Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Vijay]

So y'all think dialect differences in the US are comparable to most other countries? To me it seems like they're more comparable to modern Poland or Russia.

[mèþru]

Modern Poland has huge dialectal differences. I don't know nearly as much as about Russian dialects because I don't see any ZBBers debating it constantly

[Nortaneous]

But it does mean that nine times out of ten, if you ask someone in the US "what dialect do you speak?" they won't be able to give you a straight answer. They will pretty much all say "GA."

Yes, most people outside the South (and to a lesser extent the East Coast) will claim that they speak ordinary American English. And many of them will be wrong about that. I once met someone who claimed to speak ordinary American English, didn't have the father-bother merger (she's from Worcester), and didn't realize she didn't have it! Besides, over a third of the population of the US lives in the South. When you add to that the other regions and demographics with distinct dialects, we're probably talking about closer to half of the population.

Even if you think the entire white population of the US speaks GenAm, that's... less than two thirds of the total population. More than a tenth is black, and how many of them do you think would claim not to have a dialect?

So y'all think dialect differences in the US are comparable to most other countries? To me it seems like they're more comparable to modern Poland or Russia.

Russia has pretty significant dialect differences west of the Volga.

[Salmoneus]

So y'all think dialect differences in the US are comparable to most other countries?

That was not the question. The question was, are there dialects. Specifically, to the extent that it makes sense, when inquiring about American English pronunciations, to ask where someone's from.

That has nothing to do with 'are the differences between dialects comparable to those in other countries?' (to which the answer is 'it depends on the country' - are they comparable to the dialects in Italy? Obviously not; are they comparable to the dialects in Canada? No, the dialects in the US are more divergent).

To your earlier question: every dialect is shared between 'parts', because all parts are made up of parts. But no, of course not all non-GA dialects are dying. Look at California. Look at Chicago. Look at Boston, at New York, at the South.

[Travis B.]

So are there any parts of the US where there is a local dialect that is a) not shared with other parts of the country and b) also not dying out?

Waves.

Of course you know that there is the NCVS here. And there's l-vocalization. And uvular /r/. And plenty of intervocalic elision. And cluster reduction. And partial diphthong monophthongization. And palatalization. (Apparently many people palatalize far more than I do.) And so on. It's like the dialect here decided to just be different because it could be.

And I see no signs of it dying out.

[Vijay]

Modern Poland has huge dialectal differences.

That's not what modern Poles seem to think.

Yes, most people outside the South (and to a lesser extent the East Coast) will claim that they speak ordinary American English.

I think most people even inside the South will claim they do, regardless of whether they do or not.

Even if you think the entire white population of the US speaks GenAm

I don't. I think most of the population of the US irrespective of ethnicity does.

More than a tenth is black, and how many of them do you think would claim not to have a dialect?

I can't put a number on it, but I personally know a number of them who don't and have heard even more who also don't.

Russia has pretty significant dialect differences west of the Volga.

That's not what Russian-speakers on either side of the Volga seem to think and also not supported by what I've heard so far of their Russian.

So y'all think dialect differences in the US are comparable to most other countries?

That was not the question.

It wasn't? It seems to me that was my question this whole time:

The US doesn't really have dialects the way that most countries (including the UK) seem to. Dialect differences are pretty minimal (note: not non-existent!) in the US

Yeah but all of that is way less dialect variation than the UK (or even just England) has and in fact probably less than most countries.

The question was, are there dialects.

Who ever said there weren't dialects at all? I know I never did. But I'm also not sure to what extent what people are identifying as "dialects" are really dialects that actually exist in the areas where they're supposedly spoken and not just regional stereotypes.

Specifically, to the extent that it makes sense, when inquiring about American English pronunciations, to ask where someone's from.

You can ask where someone's from, but I'm trying to tell you it's not going to help you much, and I think that's borne out in the actual data you've managed to gather so far. Asking what dialect they speak is going to help you even less.

are they comparable to the dialects in Canada? No, the dialects in the US are more divergent).

I'm not so sure about that; Canada seems to have about as much dialect variation as the US, if not more.

To your earlier question: every dialect is shared between 'parts', because all parts are made up of parts.

...What?

But no, of course not all non-GA dialects are dying. Look at California. Look at Chicago. Look at Boston, at New York, at the South.

I don't see the difference between California, Chicago, and GA, and I get the impression the last three are dying. Certainly in Texas it is dying. It is also heavily stigmatized.

And there's l-vocalization.

