North American English Dialects, Based on Pronunciation Patterns

Small-Scale Dialect Map

The small map below is the same as the Full-Scale Dialect Map that follows, but shows the entire width of the map (on most monitors). 24-Aug.-2010

Click on any part of this map to move to the equivalent part of the Full-Scale Dialect Map. (For now this only moves to the far left or the far right of the Full-Scale Dialect Map, so unfortunately it doesn’t work well for the middle portions, and you will just have to scroll over.) 24-Aug.-2010

Full-Scale Dialect Map

Instructions

For many of the cities or towns on this map, you can listen to an audio or video sample of speech of a native (more specifically, someone who was raised there, though not necessarily born there, and whose dialect clearly represents that place). All of the cities or towns with a green center have such an audio or video sample that can be listened to (and a few of the ones with pink centers do also). I will continue adding new audio and video samples, so check back from time to time. So far there are over 900 samples listed, more and more of which are from contributors! Thanks! 1-Sep.-2014

The cities and towns with a large dot are those which are larger or more important in each state or province. New! 13-Sep.-2017

Use the scroll bars to move around on this map, or, even simpler, start at the tiny map above and click the country (U.S. or Canada) that you want to look at. This will take you to the Small-Scale Dialect Map. Click again to zoom in further on your location. (For now this only moves to the far left or the far right of the Full-Scale Dialect Map, so unfortunately it doesn’t work well for the middle portions, and you will just have to scroll over.) 24-Aug.-2010

The entire map is clickable, taking you to the list of samples for that state or province. Only those locations with green centers, and a few with pink centers, have a sample so far. There will be a few areas of the oceans and the legends that are not clickable, but all of the states and provinces now are. Place the mouse over a particular state or province to see its name. (The map guides, showing the meaning of all the colors, are on the top right and bottom left of the map.) 25-Sep.-2013

Help! For many places I haven’t found an audio sample yet. If you know of an audio or video sample on the Internet that features a speaker who was raised in a particular place, and whose dialect clearly represents that place, please let me know, whether that place is currently listed or not! Although many of the people in these samples are prominent people, I actually prefer ordinary local people, but anyone at all will do, as long as their pronunciation represents the local dialect. (The ones I especially need, and cannot find, are those with an orange-yellow center.) Also, if you think that one of the audio examples does not truly represent the local dialect, please let me know in the same way. (Oh, but please keep the samples clean. I have a policy of not using a sample if it uses a word you can’t say on TV in the U.S.!) I will normally list your name as the contributor, to make this more of a community project, unless you’d rather I didn’t, in which case I will use initials. However, I will not publish anyone’s e-mail address. 10-May-2011

Numbered Locations: A number of states (17 so far) now have so many locations mapped that there was no longer room for all the names, so I was forced to go to a numbering system for such areas, since the scale of the map is already big enough! I put the key to the numbers off the east coast of Canada. The area with the most numbers is much of Kentucky and Tennessee and neighboring areas, which are about as thoroughly mapped as they possibly can be, thanks in part to enthusiastic contributor Eli K. in 2010. That’s the kind of help needed to really fill out this map! Adj. 2-Oct.-2017

Data from the Atlas of North American English (ANAE)

I am grateful to the Atlas of North American English (ANAE) by William Labov, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg, for a good part of the data on which this map was based. Specifically, much of the information on the map above and in the Dialect Description Chart below was obtained from ANAE chapter 11 (a draft version available on the Internet), as well as from many other chapters of the same work, with a few ideas from a much older version of the same: ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/home.html. (The Table of Contents of the draft version of the atlas can be seen at: www.ling.upenn.edu/phonoatlas/ANAE_ToC.pdf, but this does not link directly to the chapters. Links to each chapter are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23.) 11-Nov.-2015

However, the names of a number of the dialects are my own, and I have made many adjustments to their borders (especially Inland and Lowland South, West Midland, and Allegheny Midland). Also, a lot of the data is from my own research and analysis. - Rick Aschmann

I discovered in late 2011 that much or all of the audio data upon which the atlas was based is now available on the Internet, on this website (select North American English Dialects). (Replaced bad link.) I will be adding samples from this site as I have time, marked as “ANAE info and audio”. 26-Jan.-2013

Map Notes

The following notes refer to numbers on the map, and show the corresponding section of the ANAE:

1: Pin-pen merger: See Map 9.5 in ANAE chapter 9 and www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map3.html. This is the only feature in which I find myself in significant disagreement with the ANAE: I have found that the pin-pen merger area is much larger than they show, especially in the west.[1] (See The Pin-Pen Merger, The Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Texas Cattle Drives below.) 6-Aug.-2011

2: Long /ō/ [oʊ] fronting: See Map 20.2 in ANAE chapter 20. 2: The boundary between central-back and central-front (the yellow dots) was used by the ANAE to define the boundary between North and Midland, but this line then extends into the West. The deep dip that it takes southwards in Utah and Nevada would seem to indicate settlement of these areas by Northerners, probably represented by the Mormon settlement. Thus this dip corresponds to a large degree to the “Mormon Corridor”. Many of these settlers were originally from the Palmyra, New York, area and from Kirtland, Ohio. Another northern contribution may have been the early northeastern organized crime influence in Las Vegas. Now I’m not saying that people in these areas sound like northeasterners: they don’t, they sound like westerners, with this one feature being dragged south because of this origin. 20-Jan.-2010

3: R-dropping: See Map 7.1 in ANAE chapter 7. R-droppers are also called non-rhotic English speakers, though I find this term rather obscure and academic, and prefer not to use it on a site like this, which is not for academics. There are two types of r-droppers, which I call Systematic R-droppers and Simple R-droppers. 11-May-2015

Systematic R-droppers are found in the northeastern U. S., in much of England, and in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, much of the Caribbean, and other places. Systematic R-droppers have linking and intrusive r’s. John F. Kennedy is an excellent example of a Systematic r-dropper. In a speech he gave prior to being elected, he says “The hungry children I sawr in West Vaginia.” This quote has one intrusive r, and one dropped r, both highlighted in red. In another speech during the Cuban missile crisis he says, starting at 4:55: “...Soviet foreign minista Gromyko told me in my office that he was instructed to make it cleah once again, as he said his govament had already done, Soviet assistance to Cubar, and I quote, ...”, which again has one intrusive r, and three dropped r’s, again highlighted in red. 11-May-2015

Simple R-droppers are found in parts of the Lowland South. As a general rule, they do not have linking and intrusive r’s. All of the areas in the South marked as r-droppers on my map are Simple R-dropper areas, though New Orleans shows some tendency to retain final r’s before a vowel, though not enough to make it systematic. (It turns out that Hawai’i Creole English is also of this type.) 11-Mar.-2016

Numerous examples of both kinds of r-droppers are given in the audio samples below. This pattern is receding, so occasionally only much older speakers retain the r-dropping in a given location. These are surrounded on the map by a dotted green circle, and in the chart below will be indicated with the phrase “Older r-dropper”. 3-Apr.-2010

4: Canadian and Tidewater raising: See Map 15.5 in ANAE chapter 15, noting only the info for the /ou/ [aʊ] vowel (which he writes /aw/), not the /ī/ [aɪ] vowel (which he writes /ay/). The ANAE does not show this information on any map for the Tidewater South, so I have gleaned the info from various sources, including stray comments in ANAE. This is also found in one, and apparently only one, of the New Orleans subdialects, St. Bernard Parish, which is far away from either Canada or the Tidewater South! Why this should be the case is a mystery. Adj. 16-Sep.-2017

5: Bite-bout line: See Map 14.1 in ANAE chapter 14.

6: “On” line: See Map 14.2 in ANAE chapter 14. This is the only lexical item included in this analysis, but it seems to correlate with the phonological data, and as the ANAE points out, largely follows the North-Midland boundary. Why it turns north at its western end in the Dakotas and does some contortions is unclear. (The ANAE did not have Mitchell, SD or Ashley, ND, which are the surprises. I had earlier thought Mitchell was north of the line, but actually it is south of it.) Miles City, Montana, an outlier of Western North, is also below the line. In San Francisco the pattern seems to be reversed, with the “Don” group possibly representing a later influx of some type. 17-Dec.-2015

Dialect Description Chart

(17-Aug.-2015)

* Those dialects marked with an asterisk are not in the Atlas of North American English (ANAE).

Other Sources

I have added and adjusted a lot of the information on the map based on the following audio and non-audio data. - Rick Aschmann

Regional non-audio data

Location Source English, French, and indigenous mother-tongue areas of Canada atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/population.html#language 25-Sep.-2013 French mother-tongue areas of Maine Wikipedia, www.francomaine.org/English/Carto/carto.htm Indigenous languages ethnologue.com/region/NAM 9-Sep.-2013 the eastern boundary of Inland North ling.upenn.edu/~dinkin/GapHandout.pdf Greater New York City ling.upenn.edu/~wlabov/Papers/TD.pdf Eastern boundary between Eastern New England and Providence ling.upenn.edu/~johnson4/pwpl_draft.pdf 30-Mar.-2010

Multiple-region audio samples found on the Internet

Location Source Comment Samples from al­most all U. S. states and a few from Canada International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) (or new clickable map: www.dialectsarchive.com/globalmap) This site has been completely redone, perhaps in 2013, and is vastly improved, since it now provides a lot more information about the speakers, including place of birth and sometimes a list of places where they have lived, plus a lot of other information! However, I still find that many of the samples do not represent well the bedrock pronunciation of the area, but instead represent those who have tried to sound less “local”. Also, locations are often limited (though I see that more have been added recently), and often only urban locations are given. Even so, in many cases the data is useful, and I have used it in the sound samples below, especially when clearer indications are given of “nativeness”, and now that more information has been provided, I will probably add more. If anyone finds any of these that I have left out and shouldn’t have, please let me know! (Because this site changed its entire structure, none of the old links worked anymore, and I have redone them all. The original site was web.ku.edu/~idea or web.ku.edu/~idea.) 8-Nov.-2013 Samples only from north-central U. S. csumc.wisc.edu/AmericanLanguages/english/eng_us.htm Again, it is not always clear if the speakers are natives of the area in which they were interviewed, or if they represent well the local dialect. However, it includes rural speakers, which can help fill in holes. Used occasionally. If anyone finds any of these that I have left out and shouldn’t have, please let me know! 11-Mar.-2016

Guide to the Sounds of North American English

In many places on this web page the pronunciation of a name or other word will be given after it. These pronunciation guides will have two forms: a phonemic guide between slashes / /, based on the Traditional Dictionary Pronunciation System (TDPS) that is found in many dictionaries, especially American ones[12], and a phonetic guide (providing the phonetic details) between square brackets [ ], based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). (Thanks, Maria Mikkonen![13]) 26-Aug.-2013

The advantage of the phonemic guide is that it allows different dialects to use the same pronunciation key and get the right result for each dialect. For this guide I have mostly followed the TDPS system used in the American Heritage Dictionary[14], rather than the one used by Merriam-Webster or others, since it is more complete and applies to more dialects. 31-Aug.-2015

However, I have included the phonetic guide as well, partly to give a more precise phonetic pronunciation of local variants, and partly because many have complained that they prefer the IPA or are familiar only with it. (This guide includes allophonic variation such as aspiration on voiceless consonants, which is conditioned by stress and word position. However, it would be impractical to represent all the fine detail, such as the rounding that many English consonants have, or the differences between “clear l” [l] and “dark l” [ɫ].) 18-July-2013

In the phonemic guide I have followed the American Heritage Dictionary system (a more complete analysis can be found on this Wikipedia page) to the letter, except for a few minor adjustments in the vowel system[15] and one in the consonant system (/ŧħ/ instead of /th/), and the following differences: 11-Mar.-2016

1. I write the syllable with primary stress using bold and underline, and syllables with secondary stress with just bold, rather than using an apostrophe after it like the AHD. In other words, I show the pronunciation of “underneath” as /ŭndər nēth /, whereas the AHD does it as /ŭn'dər-nēth'/. 31-Aug.-2015

2. I do not separate syllables with a hyphen except when absolutely necessary, as in “cartridge” / kär trij/ versus “cartwright” / kärt -rīt/, or “mission” / mĭsh ən/ versus “mishap” / mĭs -hăp/; although technically in these two cases the underlining of the primary-stressed syllable gives enough information, even so the hyphens help to clarify.

3. I show the pronunciation of words like “needle” and “sudden” as / nēd əl/ and / sǔd ən/, rather than treating them as having syllabic /l/ or /n/, which they clearly have phonetically: [ˈniɾl̩, ˈsʌdn̩]. 2-Jan.-2012

The ANAE does not use either the TDPS or the IPA, but instead uses a completely different transcription system, described in ANAE chapter 2. This system is phonemic, like the TDPS.[16] 31-Aug.-2015

How Many Vowels are there in American English?

