Western Pennsylvania English Explained

Western Pennsylvania English
Also Known As:	Pittsburgh English, Pittsburghese
Region:	Western Pennsylvania
Familycolor:	Indo-European
Fam2:	Germanic
Fam3:	West Germanic
Fam4:	Ingvaeonic
Fam5:	Anglo–Frisian
Fam6:	Anglic
Fam7:	English
Fam8:	North American English
Fam9:	American English
Ancestor:	Old English
Ancestor2:	Middle English
Ancestor3:	Early Modern English
Script:	English alphabet
Isoexception:	dialect
Glotto:	west2919
Map:	Appalachian dialect region of United States.png
Mapcaption:	Appalachia (in white) overlaid with dialect regions defined by the 2006 ANAE. Western Pennsylvania English can be seen in orange.

Western Pennsylvania English, known more narrowly as Pittsburgh English or popularly as Pittsburghese, is a dialect of American English native primarily to the western half of Pennsylvania, centered on the city of Pittsburgh, but potentially appearing in some speakers as far north as Erie County, as far west as Youngstown, Ohio, and as far south as Clarksburg, West Virginia.^[1] Commonly associated with the working class of Pittsburgh, users of the dialect are colloquially known as "Yinzers". The dialect is even heard in the town of Hancock, Maryland.

Overview

Scots-Irish, Pennsylvania Dutch, Polish,^[2] Ukrainian^[3] and Croatian^[4] immigrants to the area all provided certain loanwords to the dialect (see "Vocabulary" below). Many of the sounds and words found in the dialect are popularly thought to be unique to Pittsburgh, but that is a misconception since the dialect resides throughout the greater part of western Pennsylvania and the surrounding areas.^{[5] [6]} Central Pennsylvania, currently an intersection of several dialect regions, was identified in 1949 by Hans Kurath as a subregion between western and eastern Pennsylvania,^{[7] [8]} but some scholars in the 20th century onwards have identified it within the western Pennsylvania dialect region.^[9] Since Kurath's study, one of western Pennsylvania's defining features, the cot–caught merger, has expanded into central Pennsylvania, moving eastward until being blocked at Harrisburg. Perhaps the only feature whose distribution is restricted almost exclusively to the immediate vicinity of Pittsburgh is pronounced as //aʊ// monophthongization in which words such as house, down, found, and sauerkraut are sometimes pronounced with an "ah" sound, instead of the more standard pronunciation of "ow", rendering eye spellings such as hahs, dahn, fahnd, and sahrkraht.

Speakers of Pittsburgh English are sometimes called "Yinzers" in reference to their use of the second-person plural pronoun "yinz." The word "yinzer" is sometimes heard as pejorative, indicating a lack of sophistication, but the term is now used in a variety of ways.^[10] Older men are more likely to use the accent than women "possibly because of a stronger interest in displaying local identity...."^[11]

Phonology

pronounced as /notice/

! colspan="2"

Front	Central	Back
Close	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Mid	pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/
Open	pronounced as /link/			pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Diphthongs	pronounced as /eɪ   aɪ   ɔɪ   aʊ   oʊ/

A defining feature of Western Pennsylvania English is the cot–caught merger, in which pronounced as //ɑ// (as in ah) and pronounced as //ɔ// (as in aw) merge to a rounded pronounced as //ɒ// (phonetically pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|ɒ}}~{{IPAplink|ɔ}}]/). As in most other American dialects, the father–bother merger also occurs.^{[5] [6] [12]} Therefore, cot and caught are both pronounced pronounced as //kɒt//; Don and dawn are both pronounced as //dɒn//. While the merger of the low back vowels is also widespread elsewhere in the United States, the rounded realizations of the merged vowel around pronounced as /[ɒ]/ is less common, except in Canada, California and Northeastern New England.^{[5] [6]}

pronounced as //ɒ// has a stylistic variant, which is open central unrounded pronounced as /link/, as in the sarcastic pronunciation of I apologize as pronounced as /[aɪ əˈpʰäɫɨdʒaɪz]/. It may also occur before pronounced as //r//, as in start pronounced as /[stäɹʔt]/ or car pronounced as /[kʰäɹ]/, but a more common pronunciation is back and rounded: pronounced as /[stɒɹʔt]/ etc. The vowel in hoarse is the same as the one in horse, phonetically pronounced as /link/: pronounced as /[hɔɹs]/ but phonemically pronounced as //oʊ// due to the cot-caught merger: pronounced as //hoʊrs//.

