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The Philadelphia accent is the accent of English spoken in Philadelphia and extending into Philadelphia's suburbs in the Delaware Valley and southern New Jersey. It is one of the best-studied dialects of American English due to the fact that Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania is the home institution of William Labov, one of the most productive American sociolinguists. Unlike the dialects found in much of the rest of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia accent shares some unusual features with the New York accent and Southern American English, although it is a distinct dialect region. The Philadelphia accent is, however, in most respects similar to the accents of Wilmington, Delaware and Baltimore, together with which it constitutes what Labov describes as the "Mid-Atlantic Dialect".
Scope
Actual Philadelphia accents are seldom heard nationally; Philadelphia natives who attain national prominence often make an effort to tone down or eliminate their accents. However, Chris Matthews is a conspicuous example of the real thing.
Movies and television shows set in the Philadelphia region generally make the mistake of imbuing the characters with a working class New York accent (specifically heard in Philly-set movies such as the Rocky series, Invincible, and A History of Violence) that is unlike how Philadelphians actually speak. A contrary example is the character of Lynn Sear (played by Toni Collette) in The Sixth Sense, who speaks with an accurate Philadelphia accent.
The use of geographically inaccurate accents is also true in movies and television programs set in Atlantic City or any other region of South Jersey; the characters often use a supposed "Joisey" accent, when in reality that New York-influenced dialect for New Jersey natives is almost always exclusive to the extreme northeastern region of the state nearest New York City. An important factor here is that in the real world, "local" TV, political, and sports personalities in South Jersey are Philadelphians, not New Yorkers.
Linguistic Features
Pronunciation
The precise realizations of features of the Philadelphia accent vary to some degree among different ethnic groups, social classes, and parts of the Philadelphia region. The general phonological features of the accent, however, are as follows:
Vowels
- Philadelphia is resistant to the cot-caught merger (unlike areas of the Midwest and West) because the vowel phoneme of words like caught, cloth, and dawn is raised to a high [ɔ], increasing its distance from the [ɑ] of cot. Philadelphia shares this feature with New York, and southern New England. (Other dialect regions, such as the South and Inland North distinguish between cot and caught also, but not in the same way that Philadelphia does.)
- On is pronounced /ɔn/, so that, as in the South and Midland varieties of American English (and unlike New York and the Inland North) it rhymes with dawn rather than don.[citation needed]
- The /oʊ/ diphthong of goat and boat is fronted, so it is pronounced [ɞʊ], the same way some speakers pronounce it in the Midland and South. The diphthong in house and loud (/aʊ/) is fronted as well—sometimes even more extremely than the /oʊ/, reaching as far as [ɛɔ] for some speakers. (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006: 144, 237).
- As in New York English and some forms of English English, the phoneme /æ/ has split into two phonemes, so that speakers of the Philadelphia accent have different vowels in mad and sad for example. Fewer words have the "tense" phoneme, /eə/ in Philadelphia than in New York City; for more details on both the Philadelphia and New York systems see: phonemic æ-tensing in the Mid-Atlantic region.
- As in New York, Boston, and most accents of English outside North America, there is a three-way distinction between Mary [meəɹi], marry [mæɹi], and merry (sometimes [mɛɹi]). However, in Philadelphia some speakers have a merger of /ɛ/ and /ʌ/ before /r/ (the furry-ferry merger), so that merry is merged instead with Murray (both are pronounced as the latter, [mɝi]). Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006: 54) report that about one third of Philadelphia speakers have this merger, one third have a near-merger, and one third keep the two distinct. Relatedly, many words like orange, Florida, and horrible have /ɑ/ before /r/ rather than the /ɔr/ used in many other American accents (See: Historic "short o" before intervocalic r).
- Canadian raising occurs for /aɪ/ (as in price) but not for /aʊ/ (as in mouth) (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006: 114-15, 237-38). Consequently, the diphthong in like [lʌɪk] differs from the diphthong in live [laɪv]. Canadian raising in Philadelphia occurs before voiceless consonants, and unlike in Canadian English, it is extended to occur before some voiced consonants as well, including intervocalic voiced stops as in tiger and spider. It has been argued[1] that /aɪ/ has actually undergone a phonemic split in Philadelphia as a result of Canadian raising.
- There is a (non-phonemic) split of /eɪ/ (face) so at the end of a word (for example, day) it has an open starting point and is similar to the [æɪ] found in Australian and New Zealand English (and some forms of English English), while in any other position (for example, date) it is pronounced more like the [i] in deet (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006: 237). Pairs of words which may be confused as a result of this development include eight and eat, snake and sneak, slave and sleeve.
- Back vowels preceding /r/ are shifted: [ur] as in tour is lowered[citation needed] to the vicinity of /ɔr/ and merges or comes close to merging with /ɔr/ as in tore. In phonetics, a lowered sound is articulated with the tongue or lip lowered (the mouth more open) than some reference point. Relatedly, /ɑr/ as in tar is raised to [ɔr].
- Both long -e and long -a sounds are shortened before -g. Eagle rhymes with Iggle [ˈɪgɫ]. League rhymes with big [bɪg]. Vague and plague rhyme with Peg (pronounced [vɛg] and [plɛg], respectively). For some Philadelphians, colleague and fatigue also rhyme with big (pronounced [ˈkɔlɪg] and [fətɪgˈ], respectively). However, these are words learned later, so many use the standard American coleeg [ˈkɔlig] and fateeg [fətigˈ].
Consonants
- Unlike many of the urban areas of the eastern seaboard (Boston, Providence, New York, Richmond, Charleston), Philadelphia has never had non-rhoticity as a widespread feature among white speakers; however, there is some sporadic non-rhoticity found especially in South Philadelphia. It has been conjectured that the reason non-rhoticity is only found in South Philadelphia has to do with the Italian immigrants to the area: Italians pronounce r as an alveolar trill (informally called a rolled R), and second-generation kids, wanting to avoid their parents' foreign accent (heavily stigmatized by establishment Philadelphia), solved the problem by leaving most r's completely out of their speech.[citation needed]
- The sibilant /s/ is often palatalized to [ʃ] (sh as in she). Thus, the word streets might be pronounced shtreets [ʃtɹits].
- Many Philadelphians use the dark l for /l/ in all positions.
Phonemic Incidence
- The word water is commonly pronounced /wʊdər/ (with the first syllable identical to the word wood, so that it sounds somewhat like wooder.)[2][3] This is considered by many to be the defining characteristic of the Philadelphia accent.
- In words like gratitude, beautiful, attitude, Baltimore, and prostitute, the i may be pronounced with a long ee sound [i], as in bee.
- Many words ending in -ow or -no, such as window, widow, tomato, or casino, are pronounced with a schwa ending (like the indistinct vowel sound at the end of the word coda). Thus, windows would be pronounced windas [ˈwɪndəz].[citation needed]
Lexicon
- The interjection yo was popularized (and possibly originated in its current meaning) in the Philadelphia dialect among Italian American and African American Philadelphians. Today, Philadelphia natives in general are known to commonly use the interjection.
Notable Speakers
External links
References
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