How is that a dialect feature? The whole of North America and even some parts of Britain have all had l-vocalization attested for at least two hundred years. To me it seems rather like a widespread and ongoing sound change that just hasn't made it into any de facto standard variety.

[Salmoneus]

Modern Poland has huge dialectal differences.

That's not what modern Poles seem to think.

Says the American.

Yes, most people outside the South (and to a lesser extent the East Coast) will claim that they speak ordinary American English.

I think most people even inside the South will claim they do, regardless of whether they do or not.

Even from outside the US, that doesn't seem true. Lots of Southerners recognise that they have a 'drawl' or a 'twang' or whatever and are actively proud of it.

Even if you think the entire white population of the US speaks GenAm

I don't. I think most of the population of the US irrespective of ethnicity does.

This is clearly false. You can eliminate 40% of the population immediately for having the cot-caught merger. Then there's the whole of the South, and the whole of the Inland North, and obviously all of New England, and New York, and...

General American is actually only spoken in very few areas.

Russia has pretty significant dialect differences west of the Volga.

That's not what Russian-speakers on either side of the Volga seem to think and also not supported by what I've heard so far of their Russian.

Says the American

It wasn't? It seems to me that was my question this whole time

Well, let's analyse the text on both internal and external grounds. Internally, you said "The US doesn't really have dialects the way that most countries (including the UK) seem to. Dialect differences are pretty minimal in the US, and isoglosses are all so messy and interstate migration so common that they can't be reliably associated with any particular area of the country."
The first sentence is obviously ambiguous between a restrictive and a descriptive use of the manner clause, but fortunately the ambiguity is cleared up in the second sentence, since 'isoglosses are so messy they can't be associated with any particular area' is synonymous with 'there are no dialects'.

More powerfully, on external evidence, by conversational implicature, you said this to rebut the claim that there were dialects, and have continued to act like you're disagreeing (for two pages of everyone else telling you there are US dialects and you saying 'nope'), even though all we've said is that there are dialects - nobody has ever claimed that US dialects are more divergent than UK dialects, so the fact of you disagreeing implies that that's not your only argument.Because if that's all you want to say, sure, we all know that, we've all agreed to that a page ago.

If that's all you wanted to say, then your way of saying it has been bizarre and misleading! But rest assured, we all know that the US dialects are less divergent than UK ones.

But I'm also not sure to what extent what people are identifying as "dialects" are really dialects that actually exist

Wow, I can't imagine where anyone got the idea that you thought there weren't US dialects came from! Why didn't we realise that your position was a simple 'there are dialects, but they're not really dialects that actually exist'?

Fortunately, in this case, there are people called linguists who have studied this question in great detail, so you don't have to be sure.

Specifically, to the extent that it makes sense, when inquiring about American English pronunciations, to ask where someone's from.

You can ask where someone's from, but I'm trying to tell you it's not going to help you much, and I think that's borne out in the actual data you've managed to gather so far. Asking what dialect they speak is going to help you even less.

My 'data' so far is one person who has the cot-caught merger despite being from a non-merging area. This does not shock me to my core. The area around DC apparently is one of the few areas that's on average GA, but it has many speakers from all over the country, so some outliers are to be expected. The cot-caught merger is spreading out of its core area, and DC is not core non-merger territory (it's not that far, relatively speaking, from merging areas, so it's not like it's the deep south). Bosko's pronunciation is unusual, but not freakish.

In general, asking where someone's from (primarily where they learned their language, but also where they live now) does strongly correlate to linguistic features, and we know this because people have checked. The big text in this area is the atlas of north american english, although it's now a little out of date; there are countless papers on local regions and specific features.

Fortunately, however, US dialects are obvious enough that it doesn't take an academic linguist to spot them, so we have this very-helpful map of US (and Canadian) dialects. It's based on the anae, but confirmed and updated through the creator's own research - hundreds of voice samples. Both his soundfiles and the soundfiles for the anae are available online, if you still think this is all a hoax by Big Phonology.

[Aschmann's map is only based on phonological differences, so you'll have to look elsewhere for the substantial lexical and grammatical dialectical studies]

are they comparable to the dialects in Canada? No, the dialects in the US are more divergent).

I'm not so sure about that; Canada seems to have about as much dialect variation as the US, if not more.

This is blatently false.

To your earlier question: every dialect is shared between 'parts', because all parts are made up of parts.

...What?