No, the answer is not: “Five: a, e, i, o u.” Granted, in traditional English spelling those are the vowel letters, yes, but I’m talking about our spoken language: How many significant vowel sounds are there? Well, if you consult any popular American English dictionary, and study the Pronunciation Key, there will be a long list of vowels. In the Pronunciation Key to the American Heritage Dictionary, 19 different vowel symbols are listed (not counting the ones only used in foreign words)! However, some of these are special vowels that only occur before the /r/ sound, which are “colored” by the /r/, so these can be separated out as special cases. And one of these vowels, /ə/, only occurs in weak syllables (completely unstressed syllables), never in stressed syllables, so it also can be separated out as a special case. This leaves us with 15 Ordinary Vowels that can occur in stressed syllables. Very few North American English speakers have all of these vowels: Many have 14 (lacking the /ä/ vowel), and many have only 13 (lacking both /ä/ and /ô/). Greater New York City has 16 Ordinary Stressed Vowels, the 15 in the American Heritage list plus one that is not usually listed in dictionary pronunciation guides, found in the word “bad”, which it makes sense to spell /â/, since in this dialect it is the same as the r-colored vowel that occurs before /r/ in words like “bearing”! This vowel also occurs in the Atlantic Midland dialect. (I had initially spelled this vowel as /ăə/, but there is no need to use additional symbols when this is not necessary.) 31-Aug.-2015

These 16 vowels are listed below in the second column, with sample words shown in the first column. Those with a breve ˘ over them, /ă,ĕ,ĭ,ŏ,ŭ,ŏŏ/, are those vowels that historically were short vowels in English (and still are in British English), while those with a macron ˉ over them, /ā,ē,ī,ō,ōō/, are those vowels that historically were long vowels in English (and still are in British English). In American English these vowels are no longer phonetically long or short, though the “short” ones tend to be phonetically lax, and the “long” ones tense. As a general rule the short/lax ones do not occur at the end of a word or syllable, only before a consonant; this rule has no exceptions in British English, though it does seem to have a few in American English. (The remaining Ordinary Stressed Vowels /ä/, /â/ (in Greater New York City and Atlantic Midland), /ô/, /oi/, and /ou/ fit in more with the long/tense group in terms of their pronunciation, history, and distribution.) (See also the section How I Use the IPA (and how I don’t) for more discussion about this.) 10-Nov.-2015

The remaining columns show what happens to vowels before final r, showing the “R-colored” vowels used in most of North America, and showing the Southern System in the final column, representing the system used in much of the South, which does not have “R-colored” vowels.

(I have included the IPA equivalents of these vowels in brackets [ ] as well. However, keep in mind that the actual pronunciation of a given phonemic vowel may vary greatly from region to region. For example, the /ŏ/ vowel is pronounced as [a], an open front unrounded vowel, in much of the Inland North, but is pronounced as [ɔ], an open-mid back rounded vowel, in England. A whole gamut of vowel sounds in between these two occurs somewhere in North America: in much of Canada and in some other “cot”=“caught” areas the pronunciation is [ɒ], whereas most others use [ɑ] or [a] or something in between. Many other vowels have similar variants. The most distinctive Southern pronunciation is shown in a separate column. However, keep in mind that I have not listed all possible variants for any region.) 3-July-2010

If anyone finds that any of the symbols in the chart do not display properly on their web browsers, please let me know. Most of them are standard Unicode characters.

On Android phones and tablets: up until Android version 4.3 in 2013, in the standard Android browser and in Chrome the symbols /ȯ/, one of the R-colored vowels below, and uppercase /Ə/, used in the phonemic respelling section, did not display correctly. And up until version 5 they still hadn’t fixed a few of the IPA characters, like [ᵿ], which I use to show the Southern pronunciation of the vowel in “boot”, nor had they fixed other font problems, like for Ancient Greek, leaving me frustrated with my Android phone for a long time! However, now in version 5 they finally seem to have fixed all of these issues. However, if you have an older version of Android the solution is simple: just use the Firefox browser, which displays these characters properly in spite of Android. 31-Aug.-2015

Ordinary Stressed Vowels “R-colored” Stressed Vowels Final Wells (sample words) phonemic IPA IPA South †† keepers droppers Southern System beat bee fleece feel ē [i] [ɪi] fear, pier,

peer, near îr [ɪɹ] [ɪə] intermediate

between /ē/ and /ĭ/ /ēər/ [ɪiə(ɹ)], rhymes with “skier” bit kit fill ĭ [ɪ] [iə] 1 bait bay face fail ā [eɪ/e] [ɛɪ] fair, bear,

care, square,

pair, hair âr [eɹ] [eə] (British [ɛə]) For most speakers

intermediate between

/ā/ and /ĕ/,

but [eə(ɹ)] in GNYC,

Atlantic Midland,

and E. New England /ăr/ [æɹ/æə]: “hairy”=“Harry” / hăr ĭ/ [ˈhæɹɪ] which rhyme with “marry” / măr ĭ/ [ˈmæɹɪ], but “merry” / mĕr ĭ/ [ˈmeɹɪ] and “Mary” / mā rĭ/ [ˈmɛɪɹɪ] are different. bet dress fell ĕ [ɛ] [e] bat trap had ă [æ] ┐ [æ(ɪə)] bad man â [eə] ┘ (GNYC, Atlantic Midland) 1 ah palm father Bach’s ä [a/ɑə] ┐ (E. New England [a], GNYC [ɑə]) far, farther,

heart, start är [aɹ/ɑɹ/ɒɹ] [a/ɑ/ɑə] Nearly everyone has this![17] /är/ [ɑɹ/ɑə(ɹ)/ɒɹ] for many speakers, /ôr/ [ɔə(ɹ)] for others cot lot bother box

doll, yacht, watch ŏ [a/ɑ/ɒ/ɒəENE] ┤ [ɑ] caught awe thought balks

paw fall, cough, talk ô [ɒ/ɔ/oə/ɒəENE] ┘ (Eastern U.S. See map.) [ɒʊ] for, horse,

morning, north ôr ** [ɔɹ] [ɒəENE] See ANAE map 8.2 /är/ [ɑɹ/ɑə(ɹ)/ɒɹ] for many speakers, /ôr/ [ɔə(ɹ)] for others 1 boat toe goat foal ō [o(ʊ)] [əʊ] four, hoarse,

mourning, force ȯr ** [oɹ] [oə] For most speakers,

intermediate between

/ô/ and /ō/ /ôər/ [ɒʊə(ɹ)], rhymes with “rawer” /ȯr/ [oə(ɹ)] in much of New Orleans 1 cut strut rush, love, rough ŭ [ʌ] [ə] fur, urge, nurse,

term, firm,

word, heard ûr [ɝ] [ɝ/ɜ/ɜɪ] Varies. /ûr/ [ɝ] or /ŭr/ [ʌɹ] or /ŏŏy/ [ɜɪ] 1 foot foot full, took, put, bush ŏŏ * [ʊ] [ʏ] poor, tour cure, pure ŏŏr (yŏŏr) † [ʊɹ], etc. ([jʊɹ]) [ʊə], etc. ([jʊə]) Many lack this,

using /ōōər/, /ȯr/,

or /ûr/ instead /ōōər/ [ᵿʉə(ɹ)], “poor” often / pô ər/ [ˈpʰɒʊə(ɹ)] boot true goose fool, spook

through ōō * [u] [ᵿʉ] (cute) cue beauty

you (yōō) † [ju] [ɪʊ] 1 bite by price ī [aɪ/ɑɪ] [a/aɛ/aɪ] bout now mouth ou [æʊ/aʊ/ɑʊ] [æə] Hoyt boy choice noise oi [ɔɪ] [ɒʊɛ/ɔɛ] Vowel that Only Occurs in Weak (Completely Unstressed) Syllables “R-colored” Vowel that Only Occurs in Weak (Completely Unstressed) Syllables a bout, it e m, civ i l, gall o p, circ u s ə [ə] [ə] butt er , mot or , sol ar ər [ɚ] [ə] Same Other Vowels that Can Occur in Weak (Completely Unstressed) Syllables perm i t (noun), col i c, i mpose ĭ [ɪ] [ɪ] funn y , lin e ar ē (ĭ) ºº [i] ([ɪ]) [i/ɪ] sit u ate, fr u ition, iss ue ōō º [u/ʊ] [u/ʊ/əw/ə] bill ow ing, pill ow , potat o ō º [o/ʊ] [o/ʊ/əw/ə]

(17-Dec.-2015)

Black: The black vowels are those which all Americans have as distinct vowels.

Red: The red vowels are those which many but not all Americans have, as distinguished from the other vowels. I decided to make /ŏ/ the default vowel of the /ä/ŏ/ô/ group for all but Eastern New England, since for those who make the distinction it is by far the most common. In other words, for those who say all three the same, only /ŏ/ will be used in the phonemic spelling. However, in Eastern New England it makes more sense to make the default vowel /ô/, because of the way it interacts with a following dropped r; e.g. “wad” and “ward” are pronounced the same in Eastern New England, but nowhere else in the world! They both come out [ˈwɒəd], which phonemically would be / wôd / or perhaps / wô(r)d /. 17-Dec.-2015

Green: The green vowels are those which a small minority of Americans have, as distinguished from the other vowels, in particular regions or dialects.

†† The pronunciation given here shows the most distinctive Southern pronunciation, specifically those areas which have experienced both Stage 2 and Stage 3 of the Southern Shift, as shown on Map 18.6 in ANAE chapter 18. Stage 2 covers most of the South, whereas Stage 3 only covers much of Alabama and parts of neighboring states. These stages are independent of and cut across the boundary between Inland Southern and Lowland Southern. 8-July-2013

* These two sounds are actually spelled as / / and / / instead of /ŏŏ/ and /ōō/ in the AHD and most other dictionary pronunciation systems, but since there is not a practical way to display such a combination in Unicode, I have followed the example of this web site (part of reference.com, though they do not now use the AHD pronunciation system), and this Wikipedia page, which is one of the most complete treatments of the system. (Technically there is a way to do / / and / / in Unicode, as contributor Brian Ewins showed me[18], but I have tried them in various browsers, and they will not display consistently.) 11-Mar.-2016

** Actually, some speakers have /ôr/ instead of /ȯr/, but all speakers have one or the other! See The horse-hoarse Merger and the card-cord merger. 17-Dec.-2015

† The /yōō/ sound is not a single sound, but is simply /y/ followed by /ōō/.[19] Thus, there really is no “long /ū/” vowel. Similarly, /yŏŏr/ is simply /y/ followed by /ŏŏr/.

ºº This vowel is often pronounced as /ĭ/ [ɪ] by Southern Americans and Britishers. 8-Feb.-2013

º According to Merriam-Webster, these two vowels are actually pronounced the same, and are more properly represented as a neutral weak diphthong /əw/. They may be right for many speakers, and are probably right for me in many cases, but no other dictionary that I have found agrees with them. They are probably right for most Southerners, and possibly for most Britishers. 8-Feb.-2013

[ENE] Pronunciations marked with this are only found in Eastern New England. 17-Dec.-2015

How Many Consonants are there?

(1-Aug.-2012)

The answer to this one is a bit less complicated, but again the answer is not based on the traditional English alphabet. Most English speakers have 24. (The /hw/ [ʍ] sound, which is usually spelled “wh” in English, is really just a combination of /h/ followed by /w/, and was originally spelled this way in Old English. Most English speakers no longer have this sound, though I and many other older speakers do in many parts of North America, and in certain regions, particularly the South, nearly all speakers do.) 8-July-2013

The AHD uses /th/, in italics, for the voiced “th” sound, as in “this” (which is different from the voiceless “th” sound, as in “thin”), and for a long time I did the same on this page, but I am now using /ŧħ/ for this sound, for several reasons, one of which is that using a formatting feature like italics limits the places this writing system can be used, and anyway I would prefer to keep italics for their usual purpose. 31-Aug.-2015

Note that the letters c, q, and x are not listed. This is because they are simply different ways of spelling sounds already listed: /k/ or /s/, /kw/, and /ks/ or /gz/. I show the comparison below:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Dictionary symbol b ch d f g h j k l m n ng p r s sh t th ŧħ v w y z zh (hw) IPA b tʃ* d f ɡ h dʒ k* l m n ŋ p* ɹ s ʃ t* θ ð v w j z ʒ (ʍ) “church”, “nature” “judge” “sing”, “singer”, “finger” “shush”, “nation” “thin”, “bath” “this”, “bathe” “pleasure”, “vision”, “genre”, “rouge” (“which”, “whale”)

*These often have an aspirated allophone, e.g. [kʰ], which I have represented in the phonetic guide for many names, though not in the phonemic guide.

