 Hello. The content of this unit has by and large been extracted from William Labov's Atlas of North American English. It contains several interactive maps which have been re-engineered by our linguistic engineering team for copyright-free usage in this unit. In the virtual session where, as usual, you can use the question sheet as a default guide through the unit, we will look at the main phonological dialects of North American English using ongoing sound changes as classifying criteria. This includes simple sound shifts such as the low-back merger, Canadian raising or the fronting of ooh to name just some of these sound shifts and system changes such as the northern cities shift or the southern shift. The mastery worksheet involves a phonemic transcription task where you have to transcribe North American English words and phrases in isolation using your computer keyboard for standard characters and a virtual keyboard for special phonetic characters. The transcription system used here is the Atlas of North American English transcription system. One of the practical supplies you with several sound samples ready for phonological analysis. Extremely challenging but highly rewarding.