An interesting American dialect

[Zaarin]

I have a professor. He's an American; I don't know for certain, but I believe he's from the Pacific Northwest. He's lived in Hawaii and Alaska. He has some interesting features for an American dialect. Some are interesting but not unique, but there are two that really stand out.

*He pronounced "from" as /fɹɑm/.
*Unlike any other American I've ever heard, he does not have the Wales/whales merger.

I have quite a few professors from the Northwest; none of the others have these features in their accent. I'm curious as to where he might have picked these up or if his accent might suggest he's from somewhere else?

[roninbodhisattva]

Parents? Also, I know I have it, because the vowels are the same for me in wales/whales, but what's the type that's not merged? I haven't heard of this before.

[Nortaneous]

*Unlike any other American I've ever heard, he does not have the Wales/whales merger.

w and ʍ, or...? because a *lot* of americans preserve ʍ. most of them are over 50, but still.

[Ser]

*He pronounced "from" as /fɹɑm/.

Good ol' father-bother vowel merger, yep.

[Travis B.]

*He pronounced "from" as /fɹɑm/.

Good ol' father-bother vowel merger, yep.

The thing is that in the vast majority of North American English dialects, there are a number of very common words where historical /ɒ/ was not merged with historical /ɑː/ but instead was raised to become /ʌ/, and from is one of these. From an NAE perspective, it is actually very odd to have anything but /ʌ/ in from.

[Ser]

Even in stressed forms? I thought that it was /fɹɑm/ when stressed and /fɹəm/ (=/fɹʌm/ if you prefer) when unstressed. See "the" which has /ði/ and /ðə/ (=/ðʌ/) respectively.

[Nortaneous]

IMD it's still /frʌm/ when stressed. I don't think I've heard it with /ɑ/ more than a few times.

[Travis B.]

Even in stressed forms? I thought that it was /fɹɑm/ when stressed and /fɹəm/ (=/fɹʌm/ if you prefer) when unstressed.

Yep. From is /fɹʌm/ in the vast majority of NAE stressed and unstressed.

[Aurora Rossa]

Sounds interesting. Did you notice any other details, maybe some distinctive vocabulary? I don't know that Alaska and Hawai'i have much in the way of distinctive accents, although I'd find it interesting to hear otherwise.

[Soap]

He might just have a mixed accent type if he or his parents had moved from one part of the country to another.

[Yng]

Hmm I'm sure I've met someone with that vowel in 'from'. An American, that is. I'm not sure where he was from, though, so this probably doesn't help.

[Jashan]

*Unlike any other American I've ever heard, he does not have the Wales/whales merger.

w and ʍ, or...? because a *lot* of americans preserve ʍ. most of them are over 50, but still.

Really? I know that it's still preserved among older Americans in the South, but I've never heard it in other dialects. Granted, I haven't talked to a lot of 50+ people other than in the South (or southern Midwest, I suppose).

I know that in my family specifically, my great-grandmother preserved the initial "wh" / "w" distinction (if she were alive, she'd be 98); my grandmother seems to do it intermittantly (sp? -- and she's 80, btw); my mom *doesn't* have the distinction (she's 56), and I have it as a stressed form used to clarify meaning/context ("Did you see that program about whales on TV last night?" "Oh, I love shows about the British Islands!" "No, not Wales, <b>wh</b>ales."). For the record, I'm 31.

[linguoboy]

Really? I know that it's still preserved among older Americans in the South, but I've never heard it in other dialects. Granted, I haven't talked to a lot of 50+ people other than in the South (or southern Midwest, I suppose).

My ex (age 66) has the distinction, and he was literally born in Hollywood (well, West Hollywood) and raised in the Valley (Sherman Oaks).

[Travis B.]

Really? I know that it's still preserved among older Americans in the South, but I've never heard it in other dialects. Granted, I haven't talked to a lot of 50+ people other than in the South (or southern Midwest, I suppose).

My ex (age 66) has the distinction, and he was literally born in Hollywood (well, West Hollywood) and raised in the Valley (Sherman Oaks).

Is this native or acquired, though? I am 26, and in my formal speech I do today often have a distinction between /w/ and /ʍ/, and at times even in less formal speech I will distinguish the two.

However, this distinction is not native at all, with both my dialect and the localized, progressive General American I am used to having completely merged the two, and with my own use of /ʍ/ being learned and under the influence of more conservative General American.

[Zaarin]

*Unlike any other American I've ever heard, he does not have the Wales/whales merger.

w and ʍ, or...? because a *lot* of americans preserve ʍ. most of them are over 50, but still.

He is over 50, but living in a retirement area where that describes most of the population, I've never heard an American use /ʍ/ before.

*He pronounced "from" as /fɹɑm/.

Good ol' father-bother vowel merger, yep.

The thing is that in the vast majority of North American English dialects, there are a number of very common words where historical /ɒ/ was not merged with historical /ɑː/ but instead was raised to become /ʌ/, and from is one of these. From an NAE perspective, it is actually very odd to have anything but /ʌ/ in from.

This.

Sounds interesting. Did you notice any other details, maybe some distinctive vocabulary? I don't know that Alaska and Hawai'i have much in the way of distinctive accents, although I'd find it interesting to hear otherwise.

I haven't noticed any particular vocabulary that would distinguish him from a General American dialect.

He might just have a mixed accent type if he or his parents had moved from one part of the country to another.

