Philadelphia dialect

Philadelphia English is a variety or dialect of American English native to Philadelphia and extending into Philadelphia's metropolitan area throughout the Delaware Valley, including southeastern Pennsylvania, counties of northern Delaware (especially New Castle and Kent), the northern Eastern Shore of Maryland, and all of South Jersey, with the dialect being spoken in cities such as Wilmington, Atlantic City, Camden, Vineland, and Dover. Philadelphia English is one of the best-studied types of English, as Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania is the home institution of pioneering sociolinguist William Labov. Philadelphia English shares certain features with New York City English and Midland American English, although it remains a distinct dialect of its own. Baltimore English is a closely related and nearly identical dialect, or a subdialect of Philadelphia English, prevalent in nearby Baltimore and the its metropolitan area; both Philadelphia and Baltimore accents together constitute what Labov describes as a single "Mid-Atlantic" regional dialect.

According to linguist Barbara Johnstone, migration patterns and geography affected the dialect's development, which was especially influenced by immigrants from Northern England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Today, a marked or "heavier" Philadelphia accent is most commonly found in Irish-American and Italian-American working-class neighborhoods.

History

Philadelphia English has a complicated history, with speakers at times showing features shared with neighboring regions as well as uniquely local features. The Philadelphia and New York accents presumably shared certain common linguistic inputs in the nineteenth century, since both accents by the twentieth century demonstrated a high vowel (which helps to maintain a contrast between words like ''cot'' and ''caught'') as well as a phonemic split of the short ''a'' vowel, (causing ''gas'' and ''gap'' to have different vowels sounds, for example) not found elsewhere in the United States. One important indicator of this is that Philadelphia's short ''a'' split appears to be a simplified variant of New York City's split. Unlike New York City English, however, most speakers of Philadelphia English have always used a rhotic accent (meaning that the ''r'' sound is never "dropped").

Despite sharing patterns with the New York City accent, Philadelphia accents in the very late nineteenth century until the 1950s shifted toward certain features of the then-emerging (and now-common) regional accents of the American South and Midland, for example in fronting , raising , and even some reported weakening of . Philadelphians then began retreating from their longstanding New York City-like accent features after this point, and even further developed their own entirely unique phonological features. Next, higher-educated Philadelphians born in or since the last quarter of the twentieth century have been showing a process of dialect levelling towards unmarked Northern American English (General American English) features. This includes notable regularity among this demographic in replacing the traditional Philadelphia split with the more General American tensing of only before nasal consonants; this probably began around the time the first generation of this demographic attended college.

As of today, "the most strongly supported generalization is that Philadelphia has moved away from its Southern heritage in favor of a Northern system, avoiding those forms that are most saliently associated with local phonology". In the city of Philadelphia proper, the dialect has evolved further, especially among younger residents, and the "White Philadelphian dialect" is now spoken by a numerical minority of all Philadelphians within the city of Philadelphia itself, though it remains strong throughout the Philadelphia metropolitan region in general.

Linguistic features

Pronunciation

Vowels

The vowels in Philadelphia speech have shown volatility across the last century, as Labov's research has identified changes affecting over half of the vowel phonemes.

