The early 20th-century accent of the Inland North was the basis for the term "General American",[7][8] though the regional accent has since altered, due to theNorthern Cities Vowel Shift: its now-definingchain shift of vowels that began in the 1930s or possibly earlier.[9] A 1969 study first formally showed lower-middle-class women leading the regional population in the first two stages (raising of theTRAP vowel andfronting of theLOT/PALM vowel) of this shift, documented since the 1970s as comprising five distinct stages.[7] However, evidence since the mid-2010s suggests a retreat away from the Northern Cities Shift in many Inland Northern cities and toward a lessmarked American accent.[10][11][12] Various common names for the Inland Northern accent exist, often based on city, for example:Chicago accent,Detroit accent,Cleveland accent, etc.
Three isoglosses identifying the NCVS. In the brown areasSTRUT is more retracted thanLOT. The blue line encloses areas in whichDRESS is backed. The red line encloses areas in whichTRAP is diphthongized to[eə] even beforeoral consonants. The areas enclosed by all three lines may be considered the "core" of the NCVS; it is most consistently present inSyracuse,Rochester,Buffalo,Detroit, andChicago. Adapted fromLabov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 204.
Linguists identify the "St. Louis Corridor", extending from Chicago down into St. Louis, as a dialectally remarkable area, because young and old speakers alike have a Midland accent, except for a single middle generation born between the 1920s and 1940s, who have an Inland Northern accent diffused into the area from Chicago.[13]
Erie, Pennsylvania, though in the geographic area of the "Inland North" and featuring some speakers of this dialect, never underwent the Northern Cities Shift and often shares more features withWestern Pennsylvania English due to contact with Pittsburghers, particularly with Erie as their choice of city for summer vacations.[14] ManyAfrican Americans in Detroit and other Northern cities are multidialectal and also or exclusively useAfrican-American Vernacular English rather than Inland Northern English, but some do use the Inland Northern dialect.
The dialect's progression across the Midwest has stopped at a general boundary line traveling through central Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and then western Wisconsin, on the other side of which speakers have continued to maintain theirMidland andNorth-Central accents. SociolinguistWilliam Labov theorizes that this separation reflects a political divide; a controlled study of his shows that Inland Northern speakers tend to be more associated withliberal politics than speakers of the other two dialects, especially as Americans continue to self-segregate in residence based on ideological concerns. Former PresidentBarack Obama, for example, has a mild Inland Northern accent despite not having lived in the dialect region until young adulthood.[15]
Themonophthongs ofSouthern Michigan on avowel chart, typical of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, though not to the extreme. Adapted from Hillenbrand (2003).[16]Thediphthongs of Southern Michigan on a vowel chart, adapted from Hillenbrand (2003).[16]
When followed by/r/, the historic/ɒ/ is pronounced entirely differently by Inland North speakers as[ɔ~o], for example, in the wordsorange, forest, andtorrent. The only exceptions to this are the wordstomorrow, sorry, sorrow, borrow and, for some speakers,morrow, which use the sound[a~ä]. This is all true ofGeneral American speakers too.
Based on Labov et al.; averaged F1/F2 means for speakers from the Inland North./æ/ is higher and fronter than/ɛ/, while/ʌ/ is more retracted than/ɑ/.
AMidwestern accent (which may refer toother dialectal accents as well),Chicago accent, orGreat Lakes accent are all common names in the United States for the sound quality produced by speakers of this dialect. Many of the characteristics listed here are not necessarily unique to the region and are oftentimes found elsewhere in theMidwest.
Northern Cities Shift as a vowel chart, based on image in Labov, Ash, and Boberg (1997)'s "A national map of the regional dialects of American English".
The Northern Cities Vowel Shift, or simply Northern Cities Shift,[17] is achain shift of vowels and the defining accent feature of the Inland North dialect region, though it can also be found, variably, in the neighboringUpper Midwest andWestern New England accent regions.