(31-Aug.-2015)

The Stress Pattern of English, and How it Messes with the Pronunciation

(8-Feb.-2013)

American English (and most other varieties of English) has three levels of stress on each syllable of a word, primary stress, secondary stress, or no stress. Only one syllable in the word can have primary stress, and this is the syllable that is pronounced with the greatest intensity or loudness. The other syllables can have either secondary stress or no stress. An example is the word “counterrevolutionary”, pronounced /kountərrĕvə lōō shənârē/ [ˌkʰaʊɾ̃ɚˌɹɛvəˈluʃəˌneɹi]. This word has 8 syllables, divided with hyphens as /koun-tər-rĕv-ə- lōō -shə-nâr-ē/ [ˌkʰaʊ-ɾ̃ɚ-ˌɹɛv-ə-ˈlu-ʃə-ˌneɹ-i]. It has one syllable with primary stress, / lōō / [ˈlu], marked with bold and underline in the dictionary spelling and with [ˈ] before it in the IPA. It has three syllables with secondary stress, syllables 1, 3, and 7, marked with bold in the dictionary spelling and with [ˌ] before them in the IPA, and four with no stress, syllables 2, 4, 6, and 8. As is true with many words in English, especially long ones, every other syllable is weak (unstressed). 10-Aug.-2013

In stressed syllables (whether primary or secondary) all of the Stressed Vowels in the chart above can occur, but in completely unstressed syllables (weak syllables) in English a phenomenon called vowel weakening or neutralization occurs. As a result, most of the vowels in these syllables are weakened or neutralized to the vowel /ə/, and the rest of the vowels are weakened or neutralized to a very small group, listed under “Other Vowels that Can Occur in Weak (Completely Unstressed) Syllables” above. This vowel weakening is a characteristic of English in particular (though it does occur in other languages as well), but it does not occur at all in some languages, like Spanish, which makes it especially hard for English speakers to speak good Spanish or vice versa, since they are each always subconsciously trying to apply their own pattern to the other language. 22-Mar.-2013

We can see this weakening process in action in many groups of words in English. For example, “melody”, “melodious”, and “melodic” are spelled as if they should have the same vowel sounds, but in fact they do not, being / mĕl ədē/ [ˈmɛlədi], /mə lō dēəs/ [məˈloʊdiəs], and /mə lŏd ĭk/ [məˈlɑdɪk]. The vowel in the second syllable has three pronunciations, two stressed and one unstressed (weak), and the vowel in the first syllable has two. Spanish has equivalents of these three words, “melodía, melodioso, melódico”, but unlike English, the vowels are pronounced exactly as they are spelled in IPA, with no changes at all in the vowel quality, even though the stress falls on a different syllable in each word. 22-Mar.-2013

So, just to see if you’ve got the idea, take the word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, invented for the Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins. How many syllables does it have? Which syllables are completely unstressed (weak)? Which syllable has the primary stress? The answers can be found in the endnote.[20] 22-Mar.-2013

R-coloring

(8-July-2013)

In the vowel section above, we saw that there are a limited number of vowel sounds that can come before /r/ at the end of a word, or when the /r/ comes before another consonant, and that these are usually “colored” by the /r/, that is, they are changed so that they don’t really match any of the ordinary vowels. (These vowels are also known as “r-controlled vowels”.[21]) Some speakers have as few as 5 of these r-colored vowels in stressed syllables, others have 6 or 7, and this variation is found in both North America and Great Britain. 11-Mar.-2016

What about words like “hire” or “sour”? Aren’t these additional vowels that can come before /r/? At first glance it might seem so, but in fact, in most if not all English dialects, these words actually rhyme with words like “higher” and “power”, meaning that they are actually two-syllable words pronounced / hī ər/ [ˈhaɪɚ] and / sou ər/ [ˈsaʊɚ], so no new vowel before /r/ occurs.

For r-droppers the /r/ itself is usually dropped, but the vowel still remains unique, in most cases different from the ordinary vowels.

Vowels Before /r/ in One-syllable Words[22]

r-colored vowels → îr âr är ôr ȯr ûr ŏŏr (yŏŏr) word final: fear jeer beard fierce fair mare there their far card barn heart for war cord horse four bore cored hoarse her were heard fern fir bird first dirt fur curd burn purse poor tour boor lure (cure) (pure) (demure) Scottish pronunciation, not r-colored → ēr ār ăr ôr ōr ĕr ĭr ŭr ōōr (yōōr) (original system) [iɾ] [eɾ] [aɾ] [ɔɾ] [oɾ] [ɛɾ] [ɪɾ] [ʌɾ] [ʉɾ] [jʉɾ]

(11-Mar.-2016)

Originally these r’s were not colored, but were just like all the other vowels, and at least one dialect retains this old system, Scottish English, which does not color these vowels at all, pronouncing them instead very much the way they are spelled. This system can be seen at the bottom of the table above. 11-Mar.-2016

Thus in Scotland “bird” has a vowel close to that of “beard” for many Americans, whereas “beard” has the same vowel as “beet”! (I have shown all of the /r/s in the Scottish pronunciation in the preceding chart as [ɾ], an alveolar flap, though the [ɹ] used in North America is also common in Scotland.) 11-Mar.-2016

The following chart shows how this system works in a selection of dialects, both in and outside of North America. Those items in dark red have a one-syllable r-colored vowel. Those items in orange have a two-syllable r-colored vowel sequence (these do not actually add any new distinct vowels to the system). Those items in blue are not r-colored in the indicated dialect, but are r-colored by many Americans. In each column the number and nature of the one-syllable r-colored vowels is given at the top of the column. As always on this page, if you know for sure that I have the pronunciation of one of these words wrong, please let me know. 11-Mar.-2016

Standard British: 6 r-colored vowels: /îr,âr,är,ôr,ûr,ŏŏr/ (Older and regional has 7, like Eastern New England.†) Greater New York City: 6 r-colored vowels: /îr,âr,är,ôr,ûr,ŏŏr/ Eastern New England: 7 r-colored vowels: /îr,âr,är,ôr,ȯr,ûr,ŏŏr/[23] Scottish: No r‑colored vowels Older Southern:[24] No distinct one‑syllable r‑colored vowels except sometimes /ûr/ New Orleans My pattern, General American: 6 r-colored vowels: /îr,âr,är,ôr,ûr,ŏŏr/[25] My wife, West Midland: 5 r-colored vowels: /îr,âr,är,ôr,ûr/ [25] fear, jeer, beard, fierce / fîr / [ˈfɪə][26] / fîr / [ˈfɪə] [26] / fîr / [ˈfɪə] [26] / fēr / [ˈfiɾ] / fē ə(r)/ [ˈfɪiə(ɹ)] / fîr / [ˈfɪə] [26] / fîr ər/ [ˈfɪɹɚ] / fîr ər/ [ˈfɪɹɚ] fair, mare, there, their / fâr / [ˈfɛə] / fâr / [ˈfeə] / fâr / [ˈfeə] / fār / [ˈfeɾ] / făr / [ˈfæɪ] or [ˈfæə] / fâr / [ˈfeə] / fâr / [ˈfeɹ] / fâr / [ˈfeɹ] far, card, barn, heart / fär / [ˈfɑː] / fär / [ˈfɑə] / fär / [ˈfa] / făr / [ˈfaɾ] / fôr / [ˈfɒɹ]† or / fô / [ˈfɒʊ]† / fôr / [ˈfɔə]† / fär / [ˈfɑɹ] / fär / [ˈfɑɹ] for, war, cord, horse / fôr / [ˈfoː] / fôr / [ˈfoə] / fôr / [ˈfɒə] / fôr / [ˈfɔɾ] / fôr / [ˈfɒɹ]† or / fô / [ˈfɒʊ]† / fôr / [ˈfɔə]† / fȯr / [ˈfoɹ] / fȯr / [ˈfoɹ] four, bore, cored, hoarse / fôr / [ˈfoː] (or / fȯr / [ˈfoə]†) / fôr / [ˈfoə] / fȯr / [ˈfoə] / fōr / [ˈfoɾ] / fô ə/ [ˈfɒʊə(ɹ)]† / fȯr / [ˈfoə]† / fȯr / [ˈfoɹ] / fȯr / [ˈfoɹ] her, were, heard, fern / hûr / [ˈhɜː] / hûr / [ˈhɝ] / hûr / [ˈhɝ] / hĕr / [ˈhɛɾ] / hŭr / [ˈhʌɹ] or / hûr / [ˈhɝ] / hûr / [ˈhɝ] / hûr / [ˈhɝ] / hûr / [ˈhɝ] fir, bird, first, dirt / fûr / [ˈfɜː] / fûr / [ˈfɝ] / fûr / [ˈfɝ] / fĭr / [ˈfɪɾ] / fŭr / [ˈfʌɹ] or / fûr / [ˈfɝ] / fûr / [ˈfɝ] / fûr / [ˈfɝ] / fûr / [ˈfɝ] fur, curd, burn, purse / fûr / [ˈfɜː] / fûr / [ˈfɝ] / fûr / [ˈfɝ] / fŭr / [ˈfʌɾ] / fŭr / [ˈfʌɹ] or / fûr / [ˈfɝ] / fûr / [ˈfɝ] / fûr / [ˈfɝ] / fûr / [ˈfɝ] poor / pŏŏr / [ˈpʰʊə] / pŏŏr / [ˈpʰʊə] / pŏŏr / [ˈpʰʊə] / pōōr / [ˈpʰʉɾ] / pô ə(r)/ [ˈpʰɒʊə(ɹ)] / pŏŏr / [ˈpʰʊə]?? / pŏŏr / [ˈpʰʊɹ] / pȯr / [ˈpʰoɹ] tour, lure / tŏŏr / [ˈtʰʊə] / tŏŏr / [ˈtʰʊə] / tŏŏr / [ˈtʰʊə] / tōōr / [ˈtʰʉɾ] / tōō ə(r)/ [ˈtʰᵿʉə(ɹ)] / tŏŏr / [ˈtʰʊə] / tŏŏr / [ˈtʰʊɹ] / tōō ər/ [ˈtʰuɚ] (cure), (pure), (demure) / kyŏŏr / [ˈkʰjʊə] / kyŏŏr / [ˈkʰjʊə] / kyŏŏr / [ˈkʰjʊə] / kyōōr / [ˈkʰyʉɾ] / kyōō ə(r)/ [ˈkʰjᵿʉə(ɹ)] / kyŏŏr / [ˈkʰjʊə] / kyŏŏr / [ˈkʰjʊɹ] / kyōō ər/ [ˈkʰjuɚ] fire, tire / fī ər/ [ˈfaɪə] / fī ər/ [ˈfɑɪə] / fī ər/ [ˈfaɪə] / fī r/ [ˈfʌɪɾ]?? / fī r/ [ˈfaɹ] or / fī ər/ [ˈfaɪə] / fī ər/ [ˈfaɪə] / fī ər/ [ˈfaɪɚ] / fī ər/ [ˈfaɪɚ] sour, hour / sou ər/ [ˈsaʊə] / sou ər/ [ˈsaʊə] / sou ər/ [ˈsaʊə] / sou r/ [ˈsʌʊɾ] / sou ər/ [ˈsæʊə(ɹ)] / sou ər/ [ˈsæʊə] / sou ər/ [ˈsæʊɚ] / sou ər/ [ˈsæʊɚ]

(11-Mar.-2016)

† See The horse-hoarse Merger and the card-cord Merger. 11-Mar.-2016

R’s Between Vowels: To Color or Not to Color

(8-July-2013)

Okay, but what about r’s in the middle of words, with a vowel on both sides? Are the vowels before the /r/ still limited to these few r-colored vowels in the dialects that color their r’s? Well, no, certainly not, we can have words like “rerun”, “payroll”, and “prorate”. In other words, vowels that commonly occur at the end of a word, especially the historically long vowels, can freely occur before an /r/ in the middle of a word, when there is a clear syllable break before the r. 17-Dec.-2015

But what about the historically short vowels like /ă,ĕ,ĭ,ŏ,ŭ/? Surprisingly, these do occur in many dialects, especially in Britain but also in parts of eastern North America, but most Americans replace them with the r-colored vowels. Thus, the word “marry” is pronounced / măr ē/ [ˈmæɹi] by Britishers and by many speakers in the Eastern U.S., From Maine to the South (and apparently also in Montreal), and most of these speakers would pronounce the words “marry”, “merry”, and “Mary” with three different vowels, but most Americans pronounce all three of these exactly the same, as / mâr ē/ [ˈmeɹi]. This feature of allowing /ă,ĕ,ĭ,ŏ,ŭ/ to occur before /r/ in the middle of a word (but not at the end) is one of the features that makes speakers from the east coast sound different from other Americans, even in the case of radio and television personalities who have otherwise modified their speech to General American. So how many vowels can come before an r followed by another vowel? It varies hugely from one dialect to the next! 17-Dec.-2015

The following chart shows a lot of these variations, though there are certainly others. Those items in black are not r-colored in any dialect. Those items in dark red have a one-syllable r-colored vowel. Those items in orange have a two-syllable r-colored vowel sequence (these do not actually add any new distinct vowels to the system). Those items in blue are not r-colored in the indicated dialect, but are r-colored by many Americans. In each column the number and nature of the one-syllable r-colored vowels is given at the top of the column. This does not count “tiring”, in which the r-coloring is two syllables, not one. As always on this page, if you know for sure that I have the pronunciation of one of these words wrong, please let me know. 21-Aug.-2013

