Pittsburgh Dialect

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 02:58 PM 10/19/00 +0800, Larry Horn wrote:

>>The most distinctive pronunciation oddity is /au/ > /a/, the usual
>>Pittsburgh examples being "downtown" /dantan/ ('daantaan' or 'dahntahn')
>>and "South Side" /saTsaid/ ('Saath Side' or 'Sahth Side') (a district of
>>Pittsburgh). Thus 'power' in Pittsburgh tends to be monosyllabic /par/,
>>rhyming with 'far'. This is completely usual. Approximately, Pittsburgh
>>'down' = Chicago 'don', while Pittsburgh 'don' = 'dawn' = Chicago 'dawn'.
>
>The [au] > [a] is indeed a real Pittsburgh shibboleth; there are no
>other places on the U.S. dialect map from Labov et al. (reprinted in
>black-and-white in Wolfram & Schilling-Estes) in which the relevant
>diacritic occurs, and the Telsur project URL Doug cites below
>contains the assertion "The monophthongization of /aw/ is much less
>common [than that of /ay/]; in the United States, it is found in only
>one urbanized area: Pittsburgh" but I did notice that some of the
>Okracoke Island speakers on Schilling-Estes's "Okracoke Brogue" video
>monophthongized their [au]s in a similar way.
>
>>Phonology reference on the Web:
>>
>>http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch11/Ch11.html
>>
>>-- Doug Wilson
>
>Doug doesn't mention another striking Pittsburgh-area trait, the
>laxing of high and mid vowels before a rather unusual natural class
>consisting of [g] and [l].  The local Pennsylvania pro teams are
>sometimes referred to in the local press as the Pittsburgh "Stillers"
>and the Philadelphia "Iggles", and a major supermarket chain in
>Pittsburgh sometimes promotes itself as the Giant Iggle.  /i/ thus
>becomes [I], /e/ becomes [E] (as when you drink Arn City "Ell"), and
>/u/ and /o/ merge to [U] ("pool" and "toll" both rhyme with "bull").
>The relevant rule and its conditioning factors, phonetic motivation,
>and theoretical implications are described in a 1997 U. Mass.
>phonology dissertation by Laura Walsh Dickey, "The Phonology of
>Liquids" (section 2.2.2.4, Pittsburgh English, using data from her
>field notes).
>
>larry

I'll modify your comment on the /au/ --> /a/ "shibboleth" in
Pittsburgh:  We have the same loss of glide in SE Ohio, though perhaps not
to the degree in Pitt nor in all the same environments.  We also have some
of the laxing and merging you refer to above (as I wrote in a previous
note).  If I ever get my recent PowerPoint demo on all this up on my
website, you'll get more details (or see my upcoming article in LVC on this
region).  The only reason Telsur maps don't show this is that work thus far
has been concentrated on large urban areas; the hinterland (including
southern Ohio) ain't there yet!


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm