Northern Cities Vowel Shift

[KnotBrian]

I thought the girl said plaque and I'm from the Detroit area.. :/

[St37One]

In Buffalo its pronounced "Baffalo", Socks are "Sax" and Boxes are "Baxes".

[jeenyus720]

Im from Syracuse and no one here sounds like that

[JanuaryBlack1996]

yeah my grandparents live in Chicago and thats how they talk. My grandmother says dall instead of doll. im used to somethings but sometimes i have to think about what shes saying because i dont understand some words

[SepherStar]

I think they got infiltrated by Bostonians, New Yorkers and Wisconsinites.

[PolitcalIslam]

I still heard black. 

[PolitcalIslam]

@sleepyasthesouth I lived in Buffalo before, and I, still, have never heard anyone talk like that.

[sleepyasthesouth]

@PolitcalIslam Are you FROM Buffalo? The problem with Labov's research is the he exaggerates all speech patterns until they sound quite different, and then people deny they exist. These things also happen far more often mid-sentence and when speaking quickly.

[PolitcalIslam]

@sleepyasthesouth From? No. I lived there for 12 years, though.

[PolitcalIslam]

@sleepyasthesouth I do know what you are saying, and people there do speak strangely. Still, I doubt that anyone other than a select group in the innercity actually speaks like that.

[sleepyasthesouth]

@PolitcalIslam It's not just an inner-city sound. It hasn't affected AAVE. Here's video with an example of a woman with the accent a while ago: youtube.com/watch?v=G6op3b-Nhz­Y

Listen to the 1stwoman. Most of the people have the accent, but hers is strong.

I think being from a place makes it harder to hear the accent (if you moved there at a young age it may explain it). Most people don't perceive subtle shifts in the early states of the shift. If it keeps getting stronger people will notice it.

[PolitcalIslam]

@sleepyasthesouth I heard the fronting of the vowels, and I absolutely do not deny the vowel shift. Amongst most people, though, it is not what most southerns interpret it as. I live in the south, and most people tell me I have an accent, but they normally say they don't know where it's from.

[drpants]

oh my god the drawing at 0:53 totally looks like a dick

[jeremiad86]

What documentary was this, and where can I get it? Thanks

[thereshegoes03]

I've read many articles about this Shift, and I still don't quite understand it. I am a native Michigander. People say we speak with an emphasized "e" (for example, "cat" becomes "cee--ahtt", the name Ann sounds like Ian, etc.) I don't notice this at all...to us, "cat" sounds like "caht", "bat" sounds like "baht". Maybe I'm not making sense here, but could someone better explain this Shift to me?

[LisaSpringfield]

This phenomena is also seen in the Australian accent, but yet with different words.

Our "carp" and "bark" (pronounced 'cahp' and 'bahk') will sounds like "cap" and "back" to the British and Californian ear.

[MichaelJacksonFan000]

@LisaSpringfield Yeah true, Aussies will say "can you hear the dog 'backing'" (as in 'barking'). lol

[anonymous243124]

When we don't have a standard agreed pronunciation of letters and words then their actual sound becomes a matter of perspective.

What is occurring is a break down of objectivity, block and black are pronounced the same as there is no standard or rather no correct way being taught as people don't view this as being a degradation of the language.

So flaunt your "change is unavoidable" nonsense, the fact is you can't deny that this is a degradation of the language brought about by poor education.

[dreamcore]

@anonymous243124 Whoa, if you really want to see how much the language has degraded, you should read some Beowulf ;)

[graaaaaagh]

@anonymous243124

What dreamcore said. As well, you'd have to call the Romance languages degradations of Latin, and Russian and Polish degradations of Proto-Slavic, and Hindi a degradation of Sanskrit, and so on. Education has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that language change is indeed inevitable.

There isn't, and never has been, any 'objectivity' in language. If there were, you'd instantly understand what I'm saying when I call you a pendejo or an espèce d'enfoiré.

[anonymous243124]

@graaaaaagh Language is socially constructed, it is whatever we make it and pronunciation of a language is the same way.

My point was that were not encouraging ppl to look at English as having a "right pronunciation", they view something like this as being a completely acceptable regional development and thus they dont try to conform to say General American.

