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Bronx Accent
The sound system of New York City English is popularly known as a New York accent. The accent of the New York metropolitan area is one of the most recognizable in the United States, largely due to its popular stereotypes and portrayal in radio, film, and television. Several other common names exist based on more specific locations, such as Bronx accent, Brooklyn accent, Queens accent, Long Island accent, and North Jersey accent. Research supports the continued classification of all of these under a single label, despite some common assumptions among locals that they meaningfully differ. The following is an overview of the phonological structures and variations within the accent. Vowels Consonants While the following consonantal features are central to the common stereotype of a "New York City accent", they are not entirely ubiquitous in New York City. By contrast, the vocalic (vowel) variations in pronunciation as described above are far more typical of New York City� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fuhgeddaboudit
Fuhgeddaboudit, an eye dialect spelling of "forget about it," may refer to: * wikt:fuhgeddaboudit, Fuhgeddaboudit, a stereotypical phrase from New York City English, included in a list of Glossary of Mafia-related words, Italian-American Mafia terminology * List of Dark Angel episodes#ep37, Fuhgeddaboudit (''Dark Angel'' episode) * ''Fugget About It'', a Canadian adult animated sitcom {{disambig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monophthong
A monophthong ( ) is a pure vowel sound, or one whose articulation at beginning and end is relatively fixed, with the tongue moving neither up nor down and neither forward nor backward towards a new position of articulation. A monophthong can be contrasted with a diphthong, where the vowel quality changes (glides from one quality to another) within the same syllable, and with hiatus, where two vowels are next to each other but in different syllables. A vowel sound whose quality does not change over the duration of the vowel is called a pure vowel. The word comes . ) Sound changes The conversions of monophthongs to diphthongs (diphthongization), and of diphthongs to monophthongs (monophthongization), are major elements of language change and are likely the cause of further changes. In some languages, due to monophthongization, graphemes that originally represented diphthongs now represent monophthongs. See also * Diphthong, also known as a vowel cluster * Vowel hiatus * In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonemic Split
In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones may emerge, or they may simply be rearranged. Sound change may be an impetus for changes in the phonological structures of a language (and likewise, phonological change may sway the process of sound change). One process of phonological change is ''rephonemicization'', in which the distribution of phonemes changes by either addition of new phonemes or a reorganization of existing phonemes. Mergers and splits are types of rephonemicization and are discussed further below. Types In a typological scheme first systematized by Henry M. Hoenigswald in 1965, a historical sound law can only affect a phonological system in one of three ways: * Conditioned merger (which Hoenigswald calls "primary split"), in which some instances of phoneme A beco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
/æ/ Raising
In the sociolinguistics of the English language, raising or short-''a'' raising is a phenomenon by which the "short ''a''" vowel , the vowel (found in such words as ''lack'' and ''laugh''), is pronounced with a raising of the tongue. In most American and many Canadian English accents, raising is specifically tensing: a combination of greater raising, fronting, lengthening, and gliding that occurs only in certain phonological environments or certain words. The most common context for tensing throughout North American English, regardless of dialect, is when this vowel appears before a nasal consonant (thus, for example, commonly in , but rarely in ). The realization of this "tense" (as opposed to "lax") includes variants such as , , , etc., which can depend on the particular dialect or even speaker. One common realization is , a transcription that will be used throughout this article as a generalized representation of the tensed pronunciation. Variable raising of (and , ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlas Of North American English
''The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change'' (abbreviated ANAE; formerly, the ''Phonological Atlas of North America'') is a 2006 book that presents an overview of the pronunciation patterns ( accents) in all the major dialect regions of the English language as spoken in urban areas of the United States and Canada. It is the result of a large-scale survey by linguists William Labov, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg. Speech data was collected, mainly from 1992 to 1999, by means of telephone interviews with individuals in metropolitan areas in all regions of the U.S. and Canada. Using acoustic analysis of speech from these interviews, ''ANAE'' traces sound changes in progress in North American English, and defines boundaries between dialect regions based on the different sound changes taking place in them. ''The Atlas of North American English'' received the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award at the 2008 meeting of the Linguistic Society of Amer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with the High Middle Ages, High and Late Middle Ages. Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography. Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English literary variety broke down and writing in English became fragmented and localized and was, for the most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470), and aided by the movabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Father–bother Merger
