Northern American English


Northern American English or Northern U.S. English is a class of historically related American English dialects, spoken by predominantly white Americans, best documented in the greater metropolitan areas of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Western and Central New York, Northern Ohio, Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, and Eastern South Dakota, plus some minor areas within New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and even the Canadian region of Southern Ontario. The North as a super-dialect region is considered, by the 2006 Atlas of North American English, at its core, to consist of the dialects of the Inland North and Southern New England.
Canadian English is believed to have originated from Northern American English, or to simply be a variety of it. Though arguably native to the geographical Northern United States, current-day Pacific Northwest English, New York City English, and Northern New England English only marginally fall under the Northern U.S. dialect spectrum, according to the ANAE, if at all.
Northern U.S. English is often distinguished from Southern U.S. English by retaining as a diphthong and from Western U.S. English by mostly preserving the distinction between the /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ sounds in words like cot versus caught.
The Inland Northern speech of the very early 20th century was the basis for the term "General American", though a new regional accent has since developed in that area.

Phonology

In the modern day, the Northern United States is a linguistic super-region of English dialects, defined by and traditionally pronounced conservatively far in the back of the mouth, "r-fulness", and a common lack of the cot-caught merger, meaning that words like pond and pawned, or bot and bought, are not pronounced identically.
The Northern Cities Vowel Shift is a series of sound changes in the North that covers a large area from western New England and New York to regions west of Wisconsin.
A phenomenon known as "Canadian raising"—the lifting of the body of the tongue in both and before voiceless consonants —is common in eastern New England, for example in Boston, as well as in the Upper Midwest. Raising of just is found throughout the entire North, including in the Great Lakes area, and elsewhere in New England. This second, more focused type of raising also appears to spreading beyond the North, as well as to California English, Philadelphia English, and Western American English dialects overall.
Though the following pronunciation variants are not all the most common ones in the North, they are still documented as variants used more strongly in this region than anywhere else in the country:
The North has historically been one of the last U.S. regions to maintain the distinction between /ɔr/ and /oʊr/, in which words like horse and hoarse or war and wore, for example, are not homophones; however, the merger of the two has quickly spread throughout the North. The vowel was once a common Northern U.S. sound in the word creek, but this has largely given way to the vowel, as in the rest of the country.

Vocabulary

The North is reported as uniquely or most strongly using certain words:
A Northeastern Corridor of the United States follows the Atlantic coast, comprising all of New England, Greater New York City, and Greater Philadelphia, sometimes even classified as extending to Greater Baltimore and Washington D.C. This region, despite being home to numerous different dialects and accents, constitutes a huge area unified in certain linguistic respects, including particular notable vocabulary and phonemic incidence.

Phonology

These phonemic variants in certain words are particularly correlated with the American Northeast :
The Northeast tends to retain a rounded /ɔ/ vowel : specifically, this is realized as.

Vocabulary

Terms common or even usual to the whole Northeast include:
The recent Northern cities vowel shift, beginning only in the twentieth century, now affects much of the North away from the Atlantic coast, occurring specifically at its geographic center: the Great Lakes region. It is therefore a defining feature of the Inland North dialect. The vowel shift's generating conditions are also present in some Western New England English; otherwise, however, this vowel shift is not occurring in the Northeastern United States.