Standard British: 6 r-colored vowels: /îr,âr,är,ôr,ûr,ŏŏr/ (Older and regional has 7, like Eastern New England.†) Greater New York City: 6 r-colored vowels: /îr,âr,är,ôr,ûr,ŏŏr/ Eastern New England: 7 r-colored vowels: /îr,âr,är,ôr,ȯr,ûr,ŏŏr/ [23] Scottish: No r‑colored vowels Older Southern: [24] No distinct one‑syllable r‑colored vowels except sometimes /ûr/ My pattern, General American: 6 r-colored vowels: /îr,âr,är,ôr,ûr,ŏŏr/ [25] My wife, West Midland: 5 r-colored vowels: /îr,âr,är,ôr,ûr/ [25] Rerun / rē rŭn/ [ˈɹiːˌɹʌn] / rē rŭn/ [ˈɹiˌɹʌn] / rē rŭn/ [ˈɹiˌɹʌn] / rē rŭn/ [ˈɾiˌɾʌn] / rē rŭn/ [ˈɹɪiˌɹʌn] / rē rŭn/ [ˈɹiˌɹʌn] / rē rŭn/ [ˈɹiˌɹʌn] hero, zero, Nero / hîr ō/ [ˈhɪəɹəʊ] / hîr ō/ [ˈhɪəɹoʊ] / hîr ō/ [ˈhɪəɹoʊ] / hē rō/ [ˈhiˌɾo] / hē rō/ [ˈhɪiˌɹəʊ] / hîr ō/ [ˈhɪɹoʊ] / h ēr ō/ [ˈhiɹoʊ] hearer, weary, nearing / hîr ə/ [ˈhɪəɹə] / hîr ə/ [ˈhɪəɹə] / hîr ə/ [ˈhɪəɹə] / hēr ər/ [ˈhiɾəɾ] / hēr ə(r)/ [ˈhɪiɹə(ɹ)] / hîr ər/ [ˈhɪɹɚ] / hîr ər/ [ˈhɪɹɚ] mirror, miracle, pirouette / mĭr ə/ [ˈmɪɹə] / mĭr ə/ [ˈmɪɹə] / mĭr ə/ [ˈmɪɹə] / mĭr ər/ [ˈmɪɾəɾ] / mĭr ə/ [ˈmiəɹə] / mîr ər/ [ˈmɪɹɚ] / mîr ər/ [ˈmɪɹɚ] payroll / pā rōl/ [ˈpʰeɪˌɹəʊl] / pā rōl/ [ˈpʰeɪˌɹoʊl] / pā rōl/ [ˈpʰeɪˌɹoʊl] / pā rōl/ [ˈpʰeˌɾol] / pā rōl/ [ˈpʰɛɪˌɹəʊl] / pā rōl/ [ˈpʰeɪˌɹoʊl] / pā rōl/ [ˈpʰeɪˌɹoʊl] Mary, vary, Sarah, pharaoh / mâr ĭ/ [ˈmɛəɹɪ] / mârē / [ˈmeəɹi] / mârē / [ˈmeəɹi] / mā rĭ/ [ˈmeɾɪ] / mā rĭ/ [ˈmɛɪɹɪ] / mârē / [ˈmeɹi] / mârē / [ˈmeɹi] scary, hairy, parent, caring / skâr ĭ/ [ˈskɛəɹɪ] / skârē / [ˈskeəɹi] / skârē / [ˈskeəɹi] / skār ĭ/ [ˈskeɾɪ] / skăr ĭ/ [ˈskæɹɪ] / skârē / [ˈskeɹi] / skârē / [ˈskeɹi] merry, very, heritage / mĕr ĭ/ [ˈmeɹɪ] / mĕrē / [ˈmɛɹi] / mĕrē / [ˈmɛɹi] / mĕr ĭ/ [ˈmɛɾɪ] / mĕr ĭ/ [ˈmeɹɪ] / mârē / [ˈmeɹi] / mârē / [ˈmeɹi] marry, Harry, narrow, parish / măr ĭ/ [ˈmæɹɪ] / mărē / [ˈmæɹi] / mărē / [ˈmæɹi] / măr ĭ/ [ˈmaɾɪ] / măr ĭ/ [ˈmæɹɪ] / mârē / [ˈmeɹi] / mârē / [ˈmeɹi] starry, sparring / stär ĭ/ [ˈstɑːɹɪ] / stärē / [ˈstɑəɹi] / stärē / [ˈstaɹi] / stăr ĭ/ [ˈstaɾɪ] / stär ĭ/ [ˈstɑɹɪ] / stärē / [ˈstɑɹi] / stärē / [ˈstɑɹi] sorry, borrow / sŏr ĭ/ [ˈsɔɹɪ] / sŏrē / [ˈsaɹi] / sôrē / [ˈsɒəɹi] / sŏr ĭ/ [ˈsɔɾɪ] / sär ĭ/ [ˈsɑɹɪ] / särē / [ˈsɑɹi] / särē / [ˈsɑɹi] foreign, coral, horrible, Florida / fŏr ĭn/ [ˈfɔɹɪn] / fŏr ən/ [ˈfaɹən] / fôr ən/ [ˈfɒəɹən] / fŏr ən/ [ˈfɔɾən] / fär ən/ [ˈfɑɹən] / fȯr ən/ [ˈfoɹən] / fȯr ən/ [ˈfoɹən] drawing, sawing[27] / drôr ĭng/ [ˈdɹoːɹɪŋ] / drôr ĭng/ [ˈdɹoəɹɪŋ] / drôr ĭng/ [ˈdɹɒəɹɪŋ] boring, choral, story, glory / bôr ĭng/ [ˈboːɹɪŋ] (or / bȯr ĭng/ [ˈboəɹɪŋ]†) / bôr ĭng/ [ˈboəɹɪŋ] / bȯr ĭng/ [ˈboəɹɪŋ] / bōr ĭng/ [ˈboɾɪŋ] / bôr ēng/ [ˈbɒʊɹiŋ] / bȯr ĭng/ [ˈboɹɪŋ] / bȯr ĭng/ [ˈboɹɪŋ] prorate / prō rāt/ [ˈpʰɹəʊˌɹeɪt] / prō rāt/ [ˈpʰɹoʊˌɹeɪt] / prō rāt/ [ˈpʰɹoʊˌɹeɪt] / prō rāt/ [ˈpʰɾoˌɾet] / prō rāt/ [ˈpʰɹəʊˌɹɛɪt] / prō rāt/ [ˈpʰɹoʊˌɹeɪt] / prō rāt/ [ˈpʰɹoʊˌɹeɪt] hurry, worry, courage, nourish / hŭr ĭ/ [ˈhʌɹɪ] / hŭrē / [ˈhʌɹi] / hŭrē / [ˈhʌɹi] / hŭr ĭ/ [ˈhʌɾɪ] / hŭr ĭ/ [ˈhʌɹɪ] or / hûr ĭ/ [ˈhɝɪ] / hûrē / [ˈhɝi] / hûrē / [ˈhɝi] furry, blurry, whirring / fûr ĭ/ [ˈfɜːɹɪ] / fûrē / [ˈfɝi] / fûrē / [ˈfɝi] / fŭr ĭ/ [ˈfʌɾɪ] / fŭr ĭ/ [ˈfʌɹɪ] or / fûr ĭ/ [ˈfɝɪ] / fûrē / [ˈfɝi] / fûrē / [ˈfɝi] touring, curing / tŏŏr ĭng/ [ˈtʰʊəɹɪŋ] / tŏŏr ĭng/ [ˈtʰʊəɹɪŋ] / tŏŏr ĭng/ [ˈtʰʊəɹɪŋ] / tōōr ĭng/ [ˈtʰʉɾɪŋ] / tōōr ēng/ [ˈtʰᵿʉɹɪŋ] / tŏŏr ĭng/ [ˈtʰʊɹɪŋ] / tōō ərĭng/ [ˈtʰuəɹɪŋ] Blu-ray / blōō rā/ [ˈbluːˌɹeɪ] / blōō rā/ [ˈbluˌɹeɪ] / blōō rā/ [ˈbluˌɹeɪ] / blōō rā/ [ˈblʉˌɾe] / blōō rā/ [ˈblᵿʉˌɹɛɪ] / blōō rā/ [ˈbluˌɹeɪ] / blōō rā/ [ˈbluˌɹeɪ] eurhythmics /yōō rĭŧħ mĭks/ [ˌjuːˈɹɪðmɪks] /yōō rĭŧħ mĭks/ [ˌjuˈɹɪðmɪks] /yōō rĭŧħ mĭks/ [ˌjuˈɹɪðmɪks] /yōō rĭŧħ mĭks/ [ˌjʉˈɾɪðmɪks] /yōō rĭŧħ mĭks/ [ˌjᵿʉˈɹiəðmɪks] /yōō rĭŧħ mĭks/ [ˌjuˈɹɪðmɪks] /yōō rĭŧħ mĭks/ [ˌjuˈɹɪðmɪks] tiring / tī ərĭng/ [ˈtʰaɪɚɪŋ] / tī ərĭng/ [ˈtʰɑɪɚɪŋ] / tī ərĭng/ [ˈtʰaɪɚɪŋ] / tī rĭng/ [ˈtʰʌɪɾɪŋ]?? / tī rēng/ [ˈtʰaɹiŋ] / tī ərĭng/ [ˈtʰaɪɚɪŋ] / tī ərĭng/ [ˈtʰaɪɚɪŋ] pirate, gyrate, siren / pī ərĭt/ [ˈpʰaɪɚɪt][28] / pī rət/ [ˈpʰɑɪɹət] / pī rət/ [ˈpʰaɪɹət] / pī rĭt/ [ˈpʰʌɪɾɪt] / pī rĭt/ [ˈpʰaɹɪt] / pī rət/ [ˈpʰaɪɹət] / pī rət/ [ˈpʰaɪɹət] tie-rack / tī răk/ [ˈtʰaɪˌɹæk] / tī răk/ [ˈtʰɑɪˌɹæk] / tī răk/ [ˈtʰaɪˌɹæk] / tī răk/ [ˈtʰʌɪˌɾæk] / tī răk/ [ˈtʰaˌɹæɪk] / tī răk/ [ˈtʰaɪˌɹæk] / tī răk/ [ˈtʰaɪˌɹæk] cowrie / kou rĭ/ [ˈkʰaʊɹɪ] / kou rē/ [ˈkʰaʊɹi] / kou rē/ [ˈkʰɑʊɹi] / kou rĭ/ [ˈkʰʌʊɾɪ] / kou rĭ/ [ˈkʰæʊɹɪ] / kou rē/ [ˈkʰaʊɹi] / kou rē/ [ˈkʰaʊɹi] Moira / moi rə/ [ˈmɔɪɹə] / moi rə/ [ˈmɔɪɹə] / moi rə/ [ˈmɔɪɹə] / moi rə/ [ˈmɔɪɾə] / moi rə/ [ˈmɔɛɹə] / moi rə/ [ˈmɔɪɹə] / moi rə/ [ˈmɔɪɹə]

(11-Mar.-2016)

As you can see, the first three columns have an almost identical system, differing only in a few minor details. The same is true of the last two columns. Southern and Scottish stand entirely on their own, and in fact have more similarities with each other than they have with any of the others. 17-Dec.-2015

The horse-hoarse Merger and the card-cord Merger

(11-Mar.-2016)

As was seen in the R-Coloring section above, originally in English the sets of words in each row of the chart on the right were all pronounced differently, with distinct vowel sounds before the “r”. A very limited number of speakers, both in and outside of North America, still maintain this three-way distinction. However, most speakers of English, both in and outside of North America, have merged the pronunciations of the second and third columns. This is called the horse-hoarse merger. However, in quite a variety of dialects, again both in and outside of North America, this merger did not take place, and these word pairs are still distinguished. This is explained in great detail in this Wikipedia article in the horse-hoarse merger section, as well as on ANAE map 8.2 and in the information describing it. On the other hand, a small percentage of speakers, apparently only found in parts of the United States, have merged the pronunciations of the first and second columns. This is called the card-cord merger. However, in quite a variety of dialects, again both in and outside of North America, this merger did not take place, and these word pairs are still distinguished. This is explained in some detail in this Wikipedia article in the card-cord merger section, as well as in ANAE chapter 8 on pages 52 and 53, though in both cases there is no map, and the description is incomplete. 30-Sep.-2016 For most of those who still make this three-way distinction, the vowel sound used is that shown at the top of the column in each case. However, for those who have one or the other of the mergers, the situation is somewhat complicated, and North American speakers and most others fall into five groups, as shown in the chart below. /är/ [aɹ/ɑɹ/ɒɹ] /ôr/ [ɔɹ] /ȯr/ [oɹ] far for four are or oar card cord cored barn born borne farce horse hoarse darning morning mourning farmer former

merger far for four Diagnosis and Description Where “cot”=“caught”? horse- hoarse /är/ [aɹ/ɑɹ/ɒɹ] /ȯr/ [oɹ] 1) You fall into this group if the second and third columns in the chart at upper right are pronounced the same, but the vowel before the r is not the same as the vowel sound in “caught” or “lawn” or “saw”. Most speakers in North America and England (but not Scotland or Ireland), except as specified below. can be same or different merger /är/ [aɹ/ɑɹ/ɒɹ] /ôr/ [ɔɹ] 2) You fall into this group if the second and third columns in the chart at upper right are pronounced the same, and the vowel before the r is the same vowel sound as in “caught” or “lawn” or “saw”. Includes Greater New York City, Atlantic Midland, probably some surrounding areas, and perhaps parts of South. “cot”=“caught” no merger /är/ [aɹ/ɑɹ/ɒɹ] /ôr/ [ɔɹ] /ȯr/ [oɹ] 3) You fall into this group if all three columns in the chart at upper right are pronounced differently. The only area I am certain about in North America is Eastern New England. In the British Isles it occurs in Scotland and Ireland, and formerly and perhaps currently in parts of England, though much of England is now group 1. Possibly other parts of the U.S., but see group 4. If you have the three-way distinction, and you grew up in some other parts of the U.S., I would love to know that! can be same or different card- cord /är/ [aɹ/ɑɹ/ɒɹ] /ȯr/ [oɹ] 4) You fall into this group if the first and second columns in the chart at upper right are pronounced the same, but the vowel before the r is not the same as the vowel sound in “caught” or “lawn” or “saw”. ANAE map 8.2 only shows areas that do not have the horse-hoarse merger, but the discussion on pages 52 and 53 suggests that many of these same areas have the card-cord merger, and I know of other areas that have this merger that are not mentioned in either of my sources mentioned above. In particular, I know for a fact that the merger occurs around Birmingham, Alabama,[29] and the New Orleans samples show that it occurs there also. I suspect that it covers all of the areas on ANAE map 8.2 except New England, plus Salt Lake City. can be same or different merger /ôr/ [ɔə(ɹ)] /ȯr/ [oə(ɹ)] 5) You fall into this group if the first and second columns in the chart at upper right are pronounced the same, and the vowel before the r is the same vowel sound as in “caught” or “lawn” or “saw”. Probably only in the South. Many New Orleans dialects, probably other r-dropping dialects in the South, though probably not most r-keeping dialects in the South. “cot”=“caught” both mergers? ? It is very unlikely that there is sixth group in which all three columns are pronounced the same, since this would tend to reduce too many distinctions. In this Wikipedia article in the card-cord merger section this idea is stated as a fact: “Dialects with the card–cord merger don’t have the horse–hoarse merger,” though no evidence is set forth. 30-Sep.-2016 If you have both mergers, or know of areas that do, please let me know! ?