This is true. I have something of a mixed accent myself. My parents are from rural New York, I was born in Arizona, and spent a good part of my young life in the South. Consequently I have a General American dialect but with a strange mixture of slang terms from both the North and the South.

[Nortaneous]

Really? I know that it's still preserved among older Americans in the South, but I've never heard it in other dialects. Granted, I haven't talked to a lot of 50+ people other than in the South (or southern Midwest, I suppose).

My guess is that conservative Southern Midland preserves it also, then.

I know that in my family specifically, my great-grandmother preserved the initial "wh" / "w" distinction (if she were alive, she'd be 98); my grandmother seems to do it intermittantly (sp? -- and she's 80, btw); my mom *doesn't* have the distinction (she's 56), and I have it as a stressed form used to clarify meaning/context ("Did you see that program about whales on TV last night?" "Oh, I love shows about the British Islands!" "No, not Wales, <b>wh</b>ales."). For the record, I'm 31.

My father (50s) and aunts (late 40s?) preserve it, as do all the other people on that side of my family except my cousins, who are about as old as I am, but my mother (50s, grew up in the same area as my father but moved to NYC for a while) doesn't preserve it. She hates the South and a lot of things associated with it, though, so that's not really surprising; it'd probably be more informative if I could remember whether my uncle has it, but I have no idea.

My calculus and conlaw professors also preserve it. The calculus professor speaks very conservative Southern Midland, the same dialect as my grandfather, and the conlaw professor speaks mostly conservative GA with a few conservative Southern Midland influences (/im/ for "him" instead of /(h)ɪm/). They're both pretty old though.

[Åge Kruger]

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class.

A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology, including prosody). Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, the term accent is appropriate, not dialect. Other speech varieties include: standard languages, which are standardized for public performance (for example, a written standard); jargons, which are characterized by differences in lexicon (vocabulary); slang; patois; pidgins or argots. Ref: http://www.neutralaccent.com/dialect.html

Thank goodness you're here to clear that up.. I was literally pulling my pubes out.

[Drydic]

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class.

A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology, including prosody). Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, the term accent is appropriate, not dialect. Other speech varieties include: standard languages, which are standardized for public performance (for example, a written standard); jargons, which are characterized by differences in lexicon (vocabulary); slang; patois; pidgins or argots. Ref: http://www.neutralaccent.com/dialect.html

Nice website, spambot. Tip: Don't advertise a dialect-destroying (if it even works, which is unlikely) service on a linguistics website.

[spats]

The w/wh distinction is still alive and well throughout the midland South, Appalachia, some parts of the Mid-Atlantic, etc.

I picked it up (at least in careful speech) from a guy from Tennessee when I was living in Illinois (where they're merged). Now that I'm in southwest Virginia, a lot of folks talk that way.

Unfortunately, I've found that making the distinction confuses the hell out of a lot of foreigners. Though from what I've heard, at least some Latin American native Spanish speakers will distinguish "wh" = "ju" from "w" = "hu" when speaking English.

[Bob Johnson]

Unfortunately, I've found that making the distinction confuses the hell out of a lot of foreigners. Though from what I've heard, at least some Latin American native Spanish speakers will distinguish "wh" = "ju" from "w" = "hu" when speaking English.

ホワイト /howaito/ "white"
ワイン /waiɴ/ "wine"

[linguofreak]

*Unlike any other American I've ever heard, he does not have the Wales/whales merger.

w and ʍ, or...? because a *lot* of americans preserve ʍ. most of them are over 50, but still.

He is over 50, but living in a retirement area where that describes most of the population, I've never heard an American use /ʍ/ before.

You may have heard it and missed it. My mother (Canadian) preserves the distinction, but I didn't notice that she did for the longest time, and even since noticing it I don't always catch it.

EDIT: Actually, on checking again, she distinguishes in slow speech when citing pronunciation, but doesn't even perceive a distinction otherwise.

[Jetboy]

Yeah, I picked up the <wh> <w> distinction from a teacher a year ago (It was actually when I gave him a puzzle where letters of the alphabet that were also words were grouped apart from those that weren't; he objected to <y> being placed with the former). However, I dropped it recently when my sister got annoyed at me about it. I'm thinking of trying to pick it up again, though.

[Lyhoko Leaci]

I might end up picking it up from Myonian... I have accidentally misspelled <wh> as <hw> (the Myonian spelling of it) a couple times as well...

[TaylorS]

My 58yo dad, who grew up in a little rural Minnesota town, has /ʍ/, but my mom, who is 53 and grew up in a small city (Fergus Falls, Minnesota), does not. I've kinda picked it up as an emphatic usage but not as a part of normal speech.

[garysk]

Hmmm, 59 from Colorado here, of Texan and Nebraska stock. Some Texan features I'm told. I preserve /ʍ/ in my mind, and when needed for clarity and careful speech. Drives me CRAZY that no one can spell whether and weather correctly. The fact is that even if I don't enunciate it, or others don't enunciate it, I sitll "hear" it because I know how the words are spelled, and why they're different. No idea if my parents preserved it; I imagine so, my father preserved the /ʟ/ in <talk> and <walk>, which I've utterly lost, along with <caulk>. But I still pronounce the /ʟ/ in caulk in careful speech to avoid the word <cock> in fragile or tittery company. I shameless merge father/bother, and always say /frʌm/ and /sʌm/ and /ʌðɹ/.