Not sure what's confusing there

But no, of course not all non-GA dialects are dying. Look at California. Look at Chicago. Look at Boston, at New York, at the South.

I don't see the difference between California, Chicago, and GA, and I get the impression the last three are dying. Certainly in Texas it is dying. It is also heavily stigmatized.

No, they're not dying, although inevitably they're changing, and some of the more extreme features are being levelled.
If you can't tell the difference between a Northern Cities Vowel Shift speaker and a Californian Vowel Shift speaker, that just explains why you can hold your view - you just can't hear dialects. It's not unusual. I have a bad ear too, unless I'm really concentrating - we all naturally mentally reconfigure the speech we hear into our own dialect, and some of us do that more thoroughly than others. It's why Bosko can say he's never heard non-merged American speakers in the media, even though obviously he has - because he instinctively hears them as merged, unless the realisations are too extreme. But that doesn't mean the differences aren't there - just that casual listening by non-linguists who have grown up familiar with (and compensating for) the dialect differences is a bad way to spot them.

In my case, both my parents have identifiable accents that are Not From Around Here, and everybody who knows them seems to comment on it - but I didn't realise this until I was quite old, and even now I struggle to hear it, except for cases of lexical set non-alignment or particular shibboleths (eg I can hear that my father sometimes forgets to have the foot-strut split, indicating that it's not native for him). Smaller variations in vowel position, however, I just mentally whitewash.

And there's l-vocalization.

How is that a dialect feature? The whole of North America and even some parts of Britain have all had l-vocalization attested for at least two hundred years. To me it seems rather like a widespread and ongoing sound change that just hasn't made it into any de facto standard variety.

A widespread and ongoing sound change that is much more common in one area than another is what we call a 'dialectical feature'.

[alynnidalar]

I don't see the difference between California, Chicago, and GA

it's clear to see that the vowels of california and michigan are very similar and have no significant phonological differences

[mèþru]

I agree with you Sal, but yaur belittling is uncalled for; Vijay is a linguist.

Also minor quibble with the map - the area I live in definitely does not have the same phonology as Philadelphia or Atlantic City

[Travis B.]

I don't see the difference between California, Chicago, and GA, and I get the impression the last three are dying. Certainly in Texas it is dying. It is also heavily stigmatized.

I am not sufficiently familiar with California English to say much about it, but as least for the NCVS, which is one of the largest distinctions between GA and Chicago, in that case it is essentially æ > iə~iæ, ɑ > a (or in some subdialects, even æ I hear from linguoboy!), ɛ > ɜ~ɐ, ɐ > ʌ, ɔ > ɒ (except before /r/), and ɪ > ɘ, with that preceding the > being GA and that after the > being Chicago. (I am not from Chicago and have never lived in Chicago, but I have relatives there, and the dialect is sufficiently similar to that here for me to feel relatively comfortable speaking about it.)

And there's l-vocalization.

How is that a dialect feature? The whole of North America and even some parts of Britain have all had l-vocalization attested for at least two hundred years. To me it seems rather like a widespread and ongoing sound change that just hasn't made it into any de facto standard variety.

L-vocalization here isn't really like the classic l-vocalization found in much of English. It's more like what happened to modern-day standard Polish - l-vocalization can occur before the vowel as well as after it, especially if the /l/ is in a /Cl/ cluster, where then it almost invariably happens. (The difference from Polish is that l-vocalization here is unrounded by default, whereas in Polish it is rounded by default; here it is rounded only if adjacent to something rounded to assimilate to.)

[Salmoneus]

It wasn't intentional 'belittling' - I didn't know that was his profession. Please, feel free to exchange 'linguist' with 'phonologist' or 'dialectician' or whatever more specific term would be appropriate. I haven't read any of Vijay's published papers, but I'm assuming they're not in the field of American English dialectology, so the remark remains just as valid: we don't have to rely on Vijay's intuition, because professionals in the field have actually researched the issue.

If there's an error on Aschmann's map, I suggest you tell him, and give him better sound samples. He seems to be willing to make updates based on contributions from readers.

[of course, any attempt to make exact maps based on small sample sizes is inherently quixotic; leaving aside the issue of migration and idiosyncracies, dialects would be better represented as a four-dimensional map, incorporating not just latitude and longitude but also social class and age. Nonetheless, generalisations remain useful.]


alynnidalar: and those aren't even the 'extreme' (i.e. newly-developing) forms in those areas!