For some Southerners “four” may rhyme with “rawer”, in which case “four” would be /fôər/ [ˈfɒʊɚ], and they would not actually have the /ȯr/ [oɹ] vowel (however, I need to test this further, since initial testing with some Alabamians did not show this to be true).

Writing the Way We Speak

In the phonemic texts below, the dialect provided is my own, without any of the blue vowels in the table in R’s Between Vowels: To Color or Not to Color. In the phonemic texts below, any vowels that would be one of these blue vowels for one of the first two columns above (British or GNYC) is marked in dark red. 17-Dec.-2015

Sō kŏŏd wē rīt ŧħə wā wē spēk, yōōzĭng dĭkshənârē sĭmbəlz?

(1-July-2013) Wē sûrtənlē kŏŏd, ăz ī ăm dōōĭng nou! Ĭn kənĕktəd tĕkst ŧħâr ĭz nō nēd tōō ĭndəkāt hwĭch sĭləbəl ĭz strĕst, sĭns ŧħĭs wĭl yōōzhəlē bē ŏbvēəs. Ăz yōō kən sē, Ĭngglĭsh hăz ə lŏt əv soundz, bət ĕvrē wŭn əv ŧħəm ĭz nēdəd! Soh kuud wee riyt thə way wee speek, yoozing just playn letərz?

(1-July-2013) Wee surrtənlee kuud, az iy am dooing now! In kənektəd tekst thair iz noh need too indəkayt hwich siləbəl iz strest, sinss this wil yoozhəlee bee obveeəs. Az yoo kən see, Ingglish haz ə lot əv sowndz, bət evree wun əv thəm iz needəd! Ĭt wŏŏd shûr bē ēzēər tə rīt līk ŧħĭs ĭf ŧħâr wûrnt sō mĕnē spĕshəl kârəktərz! Fȯrchənətlē ŧħâr ĭz ə wĕbsīt ŧħət prəvīdz ə kēbȯrd fər är pûrpəsəz, ăz yōō wĭl sē ĭf yōō klĭk ĭn ŧħə bŏks bəlō ănd trī tīpĭng. Ăz ŧħə kēbȯrd chärt shōz, shȯrt voulz är prəsēdəd bī ə *, ănd lông voulz bī ə -. Tə gĕt “ə” yōō tīp “=e”, ănd tə gĕt “ŧħ” yōō tīp “-t-h”. Tə pŏŏt ə ˆ ōvər ə voul, sĭmplē tīp “^” bəfȯr ĭt, ănd tə pŏŏt ə ¨ ōvər ə voul, tīp “:” bəfȯr ĭt. Ĭf ĭt jŭst sēmz tōō kŭmbərsəm tōō ăd ĕvrē sĭnggəl wŭn əv ŧħēz märks, yōō kŏŏd ăkshəlē lēv ôf ŧħə brĕv märks ( ˘ ) ŏn ŧħə shȯrt voulz, ăz sŭm dĭkshənârēz dōō! (Akshəlee, thair iz wun letər thət iy am yoozing thət izənt ə playn letər, thə letər “ə”, hwich iz ə speshəl kairəktər, bət thats not too haard tə kopee intə yər tekst. Thee ohnlee thhing not in theez chaarts thət iy səjest yoo doo iz tə riyt thə fiynəl “s” sownd az “ss” in sum kaysəz tə keep peepəl frəm thhingking its a “z” sownd. Thair aar sevrəl igzampəlz əv this in theez pairəgrafs.) Sŭm əv yōō mā thĭngk “Ī sûrtənlē dōnt sā sŭm əv ŧħōz wûrdz ŧħə wā hē dŭz!” Əv kȯrs yōō dōnt: ŧħâr wĭl bē lŏts əv vârēāshən, ăz ŧħĭs wĕb pāj ănd măp shō! Nō prŏbləm, yōō spĕl thĭngz ŧħə wā yōō sā ŧħəm, ănd īl spēl ŧħəm ŧħə wā ī sā ŧħəm! Ŧħē ōnlē bĭg prŏbləm mĕnē əv yōō wĭl ĭkspîrēəns wĭl bē ŧħē ĭntərfîrəns əv ŧħə stăndərd spĕlĭng, ŧħō sĭmplē lûrnĭng ôl əv ŧħə spĕlĭngz wĭl ôlsō tāk səm tīm. Sum əv yoo may thhingk “Iy surrtənlee dohnt say sum əv thohz wurrdz thə way hee duz!” Əv koarss yoo dohnt: thair wil bee lots əv vaireeayshən, az this web payj and map shoh! Noh probləm, yoo spel thhingz thə way yoo say thəm, and iyl speel thəm thə way iy say thəm! Thee ohnlee big probləm menee əv yoo wil ikspihreeənss wil bee thee intərfihrənss əv thə standərd speling, thoh simplee lurrning awl əv thə spelingz wil awlsoh tayk səm tiym. Nou plēz ŭndərstănd mē, īm nŏt səjĕstĭng ŧħət wē chānj ŧħĕ spĕlĭng əv Ĭngglĭsh. Mĕnē hăv prəpŏĕzd ŧħĭs thrōō ŧħə yîrz, bŭt ĭn ĕnē kāss ĭt ānt gənə hăpən, ănd wē rĭlē wŏŏdənt wŏnt ĭt tōō, sĭnss ĭt wŏŏd māk ôl ŧħē Ĭngglĭsh bŏŏks ĭn ŧħə wûrld ŏbsəlēt. Bŭt ĭts fŭn tə mĕs əround wĭŧħ! Ănd ĭf Ĭngglĭsh wûr ən ŭnrĭtən lănggwĭj, līk sō mĕnē thouzəndz əv lănggwĭjəz spōkən əround ŧħə wûrld tədā, ŧħĕn ŧħĭs ĭz ŧħə kīnd əv spĕlĭng sĭstəm ŧħət wŏŏd bē nēdəd tə rīt ĭt, wŭn ĭn whĭch ēch sound ĭz ôlwāz spĕld ŧħə sām wā. Ŧħə rēzən Ĭngglĭsh ĭz nŏt spĕld ĭn ə kənsĭstənt wā ĭz bəkŭz ĭt hăz ə lông hĭstərē, ănd hăz bärōd ə lŏt əv wûrdz frəm ŭŧħər lănggwĭjəz, wĭŧħout əjŭstĭng ŧħâr spĕlĭngz! Now pleez undərstand mee, iym not səjesting thət wee chaynj the speling əv Ingglish. Menee hav prəpoezd this thhroo thə yihrz, but in enee kayss it aynt gənə hapən, and wee rilee wuudənt wont it too, sinss it wuud mayk awl thee Ingglish buuks in thə wurrld obsəleet. But its fun tə mes ərownd with! And if Ingglish wurr ən unritən langgwij, liyk soh menee thhowzəndz əv langgwijəz spohkən ərownd thə wurrld təday, then this iz thə kiynd əv speling sistəm thət wuud bee needəd tə riyt it, wun in which eech sownd iz awlwayz speld thə saym way. Thə reezən Ingglish iz not speld in ə kənsistənt way iz bəkuz it haz ə lawng histəree, and haz baarohd ə lot əv wurrdz frəm uthər langgwijəz, withowt əjusting thair spelingz! Iym surrtənlee not thə furrst tə triy it. It turrnz owt thət menee ətempts tə reespel Ingglish fəneemiklee yoozing just thə twunteesiks letərz uv thə standərd alfəbet (withh ə vairee fyoo ədishənz liyk “ə”) hav bin triyd and yoozd, biy dikshənaireez, nooz ayjənseez, and uthər oargənəzayshənz. Ə laarj numbər əv theez aar listəd on this web siyt. Miy sistəm izənt igzaktlee liyk enee əv thəm, but iz kwiyt simələr too ə lot əv thəm, ispeshəlee tə thə koləmz laybəld “Wikipedia²”, “MECD”, “WPRK”, “BBC”, and “POD”. Iy yooz a few spelingz thət aarnt fownd eneehwair in thə kəmpairətiv chaart, in pərtikyələr “iy”, “oar”, “urr”, “uur”, “th”, and “thh”[30], bəkuz iy thhingk thay aar simplee eezeeər tə reed thən thee awlturrnətivz səjestəd. (Iy akshəlee kiynd əv liykt “igh” for /ī/, but in akshooəl yoosəj it looks klunkee.)

(11-Mar.-2016)

Click in the box below and try typing, using either of the spelling systems explained above: 1-July-2013

(Move the pop-up keyboard around if it gets in your way. You can also resize the box.) 11-Jan.-2013

$[Pop-up box]$

This text entry tool (KeymanWeb) is provided by Tavultesoft (www.tavultesoft.com). You can type any of these characters or any of over 1,000 languages in any Windows application with Keyman Desktop and any web page with KeymanWeb. Visit www.tavultesoft.com/eurolatin/ for more details.

Key to the Spelling Systems

21-Aug.-2013

The following chart compares the two spelling systems. As explained in How Many Vowels are there in American English?, the black vowels are ones all speakers have, many other have the red ones, and a few also have the green ones. (For more details see How Many Vowels are there in American English?.) 8-July-2013

Vowels:

Dictionary symbols: ē ĭ ā ĕ ă â ä ŏ ô ō ŭ ŏŏ ōō (yōō) ī ou oi ə îr âr är ôr ȯr ûr ŏŏr (yŏŏr) ər Plain letters: ee i ay e a ae aa o* aw oh u uu oo (yoo) iy ow oy ə ihr air aar awr oar urr uur (yuur) ər Traditional: beat bit bait bet bat bad father cot caught boat cut foot boot (cute) bite bout boy item fear fair far for four fur poor (cure) sinner

(31-Aug.-2015)

Dictionary symbols: *For those speakers who have this vowel {o} but not {aa}, in other words for those who rhyme “father” with “bother” (most North Americans), at the end of a word this vowel must be spelled as {aa} instead of {o}. It should also be spelled {aa} before {h}. Thus “aha” would be spelled {aahaa} rather than {oho}, “ah” would be spelled {aa} rather than {o}, and “la” would be spelled {laa} rather than {lo}. To be consistent we really should spell them all as {aa} rather than {o}, but that would make for far too many cases of {aa}, and this would really end up looking different from our traditional spelling. Since {o} is far more common than {aa} in those dialects that have them both, doing it this way will reduce difficulties for all concerned. 21-Aug.-2013

Consonants:

Dictionary symbols: b ch d f g h j k l m n ng p r s sh t th ŧħ v w y z zh (hw) Plain letters: b ch d f g h j k l m n ng p r s sh t thh th v w y z zh (hw) Traditional: church, nature judge sing, singer, finger shush, nation thin, bath this, bathe pleasure, vision, genre, rouge (which, whale)

(31-Aug.-2015)

You may notice in the above phonemic writing samples that I write several very common words in more than one way. I do this because I pronounce them more than one way, according to some fairly clear rules, and so do most English speakers. All of these are what linguists call function words rather than content words. 14-Jan.-2013

The simplest group of these is shown in the chart below. The unstressed form always has the weak vowel /ə/, whereas the stressed form can have various vowels. This is not an exhaustive list, though such words are quite a small group. 19-June-2013

