
|
Shelby Foote, historian |
Greenville |
Mississippi |
YouTube video Amazing historian, and his accent is so perfectly Classical Southern! However, I had accidentally marked him as being from Greenville, Alabama instead of Greenville, Mississippi. The latter is a bit more surprising, since it is outside of the general Classical Southern area. Adj. 28-Oct.-2011 |
|
344
|
U.S. senator Trent Lott |
Grenada /grənādə/
[ɡɹəˈneɪdə] |
Mississippi |
YouTube
video (According to the following, Trent Lott moved to Pascagoula
in his early teens, but I am assuming that his accent was already set by
then: more
info) 19-Feb.-2011 |
|
345
|
The Unity Four, southern gospel singers |
Iuka /īyōōkə/ [ˌaɪˈjukə] |
Mississippi |
YouTube video (more info) 21-Sep.-2011 |
|
346
|
Jimmie Rodgers, country singer |
Meridian |
Mississippi |
YouTube
video (Replaced dead link.)
7-Apr.-2011 |
|
347
|
Estus Pirkle, preacher, filmmaker |
New Albany |
Mississippi |
YouTube video 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
348
|
JoJo Billingsley, singer |
Senatobia |
Mississippi |
YouTube video (more info) 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
349
|
Tornado victims |
Smithville |
Mississippi |
YouTube video The first two are clearly Inland, the last one seems to be trying not to sound Southern. 10-May-2011 |
|
350
|
Dr. Brett Hildenbrand, dentist |
Tupelo /tōōpəlō/ [ˈtʰupəˌloʊ] |
Mississippi |
YouTube video (more info) (Sent in by Y.I. Thanks!) 1-July-2010 |
|
351
|
Dr. Harry Rayburn, dentist |
Tupelo |
Mississippi |
YouTube video (more info) (Sent in by Y.I. Thanks!) 1-July-2010 |
|
352
|
Heather, patient, and husband Ron |
Cape Girardeau |
Missouri |
YouTube video (Sent in by Brett Harkey. Thanks!) New! 3-Nov.-2011 |
|
353
|
State senator Matt Bartle |
Columbia |
Missouri |
|
|
354
|
U.S. senator Bill Bradley |
Crystal City |
Missouri |
|
|
355
|
U.S. senator Conrad Burns |
Gallatin |
Missouri |
|
|
356
|
Children of Mike Reed |
Houston |
Missouri |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
357
|
Governor Matt Blunt |
Jefferson City |
Missouri |
|
|
358
|
Trent Tomlinson, country singer |
Kennett |
Missouri |
|
|
359
|
Rhonda Vincent, bluegrass singer |
Kirksville |
Missouri |
YouTube video As usual, her Central Midland dialect is demonstrated by the interview, not the songs, which are often Inland Southern, appropriate to bluegrass. 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
360
|
Various residents, mainly old timers |
Linn Creek |
Missouri |
YouTube video (Sent in by Ben Foster. Thanks!) New! 16-Jan.-2012 |
|
361
|
Ferlin Husky, country singer |
Park Hills |
Missouri |
YouTube video Clearly Inland Southern! New! 31-Dec.-2011 |
|
362
|
Pastor Paul White |
Poplar Bluff |
Missouri |
Google video (Sermon starts around 13:00. His long /ī/ [a(ɪ)] vowels are fairly mixed, suggesting that he has tried to adjust his speech to some degree, but many are clearly Southern, and a few words are clearly Inland. In any case, this town is on the border, so some mixing may not be surprising. His other vowels are thoroughly Southern, so I am fairly confident that he grew up speaking Inland Southern. Another indication is that the more excited he gets, the more Southern he sounds.) 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
363
|
Robin Carnahan, politician |
Rolla |
Missouri |
|
|
364
|
George Morris, enjoys life |
Sikeston |
Missouri |
YouTube video (Sent in by a contributor. Thanks!) 7-Nov.-2009 |
|
365
|
U.S. representative Roy Blunt |
Springfield |
Missouri |
|
|
366
|
Dick M., age 44, furniture maker |
Springfield |
Missouri |
ANAE info and audio This is the sample provided in the ANAE to show that Springfield, Missouri is Lowland Southern, which seems quite unlikely for its location. This sample is clearly not Inland Southern, since multiple cases of the long /ī/ [aɪ] vowel occur before voiceless consonants, and only one word, “times” shows the Lowland Southern pronunciation, and this has the long /ī/ [a] vowel before a nasal consonant, which is the one place it is often heard in otherwise Midland accents according to the ANAE Ch. 18, p. 243. Therefore I do not think that this sample demonstrates Southern at all. Adj. 16-Jan.-2012 |
|
367
|
Kay Barnes, mayor of Kansas City |
St. Joseph |
Missouri |
|
|
368
|
Joe Buck, sports commentator |
St. Louis |
Missouri |
|
|
369
|
John Goodman, actor |
St. Louis |
Missouri |
|
|
370
|
Bob Kuban, drummer |
St. Louis |
Missouri |
|
|
371
|
Dr. Jan Garavaglia, “Dr. G: Medical Examiner” |
St. Louis |
Missouri |
YouTube video (more info) 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
372
|
Bob and Ron Coble, farmers |
Strafford |
Missouri |
YouTube video These folks sound quite Southern, with many of its secondary features, until you listen closely to their long /ī/ [a(ɪ)] vowels, which are not southern. (Sent in by Ben Foster. Thanks!) New! 16-Jan.-2012 |
|
373
|
Jan Howard, country singer[24] |
West Plains |
Missouri |
|
|
374
|
U.S. senator Jon Tester |
Big Sandy |
Montana |
|
|
375
|
John Bohlinger, lieutenant governor |
Billings |
Montana |
|
|
376
|
Wylie
Gustafson, western singer/songwriter/yodeler |
Conrad |
Montana |
YouTube video, YouTube video (more info) 19-Oct.-2010 |
|
377
|
Dave Dickenson, football player |
Great Falls |
Montana |
|
|
378
|
U.S. senator Max Baucus |
Helena |
Montana |
|
|
379
|
Casey Anderson, Expedition Wild host |
(East) Helena |
Montana |
YouTube video (more info) 11-July-2011 |
|
380
|
Eugene Peterson, author of The Message |
Kalispell |
Montana |
YouTube video 5-Oct.-2010 |
|
381
|
Miles City |
Montana |
||
|
382
|
George Winston, pianist [26] |
Miles City |
Montana |
|
|
383
|
Dixie Nelson, Chamber of commerce |
Alliance |
Nebraska |
YouTube video 8-Aug.-2009 |
|
384
|
Dennis Rose, saddlemaker |
Arthur |
Nebraska |
audio
(source) Cannot tell from clip whether “pin”=“pen”. 24-Aug.-2010 |
|
385
|
Jim Girardin, Arrow Seed Co. |
Broken Bow |
Nebraska |
YouTube video (more info) 7-Aug.-2009 |
|
386
|
Lon Milo DuQuette, occultist |
Columbus |
Nebraska |
YouTube video (really, really weird ideas) 12-Aug.-2009 |
|
387
|
Barry Kriha, TV reporter |
Gibbon |
Nebraska |
YouTube video (more info) 7-Aug.-2009 |
|
388
|
Howard Parker, cowboy poet |
Gordon |
Nebraska |
|
|
389
|
Walter Schmitt, farmer |
Gresham |
Nebraska |
video & info (source) (Sent in by Kirk Sniff. Thanks!) New! 7-Nov.-2011 |
|
390
|
Herbert Heine, farmer |
Gresham (really Thayer, but there isn’t room) |
Nebraska |
video & info (source) New! 7-Nov.-2011 |
|
391
|
Jay Keasling, chemical engineer |
Harvard |
Nebraska |
|
|
392
|
Herman Goertzen, farmer |
Henderson |
Nebraska |
video & info (source) (Sent in by Kirk Sniff. Thanks!) Amazing! The Grand Island wedge extends even farther south and east! Adj. 7-Nov.-2011 |
|
393
|
Barrett Ruud, football player |
Lincoln |
Nebraska |
|
|
394
|
Joba Chamberlain, baseball player |
Lincoln |
Nebraska |
|
|
395
|
Ben Nelson, senator and governor |
McCook |
Nebraska |
|
|
396
|
John DeCamp, Politician |
Neligh /nēlē/ [ˈnili] |
Nebraska |
YouTube video 12-Aug.-2009 |
|
397
|
Johnny Carson, entertainer |
Norfolk /nôrfôrk/
[ˈnɔɹˌfɔɹk][27] |
Nebraska |
YouTube
video 23-Aug.-2010 |
|
398
|
Marg Helgenberger, actress |
North Bend |
Nebraska |
|
|
399
|
Dr. Don Rose, disk jockey |
North Platte |
Nebraska |
|
|
400
|
Ryan Schultz, mixed martial arts fighter |
North Platte |
Nebraska |
YouTube video 21-Sep.-2011 |
|
401
|
Ben Holscher, mixed martial arts fighter |
Ogallala |
Nebraska |
YouTube video 21-Sep.-2011 |
|
402
|
Henry Fonda, famous actor |
Omaha /ōməhô/ [ˈoʊməˌhɒ] |
Nebraska |
YouTube video 26-Aug.-2009 |
|
403
|
Warren Buffett, billionaire |
Omaha |
Nebraska |
|
|
404
|
Mayor Susan Wiedeman |
Scottsbluff (Gering) |
Nebraska |
YouTube video New! 31-Dec.-2011 |
|
405
|
Tom Osborne, football coach, etc. |
St. Paul |
Nebraska |
YouTube
video (more info) Tom Osborne grew up entirely in Hastings,
Nebraska except for four years in St. Paul, from the ages of 5 to 8. However,
he talks like St. Paul, not like Hastings, as I have confirmed by
interviewing a native of Hastings, who has “pin”=“pen” and “cot”=“caught”.
Like the sample from Ashley, ND, this shows that a phonemic system can be set
before the age of 10, and never change after that.
Adj. 4-Nov.-2011 |
|
406
|
Wayne Connell, artisan |
Tryon /trīən/
[ˈtʰɹaɪən] |
Nebraska |
video (source) (Video file seems to be damaged, though
previously it was playable. Hopefully it will be fixed in the future.) I need
to re-check the video to see whether “pin”=“pen”: I had thought no, but I
have recently interviewed a Tryon native, and evidently “pin”=“pen”. 24-Aug.-2010 |
|
407
|
Doug Bereuter /bērītər/ [ˈbiˌɹaɪɾɚ], president of the Asia Foundation |
Utica |
Nebraska |
YouTube video (His clip is 10:10-15:08.) New! 7-Nov.-2011 |
|
408
|
Sam Crawford, pro baseball player |
Wahoo /wôhōō/ [ˈwɒˌhu] |
Nebraska |
YouTube video (clip starts at 1:00) 26-Aug.-2010 |
|
409
|
Darryl Zanuck, movie producer |
Wahoo |
Nebraska |
YouTube video (He pronounces it /wôhōō/ [ˌwɒˈhu], but he is probably just being funny. My wife, a native Nebraskan, assures me that Sam Crawford’s pronunciation is the correct one.) 26-Aug.-2010 |
|
410
|
Elroy Hoffman, farmer |
York |
Nebraska |
video & info (source) (Sent in by Kirk Sniff. Thanks!) Amazing! The Grand Island wedge extends even farther south and east! New! 7-Nov.-2011 |
|
411
|
Harvey Pickrel, farmer |
York |
Nebraska |
video & info (source) (Sent in by Kirk Sniff. Thanks!) This guy is from south of York, whereas the previous guy may be from north of York, and this guy’s /ō/ [oʊ] vowels are noticeably more fronted, indicating that that the blue line runs between them! However, he has “pin”≠“pen”, showing that that line runs a tiny bit more south! New! 7-Nov.-2011 |
|
412
|
U.S. representative Dean Heller |
Carson City |
Nevada |
YouTube video 25-Oct.-2010 |
|
413
|
Andre Agassi, pro tennis player |
Las Vegas |
Nevada |
YouTube video (Suggested by native Las Vegan contributor Jim Hoffman. Thanks!.) 5-Mar.-2011 |
|
414
|
Governor Jim Gibbons |
Reno |
Nevada |
YouTube video 25-Oct.-2010 |
|
415
|
U.S. senator Harry Reid |
Searchlight |
Nevada |
YouTube video (Suggested by native Las Vegan contributor Jim Hoffman. Thanks!.) 5-Mar.-2011 |
|
416
|
Wallace McCain, businessman |
Florenceville |
New Brunswick |
downloadable video (Extremely large file!) (Sent in by Lucy May. Thanks!) New! 10-Jan.-2012 |
|
417
|
Marilyn Curtin, city councilor, and unknown newswoman |
Fredericton |
New Brunswick |
YouTube video (Sent in by Lucy May. Thanks!) New! 10-Jan.-2012 |
|
418
|
Matt Stairs, pro hockey player |
Saint John |
New Brunswick |
YouTube video 13-July-2009 |
|
419
|
Donald Sutherland, actor |
Saint John |
New Brunswick |
YouTube video Contributor Lucy May says that he is not a good example of the local dialect, and has contributed various others. Thanks! Adj. 10-Jan.-2012 |
|
420
|
Don Sweeney, pro hockey manager |
St. Stephen |
New Brunswick |
video (His clip 0:20-0:50) (Sent in by Lucy May. Thanks!) New! 10-Jan.-2012 |
|
421
|
Michael Durant, U.S. Army pilot |
Berlin |
New Hampshire |
video (Found video again!) Clip starts at 0:45. 24-Aug.-2010 |
|
422
|
Doris “Granny D” Haddock, activist, walked across America |
Laconia |
New Hampshire |
YouTube
video 1-June-2009 |
|
423
|
Joe McQuaid, newspaper publisher |
Manchester |
New Hampshire |
YouTube video 2-June-2009 |
|
424
|
Captain David Ferland, policeman |
Portsmouth |
New Hampshire |
YouTube video (His clips 0:55-1:06, 1:34-1:45) (Sent in by Ben Katz. Thanks! Ben said, “As I’m sure many people do for their hometowns, I thought I’d submit this clip, as I think it gives a better representation of the Seacoast, NH accent, as opposed to the samples you currently have which includes Boston to the South, and Manchester and Laconia inland. The clip features a number of local citizens, but personally, I thought the best example was [the policeman].”) 3-June-2011 |
|
425
|
Margaret Pickering, resident |
Portsmouth |
New Hampshire |
YouTube video (Her clip 0:07-0:41) (Sent in by Ben
Katz. Thanks!) 3-June-2011 |
|
426
|
Danny DeVito, actor |
Asbury Park |
New Jersey |
|
|
427
|
Tommy DeVito, pop singer - classic working class, slightly modified! ** |
Belleville |
New Jersey |
YouTube video (more info) The curl-coil merger is not dead! This guy clearly says /woyk/ [ˈwɜɪk] instead of /wûrk/ [ˈwɝk] for “work”, and uses [ɜɪ] instead of [ɝ] in several other words also, and most of his th’s become d or t. This is quite different from his fellow band member Frankie Valli, who is modern middle class. 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
428
|
State senator Michael Doherty |
Glen Ridge |
New Jersey |
YouTube video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
429
|
Sammi Giancano, on cast of Jersey Shore reality show |
Hazlet |
New Jersey |
YouTube video Nice distinctive “bad” /băəd/ [ˈbeəd], plenty of cases of both /ăə/ [eə] and /ă/ [æ], pronounced quite distinctly! So these two distinct vowels are alive and well, even among young people. The following clip is clearer: YouTube video 28-Mar.-2011 |
|
430
|
Governor Chris Christie |
Livingston |
New Jersey |
YouTube video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
431
|
Frankie Valli, pop singer - modern middle class ** |
Newark |
New Jersey |
YouTube video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
432
|
Lou Costello, actor & comedian - classic working class |
Paterson /pătərsən/ [ˈpʰæɾɚsən] |
New Jersey |
YouTube video Contributor Jane McMullen set me straight on this one: “Your sample [for] Lou Costello, is terribly wrong. It is not a New York accent. Lou was born and raised in Paterson, NJ. He sounds just like my father (born 7 years later), also born & raised there, and all my relatives. The class is correct, classic working class, children of recent Italian immigrants. And it’s classic Paterson.” Sigh! I find that I sometimes
focus on certain prominent features, and those features make me ignore other
features, which are more important. I had listed Lou Costello as being from
New York City, even though I knew he was born in Paterson. I failed to
realize that he was also raised there. But what really led me astray was that he
has nearly all of the secondary features of the classic working class of New
York City: /th/ [ð] becomes /d/ [d], and “first” is /foyst/ [ˈfɜɪst] instead of /fûrst/ [ˈfɝst]. I had not realized that the
latter was historically found in a few places outside of the Greater New York
City dialect area, so I assumed that he had grown up in NYC. However, he
actually lacks the primary defining features of NYC: he drops very few r’s,
and he does not have the bad-had split, as seen in many of the words in the
clip above, and in the pronunciation of “bad” at the end of this clip: YouTube
video. Instead, he actually has the Eastern North pattern for these
words. Thanks for keeping me straight, Jane!