[Linguoboy]

Dialect differences are pretty minimal in the US, and isoglosses are all so messy and interstate migration so common that they can't be reliably associated with any particular area of the country.

I think something to keep in mind about internal migration is that it's common in the sense that many people do it, and that those who do tend to migrate more than once, but that still leaves an enormous population that does not migrate. According to a recent Pew survey, 37% of USAmericans have never left the town where they grew up. In the Midwest, that percentage rises to 46%. Of those who have left their hometown, nearly a third never made it out of the state where they were born[*].

Moreover, migration is--as one might expect--highly correlated with education. Three-fourths of college graduates relocate; they're also the most likely to have lived in multiple states. But only a third of adults have four-year degrees. So you have a very visible and mobile segment of the population which is university-educated and tends to speak something something very close to GA, but this obscures a very substantial number of people (on average, less educated) who stay put and retain their local accents.

[*] Here's something I think these statistics conceal, which I can illustrate anecdotally from my own family history: I was born 1100 km from where I live now. By the age of ten, I'd moved five times and lived in three different states. But for the last 30+ years, I've lived in the same city. And that's also true of all of my siblings: my younger brother came to Chicago four years after me and has never left, my older brother moved back to St Louis after dropping out of college in 1988, and my sister stayed in town for her education. Not only have she and my older brother never lived anywhere but St Louis for any significant part of their adult lives, they've always lived in the same part of town.

So, here we are, all four of us part of that 43% of Americans who have settled somewhere other than the states we were born in, and yet our places of residence have remained remarkably stable throughout our adult lives. And it shows in our accents. My younger brother and I may have a bit more Chicago influence on our Midland English than our siblings, but the NCVS touches St Louis, so my older brother's and sister's accents have shifted in a similar direction.

[Travis B.]

Here in the Milwaukee area I have worked with people who one would probably call reasonably educated (these are programmers, engineers, managers, and so on), yet those who actually speak GA are typically foreigners; typically, if someone is a white American* middle class person here they are going to have at least the NCVS and l-vocalization. So being educated does necessarily mean that people will not speak in the dialect here. Note that people do shift between the Milwaukee and Chicago areas, but people from the two areas are sometimes hard to tell apart (but you can tell if you pay close enough attention, e.g. the pronunciation of Chicago is an important shibboleth).

* I have worked with plenty of people who are not white Americans, but they are almost invariably foreign-born.

[Qwynegold]

How did the pronunciation of this go from *n̥ʰɯːs in Old Chinese to something like /tʰʌi^H/ in Middle Chinese?

I don't actually know anything about this, but I'll make a wild guess: n̥ʰ changed (because that's a really weird sound, so who would want it?) into tʰ; they're both voiceless, alveolar and aspirated, so it doesn't seem like such a huge leap. The final s obviously turned into a tone, and ɯː > ʌi is like the back version of the iː > aɪ change in English.

[Nortaneous]

Russia has pretty significant dialect differences west of the Volga.

That's not what Russian-speakers on either side of the Volga seem to think and also not supported by what I've heard so far of their Russian.

They're wrong. Folk linguistics is usually not good. When people guess where I'm from by my accent, I get everything from "Texas" to "why do you sound black".

But no, of course not all non-GA dialects are dying. Look at California. Look at Chicago. Look at Boston, at New York, at the South.

I don't see the difference between California, Chicago, and GA, and I get the impression the last three are dying. Certainly in Texas it is dying. It is also heavily stigmatized.

The Boston dialect isn't dying at all - there are plenty of people my age who preserve it. It's just that most of them are lower-middle-class 'white ethnics' - so you could probably go through four years of MIT without hearing it at all. But that's not about the dialect; that's about class stratification.

You'd be surprised! I was watching video game speedruns one day - a subculture that doesn't really attract people above 35 - and found that there's someone with Canadian raising of [a:] to [ɒɪ̯].

As for l-vocalization, l > ʁ is somewhat common, but as far as I've seen isn't regional at all.

How did the pronunciation of this go from *n̥ʰɯːs in Old Chinese to something like /tʰʌi^H/ in Middle Chinese?

For the coda, *-s > -H is obvious. I don't know where the *-j in thojH comes from.

For the rhyme in general, Baxter-Sagart initial consonant pharyngealization and Zhengzhang vowel length mean the same thing - it's a Type A syllable. (In older reconstructions, Type A syllables are reconstructed without medial *-j-, and Type B syllables are reconstructed with them.) Since there's pharyngealization and no medial *-r-, it becomes a Division I final - in this case, Qieyun rhyme class 咍 -oj.