pronounced as //ʌ// is backer and more open than pronounced as /link/ found in Midland American English, being closer to pronounced as /link/. This makes an unrounded counterpart of, with pairs such as nut pronounced as /[nɑʔt]/ vs. not pronounced as /[nɒʔt]/ or cut pronounced as /[kʰɑʔt]/ vs. cot pronounced as /[kʰɒʔt]/ contrasting mainly by roundedness. This is also found in contemporary Standard Southern British English, where nut pronounced as /[nʌʔt]/ also differs from not pronounced as /[nɔʔt]/ by rounding (though nought has a contrastive vowel instead: pronounced as /[no̞ːʔt]/, which falls together with pronounced as /link/ in Pittsburgh). Earlier reports give pronounced as /link/ as the norm for in Pittsburgh. The remaining checked vowels pronounced as //ɪ//, pronounced as //ʊ//, pronounced as //ɛ// and pronounced as //æ// are all within the General American norm.

The vowel often has an unrounded central or fronted starting point in Pittsburgh: pronounced as /[əʊ]/. Outside of the city itself, pronounced as /[oʊ]/ is more common. is sometimes also fronted, to pronounced as /[ɨu]/ (more usual value: pronounced as /[ʊu]/). As in other American dialects, and are narrow diphthongs pronounced as /[ɪi, ee̝]/. is also within GenAm norm: pronounced as /[ɔ̟ɪ]/.

The vowel alone undergoes Canadian raising to pronounced as /[ɜɪ]/ before voiceless consonants, as in ice pronounced as /[ɜɪs]/. In 1971, the Journal of the International Phonetic Association published a description of the dialect, whose author Bruce Lee Johnson notes that the auxiliary verb might is typically pronounced with nasalization, as pronounced as /[mɜ̃ɪ̃ʔt]/. Elsewhere in the article, this allophone is transcribed (IPA|ʌɪ), following its usual transcription on Wikipedia.

The vowel typically begins front in the mouth pronounced as /[æʊ]/. A less common variant has a central starting point, pronounced as /[äʊ]/, matching the starting point of (pronounced as /[äɪ]/). It is monophthongized to pronounced as /[aː]/ in some environments (sounding instead like ah), namely: before nasal consonants (downtown pronounced as /[daːnˈtʰaːn]/ and found pronounced as /[faːnd]/), liquid consonants (fowl, hour) and obstruents (house pronounced as /[haːs]/, out, cloudy).^{[5] [6] [12]} The monophthongization does not occur, however, in word-final positions (how, now), and the diphthong then remains pronounced as /[æʊ]/.^[13] That is one of the few features, if not the only one, restricted almost exclusively to western Pennsylvania in North America, but it can sometimes be found in other accents of the English-speaking world, such as Cockney and South African English.^{[5] [6]} The sound may be the result of contact from Slavic languages during the early 20th century.^[6] Monophthongization also occurs for the sound pronounced as //aɪ//, as in eye, before liquid consonants,^{[5] [6] [12] [14]} so that tile is pronounced pronounced as /[tʰɑːɫ]/; pile is pronounced pronounced as /[pʰɑːɫ]/; and iron is pronounced pronounced as /[ɑːɹn]/. That phenomenon allows tire to merge with the sound of tar: pronounced as /[tʰɑːɹ]/.

The vowel (phonemically an pronounced as //ər// sequence) is phonetically close-mid pronounced as /link/.

