Midland American English

Midland American
English is a regional
dialect or super-dialect of
American English,[2]
geographically lying
between the traditionally-
defined Northern and
Southern United States.[3]
The boundaries of
Midland American English
are not entirely clear, being
revised and reduced by
linguists due to definitional
changes and several
Midland sub-regions According to Labov et al.'s (2006) ANAE, the strict Midland dialect region
undergoing rapid and comprises the cities represented here by circles in red (North Midland) and
diverging pronunciation orange (South Midland). In the past, linguists considered the Midland dialect to
shifts since the early- cover an even larger area, extending eastward through Pennsylvania to the
middle 20th century Atlantic Ocean. The color blue on this map indicates the Inland North dialect,
onwards. [4][5] which is intruding southward into the middle of this region towards St. Louis,
Missouri and Peoria, Illinois show variation between the Midland and Inland North
Today, these general dialects.[1] The distinction between a North and a South Midland region is that
characteristics of the the South Midland shows a tendency for extra features usually associated with
Midland regional accent Southern American dialects: notably, strongest /oʊ/ fronting, a pin–pen merger,
are firmly established: and a glide weakening of /aɪ/ before sonorant consonants.
fronting of the /oʊ/, /aʊ/,
and /ʌ/ vowels occurs
towards the center or even the front of the mouth;[6] the cot–caught merger is neither fully completed nor
fully absent; and short-a tensing evidently occurs strongest before nasal consonants.[7] The currently-
documented core of the Midland dialect region spans from central Ohio at its eastern extreme to central
Nebraska and Oklahoma City at its western extreme. Certain areas outside the core also clearly demonstrate
a Midland accent, including Charleston, South Carolina;[8] the Texan cities of Abilene, Austin, and Corpus
Christi; and central and southern Florida.[9]

Early 20th-century dialectology was the first to identify the "Midland" as a region lexically distinct from the
North and the South and later even focused on an internal division: North Midland versus South Midland.
However, 21st-century studies now reveal increasing unification of the South Midland with a larger newer
Southern accent region, while much of the North Midland retains a more "General American" accent.[10]

Early 20th-century boundaries established for the Midland dialect region are being reduced or revised since
several previous subregions of Midland speech have since developed their own distinct dialects.
Pennsylvania, the original home state of the Midland dialect, is one such area and has now formed such
unique dialects as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh English.[11]
Contents
Original and former Midland
Mid-Atlantic region
Western Pennsylvania
Phonology and phonetics
Grammar
Vocabulary
Charleston
Cincinnati
St. Louis corridor
Texas
References
Bibliography

Original and former Midland

The dialect region "Midland" was first labeled in the 1890s,[12] but only first defined (tentatively) by Hans
Kurath in 1949 as centered on central Pennsylvania and expanding westward and southward to include
most of Pennsylvania, and the Appalachian regions of Kentucky, Tennessee, and all of West Virginia.[7][13]
A decade later, Kurath split this into two discrete subdivisions: the "North Midland" beginning north of the
Ohio River valley area and extending westward into central Indiana, central Illinois, central Ohio, Iowa,
and northern Missouri, as well as parts of Nebraska and northern Kansas; and the "South Midland", which
extends south of the Ohio River and expands westward to include Kentucky, southern Indiana, southern
Illinois, southern Ohio, southern Missouri, Arkansas, southern Kansas, and Oklahoma, west of the
Mississippi River.[14] Kurath and then later Craig Carver and the related Dictionary of American Regional
English based their 1960s research only on lexical (vocabulary) characteristics, with Carver et al.
determining the Midland non-existent according to their 1987 publication and preferring to identify
Kurath's North Midland as merely an extension of the North and his South Midland as an extension of the
South, based on some 800 lexical items.[15]

Conversely, William Labov and his team based their 1990s research largely on phonological (sound)
characteristics and re-identified the Midland area as a buffer zone between the Inland Southern and Inland
Northern accent regions. In Labov et al.'s newer study, the "Midland" essentially coincides with Kurath's
"North Midland", while the "South Midland" is now considered as largely a portion, or the northern fringe,
of the larger 20th-century Southern accent region. Indeed, while the lexical and grammatical isoglosses
encompass the Appalachian Mountains regardless of the Ohio River, the phonological boundary fairly
closely follows along the Ohio River itself. More recent research has focused on grammatical characteristics
and in particular a variable, possible combination of such characteristics.[16]

