Northern American English


Northern American English or Northern U.S. English is a class of historically related American English dialects, spoken by predominantly white Americans, in much of the Great Lakes region and some of the Northeast region within the United States. The North as a superdialect region is best documented by the 2006 Atlas of North American English in the greater metropolitan areas of Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Western and Central New York, Northwestern New Jersey, Northeastern Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio, Northern Indiana, Northern Illinois, Northeastern Nebraska, and Eastern South Dakota, plus among certain demographics or areas within Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont, and New York's Hudson Valley. The ANAE describes that the North, at its core, consists of the Inland Northern dialect and Southwestern New England dialect.
The ANAE argues that, though geographically located in the Northern United States, current-day New York City, Eastern New England, Northwestern U.S., and some Upper Midwestern accents do not fit under the Northern U.S. accent spectrum, or only marginally. Each has one or more phonological characteristics that disqualifies them or, for the latter two, exhibit too much internal variation to classify definitively. Meanwhile, Central and Western Canadian English is presumed to have originated, but branched off, from Northern U.S. English within the past two or three centuries.
Most broadly, the ANAE classifies Northern American accents as rhotic, distinguished from Southern U.S. accents by retaining as a diphthong and from Western U.S. and Canadian accents by mostly preserving the distinction between the /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ sounds in words like cot versus caught.
In the very early 20th century, a generic Northern American accent was the basis for the term "General American", though regional accents have now since developed in some areas of the North.

Phonology

The ANAE defines a Northern linguistic super-region of American English dialects as having:
The Northern Cities Vowel Shift is a series of sound changes in the North that covers a large area from western New York State west through the U.S. Great Lakes region and some of the Upper Midwest.

Phonemic distribution

The following pronunciation variants used more strongly in this region than anywhere else in the country:
  • apricot as
  • been as
  • crayon as the single-syllable
  • pajamas as
  • handkerchief rhyming with beef
  • poem as the single-syllable, rhyming with dome
  • root and roof using the vowel as a somewhat common alternative to the typical vowel

    Declining characteristics

The North has historically been one of the last U.S. regions to maintain the distinction between /ɔr/ and /oʊr/, in which words like horse and hoarse or war and wore, for example, are not homophones; however, the merger of the two has quickly spread throughout the North. The vowel was once a common Northern U.S. sound in the word creek, but this has largely given way to the vowel, as in the rest of the country.

Vocabulary

The North is reported as uniquely or most strongly using certain words:
  • babushka
  • bare-naked
  • crayfish
  • crust
  • diagonal or kitty-corner
  • doing cookies
  • frosting
  • futz or futz around
  • garbage
  • on the fritz
  • pit
  • you guys
  • ''woodchuck''

    Northeastern American English

A Northeastern corridor of the United States follows the Atlantic coast, comprising all the dialects of New England, Greater New York City, and Greater Philadelphia, sometimes even classified as extending to Greater Baltimore, Washington D.C., and New York's Hudson Valley north of New York City. This large region, despite being home to numerous different dialects and accents, constitutes a huge area unified in certain linguistic respects, including particular notable vocabulary and phonemic incidence.

Phonemic distribution

These phonemic variants in certain words are particularly correlated with the American Northeast :
  • cauliflower with the "i" pronounced with the vowel
  • centaur rhyming with four
  • miracle as or
  • route rhyming with shoot
  • syrup as or
  • tour and tournament with
  • vase as or
The Northeast tends to retain a contrastive /ɔ/ vowel : specifically, this is realized as. Northern New England and many younger speakers do not retain this vowel, however. Non-rhoticity or "r"-dropping is variable in Eastern New England and New York City, though gradually declining.

Vocabulary

Terms common or even usual to the whole Northeast include:
  • brook
  • bureau
  • cellar
  • cruller
  • goose pimples,
  • elastic, hair elastic, or hair thing
  • papering or TP'ing
  • rotary
  • sneakers
  • soda
  • stoop
  • sunshower
  • ''tractor trailer''

    Elite Northeastern American English

A cultivated or elite Northeastern U.S. accent, one subset being a "Boston Brahmin accent" in Boston, was once associated with members of upper-class Northeastern families in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1988, the documentary American Tongues featured interviews with two Brahmin speakers who then estimated that were about 1000 of them left. Notable example speakers included many members of the Kennedy family, including President John F. Kennedy, whose accent is not an ordinary Boston accent so much as a "tony Harvard accent". This accent included non-rhoticity and even, variably, a non-rhotic pronunciation of, a resistance to the cot-caught merger, and a resistance to the Mary-marry-merry merger. Variably, speakers dipped into other then-prestigious features, such as the split, no tensing, and a backed pronunciation of, though some New England speakers pronounced it more fronted. This accent corresponds in its time-frame and in much of its sound with a cultivated transatlantic accent promoted in theatrical and elocution courses in the same era.

Inland Northern American English

The recent Northern Cities Vowel Shift, beginning only in the twentieth century, now affects much of the North away from the Atlantic coast, occurring specifically at its geographic center: the Great Lakes region. It is therefore a defining feature of the Inland North dialect. The vowel shift's generating conditions are also present in some Western New England English; otherwise, however, this vowel shift is not occurring in the Northeastern United States.

Transitional dialects

North-Central American or Upper Midwestern English, based around Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and North Dakota, may show some elements of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift and the ANAE classifies it as a transitional dialect between the Inland North, Canada, and the West. Many Upper Midwesterners have a full cot-caught merger, however, which disqualifies this dialect from the ANAE's traditional definition for a "Northern" dialect region in the United States.
Northwestern American English similarly does not qualify under the ANAE definition, instead falling broadly under Western American English, not Northern. Northwestern accents are not yet identified by linguists as settling into a singular stable variety; its speakers share major commonalities with both Californian and Canadian accents.