Johnson notes a tendency to diphthongize pronounced as //æ// to pronounced as /[ɛə]/ not only before nasals (as in GenAm) but also before all voiced consonants (as in bad pronounced as /[bɛəd]/) and voiceless fricatives (as in grass pronounced as /[ɡɹɛəs]/). This has since been reversed and now pronounced as /[ɛə]/ is confined to the environment of a following nasal, matching the GenAm allophony.

An epenthetic (intruding) pronounced as //r// sound may occur after vowels in a few words, such as water pronounced as pronounced as /[ˈwɔɹɾɚ]/, and wash as pronounced as /[wɔɹʃ]/.^{[5] [6]}

A number of vowel mergers occur uniquely in Western Pennsylvania English before the consonant pronounced as //l//. The pair of vowels pronounced as //i// and pronounced as //ɪ// may merge before the pronounced as //l// consonant,^{[5] [6] [12]} cause both steel and still to be pronounced as something like pronounced as /[stɪɫ]/. Similarly, pronounced as //u//, pronounced as //oʊ//, and pronounced as //ʊ// may merge before pronounced as //l//, so that pool, pull, and pole may merge to something like pronounced as /[pʰʊɫ]/. On the pronounced as //il/~/ɪl// merger, Labov, Ash and Boberg (2006) note "the stereotype of merger of pronounced as //ɪl ~ il// is based only on a close approximation of some forms, and does not represent the underlying norms of the dialect." The pronounced as //i/~/ɪ// merger is found in western Pennsylvania,^{[5] [6] [12]} as well as parts of the southern United States, including Alabama, Texas and the west (McElhinny 1999). On the other hand, the pronounced as //u/~/ʊ// merger is consistently found only in western Pennsylvania. The pronounced as //i/~/ɪ// merger towards pronounced as /[ɪ]/ may also appear before pronounced as //ɡ//: eagle then sounds to outsiders like iggle.^{[5] [6] [12]}

L-vocalization is also common in the Western Pennsylvania dialect; an pronounced as //l// then sounds like a pronounced as //w// or a cross between a vowel and a "dark" pronounced as //l// at the end of a syllable.^{[5] [6] [15]} For example, well is pronounced as pronounced as /[wɛw]/; milk as pronounced as /[mɪwk]/ or pronounced as /[mɛwk]/; role as pronounced as /[ɹʊw]/; and cold as pronounced as /[ˈkʰʊwd]/. The phenomenon is also common in African-American English.

The word mirror can be pronounced as the single-syllable mere.

Western Pennsylvania English speakers may use falling intonation at the end of questions,^{[5] [6] [16]} for example, in "Are you painting your garage?" pronounced as /[↗ˈɒɹ jə ˈpʰeɪɾ̃ɪŋ jɚ ɡə↘ˈɹɒdʒ]/ (with pitch rising in intonation up to just before the last syllable and then falling precipitously).^[16] Such speakers typically use falling pitch for yes–no questions for which they already are quite sure of the answer. A speaker uttering the above example is simply confirming what is already thought: yes, the person spoken to is painting their garage. It is most common in areas of heavy German settlement, especially southeastern Pennsylvania,^[16] hence its nickname, the "Pennsylvania Dutch question", but it is also found elsewhere in Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh.^{[5] [6] [16]} It is of German origin.^[16]