* vowel: A feature unique to Middle Atlantic speakers (including Philadelphians and New Yorkers) and southern New Englanders is the raising and diphthongization of , as in , to or even higher . The raised variants often appear as diphthongs with a centering glide. As a result, Philadelphia is resistant to the cot–caught merger. Labov's research suggests that this pattern of raising is essentially complete in Philadelphia and seems no longer to be an active change.
* – split: Similarly, the single word "on" has the vowel of "dawn", and not the same vowel as "don". Labov et al. regard this phenomenon as occurring not just in the Mid-Atlantic region, but in all regions south of a geographic boundary that they identify as the "ON line", which is significant because it distinguishes most varieties of Northern American English (in which ''on'' and ''Don'' are rhymes) from most varieties of Midland and Southern American English (in which ''on'' and ''dawn'' are rhymes).
* Southeastern vowel fronting: One of the features that Philadelphia shares with dialects of the whole Southeastern United States (but absent from most New York accents) is the fronting of a variety of vowels. This includes and ; the resulting allophones are around and , respectively. Generally, greater degrees of fronting are heard when the vowels appear in "free" positions (i.e., without a following consonant) than in "checked" positions (i.e., with a following consonant). Fronting does not occur in the context of following liquids leading to a significant difference between, e.g., ''goat'' and ''goal''. The fronting of and is well established in Philadelphia, though cross-generational data show that it remains an active change. Fronted nuclei in are well established in Philadelphia speech as in New York. More recent research has noted a tendency among the middle-aged and younger generation of Philadelphians to raise the vowel, resulting in . , the vowel in ''foot'', is sometimes fronted though not to the degree seen with and .
* Short-''a'' split: As in New York and Baltimore accents, historical "short ''a''" has split into two phonemes: lax (as in ''bat'') and tense (as in ''bath''). Their distribution in Philadelphia along with Baltimore, however, is different from that of New York City. Generally, in the Philadelphia–Baltimore system, the vowel is tensed (towards ) before the consonants , , , , and in a closed syllable (so, for example, ''bats'' and ''baths'' do not have the same vowel sound, being pronounced and , respectively), and in any words directly inflectionally derived from root words with this split. Therefore, ''pass'' and ''passing'' use the tense , but ''passage'' and ''passive'' use the lax . The lax and the tense reflexes of are separate phonemes in these dialects, though largely predictable using the aforementioned rules. There are exceptions, however; the three words ''bad, mad,'' and ''glad'' become tense, and irregular verbs ending in "-an" or "-am" remain lax. The words ''mad'' (tense) and ''sad'' (lax) do not rhyme in Philadelphia or Baltimore, but do for New York City and all other English dialects. (In the Trenton area, an intermediate system is used, falling between the typical Mid-Atlantic and the New York City system.) Not all Philadelphians today have this feature and some are beginning to favor the more General American tensing of short ''a'' only before nasals (especially under the influence of youth trends and higher education); in fact, as a general rule, native Philadelphians only consistently have this split system if their own parents are native Philadelphians.

* ''Mary–marry–merry'' three-way distinction: As in New York accents and most native English accents outside North America, there is a three-way distinction between ''Mary'' ~, ''marry'' , and ''merry'' ~. However, in Philadelphia some older speakers have a merger (or close approximation) of and before (the furry–ferry merger), so that ''merry'' is merged instead with ''Murray'' (with both pronounced as something like ). Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006: 54) report that about one third of Philadelphia speakers have this merger, one third have a near-merger, and one third keep the two distinct. Relatedly, as in New York, many words like ''orange'', ''Florida'', and ''horrible'' have before rather than the used in many other American dialects (See: Historic "short o" before intervocalic r).
* Canadian raising occurs for (as in ''price'') but not for (as in ''mouth''). Consequently, the diphthong in ''like'' may begin with a nucleus of mid or even higher position , which distinguishes it from the diphthong in ''line'' . Canadian raising in Philadelphia occurs before voiceless consonants, and it is extended to occur before some voiced consonants as well, including intervocalic voiced stops as in ''tiger'' and ''spider''. Fruehwald argues that has actually undergone a phonemic split in Philadelphia as a result of Canadian raising. The raising of is unusual as the innovators of this change are primarily male speakers while the other changes in progress are led primarily by females. The sociolinguistic evidence suggests this raising is a fairly recent addition to Philadelphia speech.
* , , and vowels: Traditional Philadelphia speech shows lowered and/or laxed variants of were common: . The recent sociolinguistic evidence indicates a reversal of this trend such that the vowel is now commonly raised and fronted. This raising is heard primarily before consonants (e.g., ''eat''). The Linguistic Atlas researchers recorded lax variants of near . As with , recent research suggests this trend is being reversed by raising and fronting of the vowel often to a position well beyond . This raising occurs before consonants (e.g., ''paid''); in word-final position (''pay''), remains lowered and lax. Both of these can lead to nonstandard phonemic incidence (see " Phonemic incidence" section).
* Labov's research has indicated a tendency toward lowering of the lax vowels and . This pattern is not yet well established and is labeled by Labov as an "incipient" change.
* Many Philadelphians use a rather high, back, and perhaps even rounded vowel for as in ; something near . The so-called horse–hoarse merger takes place, and the merged vowel is typically mid to high back; it can be as high as . As noted in New York, these tendencies toward backing and raising of and may constitute a chain shift. The evidence suggests the movement of began this shift, and this vowel is relatively stable today, while generational differences are heard in the shifting of .
* , as in may be more raised than in other dialects; sometimes it is as high as .
* , as in , may show raised and back variants. In some cases, the vowel is in the high, back corner of the vowel space near . This is reportedly a recent development and is one more common among male speakers.

Consonants

* Philadelphia forms the core of the one fully rhotic major region of the traditional American East Coast. This area runs from Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey down to Delaware and northern Maryland, and remains fully ''r''-pronouncing today.
**Non-rhoticity (''R''-dropping) can be found in some areas of Philadelphia, however (presumably as a recent innovation after the nineteenth century) such as among working-class male speakers specifically from South Philadelphia

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