Pronunciation Adj. 27-Oct.-2011 |
|
433
|
Alan Hale, astronomer |
Alamogordo |
New Mexico |
|
|
434
|
U.S. senator Pete Domenici |
Albuquerque |
New Mexico |
|
|
435
|
Various, presumbably locals |
Artesia |
New Mexico |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 3-Dec.-2009 |
|
436
|
Sam Etcheverry, football coach |
Carlsbad |
New Mexico |
|
|
437
|
U.S. representative Harry Teague |
Hobbs |
New Mexico |
|
|
438
|
Baxter Black, cowboy poet |
Las Cruces |
New Mexico |
YouTube video 26-Aug.-2009 |
|
439
|
Ed Foreman, politician, speaker |
Portales |
New Mexico |
|
|
440
|
Cody Willard, Fox Business anchor |
Ruidoso |
New Mexico |
YouTube video 26-Aug.-2009 |
|
441
|
Conrad Hilton, hotel tycoon |
San Antonio |
New Mexico |
YouTube video This video clarifies that “pin”≠“pen”
for him, whereas the following did not: YouTube
video 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
442
|
James Junes, Navajo comedian |
Shiprock |
New Mexico |
YouTube video (more info) 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
443
|
Harrison Schmitt, astronaut |
Silver City |
New Mexico |
YouTube video 31-Aug.-2009 |
|
444
|
Abel Cullum, mixed martial arts |
Tucumcari |
New Mexico |
YouTube video 13-July-2009 |
|
445
|
Mayor Jerry Jennings |
Albany |
New York |
YouTube video (Sent in by Derek Hachey. Thanks!) Longer sample: YouTube video 11-Feb.-2011 |
|
446
|
Judge Frank Easterbrook |
Buffalo |
New York |
YouTube video 7-Aug.-2009 |
|
447
|
William P. Rogers, Sec. of State under Nixon |
Canton |
New York |
|
|
448
|
Stewart Vorpahl
/vôrpəl/ [ˈvoəpəl], “Bonacker” fisherman |
East Hampton (Amagansett) |
New York |
YouTube video (clip starts at 25:00) (Sent in by Alex Van Boer. Thanks!) This is the true native (working class) dialect of “The Hamptons”, not really those that follow, as the explanation that follows shows. It is quite similar to GNYC, and has the same 16 vowels as New York City, including pronouncing the “aw” or /ô/ vowel as [oə], but unlike New York City there is no working-class tendency to change th’s to d or t, and several of the vowels have a slight hint of New England. 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
449
|
Mary Gardiner, gourmet produce seller |
East Hampton |
New York |
The east end of Long Island, often called “The Hamptons”, is unusual in that it has been a rich people’s playground for generations. That’s why I was glad to find the previous clip, which shows the dialect of ordinary people, rather than the rich and famous. All three of the following samples of rich and famous people from East Hampton have quite distinct accents, although they also have certain things in common, in particular their pronunciation of the “aw” or /ô/ vowel, which is [oə] like New York City. YouTube video (more info) This lady’s ancestors have lived in the East Hampton area since the mid 1600’s, and she grew up there, unlike so many rich kids from the area who were sent off to boarding school. Her accent is fairly close to the “benchmark” Bonacker pronunciation above. One particular difference among the three speakers is that Mary Gardiner pronounces almost all her r’s, David Carmichael drops a few, and Jackie Kennedy is a consistent Systematic R-dropper. They all do it a little, confirming that the original Hamptons pattern is r-dropping. I had thought for a while that “on” rhymed with “dawn” in this dialect, based on Mary Gardiner, but it doesn’t actually. She (and Stewart Vorpahl) almost seems to rhyme it with “barn”, if the r is dropped, something a few NYC speakers may also do. 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
450
|
David Carmichael, pastry chef |
East Hampton |
New York |
YouTube video, YouTube video (clip starts at 1:45) 30-Nov.-2009 |
|
451
|
First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy |
East Hampton |
New York |
YouTube video, YouTube video She definitely has a New York accent, quite distinct from her husband’s Boston accent. She shares some features with the other East Hampton speakers (See my comments above), but at the same time has a “higher class” accent, especially noticeable in her short /ă/ vowel, though she certainly does not have a Mid-Atlantic accent. 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
452
|
Reverend Rob Schenck |
Grand Island |
New York |
YouTube video 7-Aug.-2009 |
|
453
|
Steve Levy, Suffolk County Executive - modern working class? ** |
Holbrook |
New York |
YouTube video (clip 6:05-10:35) (Sent in by Alex Van Boer. Thanks!) 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
454
|
Various residents |
Mayville |
New York |
YouTube video The mayor and most of the others on this clip are clearly Inland North and north of (or inside) the bite-bout line. The only speaker who is clearly not is Mort Flexer, near the end, who is clearly Eastern New England. 27-Dec.-2010 |
|
455
|
Dr. Amy Gutmann, University of Pennsylvania President |
Monroe |
New York |
YouTube video 23-May-2011 |
|
456
|
Dick Clark, world’s oldest teenager (actually, talk show host, etc.) |
Mount Vernon |
New York |
YouTube video In spite of all his years in show biz, he still retains his native accent to an amazing degree. Not that it’s all that different from General American to start with, but his “aw” or /ô/ vowel is frequently a clear [oə]. 23-Apr.-2011 |
|
457
|
Caucasian female, 39, administrative assistant (not clear if born and raised here) |
Mount Vernon |
New York |
|
|
458
|
Don McClean, rock singer |
New Rochelle |
New York |
YouTube video 11-Jan.-2010 |
|
459
|
Jimmy Durante, actor & comedian - classic working class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube
video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
460
|
Bugs Bunny, cartoon character - classic working class ** (not bad, Mel!)[28] |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
461
|
9-11 firefighters - modern working class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube video, YouTube video, YouTube video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
462
|
Bennett Cerf, publisher and personality - classic middle class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube
video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
463
|
Humphrey Bogart, actor - classic middle class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube video (Even though Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall both appear in this clip, and are both from NYC, and were even married to each other, he is a whole generation earlier than her, and retains the curl-coil merger, whereas she does not.) 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
464
|
Rocky Graziano, boxer - classic middle class? ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube video Based on his background, I would have expected him to be working class, but he doesn’t seem to pronounce any of his th’s as t’s or d’s. 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
465
|
Woody Allen, actor & comedian - modern middle class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube video Certifiably weird! 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
466
|
Lauren Bacall, actress - modern middle class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
467
|
Howard Cosell, sports journalist - modern middle class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube
video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
468
|
Regis Philbin, TV personality - modern middle class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube
video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
469
|
Don Rickles, actor & comedian - modern middle class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
470
|
Walter Matthau, actor - modern middle class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
471
|
U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt - classic upper class ** |
New York City |
New York |
YouTube
video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
472
|
U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt - classic upper class ** |
New York City |
New York |
audio 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
473
|
Skip Tollefson, restaurateur - classic middle class! ** |
New York City?? |
New York |
YouTube video (clip 10:40-17:44) (Sent in by Alex Van Boer. Thanks!) The curl-coil merger is not dead! This guy clearly says /woyth/ [ˈwɜɪθ] instead of /wûrth/ [ˈwɝθ] for “worth”, and /foyst/ [ˈfɜɪst] instead of /fûrst/ [ˈfɝst] for “first”, and uses [ɜɪ] instead of [ɝ] in several other words also. Obviously he is from Greater New York City rather than the Hamptons, but I couldn’t find out where! Does anyone happen to know? 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
474
|
Rick Pitino, basketball coach - modern working class ** |
Oyster Bay |
New York |
YouTube video 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
475
|
David Smithgall, dairy producer |
Perry |
New York |
YouTube video 18-Dec.-2010 |
|
476
|
Jack Foley, poet |
Port Chester |
New York |
YouTube video 16-Nov.-2009 |
|
477
|
David Lee, Physicist |
Port Chester (Rye) |
New York |
YouTube video 21-July-2009 |
|
478
|
Ed Kritzler, historian |
Roslyn Heights |
New York |
YouTube video (more info) 11-Feb.-2010 |
|
479
|
Rochester |
New York |
YouTube video Hilarious: Teaches you how to talk Rochester! (Sent in by Laura Feller. Thanks!) 11-Feb.-2011 |
|
|
480
|
unnamed, news anchor |
Rochester |
New York |
YouTube video This guy’s accent isn’t quite as pronounced as the preceding (in spite of the crude comment on the YouTube page), but it’s pretty strong for a newscaster! (Sent in by Laura Feller. Thanks!) 11-Feb.-2011 |
|
481
|
Ralph Pagano, TV chef |
Staten Island |
New York |
YouTube video (more info) 30-Nov.-2009 |
|
482
|
Gabby Hayes, actor |
Wellsville |
New York |
YouTube video In spite of being an actor, and in spite of trying to sound like a tough old cowboy, his Inland North accent is still almost unchanged: Backed /ōō/, /ō/ and /ou/ ([u], [oʊ], and [ɑʊ]), “cot”≠“caught”, etc. 24-Aug.-2010 |
|
483
|
Mike Breen, sports commentator |
Yonkers |
New York |
YouTube video 21-July-2009 |
|
484
|
Paul Teutul Sr., American Chopper |
Yonkers |
New York |
YouTube video 21-July-2009 |
|
485
|
Residents Lizzy Careen, Mary Power, and others |
Branch |
Newfoundland (& Labrador) |
YouTube video (Sent in by Michael Collins. Thanks! He also helped me set the boundaries of Irish Newfoundland.) 19-Apr.-2011 |
|
486
|
Holly Nelson, concerned citizen |
Elliston |
Newfoundland (& Labrador) |
YouTube video (Sent in by Michael Collins. Thanks!) 14-Jan.-2011 |
|
487
|
Anthony, aspiring singer |
Placentia |
Newfoundland (& Labrador) |
YouTube video (Sent in by Michael Collins. Thanks!) 14-Jan.-2011 |
|
488
|
John Crosbie, M.P. |
St. John’s |
Newfoundland (& Labrador) |
video (Replaced bad link.) 14-Jan.-2011 |
|
489
|
Steve Kent, politician |
Stephenville |
Newfoundland (& Labrador) |
YouTube video 1-Aug.-2009 |
|
490
|
Roy Williams, basketball coach |
Asheville |
North Carolina |
|
|
491
|
Harold A., age 46, territorial engineer |
Asheville |
North Carolina |
ANAE info and audio This sample, like the previous one, is clearly Lowland, based on the next-to-last word “like”. However, the ANAE classifies it as Inland Southern, perhaps based on the word “revitalized”, pronounced twice as [ɹiˈvaɾl̩ˈazd]. However, this case is expected to be variable, because, though phonemically it is followed by /t/, which is a voiceless consonant, phonetically the /t/ is realized as [ɾ], which is voiced. New! 2-Jan.-2012 |
|
492
|
Various residents |
Atlantic |
North Carolina |
YouTube video, YouTube video (throughout the videos) 9-Sep.-2010 |
|
493
|
Del McCroury, bluegrass singer |
Bakersville |
North Carolina |
YouTube video New! 18-Nov.-2011 |
|
494
|
U.S. representative Charles Taylor |
Brevard |
North Carolina |
YouTube video 12-June-2010 |
|
495
|
U.S. representative Heath Shuler |
Bryson City |
North Carolina |
YouTube video 23-June-2010 |
|
496
|
White male, born 1958, attorney |
Burnsville |
North Carolina |
|
|
497
|
John D. Loudermilk, composer |
Durham |
North Carolina |
|
|
498
|
State senator Bob Carpenter |
Franklin |
North Carolina |
YouTube video 6-Apr.-2010 |
|
499
|
Erskine Bowles, president UNC system |
Greensboro |
North Carolina |
YouTube video He speaks as expected, except that every case of /th/ [θ] becomes /f/ [f], and every case of /th/ [ð] becomes /v/ [v]. I don’t know if this is an individual idiosyncracy, or whether it is a local pattern. There is actually a well-established English dialect that has this pattern, Cockney English (London, England). 6-Dec.-2010 |
|
500
|
Dale Earnhardt, Sr., NASCAR driver |
Kannapolis |
North Carolina |
YouTube video (clip starts at 1:37) 4-Aug.-2010 |
|
501
|
Richard Petty, NASCAR driver |
Level Cross |
North Carolina |
YouTube video, YouTube video 4-Aug.-2010 |
|
502
|
Randy Travis, country singer |
Marshville |
North Carolina |
YouTube video The fascinating interplay of dialects continues to amaze me! Randy Travis is clearly Lowland Southern, as this interview shows, as could hardly be otherwise, given where he grew up. However, when he sings, he sometimes clearly adopts an Inland Southern accent, perhaps in an unconscious effort to sound more “country”, given his image as a Neotraditional country singer, as can be heard in this moving rendition of Three Wooden Crosses (replaced bad link). 31-May-2011 |
|
503
|
Jeff Whisnant /hwĭsnənt/ [ˈʍɪsnənt] (not with a /z/ sound!), southern gospel singer |
Morganton |
North Carolina |
YouTube video (www.whisnants.com/Jeff.html) Clearly Inland, though with some inconsistencies, which is not surprising, given that he grew up right on the border. 4-Sep.-2010 |
|
504
|
Brooke Aldridge, country and southern gospel singer |
Newland |
North Carolina |
YouTube video 25-Oct.-2010 |
|
505
|
Various residents |
Okracoke Island |
North Carolina |
YouTube video, YouTube video (throughout the videos), YouTube video (more info, more info) 9-Sep.-2010 |
|
506
|
White male, born 1926, retired journalist |
Oak City |
North Carolina |
|
|
507
|
(No names or specific towns given, only regions.)[29] |
Outer Banks (location uncertain) |
North Carolina |
ncsu.edu/linguistics/ncllp/dialectquiz.php 9-Sep.-2010 |
|
508
|
State senator Fred Smith |
Raleigh |
North Carolina |
YouTube video 11-Feb.-2010 |
|
509
|
Richard Jenrette, investment banker |
Raleigh |
North Carolina |
YouTube
video 11-Feb.-2010 |
|
510
|
Jody Brown & Stephanie Brown, southern gospel singers, ethnic Cherokees |
Robbinsville |
North Carolina |
YouTube video 10-Apr.-2010 |
|
511
|
Roy Cooper, North Carolina attorney general |
Rocky Mount |
North Carolina |
YouTube video He only seems to drop an r in one word: “North”, part of the name of his state, which doesn’t quite count. 25-Mar.-2011 |
|
512
|
Junior Johnson, NASCAR driver |
Ronda |
North Carolina |
YouTube video, video & info Very much a borderline accent: a mixture of Lowland and Inland, but probably slightly more Lowland. 4-Aug.-2010 |
|
513
|
White female, born 1930, housewife |
Shelby |
North Carolina |
|
|
514
|
White male, 19 (not clear if
born and raised here) |
Winston-Salem |
North Carolina |
|
|
515
|
Greenville Mayor Pat Dunn |
Wake County (rural) |
North Carolina |
YouTube video (clip starts at 5:48) I had made the assumption that she was from Greenville, but this web site says she is from rural Wake County. She clearly drop r’s, and it is unclear whether she has Tidewater Raising: the only test word is “out”, which she only says once, and it goes by rather fast, but it does sound raised. This only messes up my map! It would have been simpler if she were from Greenville! Instead, I will treat her as an older speaker retaining older features. 25-Mar.-2011 |
|
516
|
Stephanie Glance, basketball coach |
Waynesville |
North Carolina |
YouTube video 16-Mar.-2010 |
|
517
|
Charlie Daniels, country singer (sort of) |
Wilmington |
North Carolina |
YouTube video (Replaced clip.) His first hilarious hit, back when he was a long-hair. He has changed a lot, as this clip shows: YouTube video 7-Apr.-2011 |
|
518
|
Herb Key, Appalachian singer |
Wilkesboro? |
North Carolina |
YouTube video 3-Apr.-2010 |
|
519
|
David Brinkley, newscaster |
Wilmington |
North Carolina |
YouTube video 6-Feb.-2010 |
|
520
|
Governor John Hoeven[30] |
Ashley |
North Dakota |
|
|
521
|
Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer |
Bismarck |
North Dakota |
|
|
522
|
CariDee English, fashion model |
Fargo |
North Dakota |
|
|
523
|
Josh Duhamel, actor |
Minot /mīnŏt/ [ˈmaɪˌnat] |
North Dakota |
YouTube video 7-Nov.-2009 |
|
524
|
U.S. senator Byron Dorgan |
Regent |
North Dakota |
YouTube video 7-Nov.-2009 |
|
525
|
Paige Palmer, TV fitness expert |
Akron |
Ohio |
YouTube video 4-Nov.-2009 |
|
526
|
Connie Schultz, columnist |
Ashtabula |
Ohio |
YouTube video 27-Dec.-2010 |
|
527
|
Urban Meyer, college football coach |
Ashtabula |
Ohio |
YouTube video 27-Dec.-2010 |
|
528
|
Maya Lin,
designer |
Athens |
Ohio |
|
|
529
|
Sam Hornish, Jr., NASCAR driver |
Bryan |
Ohio |
YouTube video 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
530
|
John Glenn, astronaut, U.S. senator |
Cambridge |
Ohio |
|
|
531
|
U.S. representative Steve Chabot |
Cincinnati |
Ohio |
|
|
532
|
House Republican Leader John Boehner |
Cincinnati |
Ohio |
|
|
533
|
U.S. representative Dennis Kucinich, former mayor |
Cleveland |
Ohio |
|
|
534
|
Ohio House Speaker Armond Budish |
Cleveland |
Ohio |
YouTube video 6-Dec.-2010 |
|
535
|
Ray Stevens, “pro” wrestler |
Columbus |
Ohio |
YouTube video 6-Dec.-2010 |
|
536
|
Dwight Yoakam, country singer |
Columbus |
Ohio |
YouTube video 27-Dec.-2010 |
|
537
|
Martin Sheen, actor |
Dayton |
Ohio |
YouTube video 1-Mar.-2010 |
|
538
|
Robert Pollard, indie rock singer |
Dayton |
Ohio |
YouTube video 21-Dec.-2010 |
|
539
|
U.S. representative Zack Space |
Dover |
Ohio |
YouTube video 22-Aug.-2009 |
|
540
|
Johnny Paycheck, country singer |
Greenfield |
Ohio |
YouTube video 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
541
|
Bobby Bare, country singer |
Ironton |
Ohio |
YouTube video (more info) 11-July-2011 |
|
542
|
Phyllis Diller, comedian |
Lima /līmə/ [ˈlaɪmə] |
Ohio |
YouTube video 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
543
|
Susan Smeersol (spelling?), bookstore owner |
Greenville |
Ohio |
YouTube video She is a native, as she says, and clearly “pin”≠“pen”, so in spite of my early idea that Cincinnati and Dayton formed an island surrounded by “pin”=“pen” areas, in fact there is a corridor uniting them to the “pin”≠“pen” area! 11-July-2011 |
|
544
|
State representative Jay Goyal |
Mansfield (Lexington) |
Ohio |
YouTube video 6-Dec.-2010 |
|
545
|
Ricky Stanzi, college football player |
Mentor |
Ohio |
YouTube video 27-Dec.-2010 |
|
546
|
Don Shula, pro football coach |
Painesville |
Ohio |
YouTube video 27-Dec.-2010 |
|
547
|
Roy Rogers, singer & actor |
Portsmouth |
Ohio |
YouTube video, YouTube video 27-Mar.-2010 |
|
548
|
Dean Martin, actor |
Steubenville |
Ohio |
YouTube video 26-Oct.-2009 |
|
549
|
Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director |
Toledo |
Ohio |
YouTube video 24-Oct.-2009 |
|
550
|
U.S. representative Jim Jordan |
Urbana |
Ohio |
YouTube video 12-Nov.-2010 |
|
551
|
State representative Bob Peterson |
Washington Court House |
Ohio |
YouTube video (more info) 6-Dec.-2010 |
|
552
|
Mike DeWine, politician |
Yellow Springs |
Ohio |
YouTube video 1-Mar.-2010 |
|
553
|
Bob Stooks, University of Oklahoma football coach |
Youngstown |
Ohio |
YouTube video New! 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
554
|
Bo Pelini, University of Nebraska football coach |
Youngstown |
Ohio |
YouTube video New! 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
555
|
Johnny Bench, baseball player |
Binger /bǐnggər/
[ˈbɪŋɡɚ] |
Oklahoma |
|
|
556
|
Stephen Vaughan, loan officer and rancher |
Boise City |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video (His clip starts at 1:33.) He is the speaker wearing the red plaid shirt. Of all the speakers on this video, he is the only one with a clear Inland Southern accent, that is, all of his long /ī/ vowels are pronounced [a]. According to a picture on this website, his name is Stephen Vaughan, though the caption is a bit confusing as to who is who. However, a picture on this website seems to confirm his identity. This website says that he is a rancher as well as a farm loan officer , suggesting that he is a local. Local farmer and Farm Bureau president Larry Crews evidently also speaks Inland Southern based on his long /ī/ vowels, but no examples of long /ī/ vowels before voiceless consonants occur to make it absolutely certain. The other speakers show many of the secondary features of Inland Southern, but their long /ī/ vowels are dipthongs [aɪ]. New! 6-Oct.-2011 |
|
557
|
Robert Conley, author |
Cushing |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video 18-Oct.-2010 |
|
558
|
Owen K. Garriott, astronaut |
Enid |
Oklahoma |
|
|
559
|
Captain Charles Scheffel, World War II veteran |
Enid |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video 11-Jan.-2011 |
|
560
|
Roger Miller, country singer |
Erick |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video 12-Aug.-2010 |
|
561
|
Darrell Royal, football coach |
Hollis |
Oklahoma |
|
|
562
|
General Kenneth M. Taylor |
Hominy |
Oklahoma |
|
|
563
|
Kurt Stevenson, school board candidate |
Idabel |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video 29-Mar.-2010 |
|
564
|
Bernice (and Leroy) Krittenbrink and fire chief Randy
Poindexter[31] |
Kingfisher |
Oklahoma |
|
|
565
|
Reba McEntire, country singer |
McAlester |
Oklahoma |
|
|
566
|
Keith Anderson, country singer |
Miami /mīămə/ [ˌmaɪˈæmə] |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video 18-Oct.-2010 |
|
567
|
LeRoy Jones, cowboy poet |
Mountain View |
Oklahoma |
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (more info) (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) As might be expected by someone who is right on the border, he has many of the secondary features of Inland Southern, but his long /ī/s are almost all [aɪ]. Johnny Bench above is similar. 22-Apr.-2011 |
|
568
|
James Garner, actor |
Norman |
Oklahoma |
|
|
569
|
Vince Gill, country singer |
Norman |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video 22-Aug.-2009 |
|
570
|
Woody Guthrie, folk singer |
Okemah /ōkēmə/ [ˌoʊˈkʰimə] or /ǔkēmə/ [ˈʌkimə][32] |
Oklahoma |
YouTube
video 30-Mar.-2010 |
|
571
|
Bobby Murcer, baseball player |
Oklahoma City |
Oklahoma |
|
|
572
|
Garth Brooks, country singer |
Oklahoma City (Yukon) |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video 11-July-2009 |
|
573
|
Mel McDaniel, country singer |
Okmulgee |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video He talks consistent Inland Southern, and usually sings Inland: YouTube video, but sometimes he sings Lowland: as when he is singing as someone from Louisiana: YouTube video as heard in “light” and “night”, which of course is quite appropriate; even so, he slips up once, on “rifle”, showing that he really is Inland! 12-July-2011 |
|
574
|
Ricky Manning, homeowner |
Pauls Valley |
Oklahoma |
|
|
575
|
Mark Whitehead, singer |
Purcell |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video According to this song, which he wrote, he spent all of his youth in Purcell, and he sings the song with a clear Inland Southern accent. However, his web site says he was born in Norman, and Purcell is not mentioned. I have not found an interview. So, if anyone can clarify the situation one way or the other, please do so. 23-May-2011 |
|
576
|
Matt Holliday, pro baseball player |
Stillwater |
Oklahoma |
YouTube video 11-July-2009 |
|
577
|
U.S. representative John Sullivan |
Tulsa |
Oklahoma |
sullivan.house.gov
(click VIDEOS, then Select) 1-Mar.-2010 |
|
578
|
Caucasian Male, 34, Fire Chief
(clearly Inland South, but not clear if born and raised here) |
Wyandotte |
Oklahoma |
|
|
579
|
Peter Short, United Church moderator |
Arnprior |
Ontario |
YouTube video 31-July-2009 |
|
580
|
Dan Quinn, pro hockey player |
Brockville |
Ontario |
YouTube video (more info) 31-July-2009 |
|
581
|
Duncan Keith, pro hockey player |
Fort Frances |
Ontario |
YouTube video Even with 7 teeth missing, this clip is quite clear. This one is longer, but doesn’t really have more of him speaking: YouTube video. 29-Dec.-2010 |
|
582
|
Rochelle Mazar, contributor |
Guelph /gwĕlf/ [ˈɡwɛlf] |
Ontario |
YouTube video (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) 4-Apr.-2011 |
|
583
|
Jason Law, contributor |
Inwood |
Ontario |
YouTube video (Self-recording for this site. Thanks!) 30-Mar.-2011 |
|
584
|
Lubomyr Luciuk, college professor |
Kingston |
Ontario |
YouTube video 31-July-2009 |
|
585
|
Mike Fletcher, diver |
Port Dover |
Ontario |
YouTube video 21-Dec.-2010 |
|
586
|
Tanya Kim, TV personality |
Sault Ste. Marie |
Ontario |
YouTube video 6-Feb.-2010 |
|
587
|
Joe Bowen, sportscaster |
Sudbury |
Ontario |
|
|
588
|
Michael Barry, pro cyclist |
Toronto |
Ontario |
YouTube video 20-Feb.-2010 |
|
589
|
Nora Young, CBC Radio host |
Toronto (Don Mills) |
Ontario |
YouTube video Nora made this video after she interviewed me on CBC radio in March of 2011. Thanks! I hope many others will do the same. (See Record Your Own Voice for more info or to hear the interview.) 26-Mar.-2011 |
|
590
|
Ken Boshcoff, politician |
Thunder Bay |
Ontario |
YouTube video 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
591
|
Mike Eaves, Hockey Coach |
Windsor |
Ontario |
YouTube video 4-Nov.-2009 |
|
592
|
Killer Kowalski, “pro” wrestler |
Windsor |
Ontario |
YouTube video Warning: graphic description of gore! Don’t listen too long! 4-Nov.-2009 |
|
593
|
Ross Coleman, pro bull rider |
Molalla /məlǒlə/ [məˈlɑlə] |
Oregon |
YouTube video I am in some doubt about this sample: He
occasionally seems to be trying to imitate a Texas accent, which seems to be in
vogue on the rodeo circuit. Still, his dialect seems to be fairly consistent.
My main concern is about whether he has fronted his long /ō/ [oʊ] more than is normal for his area. Contributor Andrea Niemiec wrote to confirm this: ‹‹I listened to the Mollala, OR audio sample with a great deal of interest, as I grew up about 15 miles away in Silverton, OR, where I lived until the age of 18. I believe that he is attempting to sound “country” a great deal more than most people do; certainly there is slight accent from certain older generations who have grown up in rural Oregon, but he sounded like an “out-of-towner” to me, and I would agree with you in ascribing it to his profession.›› Adj. 30-Nov.-2011 |
|
594
|
Phil Knight, Nike co-founder |
Portland |
Oregon |
YouTube video Oops! I had him listed as being from Eugene, not Portland. Don’t know how I did that: Wikipedia is very clear about it. Contributor Gilbert Kennen pointed out my error. Thanks! And as I listen to his long /ō/ [oʊ] vowels, I realize that they are Portland, not Eugene. 5-Mar.-2011 |
|
595
|
U.S. representative Earl Blumenauer |
Portland |
Oregon |
YouTube video 25-Nov.-2010 |
|
596
|
Roy Afflerbach, former state senator and mayor |
Allentown |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube video New! 28-Oct.-2011 |
|
597
|
Charles Bronson, actor |
Ehrenfeld |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube
video 5-May-2009 |
|
598
|
Fred Biletnikoff, pro football player |
Erie |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube video 4-Nov.-2009 |
|
599
|
State representative Glen Grell |
Harrisburg |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube video There’s nothing quite so boring as
parliamentary procedure! 4-June-2009 |
|
600
|
Rick Gray, mayor of Lancaster, PA |
Harrisburg |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube video New! 28-Nov.-2011 |
|
601
|
Jimmy Stewart, actor |
Indiana |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube video 26-Nov.-2009 |
|
602
|
Fred Rogers, host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood |
Latrobe |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube
video 5-May-2009 |
|
603
|
Arnold Palmer, pro golfer |
Latrobe |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube
video 5-May-2009 |
|
604
|
Judge John E. Jones |
Orwigsburg |
Pennsylvania |
|
|
605
|
City Councilman Frank Rizzo, Jr. |
Philadelphia |
Pennsylvania |
Compare “bad” in this YouTube video with “dad” and “had” in this YouTube video to hear the two distinct vowels. 4-June-2009 |
|
606
|
U.S. representative Michael Doyle |
Pittsburgh |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube
video 7-May-2009 |
|
607
|
Dennis Miller, comedian & commentator |
Pittsburgh |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube video (Replaced bad link again!) Interviewing Jesse Ventura: talk about two extremely distinct accents! And points of view! (Original link suggested by Y.I. Thanks!) 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
608
|
Johnny Angel & the Halos, singing group |
Pittsburgh |
Pennsylvania |
Santa Claus is comin’ Dahntahn This is great! It’s a dialect enthusiast’s dream! They take the familiar song, and change the words just enough to really maximize the occurrence of their unique pronunciation of the /ou/ [a] vowel! Not to mention various unique terms. And they even have good harmony! (See the next entry for some help on the words.) (more info) 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
609
|
DoubleShot!, singing group |
Pittsburgh |
Pennsylvania |
Santa Claus is goin’ Dahntahn Very similar to the preceding, but shows the words, which is a big help in a few places! On the other hand, their Pittsburg accent sounds to me to be just the tiniest bit less pristine than the preceding. (more info) (Sent in by Ted Ying. Thanks!) 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
610
|
The Yinzers, singing group |
Pittsburgh |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube video Just as fun as the preceding two! 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
611
|
Richard “Punchy” Kozlowski[33] |
Reading /rĕdĭng/ [ˈɹɛdɪŋ] |
Pennsylvania |
YouTube
video Pronunciation Adj. 15-Nov.-2011 |
|
612
|
Mike Mussina, pro baseball pitcher |
Williamsport |
Pennsylvania |
|
|
613
|
Jonathan Mann, Journalist |
Montreal |
Quebec |
video 24-June-2010 |
|
614
|
Dan Laxer, Journalist |
Montreal |
Quebec |
YouTube video 24-June-2010 |
|
615
|
U.S. senator John Chafee |
Providence |
Rhode Island |
|
|
616
|
Police officer |
Providence |
Rhode Island |
YouTube video 31-Mar.-2010 |
|
617
|
Regina /rəjīnə/ [ɹəˈdʒaɪnə] |
Saskatchewan |
YouTube
video Yes, I know the clip is about Wilmington, Delaware, but the
speaker is from Regina! 26-Mar.-2011 |
|
|
618
|
U.S. senator Lindsey Graham |
Central |
South Carolina |
YouTube
video Lowland Southern speaker from an apparently Inland Southern
area. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. Adj. 2-Jan.-2012 |
|
619
|
Fritz Hollings, U.S. senator, governor |
Charleston |
South Carolina |
|
|
620
|
Katon Dawson, politician |
Columbia |
South Carolina |
|
|
621
|
David Beasley, former governor |
Darlington |
South Carolina |
|
|
622
|
U.S. senator Strom Thurmond |
Edgefield |
South Carolina |
YouTube video (Older speaker retaining Lowland Southern and r-dropping, although younger ones have apparently completely lost it!) New! 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
623
|
U.S. senator Jim DeMint |
Greenville |
South Carolina |
YouTube
video Lowland Southern speaker from an apparently Inland Southern
area. See Possible Southern Class
Distinction?. Adj. 2-Jan.-2012 |
|
624
|
Sofia B., age 33, bank teller |
Greenville |
South Carolina |
ANAE info and audio Clearly Inland, based on the work “invite”. New! 2-Jan.-2012 |
|
625
|
Kristen B., age 41, bank teller |
Greenville |
South Carolina |
ANAE info and audio Clearly Inland, based on the work “like”. New! 2-Jan.-2012 |
|
626
|
Susan Smith, murderer |
Union |
South Carolina |
YouTube video (Her clip is 1:48-2:30.) 12-July-2011 |
|
627
|
U.S. senator Tom Daschle |
Aberdeen |
South Dakota |
|
|
628
|
67-year-old White man with some schooling |
Ludlow |
South Dakota |
|
|
629
|
Bob Barker, game show host |
Mission |
South Dakota |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “dawn”! 27-Mar.-2010 |
|
630
|
U.S. senator George McGovern |
Mitchell |
South Dakota |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “don”. 19-Mar.-2010 |
|
631
|
Nancy Tystad Koupal, historian |
Mitchell |
South Dakota |
audio
(more info, more info) “On” rhymes with
“dawn”! Does not match the other people from Mitchell. Was she really raised
in Mitchell? 24-Mar.-2010 |
|
632
|
Mike Miller, pro basketball player |
Mitchell |
South Dakota |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “don”. 27-Mar.-2010 |
|
633
|
Governor Mike Rounds |
Pierre /pîr/ [ˈpʰɪɹ] |
South Dakota |
YouTube
video “cot”≠“caught”, but the difference is minimal, so much
so that I at first missed it, and had him in the wrong region! This is not
unusual for the Western North. |
|
634
|
Becky Hammond, basketball player |
Rapid City |
South Dakota |
|
|
635
|
Tillie Black Bear, Lakota women’s advocate |
St. Francis |
South Dakota |
YouTube video “On” rhymes with “don”. 27-Mar.-2010 |
|
636
|
Joe Foss, World War II flying ace |
Sioux Falls |
South Dakota |
|
|
637
|
U.S. senator Tim Johnson |
Vermillion |
South Dakota |
YouTube video 19-Mar.-2010 |
|
638
|
Lee Raymond, Exxon |
Watertown |
South Dakota |
|
|
639
|
Archie Campbell, comedian |
Bulls Gap |
Tennessee |
YouTube video 1-Jan.-2010 |
|
640
|
Troy Odle |
Camden |
Tennessee |
|
|
641
|
Peg McKamey Bean, southern gospel singer |
Clinton |
Tennessee |
|
|
642
|
Sterling Marlin, NASCAR driver |
Columbia |
Tennessee |
YouTube video, YouTube video 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
643
|
Mack Brown, football coach |
Cookeville |
Tennessee |
YouTube video 10-Mar.-2010 |
|
644
|
Amanda Garrett, vlogger |
Cookeville |
Tennessee |
YouTube video (Sent in by her mother Tracy. Thanks!) Almost fully consistent Lowland Southern as far as her long /ī/ [a(ɪ)] vowels and in other ways. The dialect is not dying out, even among young people! 5-Mar.-2011 |
|
645
|
Rodney Atkins, country singer |
Cumberland Gap |
Tennessee |
YouTube video, YouTube video 5-July-2010 |
|
646
|
State senator Doug Jackson |
Dickson |
Tennessee |
YouTube video The stuff politicians find to quibble about! 10-Mar.-2010 |
|
647
|
Dave’s mom |
Dover |
Tennessee |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
648
|
Dave’s dad |
Dover |
Tennessee |
YouTube video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
649
|
Committee members |
Dunlap |
Tennessee |
YouTube video The lady who does most of the talking is clearly Inland, as is the man who speaks briefly towards the end. (The man who talks the most sounds like a transplanted northerner.) New! 1-Nov.-2011 |
|
650
|
Politically active resident |
Dunlap |
Tennessee |
YouTube video Not to detract in any way from the concerns of the main speaker, mainly teenage drinking, and who seems to have researched his subject, I find it delightful that his kids (presumably) are playing “punch bug” in the background. Clearly Inland. New! 1-Nov.-2011 |
|
651
|
The Boyd Brothers, local country singers |
Dunlap |
Tennessee |
YouTube video Clearly Inland. New! 1-Nov.-2011 |
|
652
|
Diana Walker, southern gospel singer |
Knoxville |
Tennessee |
audio & info (Scroll down to her testimony to listen.) Very consistent and clear Inland, but very occasionally does a long /ī/ [a] vowel with a diphthong [aɪ], for no obvious reason! (more info) 11-July-2011 |
|
653
|
Storekeepers: Cathy Bell, Robbie Treadwell |
Linden |
Tennessee |
YouTube video These 2 are clearly Inland. 12-June-2010 |
|
654
|
Dwight Hines, businessman |
Lobelville |
Tennessee |
YouTube video All but the first one are clearly Southern, but only this speaker happens to use any diagnostic words for Inland: his name being one of them! (The first speaker sounds like a transplant from up North.) 12-June-2010 |
|
655
|
Mayor Randy Brundige |
Martin |
Tennessee |
Google video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
656
|
John Wilder, speaker, TN senate |
Mason |
Tennessee |
Older r-dropper: YouTube video (Speaks Classical Southern, dropping his r’s, something only heard occasionally from much older speakers in this area.) 10-Mar.-2010 |
|
657
|
Roy Acuff, “king of country music” |
Maynardville |
Tennessee |
YouTube video Beautiful combination of Anglo-Celtic melody (more info) with traditional mountain dialect. YouTube video, YouTube video Anybody like railroad songs? These are two of the best! 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
658
|
Carl Smith, country singer |
Maynardville |
Tennessee |
YouTube video 10-May-2011 |
|
659
|
Buddy Coppock, southern gospel singer |
Maynardville |
Tennessee |
audio & info (Scroll down to his testimony to listen.) Very consistent and clear Inland, but very occasionally does a long /ī/ [a] vowel with a diphthong [aɪ], for no obvious reason! (more info) 11-July-2011 |
|
660
|
Various, presumably residents |
McMinnville |
Tennessee |
YouTube video (All speakers are Lowland.) 10-Mar.-2010 |
|
661
|
Dottie West, country singer |
McMinnville |
Tennessee |
YouTube video (Clearly Lowland as well!) 23-Feb.-2011 |
|
662
|
Paula Flowers, politician |
Monterey |
Tennessee |
YouTube video 10-Mar.-2010 |
|
663
|
U.S. Congressman Bart Gordon |
Murfreesboro |
Tennessee |
YouTube video 10-Mar.-2010 |
|
664
|
Caucasian male, born 1990 |
Nashville |
Tennessee |
|
|
665
|
Ronnie McDowell, pop singer |
Portland |
Tennessee |
YouTube video (more info) 2-Dec.-2009 |
|
666
|
Darryl Worley /wûrlē/ [ˈwɝli], country singer |
Pyburn |
Tennessee |
YouTube video 4-Sep.-2010 |
|
667
|
Caucasian male, born 1943 |
Ridgetop |
Tennessee |
|
|
668
|
Skylar McBee, college basketball player |
Rutledge |
Tennessee |
YouTube video (Sent in by Jay Brantner. Thanks!) New! 18-Nov.-2011 |