The first two sound changes in the shift, with some debate about which one led to the other or came first,[18] are the generalraising and lengthening (tensing) of the "short a" (the vowel sound ofTRAP, typically rendered/æ/ in American transcriptions), as well as thefronting of the sound ofLOT orPALM in this accent (typically transcribed/ɑ/) toward[ä] or[a]. Inland NorthernTRAP raising was first identified in the 1960s,[19] with that vowel becoming articulated with the tongueraised and then gliding back toward the center of the mouth, thus producing acentering diphthong of the type[ɛə],[eə], or at its most extreme[ɪə]; e.g.naturally[ˈneətʃɹəli]ⓘ. As forLOT/PALM fronting, it can go beyond[ä] to the front[a], and may, for the most advanced speakers, even be close to[æ]—so thatstock andbotch come to be pronounced how amainstream American speaker would saystack andbatch; e.g.coupon[ˈkʰupan]ⓘ.
The fronting of theLOT/PALM vowel leaves a blank space that is filled by lowering the "aw" vowel inTHOUGHT[ɔ], which itself comes to be pronounced with the tongue in a lower position, closer to[ɑ] or[ɒ]. As a result, for example, people with the shift pronouncecaught the way speakers without the shift saycot; thus, shifted speakers pronouncecaught as[kʰɑt] (andcot as[kʰat], as explained above).[20] In defiance of the shift, however, there is a well-documented scattering of Inland North speakers who are in a state of transition toward acot-caught merger; this is particularly evident in northeastern Pennsylvania.[21][22] Younger speakers reversing the fronting of/ɑ/, for example inLansing, Michigan, also approach a merger.[10]
The movement of/æ/ to[ɛə], in order to avoid overlap with the now-fronted/ɑ/ vowel, presumably initiates the consequent shifting of/ɛ/ (the "short e" inDRESS,[ɛ] in General American) away from its original position. Thus,/ɛ/ demonstrates backing, lowering, or a combination of both toward[ɐ], thenear-open central vowel, or almost[æ].[10]
The next change is the movement of/ʌ/ (theSTRUT vowel) from a central or back position toward a very far back position[ɔ].[citation needed] People with the shift pronouncebus so that it sounds more likeboss to people without the shift.
The final change is the backing and lowering of/ɪ/, the "short i" vowel inKIT, toward[ɘ],[23] or even toward the schwa[ə]. Alternatively,KIT may be lowered to[e], without backing.[citation needed] This results in a considerable phonetic overlap betweenKIT/ɪ/ andCOMMA/ə/.
Before/r/, only/ɑ/ undergoes the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, so that the vowel instart/stɑrt/ varies much like the one inlot/lɑt/ described above. The remaining/ɔ/,/ɛ/ and/ɪ/ vowels retain values similar to General American (GA) in this position, so thatnorth/nɔrθ/,merry/ˈmɛri/ andnear/nɪr/ are pronounced[noɹθ,ˈmɛɹi,niɹ], with unshiftedTHOUGHT,DRESS andKIT (as close as in GA). Inland Northern American English features thenorth-force merger, theMary–marry–merry merger, themirror–nearer and/ʊr/–/ur/ mergers, thehurry–furry merger, and the nurse–letter merger, all of which are also typical of GA varieties.[24]
William Labov et al.'sAtlas of North American English (2006) presents the first historical understanding of the order in which the Inland North's vowels shifted. Speakers around the Great Lakes began to pronounce theshorta sound,/æ/ as inTRAP, as more of adiphthong and with a higher starting point in the mouth, causing the same word to sound more like "tray-ap" or "tray-up"; Labov et al. assume that this began by the middle of the 19th century.[25] After roughly a century following this first vowel change—general/æ/ raising—the region's speakers, around the 1960s, then began to use the newly opened vowel space, previously occupied by/æ/, for/ɑ/ (as inLOT andPALM); therefore, words likebot,gosh, orlock came to be pronounced with the tongue extended farther forward, thus making these words sound more like howbat,gash, andlack sound in dialects without the shift. These two vowel changes were first recognized and reported in 1967.[7] While these were certainly the first two vowel shifts of this accent, and Labov et al. assume that/æ/ raising occurred first, they also admit that the specifics of time and place are unclear.[26] In fact,real-time evidence of a small number of Chicagoans born between 1890 and 1920 suggests that/ɑ/ fronting occurred first, starting by 1900 at the latest, and was followed by/æ/ raising sometime in the 1920s.[18]