Dictionary Symbols Plain Letters Standard Spelling usual pronun- ciation, without stress with special emphasis Examples usual pronun- ciation, without stress with special emphasis Examples Comments “some” səm sŭm Ī sē səm fōōd. Ī wŏnt sŭm! səm sum Iy see səm food. Iy wont sum! “but” bət bŭt Də yōō hăv hăsh? Ī dōnt nō, bət īl chĕk… Wou, wē sēm tə hăv nŭthĭng bŭt hăsh! bət but Də yoo hav hash? Iy dohnt noh, bət iyl chek… Wow, wee seem tə hav nuthhing but hash! “can” kən kăn Kən yōō dōō ĭt? Yĕs, ī kăn! kən kan Kən yoo doo it? Yes, iy kan! “that” ŧħət ŧħăt Ī nō ŧħət ŧħăt ĭz trōō. thət that Iy noh thət that iz troo. In this case, these two words actually have different meanings! “them” ŧħəm ŧħĕm Ī tōld ŧħəm tə kŭm. Hōō? Ŧħĕm! thəm them Iy tohld thəm tə kum. Hoo? Them! The first is often simply /əm/, sometimes spelled «’em». “for” fər fȯr / fôr Ī wŏnt tē fər tōō. Hwŭt fȯr? fər foar/fawr Iy wont tee fər too. Hwut foar? “of” əv ŭv Wŭn əv ŧħəm ĭz ə thēf. Hwŭt ŭv ĭt? əv uv Wun əv thəm iz ə thheef. Hwut uv it? The emphatic one is usually /ŏv/ in British and Southern American. “from” frəm frŭm Hwârz shē frŭm? Shēz frəm Nəbrăskə. frəm frum Hwairz shee frum? Sheez frəm Nəbraskə. The emphatic one is usually /frŏm/ in British and Southern American. (8-Nov.-2013)

A second group of these words has a special pattern when unstressed (weak), depending on whether the following word starts with a vowel or a consonant. In one case the traditional spelling represents this pattern, that of “a” before a consonant, and “an” before a vowel. But at least two other words have a similar pattern, but because the standard spelling does not represent it, we are usually unaware of it. These are listed in the following chart. Examples of most are found in the sample above, or in the footnotes. The following list is probably complete. 22-Mar.-2013

Dictionary Symbols Plain Letters Standard Spelling usual pronun- ciation, without stress, before consonant usual pronun- ciation, without stress, before vowel with special emphasis usual pronun- ciation, without stress, before consonant usual pronun- ciation, without stress, before vowel with special emphasis Comments “the” ŧħə ŧħē ŧħē * thə thee thee * For most Britishers and many Southern Americans the second one would usually be /ŧħĭ/. I assume that the third one will generally be /ŧħē/ in British English. However, in the preface to A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh he says “Winnie ther Pooh”, where “ther” would rhyme with “fur”, but only the way an r-dropper would say it, with no actual r-sound! Britishers, please let me know which would be normal for you. Compare also the Bill Murray line quoted in the previous footnote, and consider how an r-dropping Britisher would be likely to say it. 9-July-2013 “to” tə tōō tōō tə too too The third case would be like when a taxi driver says, “Where to?” The words “do” and “you” also sometimes follow this pattern, though not as consistently as “to”. Compounds ending in “to” also work like “to”, e.g. “into”, “onto”. “a” ə ā * ə ay * “an” ən ăn ən an

(19-June-2013)

* Like when Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day says, “I’m a god. I’m not the God.” / Īm ā gŏd . Īm nŏt ŧħē Gŏd ./ (Iym ay god. Iym not thee God.)

How I Use the IPA (and how I don’t) 2-Feb.-2011

When I show the pronunciation of a place, I try to always show how someone from that place would actually pronounce it. However, occasionally even the natives can’t agree. For instance, many Chicagoans say /shĭ kô gō/ [ʃɪˈkʰɒˌɡo] or even /shĭ kô gə/ [ʃɪˈkʰɒɡə], but there are also many who say /shĭ kŏ gō/ [ʃɪˈkʰaˌɡo], and the latter group may be growing. (I had originally had the impression that the former group was larger, but contributor and native Chicagoan Richard R. says that they are about evenly matched. He says, ‘I suspect that this is a North Side versus South Side and/or West Side thing, as my Cubs fan friends tend to say “ah”, but my Sox fan friends (and Richard Daley) say “aw”. FWIW, I grew up in the western suburbs saying “ah”.’) Keep in mind that all of these speakers definitely have “cot”≠“caught”. I have always called it /shĭ kŏ gō/ [ʃɪˈkʰɑˌɡoʊ], with a couple of slight vowel differences, since I don’t have an Inland North accent! 18-July-2013

I have noticed that many people who use the IPA to show the pronunciation of place names on Wikipedia do several things that I have chosen not to do.

For one thing, they often write both [ə] and [ɨ] in showing the pronunciation of the weak vowel /ə/ in American English. Now this is not incorrect, since for me the word “sofa” / sō fə/ would usually be phonetically [ˈsoʊfə], whereas the word “broken” / brō kən/ would be phonetically [ˈbɹoʊkɨn]. However, it should be understood that this is a phonetic difference, not a phonemic one, so that the difference is incidental rather than significant. And in actual practice I find I have a lot of variation: for instance, “sofa bed” / sō fə bĕd/ would usually come out [ˈsoʊfɨˌbɛd], and “sofas” / sō fəz/ could come out [ˈsoʊfəz] or [ˈsoʊfɨz] depending on how deliberately I am speaking, or its position in the sentence. And I find that others have the same problem: in the Appalachian Mountains article the pronunciation is given as “/ˌæpəˈleɪʃɨn/ or /ˌæpəˈlætʃɨn/”; for me the vowels shown as [ə] and [ɨ] in these pronunciations are exactly the same for me, probably both [ɨ]. So for strictly practical purposes I am writing both [ə] and [ɨ] as [ə]. 18-July-2013

Another thing I find people doing is using British phonetic transcription to show the pronunciation of American place names. For instance, in the Lafayette, Indiana article the pronunciation is given as “/ˌlɑːfiːˈɛt/”. Now, in British English there truly are phonetically long and short vowels: “beat” is phonetically [ˈbiːt], where the vowel [iː] is phonetically long, whereas “bit” is phonetically [ˈbɪt], where the vowel [ɪ] is phonetically short. However, in nearly all North American English dialects, this is not the case: both “beat” [ˈbit] and “bit” [ˈbɪt] have vowels which are phonetically the same length, in spite of the fact that the first has what is traditionally called a “long e”, while the second has what is traditionally called a “short i”. Scottish English is like American English in this respect. And it turns out that the “/ˌlɑːfiːˈɛt/” pronunciation given in the Wikipedia article is wrong for both British and American English: in British it would usually be [ˌlɑːfɪˈɛt] or [ˌlɑːfiˈɛt], the [ɪ] or [i] being short because it is unstressed (weak), whereas in American English (at least in West Lafayette, Indiana) it would be [ˌlɑfiˈɛt], phonemically /lŏfē ĕt /. 18-July-2013

John Wells’s Lexical Sets

Words in pink in the chart in the How Many Vowels are there in American English? section above are from John Wells’s Standard Lexical Sets. Note that he has a sample word for each of the 15 Ordinary Stressed Vowels and the 7 “R-colored” Stressed Vowels in the American Heritage Dictionary’s list, but not for the more localized /â/ vowel found in “bad” in GNYC and Atlantic Midland. I have included all of the words in John Wells’s list except for the following two words, which we could call Skew Words, since they have different vowels in different regions: 18-July-2013

Skew Word Most Americans Southern England bath / băth / [ˈbæθ] / bäth / [ˈbɑ:θ] (Also Eastern New England [ˈbaθ].) cloth / klôth / [ˈkʰlɒθ] (for those who distinguish cot, caught) / klŏth / [ˈkʰlɔθ] (Also possibly Greater New York City??, other places in northeast??) Compare the above with: math / măth / [ˈmæθ] / măth / [ˈmæθ] Goth / gŏth / [ˈɡaθ/ɡɑθ/ɡɒθ] / gŏth / [ˈɡɔθ]

1-Oct.-2010

This skewing of the /ŏ/ and /ô/ vowels between the British and American systems is typically seen only before the consonant phonemes /f/, /th/, and /g/ ([f], [θ], and [ɡ]), as can be seen in the chart of Other Examples in The Cot-Caught Merger article, comparing the blue items with those in the preceding column. 10-Aug.-2013

Rick Aschmann’s Lexical Sets

However, it seems to me that John Wells’s list above was not well selected to show contrasts in a similar environment. Instead, I would draw your attention to all of the words in blue below, all of which end in /t/, and most of which begin with /b/, and also to the words in dark red, which similarly show contrasts in other environments. Thus, my lexical sets would be the following: 1-Oct.-2010

Main set: beat, bit, bait, bet, bat, cot, caught, boat, cut, foot, boot, bite, bout, Hoyt This list lacks only two of the Ordinary Stressed Vowels, /â/ as in “bad” (GNYC and Mid Atlantic) and /ä/ as in “father” (GNYC and ENE), which do not occur in native words before /t/ (except where an /r/ has been dropped, as in “part” / pät / (ENE [ˈpʰat], GNYC [ˈpʰɑət]). These two vowels are also lacking in most North American English dialects. I could have used “quoits” in place of “Hoyt”, which is a surname, but I suspect that many more people are familiar with Hoyt than with quoits! 18-July-2013 R‑Colored set: fear, fair, far, for, four, poor, tour, fur For determining how many R-colored vowels a speaker has. (No one has more than 7, though I have listed 8 here. Those who have /ŏŏr/ usually say / tŏŏr , pŏŏr /, but others often do not rhyme these words, many saying them as / tōō ər, pȯr / [ˈtʰuɚ, ˈpʰoɹ].) 9-July-2013 Skew sets: bath, math; Goth, cloth For checking for what I call “skewing”. Other sets: had, bad; father, bother; Bach’s, box, balks For determining if various pairs of Ordinary Stressed Vowels are distinguished by a given speaker.

Record Your Own Voice! 26-Mar.-2011

If you want to help me complete this map, or even to provide more sound samples for locations that already have them, there is an easy way: record your own voice and post it on YouTube. Nora Young, host of the program Spark on CBC radio, and a native of Toronto, Ontario, has done a sample recording of her own voice, and has set up a YouTube page where others can do the same.

She did this after interviewing me on her program in March of 2011, where I explained the need for more samples of this kind. To listen to the interview, go to www.cbc.ca/spark/2011/03/spark-142-march-27-30-2011, then scroll down till you see “YouTube Dialects Map”, or search for “YouTube Dialects Map” or “Rick Aschmann”. The interview can be heard by clicking the link below the paragraph.

If you grew up in one particular place in Canada or the U.S., then I would very much like a sample from you. In particular, if you lived in one town for most of your childhood, in particular between the ages of 5 and 15, and speak like people from that place, then you should be a great sample. (That is, unless you tried to consciously change your accent after that: I know a gal who moved from the South to the Midland before her senior year of high school, and she was subjected to so much ridicule that she completely changed her way of speaking.) And obviously, if you moved around a lot throughout your childhood, then you won’t really work for my map.

You can do just a simple recording, like Nora did, as short or as long as you like, just telling a bit about yourself and where you grew up. Or, if you want to be quite thorough about it, or just don’t know what to say, I have prepared a version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (slightly expanded to include certain key words) that you can read. This way if I need to check a particular word to nail down the dialect of your hometown I will be able to. Either way, please be sure to say where you grew up, and if only for part of your childhood, from what age to what age.

All of your clips sent in like this will be labeled “(Self-recording for this site. Thanks!)” in the table below, so that will make them easy to find. 30-Mar.-2011

Note to Canadians: Nora points out that Canadians are currently underrepresented on the map. So, this is your chance to change that! Send in your samples!

Audio Samples of Local Dialects

Here you can hear audio samples of different local dialects. These are all found on the Internet:

As far as possible these have been restricted to people who were raised in the location, and in many cases have lived there nearly all their lives, and have presumably retained the local dialect, except where indicated. (For most of these people, their birthplace and life history can be found on en.wikipedia.org, or at the links provided.) Items in pink are doubtful as to whether they represent accurately the dialect indicated, or, in the case of the rejected samples at the bottom of the chart, definitely do not represent their local dialect. 1-July-2010

DISCLAIMER: I do not necessarily agree with all of the people speaking here: I have simply selected them as good examples of their dialect! Nor does the fact that many of them are politicians indicate that I particularly like politicians: The fact is that politicians tend to retain their local dialect more than other public professions (actors, artists), to maintain their identity with the locals. Also, they talk in public a lot, so the data is readily available. Country singers and southern gospel singers also tend to be reliable,[31] and I like them better than politicians. Somewhat surprisingly to me, NASCAR racers seem to be very reliable, also: even though they travel a lot for the races, they tend to raise their families in their old home town, from generation to generation, and don’t care in the least how they talk! 4-Aug.-2010

You may also notice that I prefer older people to younger people. This is simply because there has been a lot more dialect mixing among the younger generation than in previous generations.

