In defense of local dialects. Or not.

[Wilson Gray]

On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 4:13 PM, Paul Johnston <paul.johnston at wmich.edu> wrote:

> I've noticed [taen] (with retracted [ae]) a lot from my Michigan-born students. Â Especially the women. Â It's part of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift-- you get either retraction (to [E] with two dots, roughly where Scottish "tin" is), or retraction + lowering, giving you [taen] with two dots, roughly my NY/NJ vowel in "cat".

I agree, Paul. To tell it like it T-I-tiz, FWIW, I think that I'm
hearing a lower-than-I'm-accustomed-to version of /E/ and not an
IMO-true aesc. I'm pretty sure that, if I heard the pronunciations in
isolation, I could tell "tan" from "ten." But, of course,

Youneverknow.

I hear it occasionally - rather rarely, actually - on TV, so there's
usually not a clue as to where the speaker, usually a woman, as you
note, is from. I can't recall when/where I first heard, well, noticed,
it, but I spent the summer of '73 at UMI. So, maybe it was then/there.

--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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