[graaaaaagh]

@anonymous243124

It is just that. A completely acceptable regional development. No one should have to conform to "General American", which is just a construct based on the accent of the 1950s Midwest.

And they shouldn't view it as anything that needs correcting. And even if they did, change would still take place. Languages do not, and cannot, remain static.

And I was just being playful with the French/Spanish insults, to illustrate my point about objectivity.

[anonymous243124]

Now Im not saying theres anything wrong with this, simply that this kind of change doesnt just happen, ppl dont just wake up and start speaking differently, it happens subtly and only because ppl dont view it as being anything that needs correcting.

[anonymous243124]

I also dont see how I would know Spanish or French under any circumstance being that Im not from, nor do I have any connection to any place thats ever spoken those languages or any other romance language for that matter.

At any rate, its regrettable that you think you need to use that language with me, I never meant any offense to anyone, Im sorry.

[graaaaaagh]

@anonymous243124

And remember that the Romance languages and English share a common ancestor. They were all once the same language.

[anonymous243124]

@graaaaaagh Point taken, while Id contend that in modern society we could maintain a static language, you are right that they have always changed in the past so it probably wouldnt be practical to even try

That said English is actually descended for Proto-Germanic, just as the English people are a Germanic people ethnically having developed in lower Denmark and northern Germany before migrating and forming Old English which was mutually intelligible with Old Norse and several others of the time

[szymonwoj1]

I thought only I have problems with bosses and buses

[MrJasonSmarts]

omg thats awful... I hope americans dont start speaking like that!!. o0

[grzesieksz]

i friggin like Labov

[BigWorm242]

I must have the shift bad. That first word doesn't sound anything like "black" to me. Black has a short A like "cat" or "math" while the woman is very clearly using a long A like in "father".

[bingobastard]

I moved to Chicago for a job, where one of my co-workers was named "Dan." He introduced himself as Dan, I called him Dan, everyone called him Dan. After a couple of months, i looked up his name in the phone directory, and I was surprised to find he was actually "Don."

At a catholic funeral mass in Chicago, I got horribly inappropriate (nervous) giggles when I heard the congregation reciting: "Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world ..." etc in those thick accents.

[vichiousfishes]

The Long Island Vowels, "eh ehy eyee ow ouw," ja frekin jagass.

[vvCreativeShorts]

I had never heard of him before, but his theory is correct!

I am from the Great Lakes region and I have made a film about it as well, see video resonses, "The Ever Evolving English Language.

[Presbyterian4life]

I'm from Chicago, and no one that I know speaks like that recording. It sounded more like a stereotypical Brooklyn accent than anything I've heard in the Great Lakes region.

[conweez]

What show or documentary is this from?

[bdsteine]

@conweez I believe it's "Do You Speak American"

[bdsteine]

@conweez I believe it's "Do You Speak American"

[blackj1988]

I always make fun of the way people of Chicago say their vowels. Now I know why.

[Linguiphile]

There is another vowel shift, that I call the NPR Vowel Shift. If you listen to news reporters and socio-political commentators on TV and radio--especially on NPR--you'll notice they pronounce the long "A" sound as long "E": "seam" for "same," etc. They're also pronouncing long "O" more and more often as short "U": "uppening" for "opening," etc. Short "U" often becomes short "E": "must" becoming "mest". Short "E" in "sex" becoming short "A" in "sax".

[strawberryseason]

Having lived near Syracuse, NY for many years, this "shift" is not new. It has been happening for at least 90 years, as even the old people I knew spoke this way.

[XSmashleyX87]

It's really interesting how the study and change of linguistics is being taken here by some viewers as something that shouldn't really be happening simply due to national television, etc. I've barely begun studying this and I find the entire field completely fascinating in how language varies, how it changes, etc. Labov has really developed some great stuff!

[TheStripesofWhite]

What show is this, things like the interest me greatly.

[AirCooledMan2006]

"Bosses" = "busses"? Why would anyone pronounce it wrong like that? BUSSES! BUSSES!

[mateyboy07]

@AirCooledMan2006 lol, you don't understand language at all. unless you're being sarcastic.

[kives1985]

@AirCooledMan2006

We don't want you on our bosses anyway Aircooledman2006. Go back to you hoighty-toighty California or wherever.