During the 1960s, several more vowels followed suit in rapid succession, each filling in the space left by the last, including the lowering of/ɔ/ as inTHOUGHT, the backing and lowering of/ɛ/ as inDRESS, the backing of/ʌ/ as inSTRUT (first reported in 1986),[27] and the backing and lowering of/ɪ/ as inKIT, often but not always in that exact order. Altogether, this constitutes the Northern Cities Shift, identified by linguists as such in 1972.[15]
Migrants from all over the Northeastern U.S. traveled west to the rapidly industrializing Great Lakes area in the decades after theErie Canal opened in 1825, and Labov suggests that the Inland North's general/æ/ raising originated from the diverse and incompatible/æ/ raising patterns of these various migrants mixing into a new, simpler pattern.[28] He posits that this hypothetical dialect-mixing event, which initiated the larger Northern Cities Shift (NCS), occurred by about 1860 in upstate New York,[29] and the later stages of the NCS are merely those that logically followed (a "pull chain"). More recent evidence suggests that German-accented English helped to greatly influence the Shift, because German speakers tend to pronounce the EnglishTRAP vowel as[ɛ] and theLOT/PALM vowel as[ä~a], both of which resemble NCS vowels, and there were more speakers of German in the Erie Canal region of upstate New York in 1850 than there were of any single variety of English.[30] There is also evidence for an alternative theory, according to which the Great Lakes area—settled primarily by western New Englanders—simply inheritedWestern New England English and developed that dialect's vowel shifts further. 20th-century Western New England English variably showed NCS-likeTRAP andLOT/PALM pronunciations, which may have already existed among 19th-century New England settlers, though this has been contested.[30] Another theory, not mutually exclusive with the others, is that theGreat Migration of African Americans intensified White Northerners' participation in the NCS in order to differentiate their accents from Black ones.[31]
Recent evidence suggests that the Shift has largely begun to reverse in many cities of the Inland North,[10][11] such asLansing,[10]Ogdensburg, Rochester, Syracuse,[11][32][33] Detroit, Buffalo, Chicago, andEau Claire.[12] In particular,/ɑ/ fronting and/æ/ raising (though raising is persisting before nasal consonants, as is theGeneral American norm) have now reversed among younger speakers in these areas. Several possible reasons have been proposed for the reversal, including growing stigma connected with the accent and the working-class identity it represents.[34]
Rhoticity: As inGeneral American, Inland North speech isrhotic, and ther sound is typically the retroflex[ɻ] or perhaps, more accurately, a bunched or molar[ɹ].
Canadian raising: Theraising of the tongue for the nucleus of thegliding vowel/aɪ/ is found in the Inland North when the vowel sound appears before anyvoiceless consonant, thus distinguishing, for example, betweenrider andwriter by vowel quality (listenⓘ).[35] In the Inland North, unlike some other dialects, the raising occurs even before certainvoiced consonants, including in the wordsfire,tiger,iron, andspider. When it is not subject to raising, the nucleus of/aɪ/ is pronounced with the tongue further to the front of the mouth than most other American dialects, as[a̟ɪ] or[ae]; however, in the Inland North speech of Pennsylvania, the nucleus is centralized as in General American, thus:[äɪ].[36]
The nucleus of/aʊ/ may be more backed than in other common North American accents (toward[ɐʊ] or[ɑʊ]).
