pronounced as /notice/Inland Northern (American) English, also known in American linguistics as the Inland North or Great Lakes dialect,[1] is an American English dialect spoken primarily by White Americans in a geographic band reaching from the major urban areas of Upstate New York westward along the Erie Canal and through much of the U.S. Great Lakes region. The most distinctive Inland Northern accents are spoken in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. The dialect can be heard as far west as eastern Iowa and even among certain demographics in the Twin Cities, Minnesota.[2] Some of its features have also infiltrated a geographic corridor from Chicago southwest along historic Route 66 into St. Louis, Missouri; today, the corridor shows a mixture of both Inland North and Midland American accents. Linguists often characterize the western Great Lakes region's dialect separately as North-Central American English.
The early 20th-century accent of the Inland North was the basis for the term "General American",[3] though the regional accent has since altered, due to the Northern Cities Vowel Shift: its now-defining chain shift of vowels that began in the 1930s or possibly earlier.[4] A 1969 study first formally showed lower-middle-class women leading the regional population in the first two stages (raising of the vowel and fronting of the vowel) of this shift, documented since the 1970s as comprising five distinct stages. However, evidence since the mid-2010s suggests a retreat away from the Northern Cities Shift in many Inland Northern cities and toward a less marked American accent.[5] Various common names for the Inland Northern accent exist, often based on city, for example: Chicago accent, Detroit accent, Milwaukee accent, etc.
The dialect region called the "Inland North" consists of western and central New York State (Utica, Ithaca, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Binghamton, Jamestown, Fredonia, Olean); northern Ohio (Akron, Cleveland, Toledo), Michigan's Lower Peninsula (Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing); northern Indiana (Gary, South Bend); northern Illinois (Chicago, Rockford); southeastern Wisconsin (Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee); and, largely, northeastern Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley/Coal Region (Scranton and Wilkes-Barre). This is the dialect spoken in part of America's chief industrial region, an area sometimes known as the Rust Belt. Northern Iowa and southern Minnesota may also variably fall within the Inland North dialect region; in the Twin Cities, educated middle-aged men in particular have been documented as aligning to the accent, though this is not necessarily the case among other demographics of that urban area.[2]
Linguists identify the "St. Louis Corridor", extending from Chicago down into St. Louis, as a dialectally remarkable area, because young and old speakers alike have a Midland accent, except for a single middle generation born between the 1920s and 1940s, who have an Inland Northern accent diffused into the area from Chicago.[6]
Erie, Pennsylvania, though in the geographic area of the "Inland North" and featuring some speakers of this dialect, never underwent the Northern Cities Shift and often shares more features with Western Pennsylvania English due to contact with Pittsburghers, particularly with Erie as their choice of city for summer vacations.[7] Many African Americans in Detroit and other Northern cities are multidialectal and also or exclusively use African-American Vernacular English rather than Inland Northern English, but some do use the Inland Northern dialect.
The dialect's progression across the Midwest has stopped at a general boundary line traveling through central Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and then western Wisconsin, on the other sides of which speakers have continued to maintain their Midland and North Central accents. Sociolinguist William Labov theorizes that this separation reflects a political divide and a controlled study of his shows that Inland Northern speakers tend to be more associated with liberal politics than those of the other dialects, especially as Americans continue to self-segregate in residence based on ideological concerns. Former President Barack Obama, for example, has a mild Inland Northern accent despite not having lived in the dialect region until early adulthood.
| Back | |||||||
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close-mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Open-mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Diphthongs | pronounced as /aɪ ɔɪ aʊ/ | ||||||
| Pure vowels (Monophthongs) | |||
| English diaphoneme | Inland Northern realization | Example words | |
| pronounced as //æ// | pronounced as /æə~eə~ɪə/ | bath, trap, man | |
| pronounced as //ɑː// | pronounced as /a~ä/ | blah, father, spa | |
| pronounced as //ɒ//† | lot, bother, wasp | ||
| pronounced as //ɔː// | pronounced as /ɒ~ɑ/ | dog, loss, off | |
| all, bought, saw | |||
| pronounced as //ɛ// | pronounced as /ɛ~ɜ~ɐ/ | dress, met, bread | |
| pronounced as //ə// | pronounced as /ə/ | about, syrup, arena | |
| pronounced as //ɪ// | pronounced as /ɪ~ɪ̈/ | hit, skim, tip | |
| pronounced as //iː// | pronounced as /ɪi~i/ | beam, chic, fleet | |
| pronounced as //ʌ// | pronounced as /ʌ~ɔ/ | bus, flood, what | |