The original Midland dialect region, thus, has split off into having more of a Southern accent in southern
Appalachia, while, the second half of the 20th century has seen the emergence of a unique Western
Pennsylvania accent in northern Appalachia (centered on Pittsburgh) as well as a unique Philadelphia
accent.[11]

Mid-Atlantic region
The dialect region of the Mid-Atlantic States—centered on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Baltimore,
Maryland; and Wilmington, Delaware—aligns to the Midland phonological definition except that it strongly
resists the cot–caught merger and traditionally has a short-a split that is similar to New York City's, though
still unique. Certain vocabulary is also specific to the Mid-Atlantic dialect, and particularly to its
Philadelphia sub-dialect.

Western Pennsylvania

The emerging and expanding dialect of western and

much of central Pennsylvania is, for many purposes,
an extension of the South Midland;[17] it is spoken
also in Youngstown, Ohio, 10 miles west of the state
line, as well as Clarksburg, West Virginia. Like the
Midland proper, the Western Pennsylvania accent
features fronting of /oʊ/ and /aʊ/, as well as positive
anymore. Its chief distinguishing features, however,
also make it a separate dialect than the Midland one.
These features include a completed lot–thought
merger to a rounded vowel, which also causes a chain
shift that drags the strut vowel into the previous Based on Labov et al., averaged F1/F2 means for
position of lot. The Western Pennsylvania accent, speakers from Western Pennsylvania. The merger
lightheartedly known as "Pittsburghese", is perhaps of /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ is complete for 11 out of 14
best known for the monophthongization of mouth to speakers;[10] /ʌ/ is backer and lower than in the
palm (/aʊ/ to [aː]), such as the stereotypical Pittsburgh rest of the North Midland.
pronunciation of downtown as dahntahn. Despite
having a Northern accent in the first half of the 20th
century, Erie, Pennsylvania, is the only major Northern city to change its affiliation to Midland by now
using the Western Pennsylvania accent.

Phonology and phonetics

Rhoticity: Midland speech is firmly rhotic (or
fully r-pronouncing), like most North
American English.
Cot–caught merger in transition: The merger
of the vowel sounds in lot and thought is
consistently in a transitional phase
throughout most of the Midland region,
showing neither a full presence nor absence
of the merger. This involves a vowel merger
of the "short o" /ɑ/ (as in cot or stock) and
"aw" /ɔ/ (as in caught or stalk) phonemes.
On boundary: A well-known phonological
difference between Midland and Northern Based on Labov et al.; averaged F1/F2 means for
accents is that in the Midland, the single speakers from the (North) Midland (excluding
word on contains the phoneme /ɔ/ (as in
Western Pennsylvania and the St. Louis corridor). /
caught) rather than /ɑ/ (as in cot), as in ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are close but not merged.
the North. For this reason, one of the
names for the boundary between the
dialects of the Midland and the North is the "on line".
 Epenthetic R: The phoneme sequence /wɑʃ/, as in wash, squash, and Washington,
traditionally receives an additional /r/ sound after the ⟨a⟩, thus with Washington sounding
like /ˈwɑrʃɪŋtən/ or /ˈwɔrʃɪŋtən/. Likely inherited from Scots-Irish influence, this features
ranges from D.C., Maryland, southern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas,
West Texas, and the Midland dialect regions within Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri,
Oklahoma, and Kansas.[18] Studied best of all in southern Pennsylvania, this feature may be
declining.[19]
The short-a phoneme, /æ/ (trap), most commonly follows a General American ("continuous"
and pre-nasal) distribution: /æ/ is raised and tensed toward [eə] before nasal consonants
(such as fan) but remains low [æ] in other contexts (such as fact). An increasing number of
speakers from central Ohio realize the TRAP vowel /æ/ as open front [a] ( listen).[20]
Fronting of /oʊ/ (goat): the phoneme /oʊ/ (as in goat) is fronter than in many other American
accents, particularly those of the North; the phoneme is frequently realized as a diphthong
with a central nucleus, approximating [ɜʊ~ɵʊ].[21]
Fronting of /aʊ/ (mouth): the diphthong /aʊ/ (as in mouth) has a fronter nucleus than /aɪ/,
approaching [æʊ~ɛɔ].[21]
Fronting of /ʌ/ (strut): among younger speakers, /ʌ/ (as in bug, strut, what, etc.) is shifting
strongly to the front: [ɜ] ( listen).[22]
Lowering of /eɪ/ (face): the diphthong /eɪ/ (as in face, reign, day, etc.) often has a lower
nucleus than the Northern accents just above Midland region, so that the Midland diphthong
approaches [ɛɪ~ɜɪ].[23]
Phonologically, the South Midland remains slightly different from the North Midland (and
more like the American South) in certain respects: its greater likelihood of a fronted /oʊ/, a
pin–pen merger, and a "glideless" /aɪ/ vowel reminiscent of the Southern U.S. accent,
though /aɪ/ deletion in the South Midland only tends to appear before sonorant consonants:
/m/, /n/, /l/, /r/. For example, fire may be pronounced something like fahr or even far.[17]
Southern Indiana is the northernmost extent of this accent, forming what dialectologists refer
to as the "Hoosier Apex" of the South Midland, with the accent locally known as the "Hoosier
Twang".

Grammar
Positive anymore: A common feature of the greater Midland area is so-called "positive
anymore": It is possible to use the adverb anymore with the meaning "nowadays" in
sentences without negative polarity, such as Air travel is inconvenient anymore.[24]
"Need + participle": Many speakers use the construction "need + past participle". Some
examples include:
The car needs washed to mean the car needs to be washed
They need repaired to mean they need to be repaired
So much still needs said to mean so much still needs to be said

To a lesser degree, a small number of other verbs have been reportedly used in this way
too, such as The baby likes cuddled or She wants prepared.[16]

"All the + comparative": Speakers throughout the Midland (except central and southern
Illinois and especially Iowa)[25] may use "all the [comparative form of an adjective]" to mean
"as [adjective] as", when followed by a subject. Some examples include:[26]
I held all the tighter I could to mean I held as tight as I could
That was all the higher she could jump to mean That was as high as she could jump
 This is all the more comfortable it gets to mean This is as comfortable as it gets
Alls: At the start of a sentence, "alls [subject] [verb]" can be used in place of "all that [subject]
[verb]" to form a noun phrase followed by is or was. For example (with the entire clause in
italics): "Alls we brought was bread" or "Alls I want to do is sing a song". This has been
especially well-studied in southern Ohio, though it is widespread throughout the Midwest.[27]
Many other grammatical constructions are also reported to varying degrees, predominantly
of Scots-Irish origin, that could hypothetically define a Midland dialect, such as: what-all (an
alternative to what), wakened (an alternative to woke or woke up), sick at the stomach,
quarter till (as in quarter till two to mean the time 1:45), and whenever to mean when (e.g. I
cheered last Saturday whenever I won the award).[16]

Vocabulary
bank(ed) barn, particularly in the East Midland (Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania), for a barn
built into a hill with two-level access[28]
berm, in the East Midland (Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania), and parking, in Chicago, Iowa
and Kansas, for a road verge[24][29]
blinds for window shutters
carry-in, in the East Midland (Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio), for potluck[30]
carry-out for take-out
chuckhole, particularly in the East Midland (Indiana and Ohio),[31] and chughole, in the
South Midland,[32] for pothole
crawdad for crayfish[24]
dope, in Ohio, for dessert sauce[33]
mango (or mango pepper) for green bell pepper, often when pickled or stuffed[34]
pop in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, western Missouri, northeastern Oklahoma, Ohio, and
Pennsylvania; soda, in eastern Missouri and southern Illinois; and coke in the Indianapolis
metropolitan area, southwestern Indiana, and the Oklahoma City metropolitan area[24]
sack for any disposable bag[24]
tennis shoes for any generic athletic shoes (running shoes in Cincinnati)[24]

