Mid-Atlantic American English

Mid-Atlantic American English, Middle Atlantic American English, or Delaware Valley English is a class of American English, considered by The Atlas of North American English to be a single dialect,[1] spoken in the Delaware Valley region of the Mid-Atlantic United States: southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, some southern parts of Central Jersey, northern Delaware, and northeast Maryland.

The dialect consists mainly of the widely studied subsets known as Philadelphia English and Baltimore English.

This dialect of English centers most strongly on Philadelphia and Reading, Pennsylvania; Wilmington, Delaware; Baltimore, Maryland; and Atlantic City and Trenton, New Jersey.[2]

Phonological characteristics
A chart of all vowels of Mid-Atlantic American English
Pure vowels (Monophthongs)
English diaphoneme Mid-Atlantic realization Example words
/æ/ [æ] act, pal, trap
[æə~ɛə~eə] ham, pass, yeah
/ɑː/ [ɑː] blah, father
/ɒ/ bother,
lot, top, wasp
[ɔə]~[ɒ̝ə] dog, loss, cloth
/ɔː/ all, bought, taught, saw
/ɛ/ [ɛ] dress, met, bread
/ə/ [ə~ɜ] about, syrup, arena
/ɪ/ [ɪ~ɪ̈] hit, skim, tip
/iː/ [iː] beam, chic, fleet
/ʌ/ [ʌ] bus, flood, what
/ʊ/ [ʊ] book, put, should
/uː/ [ʉu] food, glue, new
Diphthongs
/aɪ/ [äɪ] ride, shine, try
[ɐɪ] bright, dice, pike
/aʊ/ [æʊ~ɛɔ] now, ouch, scout
/eɪ/ [eɪ] lake, paid, rein
/ɔɪ/ [ɔɪ~oɪ] boy, choice, moist
/oʊ/ [ɘʊ~ɜʊ] goat, oh, show
R-colored vowels
/ɑːr/ [ɑɹ] barn, car, park
/ɪər/ [iɹ] fear, peer, tier
/ɛər/ [er] bare, bear, there
/ɜːr/ [əɹ~ɜɹ] burn, first, herd
/ər/ [əɹ] doctor, martyr, pervade
/ɔːr/ [ɔɹ~oɹ] hoarse, horse, poor
score, tour, war
/ʊər/
/jʊər/ [jɔɹ~joɹ~jəɹ] cure, Europe, pure

The Mid-Atlantic dialectal region is characterized by several unique phonological features:

  • No cot-caught merger: There is a huge difference in the pronunciation between the cot class of words (e.g. pot, glob, and rock) and the caught class (e.g. thought, awe, and call), as in New York City.[3] The caught class is raised and diphthongized towards [oə]~[o̝ə].[4]
  • Lot-cloth split: Similarly, the single word "on" has the vowel of "dawn", and not the same vowel as "don" etc. Labov et al. regard this phenomenon as occurring not just in the Mid-Atlantic region, but in all regions south of a geographic boundary that they identify as the "ON line", which is significant because it distinguishes most varieties of Northern American English (in which on and Don are closer rhymes) from most varieties of Midland and Southern American English (in which on and dawn are closer rhymes).[5]
  • Short-a split system: The Mid-Atlantic region uses a short-a split system similar to, but more limited than, the New York City short-a split system. (In the Trenton area, an intermediate system is used, falling between the typical Mid-Atlantic and the New York City system.)[6] Generally, in the Mid-Atlantic system, the vowel /æ/ is tensed (towards [eə]) before the consonants /m/, /n/, /f/, /s/, and /θ/ in a closed syllable (so, for example, bats and baths do not have the same vowel sound, being pronounced [bæts] and [beəθs], respectively), and in any words directly inflectionally derived from root words with this split. Therefore, pass and passing use the tense [eə], but passage and passive use the lax [æ].[7] The lax and the tense reflexes of /æ/ are separate phonemes in these dialects, though largely predictable using the aforementioned rules. There are exceptions, however; the three words bad, mad, and glad become tense, and irregular verbs ending in "-an" or "-am" remain lax.[8]
/æ/ raising in North American English[9]
Following
consonant		 Example
words[10]		 New York
City,[10] New
Orleans[11]		 Baltimore,
Philadel-
phia[10][12]		 General
American,
New England,
Western US		 Midland US,
Pittsburgh		 Southern
US		 Canada,
Northern
Mountain
US		 Minnesota,
Wisconsin		 Great
Lakes
US
Non-prevocalic
/m, n/		 fan, lamb, stand [ɛə][13][upper-alpha 1][upper-alpha 2] [ɛə][13] [ɛə] [ɛə~ɛjə][15] [ɛə][16] [ɛə][17][13]
Prevocalic
/m, n/		 animal, planet,
Spanish		 [æ]
/ŋ/[18] frank, language [eɪ][19] [æ][18] [æ~æɛə][15] [ɛː~ɛj][16] [eː~ej][20]
Non-prevocalic
/ɡ/		 bag, drag [ɛə][upper-alpha 1] [æ][upper-alpha 3] [æ][13]
Prevocalic /ɡ/ dragon, magazine [æ]
Non-prevocalic
/b, d, ʃ/		 grab, flash, sad [ɛə][upper-alpha 1] [æ][21] [ɛə][21]
Non-prevocalic
/f, θ, s/		 ask, bath, half,
glass		 [ɛə][upper-alpha 1]
Otherwise as, back, happy,
locality		 [æ][upper-alpha 4]
  1. In New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, most function words (am, can, had, etc.) and some learned or less common words (alas, carafe, lad, etc.) have [æ].
  2. In Philadelphia, the irregular verbs began, ran, swam, and wan (a local variant of won) have [æ].[14]
  3. In Philadelphia, bad, mad, and glad alone have [ɛə].
  4. In New York City, certain lexical exceptions exist (like avenue being tense) and variability is common before /dʒ/ and /z/ as in imagine, magic, and jazz.[22]
    In New Orleans, [ɛə] additionally occurs before /v/ and /z/.[23]
  • Strong fronting in the starting places of these vowels: /aʊ/ (for example, towards [æʊ~ɛɔ]), /oʊ/ (for example, towards [ɘʊ~ɜʊ]) and /uː/ (for example, towards the diphthongized [ʉu]),[24] none of which occur in New York City English but are, rather, similar to Midland U.S. English, and even Southern U.S. English.
  • Rhoticity: The Mid-Atlantic dialect, unlike the traditional New York City dialect, is mostly rhotic.[8]

Lexical characteristics
  • To refer to a sweetened, flavored, carbonated soft drink, the term soda is preferred (rather than pop or the generic coke which are common to the west and to the south, respectively).
  • Positive anymore may be used without its negative polarity to mean "nowadays," as in "Her hoagies taste different anymore."
  • The term jimmies is sometimes used in this and the Boston dialect to refer to small confectionaries used to top ice cream and icing, generally called sprinkles in New York and the rest of the United States.
  • The term rail drink may be used in parts of the Mid-Atlantic region, in particular in much of the Washington, D.C./Baltimore metro area, for what is known as a "well drink" in bars and pubs in much or most of the rest of the U.S.

Notable speakers
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
gollark: To what?
gollark: We don't really *store* bees for use, as much as just write their pattern directly into the universe as needed.
gollark: Andrew is just overselling ATech™ a lot.
gollark: Those don't actually work.
gollark: It's mostly obsolete now.

References
  1. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 236
  2. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 233
  3. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 125
  4. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 130
  5. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 189
  6. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 239
  7. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 173
  8. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), chpt. 17
  9. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 182.
  10. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 173–4.
  11. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 260–1.
  12. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 238–9.
  13. Duncan (2016), pp. 1–2.
  14. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 238.
  15. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 178, 180.
  16. Boberg (2008), p. 145.
  17. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 175–7.
  18. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 183.
  19. Baker, Mielke & Archangeli (2008).
  20. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 181–2.
  21. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 82, 123, 177, 179.
  22. Labov (2007), p. 359.
  23. Labov (2007), p. 373.
  24. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 237
  25. "The Best Show with Tom Scharpling". thebestshow.libsyn.com. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
  26. "Philadelphians have a unique accent, with pronunciation evolving over the decades". Retrieved 2018-08-24.
  27. "Senator Barbara Mikulski Delivers Farewell Speech". c-span.org. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
  28. "Simply Laura".

Bibliography
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