(Baxter-Sagart schwa and Zhengzhang ɯ are also the same thing - they're completely equivalent except in notation.)

For the initial, OC voiceless nasals are reconstructed by character evidence, and AFAIK they're completely lost by the 'Proto-Chinese' stage. Most voiceless nasals become MC x- or xw-, but *hn- > th-.

[missals]

Yeah, it's quite perplexing to insist that the US doesn't have significant dialectal differences anymore - or even, whether or not they're "significant", any varieties truly distinctive to a particular region.

Now, there is a lot of leveling and spreading going on. And the middle/professional class in much of the country is assimilating to a kind of California-tinged koine. But the thing is, even among that group, nobody speaks a "pure" GA. Almost everyone has some kind of "tell" - oftentimes many such tells, because many of them pass entirely under the radar, with no stigma or stereotype attached at all. Americans just don't have the folk-linguistic framework to talk about many of the ongoing changes in their language. This is the case for Canadian raising of /aj/ and various pre-lateral mergers and pre-velar raising phenomena, for example. And the only part of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift that Americans actually notice and comment on is dipthongization of /æ/ and /ɑr/ and fronting of /ɑ/. You can back your /ʌ/ and /ɛ/ as much as you want and hardly anyone will notice unless it gets to the point where it actively impedes communication.

And then there's the dialect-dialects. Recent studies have shown that the Southern Vowel Shift is heavily receding among suburban whites in major Sun Belt cities due to professional transplants from the Midwest, but nonetheless there is no sign at all that the Southern Accent is declining anywhere outside of that limited context. And yes, the old non-rhotic New York City accent is well and dead among anyone below the age of 60, but the area still has numerous distinctive features, such as the ingliding dipthong /ʊə/ for the CAUGHT vowel and preservations like the Mary-merry-marry distinction.

There is some evidence the NCVS is in decline among young people in certain cities, but nonetheless as soon as you cross that isogloss you can hear that incredible dipthongization of /æ/ among people of all ages, and the other traits of the accent if you listen more closely.

Also, some may not be pleased to hear this, but the cot-caught merger isn't a regionalism anymore. The Harvard Dialect Survey showed that 70% of all Americans born after 1990 have the merger, and that was in 2001. It's now a regionalism if you don't have the merger, at least if you're under 30. If you're under 30 and don't have the merger it means you're from the NYC area, one of the big NCVS cities, or somewhere in the South. But even some people with Southern accents have the merger these days.

EDIT: And even in this era when some dialects do seem to be on the verge of decline, there are still genuinely novel developments occurring in American English: Young people of all races/ethnicities in the town of Liberal, Kansas now speak a syllable-timed English with no raising or breaking of /æ/.

[Travis B.]

Part of me wonders whether things that seem like dialectal features here to me are really just because other people have not noticed them elsewhere. For instance, l-vocalization; I do not see people putting this in their transcriptions, but at the same time other people here have noted that this actually a widespread feature, and I have read things to a similar effect. Another feature like this is final devoicing - not the German, Dutch, Polish, or Russian kind where there is neutralization, but just simple devoicing without merger - I do not hear anyone commenting on this, yet I cannot help hear it when listening to people speaking English wherever they may be from and no matter what register they are speaking in.

[Salmoneus]

What you're probably hearing is the relative lack of auditory indications of voicing in word-final position (particularly phrase-final or when words are said in isolation). This is (to return to my earlier topic) supposedly why voiceless stops are often glotally reinforced in these positions, to emphasise the contrast.

[Linguoboy]

While lining up for pączki today, a coworker and I shared our love for the ones with apricot filing and I was struck by the difference in our pronunciation. It seems to me that food words in English have a disproportionate number of unpredictable alternations and that--even more interesting--several seem to vary arbitrarily without coinciding with other prominent isoglosses. Some examples:

apricot: /eː/ vs /æ/
salmon: /æ/ vs /æl/ vs /ɑ/
potato, tomato: /eː/ vs /ɑ/
basil: /eː/ vs /æ/

For the helluvit, I've underlined my values. I don't know that I even share them all with other members of my family, let alone with the regiolect of any particular place.

[Travis B.]

I have /æ/pricot, s/æ/mon, pot/eɪ/to, tom/eɪ/to, and b/eɪ/sil.

Too bad Pączki Day really isn't a thing here in the Milwaukee area, even though we have plenty of people of Polish descent here.