Today, the Midland is considered a transitional dialect region between the South and Inland North;
however, the "South Midland" is a sub-region that phonologically speaking fits more with the South and
even employs some Southern vocabulary, for example, favoring y'all as the plural of you, whereas the rest
of the (North) Midland favors you guys. Another possible Appalachian and South Midland variant is
you'uns (from you ones), though it remains most associated with Western Pennsylvania English.[35]

Charleston
Today, the city of Charleston, South Carolina clearly has all the defining features of a mainstream Midland
accent. The vowels /oʊ/ and /u/ are extremely fronted, and yet not so not before /l/.[8] Also, the older, more
traditional Charleston accent was extremely "non-Southern" in sound (as well as being highly unique),
spoken throughout the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, but it mostly faded out of existence in the
first half of the 20th century.[8]

Cincinnati
Older English speakers of Cincinnati, Ohio, have a phonological pattern quite distinct from the surrounding
area (Boberg and Strassel 2000), while younger speakers now align to the general Midland accent. The
older Cincinnati short-a system is unique in the Midland. While there is no evidence for a phonemic split,
the phonetic conditioning of short-a in conservative Cincinnati speech is similar to and originates from that
of New York City, with the raising environments including nasals (m, n, ŋ), voiceless fricatives (f, unvoiced
th, sh, s), and voiced stops (b, d, g). Weaker forms of this pattern are shown by speakers from nearby
Dayton and Springfield. Boberg and Strassel (2000) reported that Cincinnati's traditional short-a system
was giving way among younger speakers to a nasal system similar to those found elsewhere in the Midland
and the West.

St. Louis corridor

St. Louis, Missouri, is historically one among several (North) Midland cities, but it has developed some
unique features of its own distinguishing it from the rest of the Midland. The area around St. Louis has
been in dialectal transition throughout most of the 1900s until the present moment. The eldest generation of
the area may exhibit a rapidly-declining merger of the phonemes /ɔr/ (as in for) and /ɑr/ (as in far) to the
sound [ɒɹ], while leaving distinct /oʊr/ (as in four), thus being one of the few American accents to still
resist the horse-hoarse merger (while also displaying the card-cord merger). This merger has led to jokes
referring to "I farty-far",[36] although a more accurate eye spelling would be "I farty-four". Also, some St.
Louis speakers, again usually the oldest ones, have /eɪ/ instead of more typical /ɛ/ before /ʒ/—thus measure
is pronounced [ˈmeɪʒɚ]—and wash (as well as Washington) gains an /r/, becoming [wɒɹʃ] ("warsh").

Since the mid-1900s (namely, in speakers born from the 1920s to 1940s), however, a newer accent arose in
a dialect "corridor" essentially following historic U.S. Route 66 in Illinois (now Interstate 55 in Illinois)
from Chicago southwest to St. Louis. Speakers of this modern "St. Louis Corridor"—including St. Louis,
Fairbury, and Springfield, Illinois—have gradually developed more features of the Inland North dialect,
best recognized today as the Chicago accent. This 20th-century St. Louis accent's separating quality from
the rest of the Midland is its strong resistance to the cot–caught merger and the most advanced development
of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCS).[37] In the 20th century, Greater St. Louis therefore became a mix
of Midland accents and Inland Northern (Chicago-like) accents.

Even more complicated, however, there is evidence that these Northern sound changes are reversing for the
younger generations of speakers in the St. Louis area, who are re-embracing purely Midland-like accent
features, though only at a regional level and therefore not including the aforementioned traditional features
of the eldest generation. According to a UPenn study, the St. Louis Corridor's one-generation period of
embracing the NCS was followed by the next generation's "retreat of NCS features from Route 66 and a
slight increase of NCS off of Route 66", in turn followed by the most recent generations' decreasing
evidence of the NCS until it disappears altogether among the youngest speakers.[38] Thus, due to harboring
two different dialects in the same geographic space, the "Corridor appears simultaneously as a single dialect
area and two separate dialect areas".[39]

Texas
Rather than a proper Southern accent, several cities in Texas can be better described as having a Midland
U.S. accent, as they lack the "true" Southern accent's full /aɪ/ deletion and the oft-accompanying Southern
Vowel Shift. Texan cities classifiable as such specifically include Abilene, Austin, San Antonio and Corpus
Christi. Austin, in particular, has been reported in some speakers to show the South Midland (but not the
Southern) variant of /aɪ/ deletion mentioned above.[40]