As mentioned above, the pronunciation of some of the names is given after the name. If anyone thinks I have the pronunciation of a place wrong, please let me know! 3-July-2010

Some of these links may not be current. Please let me know about any bad links. - Rick Aschmann

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Special Interest and Historical Articles

Minimal Pairs* Before↓ short /ŏ/ [a/ɑ/ɒ/ɔ] /ô/ “aw” [ɒ/ɔ/oə/ɒʊ/o:] /t/ [t] 1. cot caught 2. rot wrought 3. sot sought 4. tot taught / taut 5. knotty naughty 6. hottie haughty 7. Bott (surname) bought /d/ [d] 8. pod pawed 9. odd awed 10. cod cawed 11. clod clawed, Claude 12. nod gnawed 13. sod sawed 14. body bawdy /n/ [n] 15. Don Dawn 16. pond pawned 17. Fonz fawns /l/ [l] 18. collar caller 19. holler hauler 20. moll maul 21. doll Dall (surname) /b/ [b] 22. bobble bauble 23. Dobbin daubin’ /p/ [p] 24. popper pauper 25. moppin’ Maupin (surname) /z/ [z] 26. Oz awes /k/ [k] 27. hock hawk 28. sock Sauk (tribe) 29. ox auks 30. fox Fawkes 31. stock stalk † 32. cock caulk † 33. chock chalk † 34. wok walk † 35. box balks † (26-Sep.-2016) * These words are distinguished in both American

and British English, in those regions with the

distinction. Those that are capitalized are proper

names, but in every case these are known and used

in English. 15-Aug.-2015 † Some Americans actually pronounce the “l” in some

of these words, in which case pronouncing the pair

differently proves nothing about the vowels. Other Examples short /ŏ/ /ô/ “aw” botch debauch fossil faucet profit offer Goth cloth, moth congress stronger cog, boggle, goggles bog, dog, flog, hog, log, boondoggle (The chart above shows

the American pattern.

Those in blue in the

second column have

short /ŏ/ in British English,

and also possibly for

some Northeasterners.) (28-Oct.-2011) The Cot-Caught Merger You will notice that in the most of the area on this map people pronounce “cot” and “caught” the same, the areas with either single or double hatching. However, much of this area is sparsely populated, so actually the majority of speakers in North America pronounce them differently, probably about 50% more[54]. Those of you in the first group may think, “How would they be different?” Or, if you can sometimes hear a difference in other people’s speech, you may say, “How could that be important?” On the other hand, those of you in the second group may be amazed to realize that some people pronounce them the same. That’s the way it is with language: people filter what other people say through their own language filter, and assume that other people pronounce things the way they do, when actually they don’t. 16-Nov.-2010 And this isn’t the only word pair that has (or doesn’t have) this distinction. When I was living overseas in a community that was made up mostly of Americans and Canadians from various regions, I knew a family in which the father’s name was “Don”, and the daughter’s name was “Dawn”. Guess which group they belonged to! When I would be talking to someone about the family, and would mention that I had recently been chatting with Don, if they belonged to the “merger” group, they would often say, “Do you mean the father or the daughter?” Now, I consistently say those two names differently, but they couldn’t hear the difference! You might wonder, “Why would those people name their daughter Dawn, knowing the confusion it would cause?” The answer is: It never crossed their minds! To them, the two names were obviously pronounced differently, and it never even occurred to them that anyone would pronounce them the same! 26-Sep.-2016 And there are plenty of word pairs for which this vowel distinction is the only difference, as the charts to the left show. (The minimal pairs are especially interesting, since there are so many of them, and this list is still almost certainly not exhaustive, since I keep finding new pairs to add to it. However, I think I’m getting close now, since I discovered Wiktionary’s rhyming lists, and added a whole bunch in March, 2016. If any of you can think of more minimal pairs, please let me know. (I haven’t included words I had never heard of before I saw them in the rhyming lists, and which aren’t in standard dictionaries, preferring to stick to generally known items. Nor have I included all possibilities with proper names. If I had, the list would be even longer.) The five pairs in red are a short list to try if you don’t want to do the whole list.) So you see, it really does matter! 26-Sep.-2016 On the other hand, the amazing thing to me is that the “merger” group gets along so well saying all these pairs of words the same, as the following personal anecdote shows! 14-Mar.-2016 One day my wife and I were talking about farming practices, something I know almost nothing about, and she mentioned that they sometimes use “stocks” of corn to make silage. At least, that’s what I heard her say. I was surprised. “You mean they can’t just feed the corn to the cattle straight?” However, she was actually referring to “stalks” of corn, which never occurred to me, since I heard her say “stocks”. In fact, she says them both the same (with a pronunciation closer to the way I say “stocks” than the way I say “stalks”), so to her, the context should have told me which she meant, not the pronunciation. Go figure! Other similar confusions continue to arise occasionally in our marriage based on this distinction, but each time it takes me a little less time to realize what she meant. 28-Oct.-2011 And many other potential ambiguities can arise. I can come up with various phrases that would be ambiguous if spoken by, or to, someone with the cot-caught merger, but completely unambiguous between two speakers who maintain the distinction: 26-Sep.-2016 “I saw Don today, but I didn’t see Dawn.” “I saw Dawn today, but I didn’t see Don.” “He was acting odd.” (strange) “He was acting awed.” (feeling fear or respect or wonder) “That is an unusual looking collar.” (top part of a shirt or jacket) “That is an unusual looking caller.” (visitor) “It was a very knotty idea.” (difficult or complicated) “It was a very naughty idea.” (disobedient, improper, indecent) “He’s hocking some watches.” (pawning them at a pawn shop) “He’s hawking some watches.” (selling them on the street with a loud voice) “I see the ox.” (a big bovine) “I see the auks.” (small sea birds) “I heard a loud holler.” (a shout) “I heard a loud hauler.” (a trucker, or his truck) “I see the Fonz.” (colorful Happy Days TV character) “I see the fawns.” (baby deer) “Here comes the body builder.” (someone with big muscles) “Here comes the bawdy builder.” (a contractor with a foul mouth) (28-Nov.-2016) The last example probably wouldn’t actually be ambiguous, since the first would probably have emphasis on “body”, but the second on “builder”. Even so, it would be confusing out of context. And if the second one is said with emphasis on “bawdy”, to distinguish this builder from several others in a group, then they would be perfectly ambiguous. 26-Sep.-2016 However, coming up with these ambiguous sentences wasn’t easy, and some are fairly unlikely, which demonstrates why the loss of this distinction is so seldom a problem! And some of the words just aren’t that well known: a lot of people don’t know what auks are, or who the Fonz was, or the difference between hocking and hawking. But most of them are pretty well known. Try some of them on your friends, especially if you make the distinction and they don’t! 26-Sep.-2016 To see an even more complex system, see The Father-Bother distinction below.

Did the cot-caught merger come from Scotland?

The three largest dialects that are characterized by the cot-caught merger, The West and the two main Canadian dialects, also have one other feature in common: the vowel of “too” is significantly more fronted than the vowel of “toe”. Now this situation is not seen in England, but it is in Scotland, where the difference in fronting of “too” and “toe” is even more extreme. And it turns out that many speakers of Scottish English also have the cot-caught merger! (In fact, they only have 12 vowels, having also merged the vowels in “good” and “food”.) Canadian English has other features like Scottish English, in particular the pronunciation of the “long vowels” in “boat” and “bait” as pure vowels rather than diphthongs, and the lower, more central pronunciation of the vowel in “bat”. Therefore, it seems likely that Canadian English, which had very heavy Scottish immigration, took all of these features from Scottish English. (Newfoundland also had very significant Irish influence, and this has given its English a distinctive Irish pronunciation, especially in Irish Newfoundland.) The dialect of the West in the U.S. may then have taken just the cot-caught merger and the fronting of the vowel of “too” from Canadian English, since no other U. S. dialect has the latter. 4-Apr.-2011

How the other dialects with the cot-caught merger got it is less clear, but it is evident from the map that they are all close to the Canadian border! In particular, based on the western settlement patterns, it seems fairly clear that the North Central dialect is simply a case of speakers from the North dialect who have adopted the cot-caught merger from the West and from Canada.

/ä/ “ah” short /ŏ/ /ô/ “aw” England: [ɑ] [ɔ] [o:] GNYC: [ɑə] [a] [oə] ENE: [a] [ɒə] South: [ɑ] [ɒʊ] MEA: [ɑ] [ɒ] Before↓ /k/ [k] Bach’s† box balks* /r/ [ɹ] sparring horrid warring /ŧħ/ [ð] father bother (broader) /b/ [b] Saab† sob /n/ [n] Kahn† con /l/ [l] Mali† Molly /m/ [m] balm* bomb /m/ [m] psalm* Somme /m/ [m] palm* pompom /m/ [m] qualm* /m/ [m] alms* /m/ [m] calming* common — ah awe — ha haw — la law — ma‡ maw — pa‡ paw (11-Mar.-2016) The Father-Bother distinction In Eastern New England (ENE), many Greater New York City (GNYC) speakers, England, Australia, various other former British colonies, and possibly a few speakers in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, the words “father” and “bother” do not rhyme, having different vowels in the first syllable. Not only that, but in all of these areas except Eastern New England and possibly the Maritimes the words “father”, “bother”, and “broader” all have different vowels. However, the words with /ä/ (the vowel in “father”) are relatively few, so there are few minimal pairs (scroll down to the second group; I found a few more here). 11-Mar.-2016 I have only found one minimal triple, which was only possible by including the name Bach, which is not an English word in the strictest sense. The three words “Bach’s”, “box”, and “balks” would each be pronounced differently in most of these areas, including England. However, in Greater New York City “Bach’s” and “box” are the same (confirmed by GNYC contributor Kevin McNamara), even though GNYC speakers make the three-way distinction in the other words listed, because of the fact that the phonetic pronunciations of /ä/ and /ŏ/ are reversed from the other regions, as shown in the chart.[55] In Eastern New England “box” and “balks” would be the same, but “Bach’s” would be different. (In the chart, MEA means “Many Eastern Americans”. Obviously, all of those with the cot-caught merger would say them all with the same vowel, and I have not shown this.) 11-Mar.-2016 Part of the issue is the limited number of consonants which may follow the /ä/ vowel. That is, native English words with /ä/ are relatively few if you don’t count words in which an r has been dropped in the pronunciation, since most of these areas (though not the Maritimes) are systematic r-dropping regions. Thus, in most of these areas the words “father” and “farther” are identical, and most words spelled with “ar” are pronounced with /ä/. 17-Dec.-2015 But apart from these words with dropped r’s, or with /ä/ before an /r/ between vowels as in the second row in the chart, native English words with /ä/ before a consonant are almost nonexistent, the only genuine cases being “father” and the “alm” words. (This is why I had to add the foreign names marked with †, just to help fill out the chart, and even these don’t work in GNYC.) On the other hand, there are quite a number at the end of a word, as the last five rows of the chart show, but none of these have minimal pairs with short /ŏ/, only with /ô/. 17-Dec.-2015 The chart on the left shows examples of these three groups of words. 26-Sep.-2016 There is another group of words that have /ä/ in southern England (and occasionally in Eastern New England), but /ă/ in most of North America and the rest of Britain, like “staff”, “pass”, “half”, “bath”, “rather”, etc. I have not included any of these in the chart. 30-Mar.-2010 Scotland is a special case: “father” and “bother” do not rhyme, but there is no distinction between /ä/ and /ă/, so “palm”=“Pam”, “psalm”=“Sam”, and “father” rhymes with “rather”. See the previous section for more info about the Scottish vowel system. 11-Jan.-2011 Those who lack the father-bother distinction will pronounce the vowels in the first two columns the same, except that the word “horrid” is variable, being pronounced / hŏr id/ ([ˈhɑɹɪd] or even [ˈhaɹɪd]) in the northeastern U.S., but / hȯr id/ [ˈhoɹɪd] by most Americans. (There may or may not be an intermediate group that says / hôr id/ [ˈhɔɹɪd].) Many similar words have this same variation, as in “horrible”, “porridge”, “coral”. 7-Feb.-2013 * Most English speakers worldwide do not pronounce the “l” in these words, and in particular all of those with the Father-Bother distinction or who are systematic r-droppers apparently do not. However, many Americans do. See the following section, The Pronunciation of “-alm” and “-olk” and “-alk”, for a discussion of these words. 24-Sep.-2011 † In Greater New York City each of these words is the same as the corresponding word in the next column, but apparently in all other areas with the Father-Bother distinction they are different. See also the discussion in the second paragraph above. 17-Dec.-2015 ‡ Many Eastern Americans (MEA) may pronounce these two words the same as the corresponding word in the third column, but I doubt that any with the father-bother distinction do. 17-Dec.-2015

The Pronunciation of “-alm” and “-olk” and “-alk”

Do you pronounce the “l” in the red words in the chart below? How about in the blue words? I don’t pronounce the “l” in any of them! However, I do pronounce the “l” in all of the green words, though some people don’t pronounce it in all of these. I only became aware in 2011 that many Americans pronounce the “l” in the red words, and I’m trying to find out if the distribution is regional, or is just all mixed up! (The words in parentheses are not very common, so don’t pay attention to them if you aren’t sure, or if they don’t work like the others.) 15-May-2012

Most Americans apparently pronounce the “l” in the red words in the first column below, a smaller number pronounce the “l” in the red words in the second column, and an even smaller number pronounce the “l” in the red words in the third column, but like me some Americans definitely do not pronounce the “l” in any of them, nor do the vast majority of English speakers outside North America. 1-June-2011

I am fairly certain that no native English speakers pronounce the “l” in the blue words. However, I thought that was true of the third red column, and I was proved wrong, so please let me know. 8-June-2011

Please let me know which words you pronounce the “l” in, and which you don’t. Be sure to compare them with the words in black below to see if they rhyme. If they do, then you aren’t pronouncing the “l”! 1-June-2011

I became aware in late 2011 that some speakers pronounce “my folks” without the “l”, but “folk song” with an “l”. Similarly, some speakers pronounce “corn stalk” (a noun) without the “l”, but “I stalk the deer” (a verb) with an “l”. If any of you who have already answered the survey find that you do the same, please let me know. 15-May-2012

calm yolk talk half would palm my folks walk calf could balm folk song chalk behalf should psalm (Polk) corn stalk (noun) qualm polka dot I stalk the deer (verb) alms balk (napalm) calk/caulk (malmsey) (Falklands) almond polka (dance) falcon Ralph mould talc If any of the red words above rhyme with any of the words in the same column below, then you are not pronouncing the “l”! I believe that the blue words above rhyme with the words in the same column below for all speakers (except perhaps the words with **). Let me know if I am wrong! bomb* poke hawk laugh wood arm* cloak squawk graph** good farm* soak gawk chaff** auk hock dock cock wok * Very few English speakers rhyme “bomb” with “arm” or “farm”. (Apparently only the Providence Rhode Island dialect does!) However, some Americans rhyme the red words in the first column above with “bomb”, not pronouncing the “l”. Distinctly, most systematic r-droppers, e.g. Eastern New England, Greater New York City, and Standard British rhyme them with “arm”, again not pronouncing the “l”. 18-July-2013 ** Many Britishers and other systematic r-droppers outside North America pronounce all of the blue and black words in this column with /ä/ [ɑ:] rather than /ă/ [æ], and also rhyme them with “scarf”. However, “graph” and “chaff” show variation between the two. Contributor Peter Nelson from New Zealand has /ä/ [ɑ:] in “laugh”, but /ă/ [æ] in “graph” and “chaff”, but says he knows New Zealanders and Australians who use /ä/ [ɑ:] in “graph”. He could not think of another word he rhymes with “laugh” that has neither an “l” nor an “r” in the spelling. On the other hand, an older reference I have which shows Standard British pronunciation has /ă/ [æ] in “graph” but /ä/ [ɑ:] in “chaff” (Langenscheidt’s German-English, English-German Dictionary, 1970). 21-Sep.-2015 (21-Sep.-2015) (1-Sep.-2015)$Mapping4

Background Info

In English the number of words which end in “-alm” or “-alms” is limited. The only ones of these which are really common, well-known words are listed in the first column of the first chart above, although obviously there are other words derived from these that are also common, like “embalm” or “becalm” or “psalms”. (This web site lists a few more, but they are so rare they don’t even show up in standard dictionaries. The word “realm” doesn’t count, since its pronunciation is completely different.) So, the list is short, though it is clearly a pronunciation pattern. Now, around the world most English speakers, including myself, do not pronounce the “l” in these words, and these words contribute to the short list of words containing the /ä/ vowel for those speakers who do not rhyme the words “father” and “bother”, as discussed in the previous section. For this reason this list of words, though short, is somewhat important when discussing how many vowels a particular speaker has. 19-May-2011

Until 2011 I had assumed that historically the “l” in all of the red words above was completely lost in all English dialects, and that the few speakers who did pronounce the “l” did so because it had been reintroduced based on a “bookish” pronunciation. However, I seem to have been quite wrong. A number of contributors to this page have written in and told me so, after seeing the “-alm” words listed in the previous section, and marked as having a “silent l”. Thus, contributor Jon from Sacramento, California disagrees: “I would also note that all of the words that you list with a silent ‘l’ in your father-bother distinction (balm, psalm, palm, alms, calming) I would say with a swallowed but still present to varying degrees “l” sound, and I think the majority of people I grew up with in Sacramento would too.” Thus he pronounces “balm” as / bŏlm / ([ˈbɒɫm] (he does not distinguish “cot” and “caught”), with a “dark l”, which would sound almost “swallowed”, as he describes it, though clearly there. 15-May-2012

I should have realized that it wasn’t a bookish pronunciation, since it only applies to certain groups of words, as shown in the first chart above, not to all words with silent “l”, of which there are many. I have listed the main groups in the first chart above. 3-June-2011

After I was challenged by these two contributors, I went looking on the Internet, and found that there is indeed one American dictionary that lists a pronunciation of some of these words with the “l” pronounced, the Online Merriam-Webster dictionary, in all of these words: calm, palm, balm, psalm, qualm, alms, and napalm, and even provides audio samples of the “l” pronunciation. This was surprising to me, since most dictionaries, both American and British, give only a pronunciation with no “l”. (Merriam-Webster also gives another pronunciation / kăm / for “calm”, which would evidently be the Scottish pronunciation, like “palm” mentioned above.) 16-May-2011

Contributor Y.I. has pointed out to me that the ANAE Ch. 2, p. 14 had also observed this phenomenon: “Words with vocalized /l/ formed a part of this class: calm, palm, balm, almond, though a large number of North Americans have retained or restored the /l/.” Like me, they are apparently unsure whether the “l” was retained or restored, and unfortunately they have not provided any help about the regional distribution. (In this book, also found by Y.I., the assumption is simply made that these “l”s are retained because of spelling pronunciations, without providing any evidence.) I had not previously thought of the word “almond” as belonging to this class, since I myself pronounce the “l” in this word, as / ôl mənd/ ([ˈɒlmənd], quite different from my “calm” / kŏm / ([ˈkʰɑm]. (I distinguish “cot” and “caught” but not “father” and “bother”.) However, after consulting my many dictionaries, none of them recognize such a pronunciation, but say that the proper pronunciation is either / ä mənd/ or / ăm ənd/! I checked with my wife, who is from Nebraska and does not pronounce the “l” in “calm”, though she does in “balm”, and she does pronounce it in “almond”, just as I do. The Online Merriam-Webster dictionary comes the closest to our pronunciation, at least recognizing that some people do pronounce the “l”, but they give the options as / ä mənd/, / ăm ənd/, / äl mənd/, or / ăl mənd/. I find the third of these four options extremely unlikely, and speculate that perhaps a speaker for whom /ä/ = /ŏ/ = /ô/ may have worked on this entry.) Most American dictionaries give both / ä mənd/ and / ăm ənd/, and according to contributor Marna Ducharme, her grandmother who always lived in New York City said / ăm ənd/ [ˈæmənd]. Not only that, but several contributors (Emmor Nile, James Divine, John Kelly), have told me that it has the / ăm ənd/ [ˈæmənd] pronunciation throughout California’s Central Valley, where they grow lots of them! In any case, it seems clear that “almond” often does not go along with the other “-alm” words. 2-Oct.-2011

Later I realized that a lot of people also pronounce the “l” in “folk” and “yolk”, as shown in the Initial Survey Results chart below. Almost all of these also pronounce the “l” in “calm”, suggesting that the two word groups are part of the same pattern of “l” retention. 8-June-2011

So this seems to be a conservative feature harking back to a time when the “l” in the red words was pronounced by all speakers, and as such, is probably a regional feature like the others on the map. 8-June-2011

If this is a conservative feature, then it must have been brought over to the U.S. from some region of Great Britain or Ireland. However, there is almost no trace of this “l” anywhere in this area, not even in Scotland or Ireland, from which many of the conservative features in American English came. However, my trusty contributor Y.I. has been able to track down one possible source: what is called the West Country of England (really the extreme southwest) apparently continues to pronounce this “l”, according to John Wells in The Accents of English, page 346, in a section describing the vowels in the West Country. According to this article, <<The West Country accent is probably most identified in American English as “pirate speech” - cartoon-like “Ooh arr, me ’earties! Sploice the mainbrace!” talk is very similar. This may be a result of the strong seafaring and fisherman tradition of the West Country, both legal and outlaw.>> Clearly this accent could have had influence in the Americas (as suggested in this linguistics book tracked down by contributor Y.I.), though why the influence has been so pervasive is unclear. 6-Sep.-2011

In any case, the retention of this “l” thus does not seem to depend on whether or not “cot”=“caught”, since it occurs across the continent. However, I am fairly certain that all speakers who are systematic r-droppers always lack the “l” in the “calm” group, and that all speakers with the father-bother distinction do too. This makes sense, since the resulting vowel is /ä/, which mainly occurs as the result of r-dropping. It is less clear why the “yolk” group would drop the “l” for this group, since the resulting vowel /ō/ [oʊ] does not normally occur as a result of r-dropping. 2-Oct.-2011

Initial Survey Results

Unlike the other data on the main map, this data is not from audio or video sound samples, but from self-analysis and direct interviews, since finding individual words in sound samples is almost impossible. It appears that the vast majority of Americans pronounce the “l” in “calm”, except for those in systematic r-dropping areas (as mentioned in the previous section), and nearby areas like Poughkeepsie and Port Chester, New York, in the Eastern North dialect. (New Orleans seems to have followed GNYC in this as in many other features, at least as far as the common words go.) So it would seem that I am in a small minority! Evidently my dialect was influenced by my parents more than I realized: my Dad was from Port Chester, New York, an area that does not pronounce the “l”, and my mother was originally from Australia, which is a systematic r-dropping area, and so again does not pronounce the “l”. Even so, I can’t believe I didn’t even notice such a widespread pattern for so long! As for Canada, it seems likely that many or most there also retain the “l”, though so far I only have data for one location. 6-Sep.-2011

We now seem to have enough data that the geographical pattern is becoming clear for the “calm” group and to a lesser extent for the “yolk” group, though the “talk” group remains unclear. However, we clearly still need more data to map these patterns fully. In particular we need more locations where the “l” in these words is definitely not pronounced. Help me out, people. This is a very simple thing for you to write in and tell me: “I grew up in X, and I pronounce the “l” in all these words,” or “I grew up in Y, and I don’t pronounce the “l” in any of these words except ‘almond’,” or whatever the case may be. 15-May-2012

Person Raised in “cot”= “caught”? Other info Pronounce “l” in “calm”, etc. Pronounce “l” in “almond” Pronounce “l” in “yolk”, etc. Pronounce “l” in “talk”, etc. Yuri Toronto, Ontario yes contributor 6-Sep.-2011 yes yes no (only “Polk” yes) most no “baulk” yes “caulk” yes Amanda Hocking Sacramento (Citrus Heights), California yes contributor 23-July-2011 yes yes yes “talk” no “walk” no “stalk” no “chalk” yes “balk” yes “caulk” yes Jon Sacramento, California yes contributor yes no: / ăm ənd/ [ˈæmənd]? ? ? Je.Ha. Oakland, California yes Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 yes ? yes ? James Divine Fresno, California yes contributor 20-May-2011 yes no: / ăm ənd/ [ˈæmənd] no ? Ju.Ar. Ventura, California yes Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 8-June-2011 yes ? no (only “Polk” yes) ? Fe.Mo. Oxnard, California yes Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 yes ? yes ? M.M. Los Angeles, California yes Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 yes yes no most no “caulk” yes, “Falklands” yes Yu.k.Jo. Pomona, California no (!) Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 yes ? yes ? Ma.Pa. Upland, California yes Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 yes ? yes ? Ma.Cu. Escondido, California yes Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 8-June-2011 yes ? no (only “Polk” yes) ? Jonathan California yes on this website yes ? ? no Sabrina Badger Carson City, Nevada yes contributor 30-Nov.-2011 yes yes no (only maybe “Polk” yes) most no “balk” yes, “caulk” yes, “Falklands” yes Brett Deibel Tulsa, Oklahoma yes contributor 16-May-2012 yes yes “yolk” no “my folks” no “folk song” yes “Polk” yes “polka” yes most no “Falklands” yes Ma.Ca. Houston, Texas yes (!) Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 yes ? yes ? Za.Ri. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania no Info from contributor M.M. Thanks! 18-May-2011 yes ? yes ? Ali King Portland, Oregon yes contributor 18-Nov.-2011 yes yes yes (“yolk” no) most no “balk” yes, “caulk” yes (friend of Jennifer Nagel) Oregon yes yes ? ? ? Randy Howell Kelso, Washington yes contributor 19-May-2011 yes ? “yolk” no sometimes “folk” yes “talk” no “walk” no “stalk” no “balk” yes “caulk” yes Christina Aschmann Bremerton, Washington yes my daughter-in-law 8-June-2011 yes yes yes yes Gerald Erichsen Snohomish, Washington yes contributor 17-May-2013 yes yes yes almost all, “polka dot” no “talk” no “walk” no “chalk” no “caulk” yes “corn stalk” no “stalk” (verb) yes “balk” yes “Falklands yes “OhKaty” Utah yes on this website yes ? ? ? “Jaques S” Anchorage, Alaska yes on this website yes ? ? ? Kirk Sniff Lamar, Colorado yes contributor 30-Nov.-2011 yes yes yes yes Tom Brokaw South Dakota no? according to this website; he moved around the state too much for me to use him as a local sample yes ? ? ? Larry Unruh Wallace, Nebraska yes my brother-in-law 21-Oct.-2011 “calm” no, others yes yes “yolk” no “my folks” no “folk song” yes “Polk” yes “talk” no “walk” no “chalk” no “caulk” no “corn stalk” no “stalk” (verb) yes “balk” yes “Falklands yes Sh