Vocabulary

• babushka - (n.) headscarf^[2]
• buggy - (n.) shopping cart
  • baby buggy - (n.) baby carriage
• the 'Burgh - (n.) Pittsburgh^[6]
• beal - (v.) to fester or suppurate^[2]
• bealed - (adj.) usually of an ear: infected or abscessed^[2]
• belling - (n.) noisy celebration or mock serenade for newlyweds; a shivaree^[2]
• berm - (n.) edge of the road, curb: an accepted alternative to "shoulder of the road"^[2]
• carbon oil - (n.) kerosene
• chipped ham - (n.) very thinly sliced chopped ham loaf for sandwiches (from a local brand name)^{[5] [6]} (see chipped chopped ham)
• city chicken - (n.) cubes of pork loin and/or veal on a short wooden skewer, breaded, then fried or baked
• cubberd - (n.) closet^[17]
• craw - (n.) crawfish^[2]
• crick - (n.) Creek
• cruds, crudded milk, or cruddled milk - (n.) cottage cheese^[18]
• diamond - (n.) town square^[17]
• dippy - (adj.) appropriate for dipping into, such as gravy, coffee, egg yolks, etc.^[19]
• doll baby - (n.) complimentary term for an attractively childlike girl or woman (reversal of "baby doll")
• drooth - (n.) drought^{[2] [20]}
• Dubbya - (n.) Letter "W", Often used when saying "www." Or a local station
• dupa - (n.) parental term (of Polish origin) for a child's backside
• feature - (v.) to think about, understand, or imagine
• grinnie - (n.) chipmunk
• gumband - (n.) rubber band;^{[5] [6] [19]} elastic fastener^[17]
• gutchies; or undergutchies (n.) term used to describe undergarments of any variety.
• hap - (n.) comfort; or, comforter or quilt:^[18]
• hoagie - (n.) a sub (i.e., submarine sandwich; used throughout Pennsylvania)^[19]
• hoopy - (n.) a person perceived as unsophisticated or having rural sensibilities (i.e., redneck or hillbilly; used especially in Ohio Valley and northern West Virginia)
• jag - (v.) to prick, stab, or jab;^[21] to tease (often, jag off or jag around)^[21]
  • jagger - (n./adj.) any small, sharp-pointed object or implement,^[21] usually thorns, spines, and prickles (as in a jagger bush or "I got a jagger in my finger").
  • jaggerbush - (n.) briar^[17]
  • jagoff - (n.) an idiot, fool, or unlikeable person
• jimmies - (n.) sprinkles^[22]
• jumbo - (n.) bologna lunch meat^{[5] [6] [21]}
• "Kennywood's open" - idiom used to inform someone that their fly is open ("Kennywood" referring to the Kennywood amusement park in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania)
• Klondike - (n.) any ice cream bar, even if not specifically a Klondike bar (first marketed in nearby Youngstown, Ohio).^[17]
• English: kolbusy or English: kolbassi - (n.) variant pronunciation of kielbasa^[21] (pronounced as //kʊlˈbɒsi//)
• monkey ball - (n.) fruit of the Maclura pomifera or monkey ball tree^[23]
• n'at (pronounced as //əˈnæt//) - et cetera; and so on; a "general extender";^{[5] [6]} literally, a contraction of "and (all) that"^[24]
• neb - (v.) to pry into a conversation or argument intrusively or impertinently^[21] (this term and its derivatives are common to Pennsylvania, but especially southwestern Pennsylvania, from Scots-Irish English)
  • neb out - to mind one's own business
  • neb-nose or nebby-nose (also nebshit) - (n.) the kind of person who is always poking into people's affairs;^[21] inquisitive person^[17]
  • nebby - (adj.) given to prying into the affairs of others; nosey;^{[5] [6] [24]} inquisitive^[17]
• onion snow - (n.) early spring snow^[17]
• redd up (also ret, rid, ridd, or redd out) - (v.) to tidy up, clean up, or clean out (a room, house, cupboard, etc.); to clean house, tidy up (hence v bl. redding up house-cleaning; tidying up)^{[25] [26] [27] [28]}
• reverend - (adj.) extreme;^[17] extraordinary, powerful^[20]
• slippy - (adj.) slippery (from Scots-Irish English)^{[5] [6]}
• spicket - (n.) alternate pronunciation of spigot, specifically an outdoor faucet used to connect to a garden hose^[29]
• Stillers - (n.) alternate pronunciation of the Pittsburgh Steelers^[30]
• sweep - (v.) to vacuum
• sweeper - (n.) vacuum cleaner (also used in Ohio and Indiana; from carpet sweeper)
• tossle cap - (n.) knit hat designed to provide warmth in cold weather
• trick - (n.) a job shift (as used in West-Central Pennsylvania)^[31]
• yins, yinz, yunz, you'uns, or youns - (pronoun) plural of you (second-person personal plural pronoun from Scots-Irish English)^{[5] [6] [18] [32] [10] [33]}