References
 1. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:277)
2. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:5, 263)
3. Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (1997). "Dialects of the United States (http://w
ww.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/NationalMap/NationalMap.html)." A National Map of The
Regional Dialects of American English. University of Pennsylvania.
4. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:263): "The Midland does not show the homogeneous character
that marks the North in Chapter 14, or defines the South in Chapter 18. Many Midland cities
have developed a distinct dialect character of their own[....] Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St
Louis are quite distinct from the rest of the Midland[....]"
5. Bierma, Nathan. "American 'Midland' has English dialect all its own (http://articles.chicagotri
bune.com/2006-05-24/features/0605230378_1_language-variation-dialect-north-american-e
nglish)." Chicago Tribune.
6. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:137, 263, 266)
7. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:182)
8. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:259)
9. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:107, 139)
10. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:263, 303)
11. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:135)
12. Murray & Simon (2006:2)
13. Kurath, Hans (1949). A Word Geography of the Eastern United States. University of
Michigan.)
14. Kurath, Hans; McDavid, Raven Ioor (1961).The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic
States. University of Michigan Press.
15. Murray & Simon (2006:1)
16. Murray & Simon (2006:15–16)
17. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:268)
18. Kelly, John (2004). "Catching the Sound of the City (https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy
n/articles/A62786-2004Oct25.html)". The Washington Post. The Washington Post Company.
19. Barbara Johnstone, Barbara; et al. (2015). Pittsburgh Speech and Pittsburghese (https://boo
ks.google.com/books?id=TpmnCgAAQBAJ&dq). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KGp. p. 22.
20. Thomas (2004:308)
21. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:255–258 and 262–265)
22. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:266)
23. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:94)
24. Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder. 2003. The Harvard Dialect Survey (http://dialect.redlog.net/)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20160430083828/http://dialect.redlog.net/) 2016-04-
30 at the Wayback Machine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
25. Murray & Simon (2006:16)
26. "All the Further (https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/all-the-further)". Yale Grammatical
Diversity Project English in North America. Yale University. 2017.
27. "The alls construction (https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena//alls-construction)". Yale
Grammatical Diversity Project English in North America. Yale University. 2017.
28. "Bank barn" (http://dare.wisc.edu/words/quarterly-updates/QU3/bank-barn). Dictionary of
American Regional English. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
29. Metcalf, Allan A. (2000). How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt. p. 101.
30. Metcalf, Allan A. (2000). How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt. p. 100.
31. "Chuckhole (http://www.wordreference.com/definition/chuckhole)". Word Reference. Word
Reference. 2017.
32. Dictionary.com (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/chughole). Dictionary.com Unabridged,
based on the Random House Dictionary. Random House, Inc. 2017.
33. "Dope (https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=dope)". The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. 2017. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company.
34. "Mango" (https://www.daredictionary.com/view/dare/ID_00036809). Dictionary of American
Regional English. Retrieved 28 December 2017.
35. Murray & Simon (2006:28)
36. Wolfram & Ward (2006:128)
37. Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006:61)
38. Friedman, Lauren (2015). A Convergence of Dialects in the St. Louis Corridor. Volume 21.
Issue 2. Selected Papers from New Ways of Analyzing Variation(NWAV). 43. Article 8.
University of Pennsylvania.
39. "Northern Cities Panel". (http://www.nwav43.illinois.edu/program/documents/Northern.Citie
s.Panel_NWAV14PanelRevAbs.pdf) 43rd NWAV. School of Literature's, Cultures, and
Linguistics. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
40. Labov, Ash & Simon (2006:126)

Bibliography
Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of North American English.
Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016746-8.
Murray, T. E.; Simon, B. L. (2006), "What is dialect? Revisiting the Midland", Language
variation and change in the American Midland: A new look at 'Heartland' English (https://boo
ks.google.com/books/about/Language_Variation_and_Change_in_the_Ame.html?id=WxTra
sumR18C), Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Thomas, Erik R. (2004), "Rural Southern White Accents", in Schneider, Edgar W.; Burridge,
Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Upton, Clive (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of
English, vol. 1: Phonology, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 300–324, ISBN 3-11-017532-0

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