The nucleus of/oʊ/ (as ingo andboat), like/aʊ/, tends to beconservative, not undergoing the fronting common in the vast American southeastern super-region. Likewise, the traditionally high back vowel/u/ is conservative, less fronted in the North than in other American regions, though it still undergoes some fronting aftercoronal consonants.[37] Also,/oʊ/, along with/eɪ/, can traditionally manifest asmonophthongs:[e] and[o], respectively.[38]
The vowel in/ɛg/ can raise toward[e] in words likebeg,negative, orsegment, except in Michigan.[39]
Working-classth-stopping: The two sounds represented by the spellingth—/θ/ (as inthin) and/ð/ (as inthose)—may shift fromfricative consonants tostop consonants among urban and working-class speakers: thus, for example,thin may approach the sound oftin (using[t]) andthose may merge to the sound ofdoze (using[d]).[40] This was parodied in theSaturday Night Live comedy sketch "Bill Swerski's Superfans," in which characters hailing from Chicago pronounce "The Bears" as "Da Bears."[41]
Caramel is typically pronounced with two syllables ascarmel.[42]
Not all of these terms, here compared with their counterparts in other regions, are necessarily unique only to the Inland North, though they appear most strongly in this region:[42]
The "soda/pop line" has been found to run through Western New York State (Buffalo residents saypop, Syracuse residents saysoda now but used to saypop until sometime in the 1970s, and Rochester residents say either. Eastern Wisconsinites around Milwaukee and some Chicagoans are also an exception, using the wordsoda.)
tennis shoes for generic athletic shoes (not Northeasternsneakers, except in New York State and Pennsylvania)
Individual cities and sub-regions also have their own terms; for example:
bubbler, in a large portion of Wisconsin around Milwaukee, forwater fountain (in addition to the synonymdrinking fountain, also possible throughout the Inland North)
cash station, in theChicago area, forATM; also called atyme machine (spoken liketime machine) in the greater Milwaukee area,[43] from the first predominant ATM brand in the area,TYME
yous(e) oryouz, innortheastern Pennsylvania around its urban center of Scranton, foryou guys; in this sub-region, there is notable self-awareness of the Inland Northern dialect (locally called by various names, including "Coalspeak").[46]Youse is also found in Chicago and its hinterland, utilized as a second-person plural pronoun (similar to "y'all").
Sue Hawk – "a Midwestern truck driver whose accent and etiquette epitomized the stereotype of the tacky, abrasive, working-class character"[73]
Kathy Hochul – "She talks plainly ... with a distinctive Buffalo accent, drawing out hera's (habits is three syllables) and dropping her terminalg's."[74]
^abChapman, Kaila (October 25, 2017).The Northern Cities Shift: Minnesota's Ever-Changing Vowel Space (Thesis). Macalester College. p. 41.Archived from the original on 2022-08-09.The satisfaction of the three NCS measures was found only in the 35-55 year old male speakers. The three male speakers fully participating in the NCS had high levels of education and strong ties to the city
^Fasold, Ralph W. (1969).A Sociolinguistic Study of the Pronunciation of Three Vowels in Detroit Speech. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics.OCLC4393202.
^Herold, Ruth (1990).Mechanisms of Merger: The Implementation and Distribution of the Low Back Merger in Eastern Pennsylvania (Ph.D. diss. thesis). Univ. of Pennsylvania.ProQuest303882706.
^Nesbitt, Monica (August 1, 2021). "The Rise and Fall of the Northern Cities Shift: Social and Linguistic Reorganization of TRAP in Twentieth-Century Lansing, Michigan".American Speech.96 (3):332–370.doi:10.1215/00031283-8791754.ISSN0003-1283.S2CID228971560.
^Kamps, Louisa (Spring 2019)."Room for Debate".On Wisconsin. Madison: Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association.Archived from the original on 2025-03-17. Retrieved2025-05-30.
Gordon, Matthew J. (2004). "New York, Philadelphia, and other northern cities: phonology". In Kortmann, Bernd; Burridge, Kate; Mesthrie, Rajend; Schneider, Edgar W.; Upton, Clive (eds.).A Handbook of Varieties of English. Volume 1: Phonology, Volume 2: Morphology and Syntax. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.ISBN9783110175325.