|
669
|
Josh Franks, Southern gospel singer |
Savannah |
Tennessee |
YouTube video (more info) 23-June-2010 |
|
670
|
Randy Parton, Dolly’s brother |
Sevierville |
Tennessee |
YouTube video Dolly has modified her speech, but Randy still speaks pure Inland Southern! 30-Jan.-2010 |
|
671
|
U.S. Congressman Jim Cooper |
Shelbyville |
Tennessee |
YouTube video 10-Mar.-2010 |
|
672
|
Billy Blakely, fishing guide |
Tiptonville |
Tennessee |
YouTube video 26-Nov.-2009 |
|
673
|
Herbert and Marie Adams, “Herbie Town” |
Trenton /trǐntən/ [ˈtʰɹɪɾ̃ən] |
Tennessee |
Google video (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 4-Sep.-2010 |
|
674
|
Ron Pace, financier |
Waverley |
Tennessee |
MSNBC video 20-Feb.-2010 |
|
675
|
Phillip Fulmer, football coach |
Winchester |
Tennessee |
YouTube video 10-Mar.-2010 |
|
676
|
Lee Roy Parnell, country singer |
Abilene |
Texas |
YouTube video 11-Jan.-2010 |
|
677
|
Caucasian male, born 1940, hair stylist |
Amarillo |
Texas |
|
|
678
|
U.S. representative Lloyd Doggett |
Austin |
Texas |
YouTube
video 9-May-2009 |
|
679
|
Colby Yates, bull rider & country singer |
Azle |
Texas |
YouTube video (more info) Clearly has an Inland Southern accent, more representative of the Dallas-Forth Worth area than that of Kenny Marchant of Carrollton below. 6-Sep.-2011 |
|
680
|
Mark Chesnutt, country singer |
Beaumont |
Texas |
YouTube video Has a clear Lowland South accent, but a few words sound Inland. I don’t have a good explanation for this, since Beaumont is far from the Inland Southern area. Adj. 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
681
|
Debra Medina, politician |
Beeville |
Texas |
YouTube video 28-Apr.-2010 |
|
682
|
U.S. representative Mac Thornberry |
Clarendon |
Texas |
YouTube video New! 30-Dec.-2011 |
|
683
|
Jim “Reverend Horton” Heath, “country-fed punkabilly” singer |
Corpus Christi |
Texas |
YouTube video 11-July-2009 |
|
684
|
U.S. representative Kenny
Marchant |
Carrollton |
Texas |
YouTube video (clip at 5:35) The Dallas-Fort Worth area is one of the few areas where there seems to be a mixture of Inland Southern and Lowland Southern based perhaps on class distinctions, though the bedrock dialect seems to be Inland. Kenny Marchart in this clip speaks mostly Lowland, with occasional lapses into Inland. However, the two speakers before him, apparently also locals, speak only Inland. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. Adj. 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
685
|
Valerie M., age 47, food service worker |
Dallas |
Texas |
ANAE info and audio (Replaced bad link.) Clearly Inland South! Adj. 31-Dec.-2011 |
|
686
|
Heather Cranford-Nied, sports commentator, etc. |
Dallas (Duncanville) |
Texas |
YouTube video (Her clip starts at 1:30) more info) Clearly speaks Inland Southern! Adj. 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
687
|
Ross Perot, Jr., businessman |
Dallas |
Texas |
YouTube video Perot clearly comes from a wealthy family and attended a private school, which may explain why he shows no sign of Inland Southern, but only Lowland Southern.See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. Adj. 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
688
|
Kent Hance, Texas Tech Chancellor |
Dimmitt |
Texas |
YouTube video 20-Jan.-2010 |
|
689
|
State senator Eliot Shapleigh |
El Paso |
Texas |
YouTube video [34] 24-Feb.-2011 |
|
690
|
Ronn Lucas, ventriloquist |
El Paso |
Texas |
YouTube video 24-Feb.-2011 |
|
691
|
Governor John Connally |
Floresville |
Texas |
YouTube video 6-Sep.-2011 |
|
692
|
Clayton Williams, oil man |
Fort Stockton |
Texas |
YouTube video 12-Jan.-2010 |
|
693
|
Dr. Adam Boyd,
M.D. |
Franklin |
Texas |
audio & info 9-May-2009 |
|
694
|
Ron White, comedian |
Fritch |
Texas |
YouTube video Not as objectionable as some of his stuff, unless you love dogs or parents. (Sent in by Y.I. Thanks!) 1-July-2010 |
|
695
|
Harry Kreisler, host of “Conversations with History” |
Galveston |
Texas |
YouTube video (Hardly Southern at all. See Galveston Movement.) 1-July-2009 |
|
696
|
Joe Don Baker, actor |
Groesbeck |
Texas |
YouTube
video 9-May-2009 |
|
697
|
Bob Moorhouse, photographer and rancher |
Guthrie |
Texas |
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) (more info) 23-Apr.-2011 |
|
698
|
Mary Kay Ash, entrepreneur |
Houston /hyōōstən/ [ˈhjustən] |
Texas |
YouTube video Yes, I know, she’s an older speaker, now deceased, but there still must be some real southerners in Houston, right? Yes, there are: see the following! 23-May-2011 |
|
699
|
Joel Osteen /ōstēn/ [ˈoʊˌstin], “prosperity gospel” preacher |
Houston |
Texas |
YouTube video (Replaced dead link.) Finally, a living Houstonian who actually speaks Southern! (See also John MacArthur) Adj. 16-Jan.-2012 |
|
700
|
White female, born 1981, college student |
Huntsville |
Texas |
|
|
701
|
Terry Allen, “outlaw” country singer |
Lubbock |
Texas |
YouTube video Occasionally his long /ī/ vowels are [aɪ], but the vast majority are clearly Inland Southern [a], before both voiced and voiceless sounds. 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
702
|
Don Bowman, “outlaw” country singer |
Lubbock |
Texas |
YouTube video This is the infamous “Wildwood Weed” song, in its original incarnation. (more info) 3-Mar.-2011 |
|
703
|
Caucasian male, born 1938 |
Mart |
Texas |
|
|
704
|
General Tommy Franks |
Midland |
Texas |
|
|
705
|
Larry Gatlin, country singer |
Odessa[35] |
Texas |
|
|
706
|
Leslie Satcher, country singer |
Paris |
Texas |
YouTube video 27-Mar.-2010 |
|
707
|
George Strait, country singer |
Pearsall |
Texas |
|
|
708
|
Ray Price, country singer |
Perryville |
Texas |
YouTube video 24-Mar.-2010 |
|
709
|
U.S. representative Louie Gohmert |
Pittsburg |
Texas |
YouTube
video Oops, no “h” in “Pittsburg”, as pointed out by David
Lawrence. Thanks! 14-Feb.-2011 |
|
710
|
Fess Parker, actor |
San Angelo |
Texas |
YouTube video 31-Aug.-2009 |
|
711
|
George Jones, country singer |
Saratoga |
Texas |
YouTube video 23-Feb.-2010 |
|
712
|
Johnny Horton, country singer |
Rusk |
Texas |
YouTube video (Replaced bad link.) 15-Dec.-2010 |
|
713
|
Caucasian female, born 1924 |
San Marcos |
Texas |
|
|
714
|
Caucasian male, born 1950(?) |
Sanderson |
Texas |
|
|
715
|
Lieutenant Governor Bill Ratliff |
Sonora |
Texas |
YouTube video 27-Mar.-2010 |
|
716
|
Rex Linn, actor |
Spearman |
Texas |
|
|
717
|
Ben Hogan, pro golfer |
Stephenville |
Texas |
YouTube video Apparently not representative, speaking Lowland where Inland would be expected. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. Adj. 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
718
|
Ross Perot, Sr., Politician |
Texarkana |
Texas |
YouTube
video 13-May-2009 |
|
719
|
Sarah McClendon, correspondent |
Tyler |
Texas |
YouTube
video (Her clip is at 8:40.) 13-May-2009 |
|
720
|
Dale Evans, singer & actress |
Uvalde |
Texas |
YouTube video 27-Mar.-2010 |
|
721
|
Tracy Byrd, country singer |
Vidor |
Texas |
YouTube video Has a clear Lowland South accent, but a few words sound Inland. 15-Dec.-2010 |
|
722
|
U.S. representative Joe Barton |
Waco |
Texas |
YouTube video 9-May-2009 |
|
723
|
Various residents |
Waxahachie /wôksəhăchē/ [ˌwɒʊksəˈhæʧɪ] |
Texas |
YouTube video All residents clearly Inland, unlike Byron Nelson below! 6-Sep.-2011 |
|
724
|
Byron Nelson, pro golfer |
Waxahachie |
Texas |
CBS News video (more info) He clearly speaks Lowland, although the native dialect of Waxahatchie seem to be Inland, as can be seen from the previous sample. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. Adj. 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
725
|
Mary Martin, actress |
Weatherford |
Texas |
YouTube video An actress, and apparently not representative, speaking Lowland where Inland would be expected. See Possible Southern Class Distinction?. Adj. 12-Dec.-2011 |
|
726
|
Caucasian female, born 1938 |
Weslaco /wĕsləkō/ [ˈwɛsləˌkʰəʊ] |
Texas |
IDEA audio (source)
2-Mar.-2011 |
|
727
|
Alan Wachsman, native Wichitan, sixth-generation Texan (How in world do you pronounce “Wichitan”?) |
Wichita Falls /wĭchĭtô fôlz/ [ˈwɪtʃɪˌtʰɒʊ ˈfɒʊlz] |
Texas |
YouTube video (more info) Sometimes finding a good sound sample for a particular place is like pulling teeth: You search through dozens of web sites and still don’t find one. Not this time: the very first clip found by searching for Wichita Falls on YouTube is this one, and it is excellent, and is as Inland North as you can get, filling in a nice blank spot. If only it were always this easy! 19-Apr.-2011 |
|
728
|
Forrest Cuch, Indian leader |
Fort Duchesne /dōōshān/ [ˌduˈʃeɪn] |
Utah |
YouTube video 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
729
|
Waldo Wilcox, rancher |
Green River |
Utah |
YouTube video (more info) 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
730
|
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s |
Ogden (Clearfield) |
Utah |
YouTube video 6-Feb.-2010 |
|
731
|
Governor Gary Herbert |
Orem |
Utah |
YouTube video 6-Feb.-2010 |
|
732
|
Mayor Lewis Billings |
Provo |
Utah |
YouTube video 6-Feb.-2010 |
|
733
|
Clayton Christensen, Harvard Professor |
Salt Lake City |
Utah |
YouTube video 6-Feb.-2010 |
|
734
|
Hannah Teter, olympic
snowboarder |
Belmont |
Vermont |
YouTube video Not a true Vermont accent? 11-Feb.-2011 |
|
735
|
U.S. senator Patrick Leahy |
Montpelier |
Vermont |
YouTube
video After feedback from contributors,
and listening again, I see that he does not really have a distinct Vermont
accent, even though he grew up in Montpelier. However he clearly does have
“cot”=“caught”. 11-Feb.-2011 |
|
736
|
Ross Powers, Olympic
snowboarder |
Peru |
Vermont |
YouTube
video More than one contributor has
said that Ross Powers does not have a real Vermont accent, and the following
are probably better examples. However, my question is: does southern
Vermont have a less pronounced accent than the north? 11-Feb.-2011 |
|
737
|
Bill, old timer |
Stowe |
Vermont |
YouTube video Contributor Jon Protas says none of the preceding three samples from Vermont shows a real Vermont accent, so I added this one. There were several even better ones, but they used some words you can’t use on TV, so I couldn’t use it. There were some others, but they seemed to be of people imitating a Vermont accent, so they didn’t work either! 2-Feb.-2011 |
|
738
|
George Woodard, dairy farmer |
Waterbury |
Vermont |
YouTube video This was sent in by Charlie Farrington as a more representative sample. Thanks! 11-Feb.-2011 |
|
739
|
John Bowman, bluegrass gospel singer |
Ararat |
Virginia |
YouTube video (www.caccwarriors.com/john-bowman) 9-Sep.-2010 |
|
740
|
Katie Couric, CBS news anchor |
Arlington |
Virginia |
YouTube video (more info) (“pin”≠“pen”) 5-Oct.-2010 |
|
741
|
Rich Lowry, National Review editor |
Arlington |
Virginia |
YouTube video (more info) (“pin”≠“pen”) 5-Oct.-2010 |
|
742
|
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google |
Arlington |
Virginia |
YouTube video (“pin”≠“pen”, except “any”, “many”) 5-Oct.-2010 |
|
743
|
Chris Kraft, NASA engineer |
Hampton |
Virginia |
YouTube video 21-July-2009 |
|
744
|
Jackson Family, bluegrass gospel singers (Joe Jackson, banjo) |
Hurley |
Virginia |
YouTube video 9-Sep.-2010 |
|
745
|
white male, born 1979 |
Leesburg |
Virginia |
|
|
746
|
Jerry Falwell, preacher |
Lynchburg |
Virginia |
|
|
747
|
June Carter Cash, country singer |
Maces Spring |
Virginia |
audio,
YouTube
video 10-May-2011 |
|
748
|
Ralph Stanley, bluegrass singer |
McClure |
Virginia |
YouTube video, YouTube video 6-Sep.-2010 |
|
749
|
Carter Stanley, bluegrass singer |
McClure |
Virginia |
YouTube video 6-Sep.-2010 |
|
750
|
Margaret Gibson, poet |
Richmond |
Virginia |
YouTube video 16-Oct.-2009 |
|
751
|
“Mother” Maybelle Addington Carter, country singer |
Nickelsville |
Virginia |
YouTube video 12-July-2011 |
|
752
|
U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Taubman |
Roanoke |
Virginia |
|
|
753
|
U.S. representative Virgil Goode |
Rocky Mount |
Virginia |
|
|
754
|
E.C. Ball, gospel & folk singer |
Rugby |
Virginia |
YouTube video 3-Apr.-2010 |
|
755
|
Wayne Henderson, guitar maker |
Rugby |
Virginia |
YouTube video, YouTube video 3-Apr.-2010 |
|
756
|
Various residents |
Tangier Island |
Virginia |
YouTube video 9-Sep.-2010 |
|
757
|
Douglas Osheroff, physicist |
Aberdeen |
Washington |
YouTube video (more info) 16-Nov.-2009 |
|
758
|
Bob Hickman, saddle maker |
Colfax |
Washington |
YouTube video (more info) 6-Dec.-2010 |
|
759
|
Kirk Triplett, pro golfer |
Pullman |
Washington |
YouTube video 25-Nov.-2010 |
|
760
|
Judy Collins, folk singer |
Seattle |
Washington |
YouTube video 6-Sep.-2011 |
|
761
|
Aya Sumika, actress |
Seattle |
Washington |
YouTube video 20-Feb.-2010 |
|
762
|
Bill Gates, Microsoft cofounder |
Seattle |
Washington |
YouTube video 10-Feb.-2011 |
|
763
|
Richard Karn, actor & game show host |
Seattle |
Washington |
YouTube video New! 28-Oct.-2011 |
|
764
|
U.S. representative George Nethercutt |
Spokane |
Washington |
YouTube video 25-Nov.-2010 |
|
765
|
Tom Maccarone, restaurateur |
Walla Walla |
Washington |
YouTube video (Sent in by S. Radtke. Thanks!) 19-Feb.-2011 |
|
766
|
Jay Randolph, sports commentator |
Clarksburg |
West Virginia |
|
|
767
|
Homer Hickam, NASA engineer |
Coalwood |
West Virginia |
|
|
768
|
Richard Thompson, politician |
Fort Gay |
West Virginia |
YouTube video (more info) (Cannot get a long enough clip to be sure “cot”=“caught”, but the surrounding samples are clear.) 28-Apr.-2010 |
|
769
|
Jim Grobe, college football coach |
Huntington |
West Virginia |
YouTube
video 2-Dec.-2009 |
|
770
|
Don Blankenship, coal CEO |
Matewan /mātwǒn/ [ˈmeɪtˌwɒn] |
West Virginia |
YouTube video 28-Apr.-2010 |
|
771
|
Matewan |
West Virginia |
YouTube
video 28-Apr.-2010 |
|
|
772
|
Tom Chafin, descendant of the feudin’ Hatfields |
Matewan |
West Virginia |
YouTube video (clip starts at 4:50) 30-Apr.-2010 |
|
773
|
Lawrence Kasdan, movie producer, director, and screenwriter |
Morgantown |
West Virginia |
YouTube video (His clip starts at 2:20.) (more info) This is the second northernmost example of Southern (after nearby Cumberland, Maryland), and is a rare case of someone in the movie industry who retains a strong regional accent! He seems to have “cot”=“caught”, unlike Cumberland, but this is not surprising. 23-July-2011 |
|
774
|
Mark Funkhouser, Kansas City mayor |
Paden |
West Virginia |
|
|
775
|
John McKay, football coach |
Shinnston |
West Virginia |
|
|
776
|
General Chuck Yeager, test pilot |
Myra |
West Virginia |
YouTube video I have listened to various samples of his, and clearly “cot”≠“caught”, though they are fairly close! Now need to verify Charleston. 28-Apr.-2010 |
|
777
|
Sara Stapleton, high school principal |
Wayne |
West Virginia |
YouTube video (her clip starts at 3:57) 28-Apr.-2010 |
|
778
|
Steven Akers, high school student |
Wayne |
West Virginia |
YouTube video (his clip starts at 0:41) 28-Apr.-2010 |
|
779
|
Arden Cogar, Sr., lumberjack |
Webster Springs |
West Virginia |
YouTube video 1-July-2010 |
|
780
|
John Corbett, actor |
Wheeling |
West Virginia |
YouTube video Oops! I had put Wheeling in the “pin”=“pen” region, but I must have been in a hurry: Both speakers clearly distinguish. 12-June-2010 |
|
781
|
Bob Ney, talk radio host |
Wheeling |
West Virginia |
YouTube video 22-Aug.-2009 |
|
782
|
J. P. Hayes, pro golfer |
Appleton |
Wisconsin |
YouTube video 3-June-2011 |
|
783
|
Matt Kenseth, NASCAR driver |
Cambridge |
Wisconsin |
YouTube video Not as strong as some Inland North, but still representative. New! 31-Dec.-2011 |
|
784
|
Thomas Christianson, boilmaster |
Door County |
Wisconsin |
YouTube video (Sent in by Y.I. Thanks!) 28-Oct.-2010 |
|
785
|
State senator Dave Hansen |
Green Bay |
Wisconsin |
YouTube video 29-Dec.-2010 |
|
786
|
Laura, cancer patient |
Green Bay (Hobart) |
Wisconsin |
YouTube video (Sent in by Anneke Majors. Thanks!) 24-Jan.-2011 |
|
787
|
Defense secretary Les Aspin |
Milwaukee |
Wisconsin |
YouTube video 16-Mar.-2010 |
|
788
|
Craig Counsell, pro baseball player |
Milwaukee |
Wisconsin |
YouTube video (Clip starts at 4:00) 16-Feb.-2010 |
|
789
|
John Koepke /kĕpkē/ [ˈkʰɛpki], dairy producer |
Oconomowoc /ōkǒnəmōǒk/ [ˌoˈkʰanəmoˌak] |
Wisconsin |
YouTube
video 3-June-2011 |
|
790
|
State senator Joe Leibham /līphǒm/ [ˈlaɪpˌham] |
Sheboygan /shəboigən/ [ʃəˈbɔɪɡən] |
Wisconsin |
YouTube video, YouTube video This guy speaks what I’ve always thought of as a typical Wisconsin accent, though I now realize that it’s limited to southern and eastern Wisconsin, and is simply a fairly pure (or extreme) example of Inland North, also heard elsewhere in the region. 2-Mar.-2011 |
|
791
|
Secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger |
Stevens Point |
Wisconsin |
YouTube video 16-Mar.-2010 |
|
792
|
Chris Bangle, car designer |
Wausau |
Wisconsin |
YouTube video 6-Sep.-2011 |
|
793
|
Lynne Cheney, wife of U.S. vice president |
Casper |
Wyoming |
|
|
794
|
U.S. representative Cynthia Lummis |
Cheyenne |
Wyoming |
|
|
795
|
U.S. senator Alan K. Simpson |
Cody |
Wyoming |
|
|
796
|
Steve Moulton, Western singer and rancher |
Encampment |
Wyoming |
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum interview (Source suggested by archivist Laura Anne Heller. Thanks!) 23-Apr.-2011 |
|
797
|
Jesse Garcia, actor |
Rawlins |
Wyoming |
YouTube video 8-Feb.-2010 |
|
798
|
Phil Gatensby, counselor |
Carcross |
Yukon Territory |
|
|
799
|
Stanley, Sr., native American from Gwich’in tribe |
Old Crow |
Yukon Territory |
|
|
|
||||
|
|
Rejected data: |
|
|
(These are people raised in a certain place, but not representing
the local dialect. If any of you have local knowledge and think that these
people do represent the local
dialect, please let me know!) Adj. 3-Nov.-2011 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reject: |
Jimmy Means, NASCAR driver
[36] |
Huntsville |
Alabama |
|
|
Reject: |
Collin Raye, country singer |
De Queen |
Arkansas |
YouTube video When I first heard him, singing this clip, I thought, “Okay, he’s from De Queen, Arkansas, and he speaks Inland Southern. Turns out I was wrong on both counts. First, he is totally inconsistent: he sometimes sings Inland, as in this clip, but usually sings Lowland, as in the first song on this interview clip: YouTube video, but he doesn’t actually talk Southern at all, as can be heard in the interview. Also, though he was born in De Queen, he was raised someplace in Texas. The first clip is a cool song, and I had at first assumed that it was a true story about Collin Raye’s grandparents, but I can find nothing to indicate this. Even so, he probably sang it in Inland Southern because he was thinking of his own grandparents, who may have been from De Queen. (I only included all this because I like the song.) 25-Feb.-2011 |
|
Reject: |
Joe Spano, actor [37] |
San Francisco |
California |
|
|
Reject: |
Christopher Lloyd, actor |
New Canaan |
Connecticut |
YouTube
video 26-Sep.-2009 |
|
Reject: |
U.S. president George H. W.
Bush |
Greenwich |
Connecticut |
YouTube video (Evidently spent too much time in Texas!) 16-Nov.-2009 |
|
John
Malkovich, filmmaker |
Benton |
Illinois |
YouTube video (Has “pin”≠“pen”, but Benton is “pin”=“pen”) 8-Jan.-2011 |
|
|
Bill
Doba, football coach |
New Carlisle |
Indiana |
YouTube video (Evidently has picked up some Southernisms from places he has coached!) 8-Jan.-2011 |
|
|
Reject: |
Hank
Harris, actor |
Duluth |
Minnesota |
YouTube video 1-May-2010 |
|
Reject: |
Rush Limbaugh, radio
personality[38]
|
Cape Girardeau |
Missouri |
YouTube
video 7-May-2009 |
|
Reject: |
Terry Teachout,
conservative writer24 |
Sikeston |
Missouri |
YouTube
video 7-May-2009 |
|
Reject: |
Melanie Wilkinson, reporter |
Clearwater |
Nebraska |
YouTube video (more info) “cot”=“caught”; where did that come from? |
|
Reject: |
Kyle Rosfeld, bootmaker |
Valentine |
Nebraska |
|
|
Reject: |
Harvey Perlman, Chancellor,
UNL |
York |
Nebraska |
YouTube video (more info) According to the previous website, he was raised in York, but this website and several others say he was born in Lincoln. So the question is, when did he move to York? Based on the other samples from York, which are Northern, I assume he does not represent York. Adj. 7-Nov.-2011 |
|
Reject: |
Leah Dizon, model |
Las Vegas |
Nevada |
YouTube video Native Las Vegan contributor Jim Hoffman said that this speaker has a slight Asian accent, and suggested Andre Agassi instead. Thanks! 5-Mar.-2011 |
|
Reject: |
Matt Bonner, pro basketball
player[39] |
Concord |
New Hampshire |
YouTube
video 2-June-2009 |
|
Reject: |
Richard Lederer, columnist |
Concord |
New Hampshire |
YouTube
video 2-June-2009 |
|
Reject: |
U.S. first lady Barbara Bush |
Rye |
New York |
YouTube video (Evidently spent too much time in Texas!) 16-Nov.-2009 |
|
Gavin Veris, pro football
player |
Chillicothe /chǐlǐkôthē/ [ˌʧʰɪlɪˈkʰɒθi] |
Ohio |
YouTube video Oops! He looks African American, but speaks General American, with no hint of AAVE, and with “pin”≠“pen”! I thought this was for historical reasons, e.g.: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chillicothe,_OH#History, and that he represented the local “white” dialect, but in fact the local white dialect has “pin”=“pen”, something I was able to determine by watching a documentary about the town, in which all the speakers were locals. Adj. 3-Nov.-2011 |
|
|
Reject: |
Gerald Tremblay, mayor |
Montreal |
Quebec |
YouTube video Does not have Canadian raising, but is a native French speaker! 1-July-2010 |
|
Mayor James Ruberto /rəbârtō/ [ɹəˈbeɹˌtʰoʊ] |
Pittsfield |
Massachusetts |
YouTube video (Sent in by Nicole Garzino. Thanks!) (more info) Nicole Garzino had proposed this speaker as representative of Pittsfield, even though he clearly has an Inland North accent. What makes it all confusing is that he apparently was raised and born in Pittsfield, at least according to the above web site, and for a while I adjusted the map assuming that he was representative, even though it make some weird bends in the lines. However, I have finally had to reject him, for reasons given under Gary Kitmacher. 20-Apr.-2011 |
|
|
Jean Charest, Premier of
Quebec |
Sherbrooke |
Quebec |
YouTube video Does not have Canadian raising, but is a native French speaker! 1-July-2010 |
|
|
Reject: |
Kevin Burke, entrepreneur |
Chattanooga |
Tennessee |
YouTube video (more info) He starts out with a non-southern “Hi!”, but immediately lapses into nearly pure Inland Southern! However, I recently realized that he may not have grown up in Chattanooga, but only in “southeast Tennessee”, as indicated on this website. Actually Chattanooga is Lowland Southern, as discussed in Inland and Lowland Southern and their relationship to the extent of slavery before the Civil War. Adj. 3-Nov.-2011 |
|
Reject: |
Two residents |
Trenton |
Tennessee |
Google video (It is not clear if this lady is from Trenton, but she speaks Lowland, and the people in the other clip from Trenton, who are far more likely to be natives, speak Inland. The sample of the other person in this clip is too short to be sure.) (Sent in by Eli K. Thanks!) 20-Feb.-2010 |
|
Reject: |
Dan Blocker, “Hoss” on Bonanza |
O’Donnell |
Texas |
YouTube video (Supposedly grew up in O’Donnell, in west Texas, but speaks Lowland. However, the information in Wikipedia is sketchy.) |
|
Reject: |
Female, born 1980, student
(some inconsistency with long /ī/ [a(ɪ)], but also some
signs of Inland Southern) |
Texarkana |
Texas |
IDEA audio (source) My main sample for Texarkana, Ross Perot, clearly speaks Lowland! Adj. 3-Nov.-2011 |
|
Reject: |
Jimbo Fisher, FSU assistant
football coach.[40]
|
Clarksburg |
West Virginia |
|
|
Reject: |
Larry Wilcox, actor |
Rawlins |
Wyoming |
YouTube video (Because he is an actor, he has evidently learned to say “ten-four” instead of “tin-four”!) 8-Feb.-2010 |
Special Interest and Historical Articles
|
The Cot-Caught Merger You will notice that in the most of the area on this map people pronounce “cot” and “caught” the same, the areas with either single or double hatching. However, much of this area is sparsely populated, so actually the majority of speakers in North America pronounce them differently, probably about 50% more[41]. Those of you in the first group may think, “How would they be different?” Or, if you can sometimes hear a difference in other people’s speech, you may say, “How could that be important?” On the other hand, those of you in the second group may be amazed to realize that some people pronounce them the same. That’s the way it is with language: people filter what other people say through their own language filter, and assume that other people pronounce things the way they do, when actually they don’t. 16-Nov.-2010 When I was living overseas in a community that was made up mostly of Americans and Canadians from various regions, I knew a family in which the father’s name was “Don”, and the daughter’s name was “Dawn”. Guess which group they belonged to! When I would be talking to someone about the family, and would mention that I had recently been chatting with Don, if they belonged to the “merger” group, they would often say, “Do you mean the father or the daughter?” Now, I consistently say those two names differently, but they couldn’t hear the difference! You might say, “Why would those people name their daughter Dawn, knowing the confusion it would cause?” The answer is: It never crossed their minds! To them, the two names were obviously pronounced differently, and it never even occurred to them that anyone would pronounce them the same! And there are plenty of word pairs for which this vowel distinction is the only difference, as the chart to the right shows. (The minimal pairs are especially interesting, since there are so many of them, and this list is probably still not exhaustive. If any of you can think of more minimal pairs, please let me know. Those in red are a short list to try if you don’t want to do the whole list.) So you see, it really does matter! Adj. 1-Nov.-2011 On the other hand, the amazing thing to me is that the
“merger” group gets along so well saying all these pairs of words the same!
One day my wife and I were talking about farming practices, something I know
almost nothing about, and she mentioned that they sometimes use “stocks” of
corn to make silage. At least, that’s what I heard her say. I was surprised.
“You mean they can’t just feed the corn to the cattle straight?” However, she
was actually referring to “stalks” of corn, which never occurred to me, since
I heard her say “stocks”. In fact, she says them both the same (with a
pronunciation closer to the way I say “stocks” than the way I say “stalks”),
so to her, the context should have told me which she meant, not the
pronunciation. Go figure! Other similar confusions continue to arise
occasionally in our marriage based on this distinction, but each time it
takes me a little less time to realize what she meant. Adj. 28-Oct.-2011 To see an even more complex system, see The Father-Bother distinction below. |
(Adj. 1-Nov.-2011) |
(The chart above shows the American pattern. Those in blue in the second column have short /ŏ/ in British English, and also possibly for some Northeasterners.) (Adj. 28-Oct.-2011) |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
* These words are distinguished in both American and British English, in those regions with the distinction. † Some Americans actually pronounce the “l” in some of these words, in which case pronouncing the pair differently proves nothing about the vowels. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did the cot-caught merger come from Scotland?
The three largest dialects that are characterized by the cot-caught merger, The West and the two main Canadian dialects, also have one other feature in common: the vowel of “too” is significantly more fronted than the vowel of “toe”. Now this situation is not seen in England, but it is in Scotland, where the difference in fronting of “too” and “toe” is even more extreme. And it turns out that many speakers of Scottish English also have the cot-caught merger! (In fact, they only have 12 vowels, having also merged the vowels in “good” and “food”.) Canadian English has other features like Scottish English, in particular the pronunciation of the long vowels in “boat” and “bait” as pure vowels rather than diphthongs, and the lower, more central pronunciation of the vowel in “bat”. Therefore, it seems likely that Canadian English, which had very heavy Scottish immigration, took all of these features from Scottish English. (Newfoundland also had very significant Irish influence, and this has given its English a distinctive Irish pronunciation, especially in Irish Newfoundland.) The dialect of the West in the U.S. may then have taken just the cot-caught merger and the fronting of the vowel of “too” from Canadian English, since no other U. S. dialect has the latter. 4-Apr.-2011
How the other dialects with the cot-caught merger got it is less clear, but it is evident from the map that they are all close to the Canadian border! In particular, based on the western settlement patterns, it seems fairly clear that the North Central dialect is simply a case of speakers from the North dialect who have adopted the cot-caught merger from the West and from Canada.
|
The Father-Bother distinction In New York City (NYC), Eastern New England (ENE), England, Australia, various other former British colonies, and possibly a few speakers in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, the words “father” and “bother” do not rhyme, having different vowels in the first syllable. Not only that, but in all of these areas except Eastern New England and possibly the Maritimes the words “father”, “bother”, and “broader” all have different vowels. However, the words with /ä/ (the vowel in “father”) are relatively few, so there are few minimal pairs. Adj. 21-Dec.-2011 I have only found one minimal triple, which was only possible by including the name Bach, which is not an English word in the strictest sense. The three words “Bach’s”, “box”, and “balks” would each be pronounced differently in most of these areas, including England. However, in New York City “Bach’s” and “box” are the same (confirmed by NYC contributor Kevin McNamara), even though New York City speakers make the three-way distinction in the other words listed, because of the fact that the phonetic pronunciations of /ä/ and /ŏ/ are reversed from the other regions, as shown in the chart. In Eastern New England “box” and “balks” would be the same, but “Bach’s” would be different. (In the chart, MEA means “Many Eastern Americans”. Obviously, all of those with the cot-caught merger would say them all with the same vowel, and I have not shown this.) 11-Jan.-2011 Part of the issue is the limited number of consonants which may follow the /ä/ vowel. That is, words with /ä/ are relatively few if you don’t count words in which an r has been dropped in the pronunciation, since most of these areas (though not the Maritimes) are systematic r-dropping regions. Thus, in most of these areas the words “father” and “farther” are identical, and most words spelled with “ar” are pronounced with /ä/. The chart on the right shows examples of these three groups of words. There is another group of words that have /ä/ in southern
England (and occasionally in Eastern New England), but /ă/ in most of
North America and the rest of Britain, like “staff”, “pass”, “half”, “bath”,
“rather”, etc. I have not included any of these in the chart. 30-Mar.-2010 Scotland is a special case: “father” and “bother” do not rhyme, but there is no distinction between /ä/ and /ă/, so “palm”=“Pam”, “psalm”=“Sam”, and “father” rhymes with “rather”. See the previous section for more info about the Scottish vowel system. 11-Jan.-2011 Those who lack the father-bother distinction will pronounce the vowels in the first two columns the same, except that the word “horrid” is variable, being pronounced /hŏrid/ ([ˈhɑɹɪd] or even [ˈhaɹɪd]) in the northeastern U.S., but /hôrid/ ([ˈhɔɹɪd] or even [ˈhoɹɪd]) by most Americans. Many similar words have this same variation, as in “horrible”, “porridge”, “coral”. |
(16-May-2011) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
* Most English speakers worldwide do not pronounce the “l” in these words, and in particular all of those with the Father-Bother distinction or who are systematic r-droppers apparently do not. However, many Americans do. See the following section, The Pronunciation of “alm” and “olk” and “alk”, for a discussion of these words. 24-Sep.-2011 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
† This is the same as “box” in New York City. 11-Jan.-2011` |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
‡ Many Eastern Americans (MEA) may pronounce this the same as “paw”, but I doubt that any with the father-bother distinction do. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Pronunciation of “alm” and “olk” and “alk”
Do you pronounce the “l” in the
red words in the chart below? How about in the blue words? I don’t pronounce
the “l” in any of them! However, I do pronounce the “l” in all of the green
words, though some people don’t pronounce it in all of these. I have recently
become aware that many Americans pronounce the “l” in the red words, and I’m
trying to find out if the distribution is regional, or is just all mixed up!
