But we here in the Midwest have a tendency to believe we don't have an accent. McClelland sat down with us today to talk about what makes the Midwestern accent so distinct.
Stateside Staff. Stateside is produced daily by a dedicated group of producers and production assistants. Listen daily, on-air, at 3 and 9 p. This is, of course, not true. The 12 states that make up the Midwest are a unique tapestry, and they have the linguistic diversity to reflect that fact. To be fair, the Midwestern accent used to be pretty much the same throughout the region. This accent is indeed the closest to General American, but it is rapidly changing.
It also has some strong similarities with the English spoken in a few major metropolitan areas of Texas — including Austin — and central Florida.
This accent covers a pretty massive area, which is why Midland American English is slowly splitting into northern and southern halves. The southern half is strongly influenced by Southern American English , whereas the northern part is closer to General American. Despite this divide, there are a number of traits that still unify this region.
The area is currently going through the cot-caught merger that is currently sweeping the nation. A number of other vowels are pronounced with the tongue slightly closer to the front of the mouth than usual. The region that is defined by this speech is western New York and the areas surrounding the Great Lakes, including the cities Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Detroit.
This diagram is meant to represent the position of your tongue in your mouth, with the left side being the front of the mouth. What this diagram shows is that these vowels in this part of the country have changed their location of pronunciation.
Inland Northern American English has other characteristics, but this vowel shift is what sets this accent apart from the rest. It was originally most strongly associated with the working class in the Rust Belt, but the strong version of the accent, often satirized by Saturday Night Live , is becoming less common.
It is the accent of most of Wisconsin, the Dakotas and Minnesota. It is associated with the latter, and so is more commonly known as the Minnesota accent. Yes, this is the one in Fargo , but that is an exaggerated version. Like with many accents, the most noticeable marker of North-Central American English is the vowels. The diphthongs vowels that are really two vowels close together are perhaps the most noticeable difference.
The combination of these foreign accents merged with Inland North American English to create this new dialect. For another example of this accent, you can turn to former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan accent is almost the same as the Minnesota accent because of similar immigrant populations. This article presents just a few of the features that are used by Midwesterners, and it could triple in length if we included longer sections about slang.
Also, the Northern Cities Vowel Shift will probably cause this information to become outdated within a decade or so. Thomas grew up in suburban Massachusetts, and moved to New York City for college. He studied English literature and linguistics at New York University, but spent most of his time in college working for the student paper.
Because of this, he has really hard opinions about AP Style. He's spent a lot of time trying to learn Spanish, and has learned a little German.
But I know western Iowans have a more rural dialect, northern Iowans have a stronger Upper Midwest dialect, and southern Iowans can sometimes sound a bit Southern like many others on the edge of the Lower Midwest.
On the other hand, the industrialized central-eastern Iowa, specifically what is called the Corridor, represents a dialectical island in the North Midland particularly along with northwestern Illinois where Ronald Reagan was born and raised.
Many early radio announcers and movie stars came from around this area. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Midstory is a c 3 non-profit thinkhub that progresses the narrative of the Midwest by incubating bright, diverse and interdisciplinary thinkers to exchange ideas and envision the future of our region through multimedia storytelling and solutions-oriented research since its founding in Twenty years ago, Long Island University reference associate Robert Delaney independently developed and published a map of 24 unique American dialects, which is still used by linguists today.
Image courtesy of Robert Delaney. Image courtesy of Rachel Morello. The words included pairs such as cot and caught and Don and dawn. The vowel sound in the first of these pairs was said to be produced with the tongue low and back in the mouth and with the lips spread open, while the vowel of the second members of each pair was said to involve a slightly higher tongue position and a rounding of the lips. For me, all these words had the same vowel, a sound close to that of the former description i.
Instead the affected vowels come to be pronounced with the tongue positioned in a slightly different place in the mouth. As a result, the vowels appear to be shifting around in articulatory space. The NCS involves changes to the six vowels illustrated by the words caught , cot , cat , bit , bet , and but. For people affected by the NCS, the vowel in caught comes to be articulated with a more fronted tongue position and with the lips spread. In this way, caught takes on a vowel similar to that of cot as spoken in other parts of the country.
The distinction is preserved because the vowel of cot also shifts, coming forward in the mouth toward the area in which other speakers pronounce the vowel of cat.
The cat vowel, in turn, shifts upward from its traditional position in the low, front area of the mouth by raising the tongue. It comes to have a position more like that of bet or even bit. Often it takes on a dipthongal quality, one that combines two vowel sounds and resembles the second syllable of the word idea.
For NCS speakers, the vowel of bit shifts away from its high, front position toward the center of the mouth, taking on a quality much like that of the second syllable of roses.
A similar tendency is heard with the vowel of bet which can sound more like but. The bet vowel also sometimes reveals a slightly different tendency toward lowering so that bet comes to sound more like bat. Finally, there is the vowel of but which is traditionally produced with a central tongue position.
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