Hallucinating distinctions (Pittsburgh)

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>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?

As for me, I am absolutely not referring to /au/ > /&u/ (& = IPA "ae"
ligature) or anything like that. Certainly I've heard people say they're
from "Washington Courthaeouse" (Ohio) etc., and this fronting is heard
around Pittsburgh too, I think probably mostly from people from a little
farther south (e.g., WV), but that's not stereotypical Pittsburgh talk AFAIK.

I am not talking about a general tendency to monophthongization, I am
talking about exactly /au/ > /a/ (or maybe /a:/ if you like). (The /au/
here is often written /aw/, I think.)

I'm not referring to any very restricted context (e.g., "downtown" itself,
or unaccented "our", or "giddahda here").

In general in stereotypical Pittsburgh speech /au/ is pronounced as /a/, so
that "shower" (Chicago /Sau at r/) is /Sar/ (or maybe /Sa at r/) in Pittsburgh (@
= schwa), "pound" (Chicago /paund/) in Pittsburgh is /pand/ and sounds
exactly like Chicago "pond", etc.

Not every Pittsburgh native has this stereotypical shift, and some
'correct' it in careful speech. I'm not absolutely sure that I can remember
a specific instance where it occurred in the word "couch" (I've been here
15 years and I no longer notice Pittsburgh pronunciation except where there
is ambiguity of meaning), but I believe the shift is pretty general in many
speakers.

Labov says /au/ > /a/ is restricted to Pittsburgh, I think:

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NationalMap.html

-- Doug Wilson