Englishes around the World - American English
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- Опубликовано: 19 июн 2024
- This video is about the history and sounds of American varieties of English. It presents six different features that can be used to distinguish between different varieties of English in North America: the Inland North, the West, the South, and Canada. You'll learn about the pin-pen merger and the cot-caught merger, the Northern Cities Shift, ai-monophthongization, uw-fronting, and Canadian Raising. Watch the video to the end to check out three mystery speakers and test your knowledge.
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The caught-cot merger is interesting to me as someone who has lived my whole life in the American West. Not only do I pronounce cot and caught the same, but it's often difficult for me to hear the difference when people say them differently, because I just perceive them as variations on the same vowel sound. I actually had no idea that many people distinguished between them until I started learning about linguistics.
In Canada, people use Canadian raising before voiceless consonants, but not necessarily in front of voiced consonants. So in "high school" or "bite" the first vowel would be raised, but Canadians usually say the word "five" with a diphthong closer to that used in the U.S.
I’m studying linguistics, foreign literatures and philology in Italy ( here there’s no single courses for linguistics only ) and your videos are just amazing, I do really appreciate your efforts and passion for linguistics and your RUclips channel. Thank you 🙏
About the cot/caught merger 14:44 interesting that my overall accent (Central West Viriginia) is similar to a friend from Mount Airy North Carolina, however I have the cot/caught merger and he doesn't. With him the difference between cot and caught is quite subtle, not nearly as strong as with some US accents.
Another supplementary explanation for resistance to the pin-pen merger in south Florida: the influence of Cuban Spanish where “I” and “e” have distinct consistent vowel qualities. If people grow up hearing Cuban Spanish, they may be more likely to distinguish between pin and pen.
Great explanation. Soon we are having discussion on LHPP module, and that was very informative. Thank you.
Thanks, that was incredibly fun!
About the pin/pen merger 10:04 remember it only happens before nasal consonants (words like hen, again, when, many, send, semblance) and not otherwise (words like pet, left, guess, said, red). EDIT: You finally mention this at 28:57 Oddly in Central West Virginia where I'm from it can go the other way; the word "sit" is pronounced "set" as it "please set down".
Thank you very much!
Thank you very much🙏🏻
Was fun to do this as an American. I always have a harder time distinguishing Canadian English and certain Northwestern dialects of English (Minnesota for example). I lived in Minnesota for a bit and I found many of their vowels to be very similar to Canadian English, which seems to be the case with the example you showed of the inland speaker. I was certain the second one had to be Avril but I got a bit confused when hearing the last one, since she isn't Canadian but has some similarities in her pronunciation. Interesting video!
I also instantly recognized Avril Lavigne ..
Currently reading your Construction Grammar and its Application to English and I'm more hooked on linguistics than ever! It's helping me to grab my students" attention while pushing them to thinking deeper on the seemingly easy language that everyone thinks English is. Keep up with the fantastic work!
I'm glad to hear that, thanks a lot, Etienne!
This is so interesting, great video 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Thanks so much for the efforts you make to share such wonderful content
I can't find mention on RUclips of something I hear with many Southern Californians, and also with a woman I knew from New Brunswick, what might be called the bag/beg merger. Magazine is "megazine" bag is "beg" but it doesn't seem to happen in all words with that "a" sound.
American here from New York. Whenever we would visit our relatives in the west they would always tease us for how we pronounced “dog” and “New York.” That caught-cot merger is a doozy...
And that stuff you drink in the morning: core-fee? ;)
@@MartinHilpert “cwoffee,” says my Brooklyn-born mother (supposedly)
@@zalmankelber3078 I hear you!
I'm from Louisville, KY. I don't have the caught-cot merger, but I use the "cot" vowel for "dog" whereas I'm guessing you use the "caught" vowel.
Thanks for this :)
Also, I can always tell someone's Canadian by how they pronounce "out." Can you comment on the following? May pronounce Washington or wash with an added 'r" (Warshington or warsh). You hear across with a 't' in the Midwest (acrosst) and the word "root" (instead of oo you hear almost a strange 'u' (r - uh -t ). Thanks.
The first one (Washington) has been called oh-raising by Bill Labov. Words such as "coffee" sound like "core-fee". The others I'm not sure about.
Labov, William. (1966) The social stratification of English in New York
City. Washington DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Clinton pronounced policemen as policemin. Pen-pin merger. Palmer pronounced right more like rate. Is that NCVS? I pronounce it like that in the example of "rate now", but when meaning correct I'd say it like "rayeet" or even more like "ray" followed by a soft glottal stop.
very interesting (as an American). The "found" in Newfoundland is pronounced like "fund" or Newfundland and the land (not a high A), like "lund". Strange, huh?
Place names are the worst, with lots of unpredictable reductive patterns. Worcester. Edinburgh. Portsmouth.
@@MartinHilpert Thank you for your replies. It's interesting that a non native speaker is so interested in English; do you know just as much linguisitically about your first language (assuming German)?
@@chadb7694 I have good friends who are experts on German, so if I have a question, I can always ask them, but that's basically it.
Which mechanism is actually inducing these shifts ? I mean, some group of people must start "inventing" a different pronunciation.
Like in biology, there is always variation, and there is always selection of variants that are more successful than others. One basic mechanism is accommodation: we adapt our way of speaking to the way our friends and close ones are speaking. Empirical sociolinguistic work all over the world has shown that female speakers are typically driving language change as early adopters, especially adolescent female speakers.
@@MartinHilpert ok, then must be similar to spreading new ideas or words for new things. Somebody starts doing it and it catches on.
@@JohnDoe-vx3z That's essentially it.