[mickeymouse12678]

When they say these are clips from people in Northern America, do they mean Boston? This sounds like an accent from places in New York. I disagree that this accent is true for all people in Northern America.

[AirCooledMan2006]

@mickeymouse12678 No, they mean the area around the Great Lakes.

[promanoatoswegodoted]

@mickeymouse12678

old man with glasses: "what we're looking at is this mass of cities around the great lakes.. uh.. here we have Syracuse, Buffalo, Detroit..."

then they show you the map and he points to the area as a big red circle is sketched around it. Does that clear everything up for you?

[123IOWNALL321]

@mickeymouse12678

I agree, that doesn't sound like Boston at all. Maybe it's southie Boston or something. I grew up about 20 minutes north of Boston and nobody sounds like what was described in the video. In fact, what's happened with the o's is completely the opposite; they're dragged out and have depth, unlike the flat a sound portrayed in this video. The New England area is too diverse to be generalized like this video did.

[creamyfilling102]

living on one black sounds like block??wtf? i didn't think that for one second. bosses with antennas on tap? tap=top now? this is weird. nobody talks like that anywhere.

[dan892k7]

The exception to those above, like 'wee', 'aye', and perhaps 'bairn' Americans generally only know from films about pirates, if at all. For some reason, most dialectal terms have completely died out in America, and all the dialects you have now are filled with words invented in the last few hundred years, or adopted not from English, but from other cultures. Which is why to you many older texts are unintelligible, but for me, I can at least make 'some' sense of them.

[dan892k7]

I'm just correcting you, you don't need to ask my opinion, I give it for free, pet ;-). Pictland? I'm from Darlington in the Cleveland area of North Yorkshire/Teesside, a good 40 minutes drive yet from the border of Scotland. Americans don't understand any of the English dialectal words like 'bairn', 'spelk', 'Gannyn', 'hyem', 'aye', 'betwixt', 'whay', 'hawey', to name only a few. Many words like this date back to 600AD and such times, and may once have been popular throughout the country.

[j1wilkin]

Bosses=busses? Nobody talks like that in either Chicago or Detroit.

[DrVirago]

No, other way around: busses sounds like bosses sounds outside the region. And the woman on the tape at least sounds like that!

[awefhiwefiuwafiuhai]

@j1wilkin You're right. No one in those places says those two words the same, i.e., merges those two vowels (because the vowel in "bosses" shifts out of the way). But I think you're missing the point. What they're saying is that the way some people in the Great Lakes area say "busses" sounds like the way some people from outside of that area say "bosses". Outsiders can hear it even if people who live in that area can't.

[dan892k7]

And in case you weren't satisfied ;-)

"Let him ealne weg þæt weste land on þæt steorbord, ond þa widsæ on þæt bæcbord þrie dagas."

As you can see, many of the words from this 9th century text are pretty much as they are today. And even the ones that aren't, aren't too difficult to decipher. þ - is a 'th' sound, and 'æ' is 'ee'. Steorbord - Starboard, þrie dagas - Three days, weste - west, ond - and, widsæ - wild sea (open sea).

Dan

[dan892k7]

No, shortly after the vikings invaded they introduced many words which had previously not been part of the language. By this point our grammar was already set to pretty much as it is today, and especially in the North where I live, the Vikings' influence shaped the language into something reasonably intelligible today. Granted, it was the French invasion, and Elizabethan England which truly changed it to what we have today, but it was 'intelligible' even back then.

Dan

[dan892k7]

Using Chaucer's tale as a landmark for the whole English language at that time isn't strictly fair. In those days, there was no written consensus on how to spell, so he wrote in his dialect and accent, not to mention he stressed on some words for poetic effect. There are other written documents, though not literature, dating back to 800AD/ 900AD which are still somewhat intelligible to an English speaker (so long as they're transliterated to latin letters). The /e/ sound is pretty uniform.

Dan

[deconstructionist67]

Well, apart from being ignorant, full of shit, and completely incorrect, what else are you?

[ohso41]

Whenever I'm in Detroit I hear a very distinctive accent that sounds like the old Saturday Night Live Chicago Bear fans Skit.

[Nick83Fairfax]

The Great Lakes accent is putrid. It is the worst American English accent by far.

[xorasel]

How can vowel pronunciation have been stable for 1000 years? English in its current form hasn't even been spoken for 1000 years.

[skinsvideos21]

@xorasel , he meant that the vowels that English words have had for that period of time haven't changed. An example would be ''bed'', where the ''e'' sounded the same 1000 years ago.

[dan892k7]

England was already recognisable, but using a different alphabet, and had a much more Germanic words. However, I've read a transliterated passage from 900AD that I, being a northern Englishman (where the dialect still uses many older words), understood pretty well. Granted, I didn't understand it ALL, but it was definitely English.

[Kelsie154]

wow i'm glad that us central/north western ohioans still say things the way they're meant to be said. :)

no offense to southern or north eastern ohioans. :/

[MidnightKat5000]

Since language is constantly changing, there is no "right" or "wrong". By your logic you are wrong as well since they you speak is not the same as those before you.

[squeegeeboy29]

No it is not Boston inthe least. From finger lakes mid upstate NY), over to Minnesota / Wisconsin. Busses sounds like New England Busses when in Boston the word Bus would sound more like Bwus. Rum for room.

Live in the south now and if hear my kids sound "country", they get corrected. I wudd ratha heah a bahstin tongue dan one uh dem freagin wicked retahded southun drawls. Dang Y'all.

[FattyArbuckle1981]

I don't think it's a Boston or New England accent.

To me, she sounds more Chicago or Minnesota.

[ohso41]

Chicago and Minnesota accents sound completely different. Hard vowels with the chicago accent, rounded "o's" and long "a's sounding like long "e's" with Minnesota. Usually if you can't figure out if they're from Chicago or Minnesota then it's because they're from the Milwaukee area.

[cockroach2]

I've read about this shift before but never actually heard it. It doesn't sound like anything I've heard before, not even in a stereotype. It sounds completely alien.

[Naerbu]

It sounded like the Black/Block sentence was about to be followed by an "and." sooo yea... you put two and two together.

[starventure]

So, why is this vowel shift happening? Is it because of a spread of the irritating "Boston" accent? Or is it due to a dumbing down of the society as a whole? When I was growing up, my father used to slap me any time he caught me speaking what he called "ghetto" english. He was adamant that speaking with a poor accent could be perceived as childish, thus holding me back from life's opportunities. The slaps worked, and I speak with a General English accent now.

[Daemonolatry]

The shift has nothing to do with society degrading or people being lazy, and nothing to do with the Boston dialect which, I should point out, does not demonstrate the shift. It really just happens. Languages change faster among large urban populations, and the Great Lakes region is festooned with huge, blue collar meccas confined to a relatively small space. This shifted dialect is in fact what your cultivated GA accent was originally based on before it began the shift. Change is unavoidable.

[doomduckie]

Vowel shifts aren't due to poor education, unless you beleive every single american is an idiot and unless you believe every spaniard and every italian and every frenchman is a ghettoised Roman, and unless you believe every black man in america is stupid and every southerner is stupid, and even every american is stupider than their ancestors. "General American" is just a construction, a gestalt, and a freezeframe in the 1950s of the average. Language changes.

[theroachksu]

Wow this is spot-on. I live in the KC metro area but frequently visit relatives in Milwaukee and Chicago. They sound exaclty like that young woman on the recording.

[EXIx2]

Noooo, we in Chicago sound like the Superfans!

[MokonaDemon]

anyone denying the existence of the vowel shift hasn't hung around these cities enough. most people in upstate ny say "black." I had a friend who pronounced her brother's name "scatt" and only when she got made fun of by some outsiders did I realize I did the same thing.

[gregtube88]

"Scatt" is a most unfortunate name... you do know what 'scat' means, right?!?

[Jinxkatrina8]

I knew busses, I'm from Milwaukee though, so it's easier :P

[0stsee]

I can usually guess if someone is from the northern cities by hearing the way they say their O's, A's, and I's.

Especially the O's are an immediate giveaway:

top sounds like tap

dot like dat

hot like hat

[vanadisriesz]

Isn't this experiment a bit flawed though? The words are pronounced so unnaturally ("bosses" is probably just her accent, but I doubt people in any region of the US draw out the vowel in "black" like that) that you're forced to guess what she's saying through context.