| pronounced as //ʊ// | pronounced as /ʊ/ | book, put, should | |
| pronounced as //uː// | pronounced as /u~ɵu/ | food, glue, new | |
| Diphthongs | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| pronounced as //aɪ// | pronounced as /ae~aɪ~æɪ/ | ride, shine, try | |
| pronounced as /ɐɪ~əɪ~ʌɪ/ | bright, dice, fire | ||
| pronounced as //aʊ// | pronounced as /äʊ~ɐʊ/ | now, ouch, scout | |
| pronounced as //eɪ// | pronounced as /eɪ/ | lame, rein, stain | |
| pronounced as //ɔɪ// | pronounced as /ɔɪ/ | boy, choice, moist | |
| pronounced as //oʊ// | pronounced as /ʌo~oʊ~o/ | goat, oh, show | |
| R-colored vowels | |||
| pronounced as //ɑːr// | pronounced as /aɻ~ɐɻ/ | barn, car, park | |
| pronounced as //ɪər// | pronounced as /iɻ~iɚ/ | fear, peer, tier | |
| pronounced as //ɛər// | pronounced as /eəɻ~eɻ/ | bare, bear, there | |
| pronounced as //ɜːr// | pronounced as /əɻ~ɚ/ | burn, doctor, first, herd, learn, murder | |
| pronounced as //ər// | |||
| pronounced as //ɔːr// | pronounced as /ɔɻ~oɻ/ | hoarse, horse, war | |
| pronounced as //ʊər// | pronounced as /uɻ~oɻ/ | poor, tour, lure | |
| pronounced as //jʊər// | pronounced as /jɚ/ | cure, Europe, pure | |
| When followed by pronounced as //r//, the historic pronounced as //ɒ// is pronounced entirely differently by Inland North speakers as pronounced as /[ɔ~o]/, for example, in the words orange, forest, and torrent. The only exceptions to this are the words tomorrow, sorry, sorrow, borrow and, for some speakers, morrow, which use the sound pronounced as /[a~ä̈]/. This is all true of General American speakers too. | |||
A Midwestern accent (which may refer to other dialectal accents as well), Chicago accent, or Great Lakes accent are all common names in the United States for the sound quality produced by speakers of this dialect. Many of the characteristics listed here are not necessarily unique to the region and are oftentimes found elsewhere in the Midwest.
The Northern Cities Vowel Shift or simply Northern Cities Shift is a chain shift of vowels and the defining accent feature of the Inland North dialect region, though it can also be found, variably, in the neighboring Upper Midwest and Western New England accent regions.
The first two sound changes in the shift, with some debate about which one led to the other or came first, are the general raising and lengthening (tensing) of the "short a" (the vowel sound of, typically rendered pronounced as //æ// in American transcriptions), as well as the fronting of the sound of or in this accent (typically transcribed pronounced as //ɑ//) toward pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/. Inland Northern raising was first identified in the 1960s,[8] with that vowel becoming articulated with the tongue raised and then gliding back toward the center of the mouth, thus producing a centering diphthong of the type pronounced as /[ɛə]/, pronounced as /[eə]/, or at its most extreme pronounced as /[ɪə]/; e.g. naturally . As for fronting, it can go beyond pronounced as /link/ to the front pronounced as /link/, and may, for the most advanced speakers, even be close to pronounced as /link/—so that pot or sod come to be pronounced how a mainstream American speaker would say pat or sad; e.g. coupon .
The fronting of the vowel leaves a blank space that is filled by lowering the "aw" vowel in pronounced as /link/, which itself comes to be pronounced with the tongue in a lower position, closer to pronounced as /[ɑ]/ or pronounced as /[ɒ]/. As a result, for example, people with the shift pronounce caught the way speakers without the shift say cot; thus, shifted speakers pronounce caught as pronounced as /[kʰɑt]/ (and cot as pronounced as /[kʰat]/, as explained above). In defiance of the shift, however, there is a well-documented scattering of Inland North speakers who are in a state of transition toward a cot-caught merger; this is particularly evident in northeastern Pennsylvania.[9] Younger speakers reversing the fronting of pronounced as //ɑ//, for example in Lansing, Michigan, also approach a merger.
The movement of pronounced as //æ// to pronounced as /[ɛə]/, in order to avoid overlap with the now-fronted pronounced as //ɑ// vowel, presumably initiates the consequent shifting of pronounced as //ɛ// (the "short e" in, pronounced as /link/ in General American) away from its original position. Thus, pronounced as //ɛ// demonstrates backing, lowering, or a combination of both toward pronounced as /[ɐ]/, the near-open central vowel, or almost pronounced as /[æ]/.
The next change is the movement of pronounced as //ʌ// (the vowel) from a central or back position toward a very far back position pronounced as /[ɔ]/. People with the shift pronounce bus so that it sounds more like boss to people without the shift.
The final change is the backing and lowering of pronounced as //ɪ//, the "short i" vowel in, toward the schwa pronounced as //ə//. Alternatively, is lowered to pronounced as /link/, without backing. This results in a considerable phonetic overlap between pronounced as //ɪ// and pronounced as //ə//, although there is no phonemic merger because the weak vowel merger is not complete ("Rosa's" pronounced as //ˈroʊzəz//, with a morpheme-final mid schwa pronounced as /link/ is distinct from "roses" pronounced as //ˈroʊzɪz//, with an unstressed allophone of that is phonetically near-close central pronounced as /link/).