(The words in parentheses are not very common, so don’t pay attention to them
if you aren’t sure, or if they don’t work like the others.) 1-June-2011
Most Americans apparenly pronounce the “l” in the red words in the first column below, a smaller number pronounce the “l” in the red words in the second column, and an even smaller number pronounce the “l” in the red words in the third column, but like me some Americans definitely do not pronounce the “l” in any of them, nor do the vast majority of English speakers outside North America. 1-June-2011
I am fairly certain that no native English speakers pronounce the “l” in the blue words. However, I thought that was true of the third red column, and I was proved wrong, so please let me know. 8-June-2011
Please let me know which words you pronounce the “l” in, and which you don’t. Be sure to compare them with the words in black below to see if they rhyme. If they do, then you aren’t pronouncing the “l”! 1-June-2011
I have recently realized that some speakers pronounce “my folks” without the “l”, but “folk song” with an “l”. Similarly, some speakers pronounce “corn stalk” (a noun) without the “l”, but “I stalk the deer” (a verb) with an “l”. If any of you who have already answered the survey find that you do the same, please let me know. 24-Sep.-2011
|
calm |
yolk |
talk |
half |
would |
|
palm |
my folks |
walk |
calf |
could |
|
balm |
folk song |
chalk |
behalf |
should |
|
psalm |
(Polk) |
corn stalk (noun) |
|
|
|
qualm |
|
I stalk the deer
(verb) |
|
|
|
alms |
|
balk |
|
|
|
(napalm) |
|
calk/caulk |
|
|
|
(malmsey) |
|
(Falklands) |
|
|
|
almond |
polka (dance) |
falcon |
Ralph |
mould |
|
|
talc |
|
|
|
|
If any of the red words above rhyme with any of the words
in the same column below, then you are not pronouncing the “l”! |
I believe that the blue words above rhyme with the words
in the same column below for all speakers. Let me know if I am wrong! |
|||
|
bomb* |
poke |
hawk |
chaff |
wood |
|
arm* |
cloak |
squawk |
laugh |
good |
|
farm* |
soak |
gawk |
|
|
|
|
|
auk |
|
|
|
|
|
hock |
|
|
|
|
|
dock |
|
|
|
|
|
cock |
|
|
|
|
|
wok |
|
|
* Very few English speakers rhyme “bomb” with “arm” or “farm”. (Apparently only the Providence Rhode Island dialect does!) However, some Americans rhyme the red words in the first column above with “bomb”, not pronouncing the “l”. Distinctly, most systematic r-droppers, e.g. Eastern New England, NYC, and Standard British rhyme them with “arm”, again not pronouncing the “l”. 11-July-2011
Background Info
In English the number of words which end in “alm” or “alms” is limited. The only ones of these which are really common, well-known words are listed in the first column of the first chart above, although obviously there are other words derived from these that are also common, like “embalm” or “becalm” or “psalms”. (This web site lists a few more, but they are so rare they don’t even show up in standard dictionaries. The word “realm” doesn’t count, since its pronunciation is completely different.) So, the list is short, though it is clearly a pronunciation pattern. Now, around the world most English speakers, including myself, do not pronounce the “l” in these words, and these words contribute to the short list of words containing the /ä/ vowel for those speakers who do not rhyme the words “father” and “bother”, as discussed in the previous section. For this reason this list of words, though short, is somewhat important when discussing how many vowels a particular speaker has. 19-May-2011
Until recently I had assumed that historically the “l” in all of the red words above was completely lost in all English dialects, and that the few speakers who did pronounce the “l” did so because it had been reintroduced based on a “bookish” pronunciation. However, I seem to have been quite wrong. A number of contributors to this page have written in and told me so, after seeing the “alm” words listed in the previous section, and marked as having a “silent l”. Thus, contributor Jon from Sacramento, California disagrees: “I would also note that all of the words that you list with a silent ‘l’ in your father-bother distinction (balm, psalm, palm, alms, calming) I would say with a swallowed but still present to varying degrees “l” sound, and I think the majority of people I grew up with in Sacramento would too.” Thus he pronounces “balm” as /bŏlm/ ([ˈbɒɫm] (he does not distinguish “cot” and “caught”), with a “dark l”, which would sound almost “swallowed”, as he describes it, though clearly there. 19-May-2011
I should have realized that it wasn’t a bookish pronunciation, since it only applies to certain groups of words, as shown in the first chart above, not to all words with silent “l”, of which there are many. I have listed the main groups in the first chart above. 3-June-2011
After I was challenged by these two contributors, I went looking on the Internet, and found that there is indeed one American dictionary that lists a pronunciation of some of these words with the “l” pronounced, the Online Merriam-Webster dictionary, in all of these words: calm, palm, balm, psalm, qualm, alms, and napalm, and even provides audio samples of the “l” pronunciation. This was surprising to me, since most dictionaries, both American and British, give only a pronunciation with no “l”. (Merriam-Webster also gives another pronunciation /kăm/ for “calm”, which would evidently be the Scottish pronunciation, like “palm” mentioned above.) 16-May-2011
Contributor Y.I. has pointed out to me that the ANAE Ch. 2, p. 14 had also observed this phenonemonen: “Words with vocalized /l/ formed a part of this class: calm, palm, balm, almond, though a large number of North Americans have retained or restored the /l/.” Like me, they are apparently unsure whether the “l” was retained or restored, and unfortunately they have not provided any help about the regional distribution. (In this book, also found by Y.I., the assumption is simply made that these “l”s are retained because of spelling pronunciations, without providing any evidence.) I had not previously thought of the word “almond” as belonging to this class, since I myself pronounce the “l” in this word, as /ôlmənd/ ([ˈɒlmənd], quite different from my “calm” /kŏm/ ([ˈkʰɑm]. (I distinguish “cot” and “caught” but not “father” and “bother”.) However, after consulting my many dictionaries, none of them recognize such a pronunciation, but say that the proper pronunciation is either /ämənd/ or /ămənd/! I checked with my wife, who is from Nebraska and does not pronounce the “l” in “calm”, though she does in “balm”, and she does pronounce it in “almond”, just as I do. The Online Merriam-Webster dictionary comes the closest to our pronunciation, at least recognizing that some people do pronounce the “l”, but they give the options as /ämənd/, /ămənd/, /älmənd/, or /ălmənd/. I find the third of these four options extremely unlikely, and speculate that perhaps a speaker for whom /ä/ = /ŏ/ = /ô/ may have worked on this entry.) Most American dictionaries give both /ämənd/ and /ămənd/, and according to contributor Marna Ducharme, her grandmother who always lived in New York City said /ămənd/ [ˈæmənd]. Not only that, but several contributors (Emmor Nile, James Divine, John Kelly), have told me that it has the /ămənd/ [ˈæmənd] pronunciation throughout California’s Central Valley, where they grow lots of them! In any case, it seems clear that “almond” often does not go along with the other “alm” words. Adj. 2-Oct.-2011
Later I realized that a lot of people also pronounce the “l” in “folk” and “yolk”, as shown in the Initial Survey Results chart below. Almost all of these also pronounce the “l” in “calm”, suggesting that the two word groups are part of the same pattern of “l” retention. 8-June-2011
So this seems to be a conservative feature harking back to a time when the “l” in the red words was pronounced by all speakers, and as such, is probably a regional feature like the others on the map. 8-June-2011
If this is a conservative feature, then it must have been brought over to the U.S. from some region of Great Britain or Ireland. However, there is almost no trace of this “l” anywhere in this area, not even in Scotland or Ireland, from which many of the conservative features in American English came. However, my trusty contributor Y.I. has been able to track down one possible source: what is called the West Country of England (really the extreme southwest) apparently continues to pronounce this “l”, according to John Wells in The Accents of English, page 346, in a section describing the vowels in the West Country. According to this article, <<The West Country accent is probably most identified in American English as “pirate speech” - cartoon-like “Ooh arr, me ’earties! Sploice the mainbrace!” talk is very similar. This may be a result of the strong seafaring and fisherman tradition of the West Country, both legal and outlaw.>> Clearly this accent could have had influence in the Americas (as suggested in this linguistics book tracked down by contributor Y.I.), though why the influence has been so pervasive is unclear. 6-Sep.-2011
In any case, the retention of this “l” thus does not seem to depend on whether or not “cot”=“caught”, since it occurs across the continent. However, I am fairly certain that all speakers who are systematic r-droppers always lack the “l” in the “calm” group, and that all speakers with the father-bother distinction do too. This makes sense, since the resulting vowel is /ä/, which mainly occurs as the result of r-dropping. It is less clear why the “yolk” group would drop the “l” for this group, since the resulting vowel /ō/ [oʊ] does not normally occur as a result of r-dropping. Adj. 2-Oct.-2011
Initial Survey Results
Unlike the other data on the main map, this data is not from audio or video sound samples, but from self-analysis and direct interviews, since finding individual words in sound samples is almost impossible. It appears that the vast majority of Americans pronounce the “l” in “calm”, except for those in systematic r-dropping areas (as mentioned in the previous section), and nearby areas like Poughkeepsie and Port Chester, New York, in the Eastern North dialect. (New Orleans seems to have followed NYC in this as in many other features, at least as far as the common words go.) So it would seem that I am in a small minority! Evidently my dialect was influenced by my parents more than I realized: my Dad was from Port Chester, New York, an area that does not pronounce the “l”, and my mother was originally from Australia, which is a systematic r-dropping area, and so again does not pronounce the “l”. Even so, I can’t believe I didn’t even notice such a widespread pattern for so long! As for Canada, it seems likely that many or most there also retain the “l”, though so far I only have data for one location. 6-Sep.-2011
We now seem to have enough data that the geographical pattern is becoming clear for the “calm” group and for the “yolk” group, though the “talk” group remains unclear. However, we clearly still need more data to map these patterns fully, in particular we need more locations where the “l” in these words is definitely not pronounced. Help me out, people. This is a very simple thing for you to write in and tell me: “I grew up in X, and I pronounce the “l” in all these words,” or “I grew up in Y, and I don’t pronounce the “l” in any of these words except ‘almond’,” or whatever the case may be. 9-June-2011
|
Person |
Raised in |
“cot”= “caught”? |
Other info |
Pronounce “l” in “calm”, etc. |
Pronounce “l” in “almond” |
Pronounce “l” in “yolk”, etc. |
Pronounce “l” in “talk”, etc. |
|
Yuri |
Toronto, Ontario |
yes |
contributor 6-Sep.-2011 |
yes |
yes |
no (only “Polk” yes) |
most no “baulk” yes “caulk” yes |
|
Amanda Hocking |
Sacramento (Citrus Heights), California |
yes |
contributor 23-July-2011 |
yes |
yes |
yes |
“talk” no “walk” no “stalk” no “chalk” yes “balk” yes “caulk” yes |
|
Jon |
Sacramento, California |
yes |
contributor |
yes |
no: /ămənd/ [ˈæmənd]? |
? |
? |
|
Je.Ha. |
Oakland, California |
yes |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 |
yes |
? |
yes |
? |
|
James Divine |
Fresno, California |
yes |
contributor 20-May-2011 |
yes |
no: /ămənd/ [ˈæmənd] |
no |
? |
|
Ju.Ar. |
Ventura, California |
yes |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 8-June-2011 |
yes |
? |
no (only “Polk” yes) |
? |
|
Fe.Mo. |
Oxnard, California |
yes |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 |
yes |
? |
yes |
? |
|
M.M. |
Los Angeles, California |
yes |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 |
yes |
yes |
no |
most no “caulk” yes, “Falklands” yes |
|
Yu.k.Jo. |
Pomona, California |
no (!) |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 |
yes |
? |
yes |
? |
|
Ma.Pa. |
Upland, California |
yes |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 |
yes |
? |
yes |
? |
|
Ma.Cu. |
Escondido, California |
yes |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 8-June-2011 |
yes |
? |
no (only “Polk” yes) |
? |
|
Jonathan |
California |
yes |
on this website |
yes |
? |
? |
no |
|
Sabrina Badger |
Carson City, Nevada |
Yes |
contributor New! 30-Nov.-2011 |
yes |
yes |
no (only maybe “Polk” yes) |
most no “balk” yes, “caulk” yes, “Falklands” yes |
|
Ma.Ca. |
Houston, Texas |
yes (!) |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 |
yes |
? |
yes |
? |
|
Za.Ri. |
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania |
no |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 |
yes |
? |
yes |
? |
|
Ali King |
Portland, Oregon |
yes |
contributor New! 18-Nov.-2011 |
yes |
yes |
yes (“yolk” no) |
most no “balk” yes, “caulk” yes |
|
(friend of Jennifer Nagel) |
Oregon |
yes |
|
yes |
? |
? |
? |
|
Randy Howell |
Kelso, Washington |
yes |
contributor 19-May-2011 |
yes |
? |
“yolk” no sometimes “folk” yes |
“talk” no “walk” no “stalk” no “balk” yes “caulk” yes |
|
Christina Aschmann |
Bremerton, Washington |
yes |
my daughter-in-law 8-June-2011 |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
“OhKaty” |
Utah |
yes |
on this website |
yes |
? |
? |
? |
|
“Jaques S” |
Anchorage, Alaska |
yes |
on this website |
yes |
? |
? |
? |
|
Kirk Sniff |
Lamar, Colorado |
yes |
contributor New! 30-Nov.-2011 |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Tom Brokaw |
South Dakota |
no? |
according to this website; he moved around the state too much for me to use him as a local sample |
yes |
? |
? |
? |
|
Larry Unruh |
Wallace, Nebraska |
yes |
my brother-in-law New! 21-Oct.-2011 |
“calm” no, others yes |
yes |
“yolk” no “my folks” no “folk song” yes “Polk” yes |
“talk” no “walk” no “chalk” no “caulk” no “corn stalk” no “stalk” (verb) yes “balk” yes “Falklands yes |
|
Sharla Unruh |
Casper, Wyoming |
yes |
my brother-in-law’s wife Adj. 16-Dec.-2011 |
“calm” no, others yes |
yes |
“yolk” no “my folks” no “folk song” yes “Polk” yes |
“talk” no “walk” no “chalk” no “corn stalk” no “stalk” (verb) yes “balk” yes “caulk” yes “Falklands yes |
|
Arlene Unruh |
Axtell, Nebraska |
yes |
my mother-in-law New! 21-Oct.-2011 |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Rebecca Ratzlaff |
Omaha, Nebraska |
no |
contributor New! 28-Oct.-2011 |
yes |
yes |
yes |
most no “Falklands” yes |
|
Jennifer Nagel |
Minneapolis, Minnesota |
no |
contributor |
yes |
? |
? |
? |
|
Lewis Thorwaldson |
Rothschild, Wisconsin |
no? |
contributor |
yes |
yes |
no (only “Polk” yes) |
most no “balk” yes, “Falklands” yes |
|
Robert Edwards |
Central Wisconsin |
no |
contributor |
yes sometimes “calm” no |
yes |
no |
no “balk” yes only in sports, “caulk” yes only as a verb |
|
Daniel Mathews |
Columbia, Missouri |
no |
contributor |
yes |
? |
? |
? |
|
Tim |
St. Louis, Missouri |
no |
on this website 17-May-2011 |
yes |
? |
yes |
? |
|
Y.I. |
Quincy, Illinois |
no |
contributor |
yes |
? |
yes |
no |
|
“windy city” |
Chicago, Illinois |
no |
on this website |
yes |
? |
? |
? |
|
ma.ba. |
New Orleans |
no |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 9-June-2011 |
“calm” no, “palm” no, “balm” no, others yes |
yes |
no |
“talk” no, “walk” no, “chalk” no, others yes |
|
Nicholas Miller |
Camden, South Carolina |
no |
contributor 18-May-2011 |
yes |
? |
? |
? |
|
Melissa Gordon |
Byron, Georgia |
no |
contributor 2-June-2011 |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Alex Coblentz |
Frederick, Maryland |
no |
contributor Adj. 16-Dec.-2011 |
yes |
yes |
“yolk” no “you folks” no “folk music” yes “Polk” yes |
no |
|
Marna Ducharme |
Burlington, Vermont |
no* |
contributor |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
|
Ann Roubal |
Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
no |
contributor 8-Sep.-2011 |
no |
no |
no |
no |
|
To.Ba. |
Cleveland, Ohio |
no |
Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 |
no |
? |
yes (!) |
? |
|
Herman Aschmann |
Port Chester, New York |
no |
my father |
no |
? |
no |
no |
|
Marna Ducharme’s grandmother |
New York City |
no |
father-bother distinction, systematic r-dropper |
no |
no: /ămənd/ [ˈæmənd] |
no? |
no |
|
Larry S. |
Poughkeepsie, New York |
no |
friend 1-Sep.-2011 |
no |
? |
no? “Polk” yes? |
no “balk” yes |
(16-May-2011)
* Although she grew up in Burlington, she was strongly influenced by her NYC relatives, and retains the distinction. 23-May-2011
Inland and Lowland Southern and their relationship to the extent of slavery before the Civil War
Before discussing the distribution of Inland Southern and Lowland Southern, I need to define them more clearly, since I find that there is a lot of confusion as to what I mean by Inland South versus Lowland South.
Inland South has full monophthongization of long /ī/ [aɪ] to [a]. This means that all long /ī/ vowels are not diphthongs [aɪ], but essentially pure vowels, usually [a] (which is clearly distinguished from /ŏ/ [ɑ]). Thus, the “i”s in “ride”, “buy”, and “right” are all the same, and all sound quite Southern! 2-Mar.-2011
However, Lowland South only has partial monophthongization of long /ī/ [aɪ] to [a]. The vowels of “ride” and “buy” have the Southern vowel [a], but the vowel of “right” is a diphthong [aɪ], with a pronunciation a bit more like other parts of the United States. The specific rule is this: before voiceless sounds the vowel is a diphthong, but elsewhere it is not. Voiceless sounds are p, t, ch, k, f, s, sh, or th (as is “python”, where it is voiceless, not as in “lithe”, where it is voiced). Why does it work that way? Ah, that kind of question doesn’t have a good answer in human language! However, to put it another way, how is it that they follow such a technical rule without knowing it? That does have an answer: patterns such as this are common in human language, even though the speakers are totally unaware of them at a conscious level. 13-Jan.-2011
Thus, to determine if a particular speaker speaks Inland or Lowland Southern, first make sure he speaks Southern at all by listening to words like “ride” and “buy”. If he does, then listen to words with voiceless sounds like “ripe”, “bite”, “righteous” (which has a ch sound in spite of the spelling), “like”, “life”, “ice” (s sound), “python”, etc.
The ANAE chapter 18 uses more complex criteria to distinguish their varieties of Southern, but I find theirs to be unwieldy, so I have gone for the simpler criterion, which seems to be sufficient, as seen in the next paragraph.
A surprising pattern seen on the map is the peculiar way in which the two Southern dialect areas are intertwined. It turns out that the current pattern of Lowland Southern matches to an amazing degree the areas with a high percentage of slaves before the Civil War, as shown by this famous antique map. Granted, there are a few minor surprises, but what is astonishing is not the occasional surprises, but how few the surprises are! 10-Mar.-2010
What seems likely is that the Inland Southern dialect spread west and south first, and then the Lowland Southern dialect was spread later by the slaveholding “aristocracy”, but never penetrated into areas unsuitable for large plantations, such as mountainous areas or dryer areas in the west. An exceptional area is Virginia, where Lowland Southern spread westward into non-slaveholding areas, and adjacent areas of West Virginia and North Carolina. Another exceptional area seems to be south Georgia and north Florida, which no Inland Southern speakers apparently ever reached. 29-Apr.-2010
The “r-dropping” areas (the green lines) and “Tidewater raising” (the pink line) also seem to be restricted to these slaveholding areas.
One result of this later spread of Lowland Southern is that Inland Southern was nearly broken into two sections, divided by what might be called the “Nashville-Huntsville Corridor”. (If you look at a satellite map of this area, you can actually see this corridor in a lighter color outlined by darker forests, a fascinating geographic demonstration of my theory. This is not to say that as a general rule Inland areas are forested and Lowland areas are not, but it holds true in this case. This corridor follows parts of river valleys in the north and the south, while the middle section follows the smoother central part of the Cumberland plateau.) A narrow neck around Iuka, Mississippi remains to connect the two sections of Inland Southern. Adj. 2-Nov.-2011
However, as more data comes in an expected result of this should be that there will be occasional islands of one dialect surrounded by the other, and this indeed seems to be the case with Chattanooga, Tennessee. This is an important city in southeastern Tennessee. I most recently spent some time there in October, 2011, was able to listen to many native speakers, and was able to determine that it is a solidly Lowland Southern city, being situated in a fairly large flat plain, and having a strategic location on the river. However, it is surrounded on all sides by mountainous country which speaks Inland Southern, making it a linguistic island! Adj. 3-Nov.-2011
One interesting corroboration of my theory is political: After the Civil War, the former slave states tended to elect exclusively Democratic Party candidates, rejecting the Republican party as the party of Lincoln. This phenomenon is referred to as the Solid South, which remained so at least up into the 1960’s. However, certain areas of the south, primarily in mountain areas like the Appalachians and the Ozarks, where little or no slavery had existed, resisted this tendency, and aligned themselves with the Union and with the Republican Party, consistently electing Republican candidates throughout this period. The fascinating map on this web page shows what areas of the south these were, at least in the 1940 election. (Notice particularly the circled areas, and the discussion about these.) Notice the correlation between these areas, my map, and the slavery map mentioned above: If we exclude the areas in Texas (which apparently represent later German immigration, at least according to the discussion on the web page), none of these areas is Lowland South (except for Sampson County, North Carolina, for which I have no explanation). Instead, ignoring the exceptions mentioned, they are all Inland South, except for part of Missouri, which is Midland! Winston County, Alabama, is in fact famous for the degree to which it opposed secession during the Civil War, being known as the “Free State of Winston”! This is not to say that Inland South areas in general vote Republican: they don’t, and in Texas and Oklahoma they are as Solid South as anywhere else. I am only saying that such areas are consistently in the Inland South region. 12-June-2010
Charleston is clearly a special case of Lowland Southern, as is clear by listening to it. The Down East & Outer Banks dialect doesn’t sound very Southern at all, but does at least have the “Tidewater raising”. Florida doesn’t count, since it had a huge influx of Yankees in the 20th century. In fact, Florida is effectively upside down: the farther south you go in Florida, the more Northern people sound! Adj. 19-Nov.-2011
Possible Southern Class
Distinction?