The phonology of the open back vowels of the English language has undergone changes both overall and with regional variations, through Old and Middle English to the present. The sounds heard in modern English were significantly influenced by the Great Vowel Shift, as well as more recent developments in some dialects such as the ''cot–caught'' merger. Overview Old and Middle English In the Old English vowel system, the vowels in the open back area were unrounded: . There were also rounded back vowels of mid-height: . The corresponding spellings were and , with the length distinctions not normally marked; in modern editions of Old English texts, the long vowels are often written , . As the Old English (OE) system developed into that of Middle English (ME), the OE short vowel merged with the fronted to become a more central ME . Meanwhile, the OE long vowel was rounded and raised to ME . OE short remained relatively unchanged, becoming a short ME vowel regarded as , wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are ''y'' and ''w'' in ''yes'' and ''west'', respectively. Written in IPA, ''y'' and ''w'' are near to the vowels ''ee'' and ''oo'' in ''seen'' and ''moon,'' written in IPA. The term ''glide'' may alternatively refer to any type of transitional sound, not necessarily a semivowel. Classification Semivowels form a subclass of approximants. Although "semivowel" and "approximant" are sometimes treated as synonymous, most authors use the term "semivowel" for a more restricted set; there is no universally agreed-upon definition, and the exact details may vary from author to author. For example, do not consider the labiodental approximant to be a semivowel. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic attached to non-syllabic vowel lett ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General American
General American English, known in linguistics simply as General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm), is the umbrella accent of American English used by a majority of Americans, encompassing a continuum rather than a single unified accent. It is often perceived by Americans themselves as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics, though Americans with high education, or from the (North) Midland, Western New England, and Western regions of the country are the most likely to be perceived as using General American speech. The precise definition and usefulness of the term continue to be debated, and the scholars who use it today admittedly do so as a convenient basis for comparison rather than for exactness. Some scholars prefer other names, such as Standard American English. Standard Canadian English accents may be considered to fall under General American, especially in opposition to the United Kingdom's Received Pronunciation. Noted phoneti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cot–caught Merger
The ''cot''–''caught'' merger, also known as the merger or low back merger, is a sound change present in some dialects of English where speakers do not distinguish the vowel phonemes in words like ''cot'' versus ''caught''. ''Cot'' and ''caught'' (along with ''bot'' and ''bought'', ''pond'' and ''pawned'', etc.) is an example of a minimal pair that is lost as a result of this sound change. The phonemes involved in the ''cot''–''caught'' merger, the low back vowels, are typically represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet as and or, in most United States English, as and . The merger is typical of most Indian, Canadian, and Scottish English dialects as well as some Irish and U.S. English dialects. An additional vowel merger, the ''father''–''bother'' merger, which spread through North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has resulted today in a three-way merger in which most Canadian and many U.S. accents have no vowel difference in words lik ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
R-colored Vowel
An r-colored or rhotic vowel (also called a retroflex vowel, vocalic r, or a rhotacized vowel) is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant. R-colored vowels can be articulated in various ways: the tip or blade of the tongue may be turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel (a retroflex articulation) or the back of the tongue may be bunched. In addition, the vocal tract may often be constricted in the region of the epiglottis. R-colored vowels are exceedingly rare, occurring in less than one percent of all languages. However, they occur in two of the most widely spoken languages: North American English and Mandarin Chinese. In North American English, they are found in words such as ''dollar'', ''butter'', ''third'', ''color'', and ''nurse''. They also occur in Canadian French, some varieties of Portuguese, some Jutlandic dialects of Danish, and in a few indigenous languages of the Americas and of Asi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
