New York, Philadelphia, and other northern cities: phonology

We will describe characteristic features of accents heard in some of the largest cities in the United States. The discussion considers two eastern cities, New York and Philadelphia, as well as the area around the Great Lakes which includes Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo. In terms of the traditional dialectological classification, these locations represent a mixture of dialects (Kurath 1949). Philadelphia is squarely within the Midland region, while New York City is grouped as part of the North but is seen as constituting its own subregion. The Great Lakes area represents the core of the Inland North, a subregion of Northern speech that stretches from western New England to roughly the Mississippi River.

Compared to other varieties in the U.S. and elsewhere, the dialects discussed here have been studied quite extensively by linguists. This is particularly true in the case of New York which has attracted regular dialectological interest since Babbitt’s 1896 report (e.g., Hubbell 1950; Thomas 1942). Much of the research on New York speech, as well as on that of Philadelphia and the Inland North, has focussed on the kinds of traditional features studied by dialect geographers. This information is valuable, but a description of contemporary speech patterns will also benefit from a more dynamic perspective, one that considers changing usage of older features as well as adoption of recent innovations. For this reason, much of the description here relies on sociolinguistic research, especially the work of William Labov who has written on New York City (1966), Philadelphia (2001), and the changes operating in the Inland North (Labov, Ash and Boberg fc.). Sociolinguistic research of this type is particularly well suited to the investigation of the speech of large urban areas because it examines a broad spectrum of the community of speakers rather than concentrating on any one segment of society. Still, even the best sociolinguistic studies cannot fully consider the rich social diversity of the populations of major cities like those discussed here. As a general caveat, therefore, it should be noted that the features described below characterize the speech of some, but certainly not all, people of these areas.