North American English regional phonology

North American English regional phonology is the study of variations in the pronunciation of spoken North American English —what are commonly known simply as "regional accents". Though studies of regional dialects can be based on multiple characteristics, often including characteristics that are phonemic, phonetic, lexical, and syntactic, this article focuses only on the former two items. North American English includes American English, which has several highly developed and distinct regional varieties, along with the closely related Canadian English, which is more homogeneous geographically. American English and Canadian English have more in common with each other than with varieties of English outside North America.
The most recent work documenting and studying the phonology of North American English dialects as a whole is the 2006 Atlas of North American English by William Labov, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg, on which much of the description below is based, following on a tradition of sociolinguistics dating to the 1960s; earlier large-scale American dialectology focused more on lexicology than on phonology.

Overview

Regional dialects in North America are historically the most strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard, due to distinctive speech patterns of urban centers of the American East Coast like Boston, New York City, and certain Southern cities, all of these accents historically noted by their London-like r-dropping, a feature gradually receding among younger generations, especially in the South. The Connecticut River is now regarded as the southern and western boundary of the traditional New England accents, today still centered on Boston and much of Eastern New England. The Potomac River generally divides a group of Northeastern coastal dialects from an area of older Southeastern coastal dialects. All older Southern dialects, however, have mostly now receded in favor of a strongly rhotic, more unified accent group spread throughout the entire Southern United States since the late 1800s and into the early 1900s. In-between the two aforementioned rivers, some other variations exist, most famous among them being New York City English.
Outside of the Eastern seaboard, virtually all other North American English has been firmly rhotic, since the very first arrival of English-speaking settlers. An exception is the English spoken in the insular and culturally British-associated city of Victoria, British Columbia, where non-rhoticity is one of several features in common with British English, and despite the decline of the quasi-British "Van-Isle" accent once spoken throughout southern Vancouver Island, it represents one of only a few distinguishable local dialects of Canadian English spoken west of Quebec.
Rhoticity in central and western North America is a feature shared today with the English of Ireland, for example, rather than most of the English of England, which has become non-rhotic since the late 1700s. The sound of Western U.S. English, overall, is much more homogeneous than Eastern U.S. English. The interior and western half of the country was settled by people who were no longer closely connected to England, living farther from the British-influenced Atlantic Coast.
Certain particular vowel sounds are the best defining characteristics of regional North American English including any given speaker's presence, absence, or transitional state of the so-called cot–''caught merger. Northeastern New England, Canadian, and Western Pennsylvania accents, as well as all accents of the Western U.S. have a merger of these and vowels, so that pairs of words like mock and talk, rod and clawed, or slot and bought rhyme. On the contrary, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York metropolitan accents, plus inland accents of the Northern and Southern U.S., all strongly resist this merger, keeping the two sounds separate and thus maintaining an extra distinct vowel sound. The rest of the U.S. largely shows a transitional state of the merger, particularly the Midland dialect region, from Ohio to eastern Kansas.
Another prominent differentiating feature in regional North American English is fronting of the in words like goat, home, and toe and in words like goose, two, and glue. This fronting characterizes Midland, Mid-Atlantic, and Southern U.S. accents; these accents also front and raise the vowel, making yowl sound something like yeah-wool or even yale. Northern U.S. English, however, tends to keep all these vowels more backed. Southern and some Midland U.S. accents are often most quickly recognized by the weakening or deleting of the "glide" sound of the vowel in words like thyme, mile, and fine, making the word spy sound something like spa.
One phenomenon apparently unique to North American U.S. accents is the irregular behavior of words that in the British English standard, Received Pronunciation, have . Words of this class include, among others: origin, Florida, horrible, quarrel, warren, borrow, tomorrow, sorry, and sorrow''. In General American there is a split: the majority of these words have , but the last four words of the list above have . In Canada, all of these words are pronounced as . In the accents of Greater New York City, Philadelphia, the Carolinas and older Southern, most or all of these words are pronounced .

