Edward McClelland explains the Northern Cities Vowel Shift

Edward McClelland, the author of "How to Speak Midwestern" explains the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. (For those who don't know, the aforementioned vowel shift is the most conspicuous part of the Cleveland "accent.")

He also tells us how the construction of the Erie Canal may have contributed to the greatest change in English vowel pronunciation in 1,000 years.

[Toqrainbow]

I'm from Rochester and I can't for the life of me pick it out in myself 🙈 its hard cos when you start paying attention to how you speak you just get confused. i think i'd have to have it pointed out :P

[KungFuJedi]

I'm from Western New England area, which is where the Northern Cities Vowel Shift originated from. We have many speakers here with the Vowel Shift.

[kenkrasity]

This would be much more useful if the speaker uttered the same vowel shifted and non-vowel shifted word immediately back to back so I could hear them one after the other. OK, us Midwesternerers say 'can' that means little unless it's compared to how someone else says 'can'. How do other people say it, and who are these other people--surely not New Yorkers or Bostonians or Southerners who have their own accents. Shifted compared to what? But mainly, say a shifted word then immediately say the same word in n unshifted accent.

[thecunninglinguist]

You can hear variations of this around Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Rochester and Scranton (among others). There are also elements of it in St. Louis and the Twin Cities. The one notable exception is Erie, where the accent is closer to Pittsburgh.

[annastephens]

Wow! I'm from a city on the Erie canal and I'm definitely a victim of this shift.

[pgifford]

The Erie Canal (1817-1824) workers weren't from "all over." The settlers came mainly from Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, and eastern NY.

[kadygirlforever]

I had a girl from Ohio mock my accent (I’m from Texas)…I wasn’t going to say anything about her pronunciations, but this is a good break down of her added vowels.

[jadanblue]

there is nothing funnier than hearing someone from defiantly defending themselves by saying "We don't have followed by ordering a "ceeEEEaan" of "pop" in a can clearly reading the word soda on the side of it.

[am]

To me, a great example of this shift is the following... Take the town name "Lancaster":
If you're from, Massachusetts, it's pronounced: LAHN-cas-tahhh.
If you're from the Hudson Valley, it's pronounced: LAEN-cas-ter.
If you're from Pennsylvania, it's pronounced: LAENK-ster.
I'm from NY's Hudson Valley myself, and I can pick out the Inland-Northern accent immediately. For example, when people pronounce Rochester like: "RUTCH-ster", or Syracuse like "SEAR-cuse". Even Akron, Ohio gets pronounced like: "AEHK-rin".

[xx_pyr]

I'm from Chicago and I definitely have the shift. My boyfriend jokingly makes fun of me a lot for "speaking weirdly" and I never knew why until now.
Retrospective edit: I should clarify he's from rural Georgia.

[AmberVivicide]

Im from Cleveland and when I moved to southern California, specifically Lancaster in LA county, people definitely knew I wasn't from the area. I couldn't tell the difference because I thought I sounded just like them. But my boyfriend from there specified it was my vowel pronunciation. He said I extended my vowels longer. Like the word car sounds like caaar, or beach sounds like beeeach. Personally i dont hear it but people commented on it so much i have to believe them 🤣

[lancebaker]

The nation-wde mostly female shift may be partly attributed to trying to avoid (overcompensate for) the southern ""pin" for "pen" and "tin" for "ten" pronunciations, so the shift gives us "pan" for "pen" and "tan" for "ten".

[ethanmcdonald]

My first awakening to it was when I happened to be listening to Cubs fans on the train saying Shi-kaaah-go. Since then, I have noticed it in many people: DNC chairman Tom Perez and Rob Gronkowski (Buffalo), Paul Ryan (Wisconsin), Fred Savage from the Wonder Years, Nationals GM Mike Rizzo, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and CNN correspondent Manu Raju (all from the Chicago area), just to name a few. It's usually accompanied by a very flat, clipped, and nasal tone in my experience. It can be subtle or very obvious, but the Inland North accent is probably the least recognized among strong regional speech patterns. The NCVS speakers are usually oblivious to what distinguishes them from the rest of the country from what I can tell, and that probably explains it. The accent tends to vary throughout the Inland North, with Chicago being the most nationally recognized.

[lancebaker]

The universal vowel shift, mostly among women, for ALL of the U.S. emerging in the past two decades is like this: "ahnd" for and, hahv for have, butter for better ("I feel much butter today"), hoppy for happy, meeby for maybe, bud for bed, sax for sex, sex for six, and on and on. There is also a new pronunciation for "and" if it is followed by a pause: "ant", with an emphatic "T". British also use ant for and. This shift is a second stage from the previous shift where "better" was pronounced "batter" and "bed" was pronounces "bad". The long E shift for long A is heard in the extreme from the sexy baby voiced Bernadette character in Big Bang Theory. She will say "beeby" for baby and "meeby" for maybe consistently.

[simonthechipmunk]

does anyone else watch videos on their own accent just to see if they get it right

[edwardmiessner]

I lived in Boston for many years before moving away in 2000 and I noticed some native Bostonians had the raising of the 'a' in words like can, cash, dad and fashion. The only difference is that instead of the schwa sound, the 'a' usually followed the long 'e' so that, for example, "cash" was pronounced as "keash." I predict the NCVS will eventually reach Boston and spread on from there. Even I ended up doing this until someone pointed it out to me.

[vwestlife]

A common example of this is people pronouncing "bag" with a long A sound, like "bayg".

[inlandnorthernamericanengl]

Research undertaken by the Chicago Dialect Project suggests that the NCVS in that city began to occur there in earnest during the first decades of the 20th Century and peaked in the decades following the Second World War.

[havenmirabella]

I’m from Utah but spent many of my formative years in Michigan. I’m incapable of hearing the shift. It just sounds “normal” to me (and yeah, I know there’s no such thing as a normal accent). Does that mean I have it?

[tepan]

If [æ] becomes [eɪ], is there any vowel/diphthong that becomes [æ]?