Grammar

• All to mean all gone: When referring to consumable products, the word all has a secondary meaning: all gone. For example, the phrase the butter's all would be understood as "the butter is all gone." This likely derives from German.^[34]
• "Positive anymore": In addition to the normal negative use of anymore it can also, as in the greater Midland U.S. dialect, be used in a positive sense to mean "these days" or "nowadays". An example is "I wear these shoes a lot anymore". While in Standard English anymore must be used as a negative polarity item (NPI), some speakers in Pittsburgh and throughout the Midland area do not have this restriction.^[35] This is somewhat common in both the Midland regions (Montgomery 1989) and in northern Maryland (Frederick, Hagerstown, and Westminster), likely of Scots-Irish origin.
• Reversed usage of leave and let:^{[5] [6] [36]} Examples of this include "Leave him go outside" and "Let the book on the table". Leave is used in some contexts in which, in standard English, let would be used; and vice versa. Used in Southwestern Pennsylvania and elsewhere, this is either Pennsylvania Dutch or Scots-Irish.^[36]
• "Need, want, or like + past participle":^{[5] [6] [37]} Examples of this include "The car needs washed", "The cat wants petted", and "Babies like cuddled". More common constructions are "The grass needs cutting" or "The grass needs to be cut" or "Babies like cuddling" or "Babies like to be cuddled"; "The car needs washing" or "The car needs to be washed"; and "The cat wants petting" or "The cat wants to be petted." Found predominantly in the North Midland region, this is especially common in southwestern Pennsylvania. Need + past participle is the most common construction, followed by want + past participle, and then like + past participle. The forms are "implicationally related" to one another (Murray and Simon 2002). This means the existence of a less common construction from the list in a given location entails the existence of the more common ones there, but not vice versa. The constructions "like + past participle" and "need + past participle" are Scots-Irish. While Adams argues that "want + past participle" could be from Scots-Irish or German,^[36] it seems likely that this construction is Scots-Irish, as Murray and Simon claim. like and need + past participle are Scots-Irish, the distributions of all three constructions are implicationally related, the area where they are predominantly found is most heavily influenced by Scots-Irish, and a related construction, "want + directional adverb", as in "The cat wants out", is Scots-Irish.^[18]
• "Punctual whenever": "Whenever" is often used to mean "at the time that." An example is "My mother, whenever she passed away, she had pneumonia." A punctual descriptor refers to the use of the word for "a onetime momentary event rather than in its two common uses for a recurrent event or a conditional one". This Scots-Irish usage is found in the Midlands and the South.

Notable examples of lifelong speakers

• John Kasich
• Pat McAfee
• Art Rooney
• Dan Rooney
• Fred Rogers - Rogers' accent is an example of the softer variation of the accent that was spoken by the middle class of the era that he grew up in.
• Myron Cope - Cope's colorful vocabulary added dozens of words to the dialect, including his most famous, "Yoi!"
• Billy Gardell - Although he grew up some of the time away from the city, Gardell sports a heavy Pittsburgh accent.

See also

• Jagoff
• Midland American English
• Pennsylvania Dutch English
• Philadelphia accent
• Pittsburgh Dad
• Regional vocabularies of American English
• Yinztagram

