Northern Cities Shift smacks me in the ear

Geoffrey Steven Nathan geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU
Fri Jan 11 20:01:32 UTC 2013


One of the changes in the Northern Cities shift, namely

ɛ > ʌ

always seemed mysterious to me, because it's kind of hard to hear. But, while hanging out in my computing office I did a double-take when I overheard two desktop service technicians talking, and one of them, I swear, said:

'Yeah, you often find that with these dull laptops...'

Anyway, that's what it sounded like.
Demographics: male twenty-something from the Detroit area.

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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