Classification of regional accents

Hierarchy of regional accents

The findings and categorizations of the 2006 The Atlas of North American English, use one well-supported way to hierarchically classify North American English accents at the level of broad geographic regions, sub-regions, etc. The North American regional accent represented by each branch, in addition to each of its own features, also contains all the features of the branch it extends from.

NORTH AMERICA
* CANADA and WESTERN UNITED STATES = conservative + is fronted + cot–''caught merger
** Atlantic Canada = is fronted before + full Canadian raising
** Standard Canada and Northwest = is backed before + is tensed before + Canadian Shift
*** Inland Canada = full Canadian raising
* GREATER NEW YORK CITY = fronted + conservative and + cot–caught distinction + New York split system + Mary–marry–merry 3-way distinction
** New York City = R-dropping
* NEW ENGLAND and NORTH-CENTRAL UNITED STATES = conservative + conservative + conservative + pin–pen distinction
** North = cot–caught distinction + is fronted before
*** Inland North = is often tensed, encouraging the Northern Cities Shift
** Eastern New England = R-dropping + full Canadian raising
*** Northeastern New England = cot–caught merger + father–bother distinction + is fronted before
*** Rhode Island = cot–caught distinction + conservative before
** Upper Midwest = cot–caught merger + is central before + is tensed before
*** Wisconsin and Minnesota = haggle–Hegel merger
* SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES = is fronted + is fronted + is fronted
** Southeastern Super-Region = cot–caught distinction or near-merger + is fronted
*** Mid-Atlantic = Mid-Atlantic split system + Mary–marry–merry 3-way distinction
*** Midland = can be monophthongized before resonants + variable pin–pen merger
*** South = is monophthongized, encouraging the Southern Shift + pin–pen merger
**** Inland South = Back Upglide Chain Shift + fill–feel merger
** Marginal Southeast = cot–caught merger
*** Western Pennsylvania = cot–caught merger, encouraging the Pittsburgh Chain Shift + full–fool'' merger
**** Pittsburgh = can be monophthongized before and, and in unstressed function words
Maps of regional accents

; Western
; North Central
; Inland Northern
; Midland
; WPA
; Southern
; Mid-Atlantic
; NYC
; ENE
All regional Canadian English dialects, unless specifically stated otherwise, are rhotic, with the father–''bother merger, cot–caught merger, and pre-nasal "short a''" tensing. The broadest regional dialects include:
; Standard Canadian
; Atlantic Canadian

Chart of regional accents

Alternative classifications

Combining information from the phonetic research through interviews of Labov et al. in the ANAE and the phonological research through surveys of Vaux, Hedges performed a latent class analysis to generate six clusters, each with American English features that naturally occurred together and each expected to match up with one of these six broad U.S. accent regions: the North, the South, the West, New England, the Midland, and the Mid-Atlantic. The results showed that the accent regions/clusters were largely consistent with those outlined in the ANAE.
The defining particular pronunciations of particular words that have more than an 86% likelihood of occurring in a particular cluster are: pajamas with either the phoneme or the phoneme ; coupon with either or ; Monday with either or ; Florida with either or other possibilities ; caramel with either two or three syllables; handkerchief with either or ; lawyer as either or ; poem with either one or two syllables; route with either or ; mayonnaise with either two or three syllables; and been with either or other possibilities. The parenthetical words indicate that the likelihood of their pronunciation occurs overwhelmingly in a particular region but does not meet the >86% threshold set by Hedges for what necessarily defines one of the six regional accents. Blank boxes in the chart indicate regions where neither pronunciation variant particularly dominates over the other; in some of these instances, the data simply may be inconclusive or unclear.

Presumed accent region	pajamas	coupon	Monday	Florida	caramel	handkerchief	lawyer	poem	route	mayonnaise	been
North					2 syll.
South					3 syll.			2 syll.
West	★
New England					3 syll.					3 syll.
Midland					2 syll.		★
Mid-Atlantic and NYC					3 syll.

★ Hedges acknowledges that the two pronunciations marked by this star are discrepancies of her latent class analysis, since they conflict with Vaux 's surveys. Conversely, the surveys show that is the much more common vowel for pajamas in the West, and and are in fact both common variants for lawyer in the Midland.