It has been often been suggested (or assumed) that in some areas there is also a social-status distinction between what I have called “Inland Southern” (sometimes referred to as “hillbilly” or “country”, as in “He sure talks country!”) and “Lowland Southern”, with people from higher-class family backgrounds favoring the “Lowland Southern” pattern, and this would make sense if my hypothesis as to its spread is true. Even so, evidence of such a social distinction does not appear in very many places, and only near the border between these two regions. Three such areas are an area surrounding Dallas and Fort Worth in Texas and an area around Greenville, which evidently Inland Southern areas, but in which a number of people born and raised there (like Ross Perot, Jr. or Kenny Marchant) have Lowland Southern accents, mostly people in the middle and upper socioeconomic class, and Little Rock, Arkansas, which is clearly a Lowland Southern area, but in which several samples of people born and raised there show traces of Inland Southern, notably people in what are often viewed as working class professions. Such areas will be marked on the map surrounded by a dotted red line, and samples showing this variation will be marked with “See Possible Southern Class Distinction?.” Adj. 2-Jan.-2012
However, “Inland Southern” is NOT equivalent to “hillbilly”, nor do people who talk “really really southern” or even “really really country” necessarily speak Inland rather than Lowland. Some people who sound “really really Southern” actually speak Lowland Southern based on the definition I am using, which seems to match high slave density areas, whereas some people whose speech doesn’t sound quite as “strong”, or who are obviously well educated and sophisticated, actually speak Inland Southern. Even so, it is true that areas generally recognized as more “hillbilly”, such as the Appalachians or the Ozarks, do indeed fall within Inland Southern, so one could say that “hillbilly” is definitely a subset of Inland Southern and not of Lowland Southern. As for “redneck”, this term has absolutely no linguistic meaning, so don’t try using this map to find out where the “rednecks” live! Adj. 12-Dec.-2011
According to contributor A.T.W., in Texas the status of Inland Southern is different from its status in the east:
I hadn’t realized, until I heard the Fess Parker clip, that the Inland Southern accent is the same as the west/central Texas accent I often hear in Houston. It’s odd, but I think you’re absolutely correct: they’re almost identical.
The interesting point is
that this is actually a high status
accent here, although regarded as a “hill-billy” accent in the East. When I
moved to Texas 30 years ago and decided to adopt a slightly more local “voice”
in my law practice, this was the accent I adopted -- it was the dialect of the
senior lawyers and judges, oil men, and others with whom I wanted to
communicate. Many of them came from wealthier ranching families in central
Texas and settled in Houston as the first post-war generation of professionals
and white-collar business people. I suspect this is a somewhat dated status
distinction today, but that dialect still tends to receive something similar to
the automatic credence which an educated English accent used to get in the
northeast. 10-Mar.-2011
Who woulda thunk it?
Original Area of Inland
Southern
But all this leaves the question: Where did Inland Southern start out? What was its original area? If we look at this map showing settlement as of 1800, we see that the earliest settled areas of what is now the Inland South region are located on either side of the Cumberland Gap, through which nearly all of the western settlement from the South took place at that time. This settlement process would have involved much mixing of populations and dialects, and it seems likely that Inland Southern was the result of this mixing, thus distinguishing it from the more settled Lowland Southern. I have now marked the Cumberland Gap on my map, and it can be seen that it lies almost exactly in the center of the northernmost node of Inland Southern, which would have been its original area. The Appalachian Mountains themselves, including the Cumberland Gap area, were not settled until later, since it was not desirable land, but the settlers were evidently speakers moving south from this original area, as the map suggests. 29-Apr.-2010
This does not explain why Inland Southern is almost non-existent in West Virginia (except for the Hatfield-McCoy area), which speaks almost entirely Lowland Southern in the southern part, in spite of being almost entirely mountains, and Midland in the north. It turns out that its settlement pattern was different from the rest of the Appalachians (check out this interesting 1861 voting map, which lines up almost exactly with my map). In any case Inland Southerners apparently tended to move east and south into new lands, not north. 30-Apr.-2010
Classical Southern and African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
The r-dropping areas in the Lowland South (marked with a
dark green line) could be described as “Classical
Southern”. This is the accent that Scarlett O’Hara is attempting to
imitate in this clip from Gone with the
Wind. This area represents the heart of the old plantation system, as
can be seen on the map mentioned above. However, this feature seems to only
occur in older settled areas, and does not occur in western areas on the Mississippi
River or farther west that were settled after about 1825. 7-Dec.-2009
Within this area older speakers seem to be consistent in maintaining this pattern. However, many younger ones in this area seem to be pronouncing all of their r’s, and I will include some of these with a comment. Outside of this area (but always within the Lowland Southern area) there will occasionally be much older speakers who do speak Classical Southern. I will comment individually on each of these, and will mark their city surrounded by a dotted green line. 23-July-2011
African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the dialect of most African Americans in the United States, is derived from Classical Southern, and shares its main features and many other features. However, it also has a number of distinctive features. I have not generally included AAVE in this study, since its geographical distribution tends to be independent of “white” dialects, primarily because after the Civil War large numbers of former slaves moved to all parts of the U.S., and tended to form their own communities, retaining their unique dialect. However, in many areas of the Lowland South no such migration occurred, and in these areas AAVE and “white” dialects share features and clearly have developed together, so in these areas I have sometimes included AAVE samples. AAVE tends to retain r-dropping more than “white” dialects do, even among younger speakers, and throughout the United States in African American communities. Adj. 2-Jan.-2012
The Pin-Pen Merger, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Texas Cattle Drives
As can be seen on the map, the pin-pen merger is primarily a Southern feature, but has spread well beyond the South. I suspect that this has happened for two principal historical processes, both of them involving Southerners moving west and North. 12-June-2010
1. The first was the settlement of the Kansas and Nebraska territories, driven in part by the political issues concerning slavery surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Evidently the bulk of the Southern settlement stopped at the Platte River in what is now eastern Nebraska, as can be seen by the comment about people “sympathetic towards the Confederate cause” in the Wikipedia article about Lincoln, Nebraska. This is where the pin-pen line runs in Eastern Nebraska: south of the Platte River. (The rest of Nebraska was not really settled until after the Civil War, and the line crosses to the north side of the Platte River west of Grand Island, though it does return to it briefly between Gothenburg and North Platte. At North Platte the river splits into the North and South Platte, and as the pin-pen line moves west it stays north of the North Platte.) Adj. 7-Nov.-2011
2. Farther west the line runs much further north, and, I suspect, was spread north up the cattle drive trails from Texas in the late 1800’s, presumably by Texas cowboys who hired on for a drive and decided to settle down somewhere along the trail home. This can be seen by comparing the pin-pen line with this map of the cattle drive trails. 29-Apr.-2011
Another view of this map that is slightly easier to read is: www.foatwurth.com/index_files/image3671.gif (from www.foatwurth.com/index_files/GreatTrails.htm). This map is quite accurate, even though the red trails were added to show details from a fictional book, and the “Hat Creek Cattle Company” is fictional. Other maps corroborating the northern extent of the cattle trails are: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cattle-trails.jpg and www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hh/thro/images/thro8.jpg (from www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hh/thro/throb.htm). See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_drives_in_the_United_States, where Miles City, MT and Medora, ND are specifically mentioned.
In addition to these two major influences, there are several additional areas for the pin-pen merger. One, which is no surprise, is that there is a small area of pin-pen merger that spreads west from the tail end of the Southern area. This seems to reach as far west as Arizona, but does not reach California. This area was settled by a mixed population even before the Civil War, but these included a large proportion of southerners, and during the Civil war the southern half of what became Arizona and New Mexico seceded from the Union, as discussed in the Wikipedia article on Traditional Arizona. 29-Apr.-2011
Another very interesting area is the San
Joaquin Valley in California, which apparently adopted the pin-pen merger during the Great
Depression, as a result of over a million “Okies” who moved there in the 1930’s. The ANAE had marked just Bakersfield as “pin”=“pen”,
but the merger appears to cover the entire valley. However, obviously older
speakers do not have it: contributor James Divine, who grew up mostly around
Fresno, and was born in the mid 1940’s, has “pin”≠“pen”. (I had
previously thought that this merger also extended north to include parts of the
Sacramento
Valley as well, which is the northern part of California’s
Central Valley, but contributor Jon, a native of Sacramento, assures me
that in Sacramento “pin”≠“pen”).
20-May-2011
Another area, which to me was a bit unexpected, is the Salt Lake City area. 11-Jan.-2011
The following is from contributor Branden Collingsworth (thanks!):
My wife and I are from Nebraska. She was born in Omaha and I was born in Lincoln. More than once I’ve asked her to “hand me that pen” and she replies “The pen or the pin?” I’ve tried to convince her that there is no difference in the pronunciation: of course, I don’t hear it. I was pretty amused to learn that we speak different sub-dialects. 14-Feb.-2011
New York City and Its Offspring
The Greater New York City dialect is the second most unusual dialect in all of North America (after New Orleans). It has many unusual features, and, more than any other city, New York seems to have historically shown great variation by social class, which is why I give so many audio examples. The following descriptions explain the classes marked in the chart with **: 10-May-2011
The classic working class dialect has “curl”=“coil”, and “dese” and “dose”; the latter is still heard in the modern working class dialect. Bennett Cerf and Humphrey Bogart are classic middle class, and have “curl”=“coil”, but not “dese” and “dose”. The curl-coil merger has nearly died out, according to William Labov, though there are plenty of well-known examples in recent history. Actually, it hasn’t completely died out! I have recently found two clips of people from Greater New York City who do still retain the curl-coil merger, Tommy DeVito and Skip Tollefson. And even Regis Philbin still seems to use the old pronunciation of the “curl”/”coil” vowel in a few words, like “circus” in his video clip. 3-Mar.-2011
Franklin Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt both speak what is sometimes called Mid-Atlantic English, (quite distinct from what the ANAE chapter 17 calls Mid-Atlantic, which I am calling Atlantic Midland). According to the Wikipedia article, Teddy speaks more “naturally” than Franklin, but structurally I see little difference between their dialects. They do not seem to have the had - bad distinction of New York City, reflecting instead the British 15-vowel system. Eleanor Roosevelt, Teddy’s niece and Franklin’s wife, went to an even greater extreme, and spoke almost pure Standard British English. (She was raised mostly in the U.S., but was educated with private tutors, and went to finishing school in England.) Another sample, that of Doris “Granny D” Haddock, shows the Eastern New England variety of Mid-Atlantic English, with only the 14 vowels of Eastern New England. 14-Apr.-2011
The ANAE chapter 17 says that “One of the most startling facts about New York City is the narrow extent of its influence in the surrounding area,” and that its boundary “has remained fixed for more than two centuries... This geographic restriction appears to be associated with the negative prestige of the New York City vernacular...” In other words, everybody thinks the New York City dialect is really weird, even though we are all fascinated with it!
The differences are of class, not section of town, according to William Labov: The ANAE chapter 17 says “Within this metropolitan linguistic area, there is no reliable evidence for geographic differentiation. The stereotype Brooklynese is used to refer to working-class New York City speech, whether the speaker is a resident of Brooklyn, Queens, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, or Jersey City. Many members of the public are convinced that they can recognize a Queens or Bronx or Jersey accent, but it appears that these geographic labels are in fact labels for perceived social class differences.”
Though its influence on the surrounding area has been limited, it has had a lot of effect on the speech of Cincinnati and of New Orleans (see the Dialect Description Chart), and shares the short-a split with the Atlantic Midland region.
The various dialects of New Orleans make it the most unusual dialect situation in all of North America. Some neighborhoods speak Classical Southern, and other neighborhoods speak a dialect which doesn’t sound Southern at all, but instead sounds exactly like New York City until you listen for a while. I have taken several dialect samples from this clip from the “YEAH, YOU RITE” documentary. This clip is a dialect student’s dream, and explains in some detail the dialect situation in New Orleans. I used four samples from this clip because it was clear what neighborhood of New Orleans they were each from. I would have used more, but it was impossible to determine what part of town the other speakers were from.
The entire documentary does not seem to be available on the Internet, except for purchase. I did, however, find a transcript, which helped a bit in identifying speakers. 14-Jan.-2011
New Orleans seems to be the only city in North America in which the entire city does not have the same dialect. In this respect it is like London of the early 1900’s, as is implied by the speaker on the park bench who refers to “’Enry ’Iggins or Higgins”, the dialect expert in the movie My Fair Lady. This fact, explained in some detail by several of the speakers in the “YEAH, YOU RITE” documentary, seems to have been missed by the ANAE (Ch. 18) (see pages 259 and following), since they treat the city as a whole in their descriptions.
Help! I need a lot more info about New Orleans neighborhoods and their dialects. In particular, I would love to know who the guy on the park bench is, and where exactly he grew up. (I at least now have that information about the narrator, Billy Delle!) 14-Apr.-2011
Wards: It is not uncommon for New Orleanians to identify where they are from by their ward number, and several of the speakers do so. These are not neighborhoods, but voting wards, and seem to radiate away from the Mississippi River in long strips. For a map of the wards. see: www.louisianarebuilds.info/files/wards.pdf. 23-Feb.-2010
Where do they speak without an accent? Or where do they speak “General American”?
This question implies that there is an accepted standard of spoken American English which is perceived as not having any strictly regional features. In other words, any features which are distinctly northern, southern, eastern or western would be excluded. And indeed there is such a standard, used by most radio and television news staff throughout the U.S. Applying such a definition rigorously leaves us with the orange striped areas on the map, in parts of the Central Midland and South Florida, and the southern fringe of the North. Applying a slightly less rigorous definition would also include some neighboring areas on the map, although these all have some noticeable regional features. For instance, San Francisco and East Midland both sound just a little bit too eastern, areas below the pin-pen line sound just a bit southern, etc. The Wikipedia article on General American covers the question fairly well, and in some detail, and I recommend reading it. The area mapped in that article covers the same general area in the Midwest as mine, but I would not include all of the cities included there.
The Canadian standard dialect is obviously distinct from the American one, and corresponds to what is spoken in most of Canada, excluding the Atlantic Provinces. Adj. 21-Dec.-2011
Do some geographic features coincide with dialect boundaries or areas? 17-Dec.-2010
Yes, some do, though obviously many do not. I have included a number of the former on the map, and even a few of the latter. These are all marked on the map in Dark Blue, or in a few cases in Rust.
The following geographic features (arranged more or less from west to east) seem to have a direct correlation with some dialect area, boundary, or feature: Adj. 1-Nov.-2011
Suisun /səsōōn/ [səˈsun] Bay: This bay, along with the Carquinez /kärkēnəs/ [ˌkʰɑɹˈkʰinəs] Strait, San Francisco Bay, and the Golden Gate (which are not marked) define the northern border of the San Francisco Bay dialect. 28-Apr.-2011
The San Joaquín /săn wŏkēn/ [ˌsæn ˌwɑˈkʰin] River: See The Pin-Pen Merger, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Texas Cattle Drives. 28-Apr.-2011
The Sierra Nevada (California): The dip in long /ō/ [oʊ] fronting in the Great Basin (possibly represented by Mormon settlement) stopped at the Sierra Nevada.
Death Valley: Obviously a geographic barrier to travel! Continues the Great Basin line. 5-Mar.-2011
Grand Canyon: Obviously a geographic barrier to travel! Continues the Great Basin line. 5-Mar.-2011
The western edge of the great plains: (Thanks to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_physiographic_region for a map of the U.S. portion of this line.) This line seems to affect dialect features only in the north and in the far south. This is probably because the west was largely settled along a few major trails that passed through the central section of the country, but not in the north or south, where the mountains proved to be a serious barrier.
1. In the north,
when the bite-bout line hits the Rocky
Mountains in Wyoming as it moves west, it turns north and follows the edge of
the plains all the way into northern British Columbia, suggesting that the
Rocky Mountains tended to block the continued westward movement of speakers
from north of this line, and that points west were settled primarily by
speakers from south of the bite-bout line. If we look at a map of the Oregon Trail,
by which the vast majority of early settlement (mainly 1846-1869) of the
northwest took place, we can see that this was true, whereas there were no
major trails north of the Oregon Trail, either in the U.S. or in Canada. After
1869 the First Transcontinental Railroad replaced the Oregon Trail
as the primary means of travelling west, but followed approximaetely the same
route across the great plains and for the first part of its path into the
mountains. The funneling effect that these two processes had on western
settlement can be seen on this map and this map
showing where western settlement had reached in 1890. Adj. 9-Oct.-2011
It would appear that even
most of British Columbia was primarily settled from the south or by
the Pacific Ocean, not from the east: Coastal B.C. was apparently already well
settled when it joined the Canadian Confederation in 1871, before any of the Prairie
Provinces did, and there had been a huge influx of Americans in 1858
because of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Even the first railroad
connecting B.C. to the rest of Canada was only completed in 1885. Even so,
over the decades these transplants seem to have fully accepted their Canadian
identity and even adopted the “Badge of Identity”!
2. In the far south, the mountains seem to block further westward expansion of the Inland South dialect, certainly in southern New Mexico, and probably also in west Texas, though south of El Paso this area is so sparsely populated and has such a high Mexican population that I have yet to find a sound sample of a native English speaker from this area. Anyone got one? Please send it in! The El Paso dialect probably owes the fact that it is east of the cot-caught line and south of the pin-pen line to influence from the South, but it clearly is not Southern by the definition of that dialect, and must have had significant admixture from the West and perhaps from the Midland.
The Black Hills (South Dakota): Both the purple pin-pen line and the yellow long /ō/ [oʊ] fronting line of dots bend around these. Thus they avoided the pin-pen merger, not being on the route of any of the cattle drives from Texas, for obvious geographic reasons. They also were apparently not settled primarily by settlers moving straight west, as the yellow dots show. Actually, they were settled very rapidly during the 1875-1878 gold rush, by people from all over the place! In 1880, the area was the most densely populated part of Dakota Territory.
The Nebraska Sand Hills: See The Unique Position of Nebraska.
The North Platte River: See The Pin-Pen Merger, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Texas Cattle Drives. Also, the Oregon Trail followed this until the point where it bends southwards in Wyoming, and this may be part of the reason that the bite-bout line stayed north of it, as discussed under The western edge of the great plains above. Adj. 9-Oct.-2011
The Platte River: (Not labelled for reasons of space, though its tributaries the North and South Platte are labelled.) See The Pin-Pen Merger, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Texas Cattle Drives. Adj. 7-Nov.-2011
The Lake of the Woods: This lake forms part of the border between the U.S. and Canada, but a piece of Minnesota, the Northwest Angle, lies north of the lake. This happened because of geographical confusion affecting the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Do the people there talk like Americans or Canadians? Americans! 29-Dec.-2010
The Appalachian Mountains, Ozark Mountains, Ouachita Mountains, and St. Francois /frănsĭs/ [ˈfɹænsɪs] Mountains: These are all mountain ranges associated with the Inland South.
The Ohio River: Marks the border between the South and the Midland for much of Kentucky, although even here it moves north of the river a time or two. How much of this was due to geography (it was easier for settlers to stay on their own side of the river as they went west), and how much was due to politics (slavery was only allowed on the south side of the river) is unclear. 12-July-2011
The Cumberland Gap: According to my theory, this was the area where Inland South originated and spread.
The Hudson River and the Erie Canal: The North dialect, and its central subdialect the Inland North were largely spread westward by way of these two waterways, as discussed in ANAE Ch. 14, pp. 212-213. This partially explains the strange hourglass shape of the Inland North subdialect, since all of the settlement came by boat to Buffalo and then continued up Lake Erie. (Originally the hourglass did not have quite so tight a waist, since originally Erie, Pennsylvania and probably also Ashtabula and Painesville, Ohio were part of the Inland North, as explained in Shared Features Across the U.S. - Canada Border.) 11-Feb.-2011
I have also included a few geographical features which do not seem to have any correlation with dialect features:
The Sacramento River: Unlike the San Joaquín River above, this does not seem to have any special features. 28-Apr.-2011
The South Platte River: See The Pin-Pen Merger, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Texas Cattle Drives.
The Mississippi River: In spite of being the greatest river in the U.S., and forming state boundaries for almost its entire course, it has had absolutely no effect on dialect patterns! Of course, it stood perpendicular to the entire western settlement flow, so people had no alternative but to find a way across!
The Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers: (Not labelled for reasons of space.) These rivers run mostly through rugged mountains or broken plateau country, and for the most part do not have a wide flood plain suitable for plantation agriculture, required, according to my theory, for the spread of Lowland Southern. The only areas that do are the middle section of the Cumberland River, centered on Nashville, one section of the Tennessee River in Alabama, and the small area around Chattanooga. Adj. 2-Nov.-2011
Do state or provincial borders coincide with dialect boundaries?
No, they don’t! From the map it is clear that the dialect boundaries totally ignore state and provincial borders, except for a very few exceptions. One of the few places where a dialect boundary does seem to follow a state boundary is the northern border of Kentucky, which is also the northern border of the South. However, it turns out that this is actually a geographical feature, the Ohio River, and even here the line doesn’t follow the river all the way. 6-Sep.-2011
In spite of this, one often hears people refer to a “Texas accent” (there are really three, just considering the blue and red lines!), or a “Massachusetts accent” (there are really four!). In fact, there isn’t a single dialect area on this map that could be described as a “state dialect”: they are all either significantly larger or smaller than a state! 17-Aug.-2010
Which states are the most linguistically complex?
As for which state has the most distinct dialect areas (defined by the blue and red lines), the winner appears to be Pennsylvania, with five dialect areas, though Louisiana may also have five, depending on how New Orleans is treated. 17-Aug.-2010
The runners up, with four, are: Illinois, Kansas, Massachussetts, Nebraska, and Ohio, and possibly also Maryland and New York (data is lacking for the latter two). It could also be argued that West Virginia has four, since in all other cases I have treated the loss of a vowel phoneme as grounds for defining a new dialect, but I am hesitant to introduce a new dialect on these grounds alone, “Allegheny Lowland Southern”, since this phoneme loss here may be viewed as a minor spillover from up north. 23-Mar.-2011
The Unique Position of Nebraska
|
The state of Nebraska is unique (besides the fact that my wife is from there) in that it is the linguistic center of North America, where east, west, north, and south meet. Thus, besides the fact that it has four dialect areas based on the blue and red lines, 2 major linguistic divisions also run through it: the light blue cot-caught line (running north to south, separating the blue hatched area from the non-hatched area), which divides the U.S. into western and eastern regions, and the purple pin-pen line (running east to west), which divides the U.S. into northern and southern regions. The 7 towns shown in the chart on the right serve to determine the exact linguistic center of North America, which is found at some point between Gibbon and Grand Island. 5-Nov.-2010 Do people who live in Kearney say, “Oh, yes, the people in Grand Island really talk different from us!”? No! They don’t even notice the differences until these are pointed out, even though these differences are easily demonstrated through word comparison, and make a difference phonemically. Even people from Grand Island don’t notice them, and they would have more of a reason to do so, since it involves the loss of distinctions that they retain. (I have personally interviewed many people from this whole area, and these lines are very real and well-defined!) Most people’s internal filters prevent them from being aware of such differences: they adjust what they hear to their own sound system. 4-Sep.-2010 The blue line separating The North (the pale green area) from The Midland (the white area) makes some very sharp bends in Nebraska. These suggest that Grand Island, Henderson (number 8), and York were settled by people from The North, but that places farther east and west were not. And this proves to be the case for the data available: Grand Island was settled in 1857 by people from Davenport, Iowa (just across from Rock Island, Illinois), after which the town was moved in 1862 (or 1866 according to the preceding link) to its current site. Columbus (7), just to the east of Grand Island, was settled by people from Columbus, Ohio in 1856. As the map shows, the dialects of Columbus, Ohio and Columbus, Nebraska are similar, except that the former has “pin”=“pen” and the latter has “pin”≠“pen”. (York, Nebraska was founded in 1869, though it does not appear that its early residents came from any particular area. I can find no information about the founding of Henderson, Gresham, Thayer, or Utica.) The origin of the settlers east of York and south of the pin-pen line has already been discussed under The Pin-Pen Merger, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Texas Cattle Drives. Adj. 8-Nov.-2011 West of Grand Island the differences are even more abrupt, with both the pin-pen line and the yellow dots indicating the backing of the /ō/ [o] vowel bending sharply north, and the cot-caught line splitting Nebraska into two parts at the same place. Part of the explanation for this is that the Nebraska Sand Hills remained essentially empty until much later than other areas of Nebraska, with little settlement until the 1904 Kinkaid Act, and were apparently settled primarily from the south and west, by people interested in cattle ranching. This explains why the bulge of the West Midland goes so far north, reaching to the northern edge of the Sand Hills along its entire length, but it does not really explain why the lines turn sharply north just west of Grand Island, since Broken Bow and Ravenna are south of the Sand Hills. However, dates of settlement still seem to provide the explanation, since Broken Bow (1882) and Ravenna (1886) were settled much later than Grand Island (1857-1862) or St. Paul (1871). Even Kearney, a much larger town which was originally settled as early as 1871, grew so rapidly that its original population was evidently swamped by the newcomers. North Platte was settled even earlier, in 1866, as the winter stopping point for the transcontinental railroad, which built a major depot there in 1869. Thus both Kearney and North Platte were founded and grew rapidly as a result of the First Transcontinental Railroad, whereas Grand Island was founded much earlier, and grew more slowly after the arrival of the railroad, apparently allowing it to retain its original dialect. Adj. 9-Nov.-2011 I have no idea why the towns between North Platte and Gothenburg (9) lie north of the pin-pen line while a group of towns around Kearney lie to the south, but I have interviewed many people from both North Platte and Kearney, so there is no uncertainty! I also cannot explain the double twist the pin-pen line makes as it moves farther west, but I have interviewed two different natives of Stapleton (2), and it definitely has “pin”=“pen”. Adj. 9-Nov.-2011 (I had earlier stated that the importance of North Platte and Kearney was due to their location on the Oregon Trail, but in fact they did not exist that early, only Grand Island did. When the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, it essentially did away with the Oregon Trail, something I had not considered. I also stated that Grand Island was off the trail because it was north of the river, but this was also incorrect.) Adj. 9-Nov.-2011 |
Towns that
Determine the Linguistic
Center of North America
z 5-Nov.-2010
|
The U.S. - Canada Border and the “Badge of Identity”
How about the national border between Canada and United States? This is a different story, and in fact this border is also the southern boundary of the Canadian dialect for almost its entire length. This dialect’s notable characteristic is the “Canadian raising” of the vowels in words like “out” and “house” (where the vowel is followed by a voiceless consonant), but not in “loud” and “now”. This feature appears to be viewed by Canadians as a sort of badge of identity, and defines the border rather clearly! Granted, it also occurs in the Tidewater South, but since this is far from the Canadian border, and since their dialect bears no other resemblance to Canadian English, it doesn’t matter!
I suspect that historically the retention of this badge of identity has been to some degree conscious and intentional: It is important for Canadians to counter the idea that many Americans have that “Canadians are really just like us”, and to have some kind of distinct identity. I really like Pierre Trudeau’s famous quote: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt”. 15-Apr.-2011
However, this doesn’t fully explain the situation. At least two Canadian contributors have written in and begged to differ with this analysis, saying that the vast majority of Canadians are totally unaware of how they pronounce things, and are certainly not consciously putting on the Canadian raising as a kind of affectation. And of course they are absolutely right! The vast majority of speakers of any language are totally unaware of the fine detail of their pronunciation system, and most Americans and Canadians can not tell what side of the border someone is from simply by their pronunciation. So why hasn’t this feature seeped across the border to the U.S. side at any point? Other features have crossed the border freely, as the next section shows, but this one has not. Well, part of the explanation may be that a small percentage of people are able to discern features like Canadian raising, and perhaps some of these people, perhaps on both sides of the border, have lit on this particular feature as being a badge of identity for Canadians, and have helped keep it from crossing the border. So maybe it’s as much the Americans as the Canadians who have kept it a Canadian feature! 6-Sep.-2011
On the other hand, at least one section of Canada, southern British Columbia, was evidently settled mostly by Americans or Europeans, with little direct immigration from previously settled areas of Canada, since the center of the country was still largely unpopulated, as discussed in the “Do some geographic features coincide with dialect boundaries or areas?” section under the discussion of the bite-bout line. And yet all of these settlers adopted the Canadian raising, and the line follows the U.S.-Canadian border all the way to the Pacific. Why did this happen unless at least some people felt that this was a badge of identity for Canadians? 15-Apr.-2011
However, there is one exception to this rule about Canadian raising and the national border: Newfoundland and Labrador do not have Canadian raising. Again, since they are nowhere near the national border, in a way this doesn’t matter, but it is unexpected, given how solid the feature is throughout the rest of Canada and even in the Maritimes! However, contributor Bob Goudreau has pointed out that there is really a simple explanation that actually bolsters my badge of identity theory: “The province of Newfoundland and Labrador did not even join Canada until 1949. ‘Newfies’ would have had no reason to sound self-consciously Canadian, because they were NOT Canadian until then (just a British colony a la Bermuda, etc.).” Cool. 15-Jan.-2011
For a while I had thought that there was a second exception,
because I thought I had found an area in Southeastern Quebec where Canadian
raising did not apply, Specifically the cities of Montreal and Sherbrooke.
However, the samples I had selected were ethnic French speakers, and even
though their English showed no trace of a French accent, Chris Harvey says that
ethnic French speakers are not the best samples of the native English Montreal
accent. Check out the two samples I have now included
for Montreal. It seems my entire idea was wrong that, because the Stanstead
area was settled by Americans, they would still speak like Americans rather
than Canadians. Chris Harvey assures me that they do not. Apparently the “Badge of
Identity” applies here, too! However, I am still looking for good
sound samples for Sherbrooke and Stanstead. Please send me some if you have
them! 17-July-2010
This is not to say that this is the only feature that
distinguishes Canadian from American English: The Canadian shift, discussed in
detail in ANAE Ch. 14, affects many Canadian vowels. However, the
Canadian raising is what most people tend to notice, which is why I think that
it has become the badge of identity. 29-Dec.-2010
Read the next section for more insight on this question. 15-Apr.-2011
Shared Features Across the
U.S. - Canada Border
Another thing that suggests that Canadian raising is a badge of identity is that plenty of other dialect features cross the border freely. If we look at the map we see that in the west several dialect feature lines cross the border, in particular the bite-bout line, making parts of British Columbia sound more like the neighboring Americans than the neighboring Canadians, except of course that they do have the Canadian raising. In the Great Lakes area the bite-bout line again crosses the border three times, making Windsor similar to its neighbor Detroit in only this one feature, and farther north making the twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie share this feature as well, but on the other side of the line.
But of course the big thing shared by Canadians with many Americans, in both the east and west, is the cot-caught merger. In fact, this feature is shared along the western two-thirds of the border, and it seems almost certain, simply by a quick look at the map, that the North Central dialect borrowed this feature from Canada, since this is the only feature that distinguishes North Central from the North. How much the West derived this feature from Canada is uncertain, but it must have been significant, since they not only share this feature, but also the fronting of the long /ōō/ [u] vowel.
In the east there are two areas along the border where this
feature is shared across the border. Obviously the border shared by the
Maritimes and Quebec with New England is one of them, and it is extremely probable
that this feature was shared across this border very early in the history of
the two nations, or even before they split into two nations in 1776! The other
area is Lake Erie, where there are a line of cities on the American side that
have the cot-caught merger. Was this due to Canadian influence? It would seem
unlikely, except that another dialect feature crosses into Canada at this same
point: one of the degrees of the long /ō/ [oʊ]
Fronting line, and another dialect line is split at this point, the bite-bout
line. So who knows? On the other hand, the ANAE Ch. 14, pp. 203-206 suggests that there was no such
influence, since the city of Erie, Pennsylvania was originally part of the
Inland North (and presumably Ashtabula and Painesville were also, though these
are not mentioned in the ANAE), and only later became Allegheny Midland.
Because of this I have not shown the cot-caught line crossing Lake Erie. 14-Jan.-2011
However, even with various features crossing the border, this does not mean that towns on opposite sides of the border will sound particularly similar. As mentioned above, Windsor and Detroit sound extremely different, sharing only one important feature. But even towns sharing more features don’t really sound that close: Tammy Faye Bakker Messner from International Falls, Minnesota, and Duncan Keith from across the river in Fort Frances, Ontario pronounce their /ō/ [o] vowels the same, and also their /ou/ [ɑʊ] vowels in words like “down”, but many of their other vowels are very different. The fact that they are neighboring towns in a remote area don’t seem to matter: one is American and the other Canadian, and that matters more! 6-Sep.-2011
About Me
I am a professional linguist and a Christian missionary, working in indigenous Amerindian languages. My work has nothing to do with English, so that is why this project is just a hobby.
A few readers have asked where I am from, and what dialect I speak. Actually, I am the total opposite of the kind of people I am looking for for the sound samples on my map: They have each been born and raised in one specific place in the U.S. or Canada. I was born in Mexico City, the son of Christian missionaries, and moved back and forth between Mexico and various places in the U.S. throughout my childhood, spending most of my time in the U.S. in the Oklahoma City area. My parents met in Mexico.
My father was born and raised in Port Chester, New York. He spoke a number of different languages. He did not have a Port Chester accent (Eastern North; check out the two sound samples I have listed), but instead spoke essentially General American, the one relic of his Eastern North upbringing being that he distinguished words like “merry” /měrē/ [ˈmɛɹi] and “marry” /mărē/ [ˈmæɹi].
My mother had an even more interesting background. She was born in Sydney, Australia, of parents who immigrated there from Scotland. When she was 10, the family moved to Berkeley, California. When she arrived, she had a strong Australian accent, but due to the ridicule of her peers, she quickly adopted a Bay Area accent, and sounded thoroughly American for the rest of her life. However, the Australian system had apparently established itself in her subconscious, because after I got interested in English dialects, I asked her if the words “father” and “bother” rhymed for her (see The Father-Bother Distinction above). She said, “Oh, no, they are quite different!” “Really?” I said. “Say them for me.” And when she said them, they both had the very same vowel, rhyming perfectly, following the Bay Area pattern. But they still felt different to her, because in her childhood she had pronounced them with very different vowels, and that phonemic system was apparently still there, though covered up by a Bay Area surface system. She also clearly distinguished “merry” and “marry”, which is not a Bay Area feature, but evidently a remnant of her Australian childhood. She also rhymed “on” with “Don”, which matches both Berkeley and Australia. (For other cases in which a phonemic system can be fixed by the age of 10, see the footnote for John Hoeven). 1-Nov.-2010
So, what accent do I have? I turns out that I speak fairly pure General American, probably because all of my schooling was in English in an American style school, even when I lived in Mexico. For the most part I don’t follow my parents’ speech patterns. For instance, they both distinguish “merry” and “marry”, and I do not. Specifically, in my dialect “cot”≠“caught” (with a clear Central Midland pattern, not the raised /ô/ [oə] of the northeastern U.S.), “pin”≠“pen”, and “on” rhymes with “Don”. Even though I spent seven years in the Oklahoma City/Norman area between the ages of 7 and 18, I didn’t pick up any influence there, since in this area “pin”=“pen” and “on” rhymes with “Dawn”. 8-June-2011
The one area in which I seem to have followed my parents, and differ from most Americans, is that I don’t pronounce the “l” in “calm” or “yolk” or “talk” (see The Pronunciation of “alm” and “olk” and “alk”). 8-June-2011
So what area matches my dialect? No area matches my dialect exactly, though the closest seems to be South Florida, especially the southern part below the “on” line, though I think my native pronunciation of the long /ō/ [oʊ] vowel is a bit more backed, and I don’t know yet how South Florida handles the words in The Pronunciation of “alm” and “olk” and “alk”). (I had previously thought that Canton, Ohio was also a close match, but it has a strongly raised “bat” vowel, whereas I do not.) I suspect that many others who moved constantly in their youth, such as “army brats” or missionary kids like myself, will have a similar pattern, which could be called something like “Transient General American”. (South Florida was populated by transients, especially the southern half, so the fact that it has this dialect should not be surprising.) On the other hand, most people who grow up in those Central Midland areas which have a General American accent as their native dialect normally rhyme “on” with “Dawn”, not “Don”. Adj. 18-Nov.-2011
To hear a sample of my speech, listen to the CBC interview Nora Young did with me. 26-Mar.-2011