Bibliography

• Brown . C. . A search for sound change: A look at the lowering of tense vowels before liquids in the Pittsburgh area . MA . 1982 . University of Pittsburgh . Pittsburgh.
• Book: Cruttenden , Alan . 2014. Gimson's Pronunciation of English. Routledge. 8th. 9781444183092.
• Duncan. Daniel. 'Tense' /æ/ Is still lax: A phonotactics study. 2016. Hansson. Gunnar Ólafur. Farris-Trimble. Ashley. McMullin. Kevin. Pulleyblank. Douglas. Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology. 3. Washington, D.C.. Linguistic Society of America. 10.3765/amp.v3i0.3653.
  • Johnstone . B. . Andrus . J. . Danielson . A. . 2006 . Mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of "Pittsburghese" . Journal of English Linguistics . 34 . 2. 77–104 . 10.1177/0075424206290692. 3851451 .
  • Layton . N. N. . 1999 . The dialect of western Pennsylvania: evaluation of ten sounds . MA . Gothenburg, Sweden . University of Gothenburg.
• Maxfield . E. K. . 1931 . The speech of south-western Pennsylvania . American Speech . 7 . 1 . 18–20 . 10.2307/451308 . 451308.
• McElhinny . B . 1999 . More on the third dialect of English: linguistic constraints on the use of three phonological variables in Pittsburgh . Language Variation and Change . 11 . 2 . 171–195 . 10.1017/s0954394599112031. 145656857.
• Montgomery . M. B. . 1989 . Exploring the roots of Appalachian English . English World-Wide . 10 . 2 . 227–278 . 10.1075/eww.10.2.03mon.
• Montgomery . M. B. . 2001 . 'My mother, whenever she died, she had pneumonia': The history and functions of whenever . Journal of English Linguistics . 29 . 3 . 234–249 . 10.1177/00754240122005350 . 143776545.
• Murray . T. E. . Frazer . T. C. . Simon . B. L. . 1996 . Need + past participle in American English . American Speech . 71 . 3 . 255–271 . 10.2307/455549. 455549.
• Murray . T. E. . Simon . B. L. . 1999 . Want + past participle in American English . 455576 . American Speech . 74 . 2. 140–164 .
• Murray . T. E. . Simon . B. L. . 2002 . At the intersection of regional and social dialects: the case of like + past participle in American English . American Speech . 77 . 1. 32–69 . 10.1215/00031283-77-1-32. 143892781 .
  • Wisnosky . M. . 2003 . 'Pittsburghese' in Pittsburgh humor . MA . Pittsburgh . University of Pittsburgh.

Further reading

• News: Blackley . Katie . Redd Up Your Pittsburghese: A Deep Dive Into How Yinz Talk . . 28 September 2017 . 22 November 2021.
• Book: Pittsburghese from Ahrn to Yinz . Heinz History Center staff . Senator John Heinz History Center . 2015 . 978-0936340210.
• Book: Kurath, Hans . 1949 . Western Pennsylvania . A Word Geography of the Eastern United States . Ann Arbor . University of Michigan Press . 35–36 . 49050233.
• Book: Kurath . Hans . McDavid . Raven I. Jr. . 1961 . Western Pennsylvania . The pronunciation of English in the Atlantic United States . Ann Arbor . University of Michigan Press . 17–18 . 60005671.
• Book: Labov . William . Sharon . Ash . Charles . Boberg . 2005 . The atlas of North American English: phonetics, phonology, and sound change . Mouton de Gruyter . 9783110167467 . 10.1515/9783110167467.
• Book: Macauley, Ronald K. S. . 1985 . The narrative skills of a Scottish coal miner . Focus on: Scotland . Varieties of English Around the World . Manfred . Gorlach . 10.1075/veaw.g5.08mac . Philadelphia . John Benjamins . 101–124. 978-90-272-4863-3 .
• Book: Montgomery, Michael B. . 1997 . A tale of two Georges: the language of Irish Indian traders in colonial North America . Focus on: Ireland . J. . Kallen . Philadelphia . John Benjamins . 227–254 . 10.1075/veaw.g21.15mon.
• Montgomery . Michael B. . 2002 . The structural history of y'all, you all, and you'uns . Southern Journal of Linguistics . 26 . 19–27 . .
• Newlin . Claude M. . 1928 . Dialects on the western Pennsylvania frontier . American Speech . 4 . 2. 104–110 . 10.2307/452864. 452864 .
• Shields . Kenneth Jr. . 1985 . Germanisms in Pennsylvania English: an update . American Speech . 60 . 3. 228–237 . 10.2307/454887. 454887 .
• Book: Simpson . J. A. . E. S. C. . Weiner . 1991 . Compact Oxford English Dictionary . 2nd . Oxford University Press.
• Tenny . Carol . 1998 . Psych verbs and verbal passives in Pittsburghese . Linguistics . 36 . 591–597 .
• Book: Thomas, E. . 2001 . An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English . Durham, NC . Duke University Press . 0822364948.

External links

• Pittsburgh Speech & Society, University of Pittsburgh
• "It's Not the Sights, It's the Sounds", New York Times article, March 17, 2006 /9"Pittsburgh is the Galapagos Islands of American dialect")
• "American Varieties: Steel Town Speak", part of PBS's Do You Speak American?
• Pittsburghese: Welcome!, Duquesne University
• Pittsburghese.com

Notes and References

1. Web site: Do You Speak American . Sea to Shining Sea . American Varieties . Pittsburghese - PBS. PBS.
2. Book: Cassidy. F. G.. Dictionary of American Regional English, Vol. I: A-C. 1985. Harvard University Press. Cambridge. 978-0-674-20511-6.
3. News: Demographic, social, cultural characteristics of persons of Ukrainian ancestry in Chicago . The Ukrainian Weekly No. 2, Vol. LXVIII . January 9, 2000 . May 16, 2008 . Wolowyna . Oleh . September 6, 2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20080906191606/http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/2000/020012.shtml . dead . (based on 1990 US Census)
4. Book: LeMay, Michael C.. Transforming America: Perspectives on U.S. Immigration [3 volumes]

   Perspectives on U.S. Immigration]

   . 2012-12-10. ABC-CLIO. 9780313396441. en.
5. Johnstone. Barbara. Barbara Johnstone. Baumgardt, Dan. "Pittsburghese" Online: Vernacular Norming in Conversation. American Speech. 2004. 79. 2. 115–145. 40281107. 10.1215/00031283-79-2-115. 3861413. 2018-04-20. 2018-04-21. https://web.archive.org/web/20180421030804/https://works.bepress.com/barbara_johnstone/10/download/. dead.
6. Johnstone. Barbara. Barbara Johnstone. Bhasin, Neeta. Wittkofski, Denise. "Dahntahn" Pittsburgh: Monophthongal /aw/ and Representations of Localness in Southwestern Pennsylvania. American Speech. 2002. 77. 2. 148–166. 40281028. 10.1215/00031283-77-2-148. 2783229. 2019-09-17. 2017-09-22. https://web.archive.org/web/20170922030945/https://works.bepress.com/barbara_johnstone/12/download/. dead.
7. Book: Kurath, Hans. A Word Geography of the Eastern United States. 21 October 2012. 1949. University of Michigan Press. 9780472085323.
8. Web site: Linguistic Geography of Pennsylvania . Evolution Publishing . 2012-10-21 . 1999 . Salvucci . Claudio.
9. Book: Thomas, Charles. An Introduction to the Phonetics of American English. registration. 21 October 2012. 1958. Ronald Press. 9780826086303 .
10. Johnstone . Barbara . Barbara Johnstone . Place, language, and semiotic order . Urban Symbolic Landscapes conference . Helsinki . May 3, 2011.
11. Web site: Questions and Answers: Who Uses Pittsburgh Speech the Most?. Pittsburgh Speech and Society. University Library System, University of Pittsburgh. 16 May 2013.
12. Book: Gagnon, C. L.. Language attitudes in Pittsburgh: 'Pittsburghese' vs. standard English. Master's thesis. 1999. University of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh.
13. Book: Kortmann . Bernd . Edgar W. . Schneider . 2004 . A Handbook of Varieties of English: A Multimedia Reference Tool . 1 . New York . Mouton de Gruyter . 407–416 . 10.1515/9783110175325. 978-3-11-019718-1 .
14. Hankey. Clyde T.. Miscellany: 'tiger,' 'tagger,' and [aɪ] in western Pennsylvania. American Speech. 1965. 40. 3. 226–229. 454074. 10.2307/454074.
15. Book: Hankey, Clyde T.. Notes on west Penn-Ohio phonology. In: Studies in Linguistics in Honor of Raven I. McDavid, Jr., ed. by L.M. Davis. 1972. University of Alabama Press. 978-0-8173-0010-4. 49–61. registration.
16. Fasold. Ralph W.. The conversational function of Pennsylvania Dutch intonation. Paper Presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAVE IX) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. 1980.
17. Book: Johnstone, Barbara. Speaking Pittsburghese: The Story of a Dialect. 2013. Oxford University Press. 978-0-199-94568-9.
18. Crozier. Alan. The Scotch-Irish influence on American English. American Speech. 1984. 59. 4. 310–331. 454783. 10.2307/454783.
19. Book: Cassidy, F. G. and. J.H. Hall., Eds.. Dictionary of American Regional English, Vol. II: D-H.. 1991. Harvard University Press. Cambridge. 978-0-674-20512-3. registration.
20. Book: Johnstone, Barbara. Pittsburgh Speech and Pittsburghese. 2015. Walter de Gruyter GmbH. 978-1-614-51178-6.
21. Book: Cassidy, F. G. and J. H. Hall, Eds.. Dictionary of American Regional English, Volume III: I-O. 1996. Harvard University Press. Cambridge. 978-0-674-20519-2. registration.
22. News: The jimmies story. Boston.com. Freeman. Jan.
23. Web site: Parker. Jeanie. Gardening: The fruit of the Osage orange tree has many odd reputed uses. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. PG Publishing. 26 February 2014. September 2, 2000. 5 October 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20141005223311/http://old.post-gazette.com/magazine/20000902monkeyballs6.asp. dead.
24. McElhinny 1999; Wisnosky 2003; Johnstone, Andrus and Danielson 2006
25. Book: Hall. J. H.. Dictionary of American Regional English, Volume IV: P-Sk. 2002. Harvard University Press. Cambridge. 978-0-674-00884-7. registration.
26. Dressman. Michael R.. Redd up. American Speech. 1979. 54. 2. 141–145. 455213. 10.2307/455213.
27. Also see McElhinny (1999); Johnstone, Andrus and Danielson (2006).
28. Book: ((Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries)). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. registration. 26 October 2012. Fourth. 2006. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 978-0-618-70173-5.
29. Web site: Definition of SPICKET. www.merriam-webster.com.
30. Web site: Yinzer Basics: Pittsburghese for Beginners. March 21, 2012.
31. Web site: Yunzonics: Translating Pennsylvanian . https://web.archive.org/web/20090923132617/http://www.tomtwine.com:80/pa.html . 23 September 2009 . dead . tomtwine.com . Thomas H. Twine . 19 April 2022.
32. McElhinny 1999; Wisnosky 2003; Johnstone, Andrus and Danielson 2006: Used Southwestern Pennsylvania and elsewhere in Appalachia, yinz is a particularly salient feature of Pittsburgh speech
33. Montgomery 2001
34. Book: Metcalf, Allan . How We Talk: American Regional English Today. registration. 92. 26 October 2012. 2000. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 978-0-618-04362-0.
35. Book: Robert P. Marzec. The Mid-Atlantic Region. 1 November 2012. 30 December 2004. Greenwood Publishing Group. 978-0-313-32954-8. 271.
36. Adams. Michael. Lexical Doppelgängers. Journal of English Linguistics. 2003. 28. 3. 295–310. 10.1177/00754240022005054. 220752970.
37. Book: Still, Brian . Usability of Complex Information Systems: Evaluation of User Interaction. 1 November 2012. 15 October 2010. CRC Press. 978-1-4398-2894-6. 57.