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The early 20th-century accent of the Inland North was the basis for the term "General American", [6] [7] though the regional accent has since altered, due to the Northern Cities Vowel Shift: its now-defining chain shift of vowels that began in the 1930s or possibly earlier. [8]
Midwestern or Upper Northern dialects or accents of American English are any of those associated with the Midwestern region of the United States, and they include: . General American English, the most widely perceived "mainstream" American English accent, sometimes considered "Midwestern" in character, particularly prior to the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.
For example, /æ/ may be generally raised and /ɑ/ generally fronted in comparison to other American English accents. [9] Some speakers exhibit extreme raising of /æ/ before voiced velars (/ɡ/ and /ŋ/), with an up-glide, and so bag sounds close to beg or is even raised like the first syllable of bagel. Other examples are the words flag and ...
For example, fire may be pronounced something like far. [18] Southern Indiana is the northernmost extent of this accent, forming what dialectologists refer to as the "Hoosier Apex" of the South Midland, with the accent locally known as the "Hoosier Twang".
English-language scholar William A. Kretzschmar Jr. explains in a 2004 article that the term "General American" came to refer to "a presumed most common or 'default' form of American English, especially to be distinguished from marked regional speech of New England or the South" and referring especially to speech associated with the vaguely-defined "Midwest", despite any historical or present ...
FX’s Emmy-winning anthology returns for Season 5 this Tuesday at 10/9c, and TVLine got a chance to talk with the cast about how they developed the distinctive Fargo accent.
World English, then, was a creation of speech teachers, and boldly labeled as a class-based accent: the speech of persons variously described as "educated," "cultivated," or "cultured"; the speech of persons who moved in rarefied social or intellectual circles; and the speech of those who might aspire to do so. [23]
Regional dialects in North America are historically the most strongly differentiated along the Eastern seaboard, due to distinctive speech patterns of urban centers of the American East Coast like Boston, New York City, and certain Southern cities, all of these accents historically noted by their London-like r-dropping (called non-rhoticity), a feature gradually receding among younger ...