of likely interest to NYers only

[Dennis R. Preston]

Careful with the fronting in the name of the city. Could be two
phonemes. Some folk got Chicago with the vowel of "caught"; others
with the vowel of "cot." Course, in the Northern Cities Shift,
"caught" sounds like "cot" and "cot" sounds like "cat," but these are
two different facts and ought to be kept straight.

Our work on the NCS makes us begin to suspect that nasality may
indeed be a regional feature, and that is often what people make fun
of in "Midwestern" speech.

dInIs

>>At 3:08 PM -0600 3/5/02, Matthew Gordon wrote:
>>>Can you specify which NCS features you've noticed?
>>>On a more general note, are NYers (nonlinguists) aware of the NCS as a
>>>stereotype of, say, Buffalo or Rochester?
>>>
>>Well, more of Chicago, I think.  But there's an awareness, at least
>>on the part of many non-linguists.  I've heard a couple of
>>mock-Northern Cities pronunciations on sports highlight shows to
>>denote "Chicago".
>>
>>larry
>
>I agree with Larry. When I mention Chicago, some of my students will
>front the vowel in the name. I also heard this in LA.
>
>As for our Great Lakes subway voice:
>There is a fronted /a/ in 'stop' and lowered vowel in 'Wall,' as well
>as tensed /ae/s in places where NYers don't tense. There don't seem
>to be any of the later shifts.
>
>--
>Michael Newman
>Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics
>Dept. of Linguistics and Communication Disorders
>Queens College/CUNY
>Flushing, NY 11367