Northern Cities Vowel Shift

Bill Labov discusses the Northern Cities Vowel Shift in American English.
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Transcript

While the language we speak on the streets of our cities is, by its very nature, changeable and shifting. For decades Bill Labov and his colleagues have been studying how Americans talk. The result is a whole library of recorded voices and a fascinating discovery. It's called the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. Labov believes there is a revolutionary shift in the pronunciation of short vowels that have been relatively stable for a thousand years.

BL: What we'll be looking at is this mass of cities around the Great Lakes. Here we have Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and Cleveland, Detroit.

RM: How many people is that?

BL: It's about 34 million people. This area used to be the closest to network pronunciation. It was what the NBC standard was based on. And today it is moving further and further away.

RM: Let's go into that in some detail. Show us how that's happening.

BL: In these experiments, we played first of all an individual word.

Computer: "Black".

BL: And then, people had to write down what they thought they heard. So, you could do that yourself. What do you hear?

RM: "Black".

BL: And then, in another series they heard:

Computer: "Living on one black".

BL: Now what do you hear?

RM: "Block".

BL: Well, you change your mind.

Computer: "Old senior citizens living on one black".

BL: This person is saying the word "block" the way they say "black".

RM: The shift in this one vowel seems to have a domino effect on the other four vowels, and they all change too. The result can be serious misunderstandings.

BL: Now, this is spectacular.

Computer: "Bosses".

BL: Everybody writes down what?

RM: "Bosses".

BL: Right. The guy.

Computer: "The bosses with the antennas".

BL: Now you begin to wonder. What are these "bosses with antennas"?

RM: "Bosses with the antennas".

BL: Right.

Computer: "I can remember vaguely when we had the buses with the antennas on the top".

RM: So, "buses" has become "bosses".

BL: Right. And so, this is very hard for most people to recognize.

RM: So, is it fair to say that North Americans are, in different regions, are growing further apart from each other linguistically?

BL: It seems so. It's hard to believe. Everyone says to us, we all watch the same radio and television. How can that be? It's a very suprising finding.
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From the documentary "Do you speak American?".

Category:

Education

Tags:

• US
• American
• Northern
• Cities
• Vowel
• Shift
• Bill
• William
• Labov
• sound
• language
• change
• linguistics
• sociolinguistics
• dialect

[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.

[grzesieksz]

i friggin like Labov

[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

[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.

[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 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.

[PolitcalIslam]

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

[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.