Before pronounced as //r//, only pronounced as //ɑ// undergoes the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, so that the vowel in start pronounced as //stɑrt// varies much like the one in lot pronounced as //lɑt// described above. The remaining pronounced as //ɔ//, pronounced as //ɛ// and pronounced as //ɪ// retain values similar to General American (GA) in this position, so that north pronounced as //nɔrθ//, merry pronounced as //ˈmɛri// and near pronounced as //nɪr// are pronounced pronounced as /[noɹθ, ˈmɛɹi, niɹ]/, with unshifted (though somewhat closer than in GA), and (as close as in GA). Inland Northern American English features the north-force merger, the Mary-marry-merry merger, the mirror–nearer and pronounced as //ʊr//–pronounced as //ur// mergers, the hurry-furry merger, and the nurse-letter merger, all of which are also typical of GA varieties.
William Labov et al.'s Atlas of North American English (2006) presents the first historical understanding of the order in which the Inland North's vowels shifted. Speakers around the Great Lakes began to pronounce the short a sound, pronounced as //æ// as in, as more of a diphthong and with a higher starting point in the mouth, causing the same word to sound more like "tray-ap" or "tray-up"; Labov et al. assume that this began by the middle of the 19th century. After roughly a century following this first vowel change—general pronounced as //æ// raising—the region's speakers, around the 1960s, then began to use the newly opened vowel space, previously occupied by pronounced as //æ//, for pronounced as //ɑ// (as in and); therefore, words like bot, gosh, or lock came to be pronounced with the tongue extended farther forward, thus making these words sound more like how bat, gash, and lack sound in dialects without the shift. These two vowel changes were first recognized and reported in 1967. While these were certainly the first two vowel shifts of this accent, and Labov et al. assume that pronounced as //æ// raising occurred first, they also admit that the specifics of time and place are unclear. In fact, real-time evidence of a small number of Chicagoans born between 1890 and 1920 suggests that pronounced as //ɑ// fronting occurred first, starting by 1900 at the latest, and was followed by pronounced as //æ// raising sometime in the 1920s.[10]
During the 1960s, several more vowels followed suit in rapid succession, each filling in the space left by the last, including the lowering of pronounced as //ɔ// as in, the backing and lowering of pronounced as //ɛ// as in, the backing of pronounced as //ʌ// as in (first reported in 1986),[11] and the backing and lowering of pronounced as //ɪ// as in, often but not always in that exact order. Altogether, this constitutes the Northern Cities Shift, identified by linguists as such in 1972.[12]
Migrants from all over the Northeastern U.S. traveled west to the rapidly industrializing Great Lakes area in the decades after the Erie Canal opened in 1825, and Labov suggests that the Inland North's general pronounced as //æ// raising originated from the diverse and incompatible /æ/ raising patterns of these various migrants mixing into a new, simpler pattern.[13] He posits that this hypothetical dialect-mixing event, which initiated the larger Northern Cities Shift (NCS), occurred by about 1860 in upstate New York, and the later stages of the NCS are merely those that logically followed (a "pull chain"). More recent evidence suggests that German-accented English helped to greatly influence the Shift, because German speakers tend to pronounce the English vowel as pronounced as /[ɛ]/ and the vowel as pronounced as /[ä~a]/, both of which resemble NCS vowels, and there were more speakers of German in the Erie Canal region of upstate New York in 1850 than there were of any single variety of English. There is also evidence for an alternative theory, according to which the Great Lakes area—settled primarily by western New Englanders—simply inherited Western New England English and developed that dialect's vowel shifts further. 20th-century Western New England English variably showed NCS-like and pronunciations, which may have already existed among 19th-century New England settlers, though this has been contested. Another theory, not mutually exclusive with the others, is that the Great Migration of African Americans intensified White Northerners' participation in the NCS in order to differentiate their accents from Black ones.[14]
Recent evidence suggests that the Shift has largely begun to reverse in many cities of the Inland North, such as Lansing,[15] Ogdensburg, Rochester, Syracuse,[16] [17] [18] Detroit, Buffalo, Chicago, and Eau Claire.[5] In particular, pronounced as //ɑ// fronting and pronounced as //æ// raising (though raising is persisting before nasal consonants, as is the General American norm) have now reversed among younger speakers in these areas. Several possible reasons have been proposed for the reversal, including growing stigma connected with the accent and the working-class identity it represents.[19]
As in General American, Inland North speech is rhotic, and the r sound is typically the retroflex pronounced as /[ɻ]/ or perhaps, more accurately, a bunched or molar pronounced as /[ɹ]/.
The raising of the tongue for the nucleus of the gliding vowel pronounced as //aɪ// is found in the Inland North when the vowel sound appears before any voiceless consonant, thus distinguishing, for example, between rider and writer by vowel quality . In the Inland North, unlike some other dialects, the raising occurs even before certain voiced consonants, including in the words fire, tiger, iron, and spider. When it is not subject to raising, the nucleus of pronounced as //aɪ// is pronounced with the tongue further to the front of the mouth than most other American dialects, as pronounced as /[a̟ɪ]/ or pronounced as /[ae]/; however, in the Inland North speech of Pennsylvania, the nucleus is centralized as in General American, thus: pronounced as /[äɪ]/.
Note that not all of these terms, here compared with their counterparts in other regions, are necessarily unique only to the Inland North, though they appear most strongly in this region:[24]
Individual cities and sub-regions also have their own terms; for example: