Hallucinating distinctions (Pittsburgh)

[Beverly Flanigan]

I think what you and Doug are hearing (and what I was trying to elicit in
my first note) is a fronting of the diphthong, common in western PA and
eastern Ohio.  Without IPA, it's hard to do, but maybe something like
[kaeowtS] = "caeowch"?  My impression is that "dahntahn" with its
monophthongization is by now idiomatic in Pittsburgh, but that
monophthongizing in general is not common there.  "Par" (actually the vowel
is further back but not up to O=backward C) is common here in southern Ohio
(and all the way up to Youngstown), but I don't think it is in
Pittsburgh.  (No one down here says "caatch" though; there are limits on
monophthongizing.)  Anyone?

Beverly Flanigan
Ohio University

At 09:04 AM 10/27/2004, you wrote:
>Thanks, Doug.  I meant to get back to this thread, then got busy.  But
>that's the best way I could put it, too.  Though even "ah" isn't exactly
>right, but it's about as close as I can get.  So in non IPA, it would be
>"caahch" with sort of a drawn out vowel there.
>
>Patti (raised in Pittsburgh and now trying to describe hr dialect to ND
>students)
>
>douglas at NB.NET wrote:
>
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>>Subject:      Re: Hallucinating distinctions (was New Jersey Dialects)
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>>>>
>>>Um-- not sure.
>>>
>>
>>This is in reference to the word "couch". I think the distinctive
>>Pittsburgh feature here is that the "ow" /au/ sound is like "ah" /a/ in
>>Pittsburgh, so it's "dahntahn" for "downtown", "power" sounds about the
>>same as "par", etc. So "couch" would be /katS/ or so, I think.
>>
>>-- Doug Wilson, Pittsburgh (but born and raised in the [outside] world)
>>
>
>--
>
>Dr. Patti J. Kurtz
>
>Assistant Professor, English
>
>Director of the Writing Center
>
>Minot State University
>
>Minot, ND 58707
>