And because you alter the context isn't it possible that the results are skewed by assumption, like how you can read a scrambled word as long as the first and last letters are correct?

[wrathincx]

I don't think there is a vowel shift. I think that people may hear for instance either block or black, but then that primary perception changes when you listen to the word in its complete environment.

I believe this experiment is then bullshit. It doesn't have to do with vowel shift, but perception shift.

[kmm0010]

Youre right to bring up perceptual factors in "hearing" vowels. But, people's vowels do differ without even considering human perception. You can instrumentally measure the acoustic properties of an individual's vowels & find them to be substantially different from another individual. The term "vowel shift" refers partly to these changing acoustic properties (or more precisely the changing of the relationships between the acoustics of all the vowels in the vowel system).

[roygbiv330]

with the transcript, i could understand the whole content. thank you very very much.

[Voltio8836]

Why does it change if all americans watch the same news and shit.

[kmm0010]

Because we are primarily influenced by social interactions being social animals. Note that children cannot learn a language natively from a TV or radio, it has to from human interaction. (There are case studies of deaf parents putting hearing children in front of TVs & the children never learned language.)

[123IOWNALL321]

@kmm0010

A friend of mine grew up learning English from watching television.

[polkakonigin]

@123IOWNALL321 I think you missed the point of kmm0010 explanation. They said people don't lean LANGUAGE from television, not ENGLISH. Your friend didn't have deaf parents did they? Surely they learned language, whatever it was, from human interaction.

[123IOWNALL321]

@polkakonigin

Are you implying that English isn't a language?

[polkakonigin]

@123IOWNALL321 What? No. I was differentiating between learning language, meaning the art of communication and learning a second language from television. As in, without human interaction, the sounds a child hears from a television will be meaningless. The kid needs a basis in some language before they can benefit from learning a different language from the tv/radio. Once again, your friend must have had some language taught to them by humans, before they could learn another from tv.

[123IOWNALL321]

@polkakonigin

My friend spoke Spanish growing up, but around the age of 5 started watching English television and learned English completely from that. Her parents didn't speak English.

[polkakonigin]

@123IOWNALL321 That's my point. They learned what language was, and how to use it from their parents. After they learned what language was, they could decode english and learn another language. But they had to have had the basis in human-taught language first. I have a friend who did the same thing, but she's romanian. If she didn't learn romanian from her family, then she never could have learned english off of cartoons

[TomSnark]

@kmm0010 The child learned the language in the case studies that I have read but the learning process was indeed slower. Because social interaction negative and positive reinforcement are important.

[hyakuendama]

Because it is a very big country where different accents have been spoken long before the first television was turned on.

[EXIx2]

Exactly.  Listen to The Three Stooges, they had dialects of their own. They always said "Hey look! The winda!" (window)

[soilworked86]

What imbecile would pronounce block as black and bus as boss? These are simple words that are supposed to follow the phonetic rules of English, they aren't exceptions. There shouldn't be any sound shifts in this day and age. Does that woman suck a cack too?

[kmm0010]

All languages change in pronunciation over time. This is how new dialects and language develop. If these people are imbeciles, then we must conclude that all English speakers are imbeciles because English has changed drastically since 600 A.D. And we would have to make a similar conclusion about the speakers of every language in the world.

[soilworked86]

I know that English today is not what it was a thousand years ago, but the development of mass media and communications like radio and television should've halted any divergences. Isn't this why American English and British English are still the same?

On a side note, I train my speech daily by reading out loud when no one is around. I try to pronounce everything perfectly and clearly. Being so anal about my speech, you can understand why this video made my ears bleed.

[kmm0010]

Well, American and British Englishes are actually different. Both in grammar (syntax) and in pronunciation (phonetics & phonology). I dont think that sociolinguists are so clear on how mass media is influencing languages, but they know it does influence them. However, more important are the daily face-to-face social interactions. It is these that influence languages.

What makes your ears bleed, my make our ears sing & dance. Y'know, "diffrent strokes for diffrent folks".

[soilworked86]

Get lost troll.