Hi!
I was wondering if it's possible to tell the difference in the accents of OR, CA, and AZ.
I was wondering if it's possible to tell the difference in the accents of OR, CA, and AZ.
Oregon vs. California vs. Arizona
California vowel shift is absent in AZ, although can be heard by some people in Oregon.
OrCal, you should think more about regions than states, and considering the scope of the geographic area you're speaking of there are bound to be multiple accents that could be distinguised from one another.
For starters, poke around the Pacific Northwest and Californian notes here:
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/
For starters, poke around the Pacific Northwest and Californian notes here:
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/
I don't think there is that much of a difference so much by region, but rather by speaker: variables such as age, gender, etc. I have heard the California vowel shift in Arizona--after all aren't many people from Arizona ex-Californians? There is also the Canadian vowel shift which sounds very similar to the California vowel shift, and is present all over the West as a consequence of the cot-caught merger. (It's called the Canadian vowel shift because it is very prevalent in Canada, and affects a far fewer number of speakers in the US, and not just in the areas ajacent to Canada.) Also, if you think about it, there aren't that many differences in pronunciation between those places, or anywhere else in the West. And there are overlaps between the areas, so you can only do things by percentages. For example if you drove from SE Arizona,up through California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska, and interviewed people saying the word "bag", here's what my guess as to what you would find. In Arizona, and Southern California, >90% of the natives would use [{] or even [a]. As you continued your journey, the number of people with a raised vowel approaching the "vague" vowel would increase. By the time you got to northern Washington state, British Columbia, and probably Alaska too most of the people would have the raised vowel. But not everyone. So, if you listened to someone who didn't have a raised -ag vowel, you couldn't really come to much of a conclusion as to where they were from. The raised -ag vowel in my opinion is one of the only few regional indicators in this area (OR, CA, AZ). Are there any others that I don't know about?
CA can be divided into North and South, with Northern CA having a stronger California Vowel Shift (one interesting irony is that the stereotypical "Valley Girl" accent exaggerates features of the CVS so strongly that it actually sounds more like a Northern California accent).
Oregon, from what I can tell, is very similar to Northern California, with both tending to have a rounded vowel in the COT-CAUGHT phoneme.
Arizona, though there are numerous variations, can have low central unrounded vowel for this sound, so that COT and CAUGHT are both pronounced [kat].
Oregon, from what I can tell, is very similar to Northern California, with both tending to have a rounded vowel in the COT-CAUGHT phoneme.
Arizona, though there are numerous variations, can have low central unrounded vowel for this sound, so that COT and CAUGHT are both pronounced [kat].
Arizona can also have a very back and rounded /o/ vowel--I was surprised to hear it somewhere so far SW.
-Arizona, though there are numerous variations, can have low central unrounded vowel for this sound, so that COT and CAUGHT are both pronounced [kat]. -
Yup, professor Labov tells us (in his Atlas), Tucson AZ is the place of low central merger (another place where this happens is: St. John's NL, also mentioned in his atlas, and may I add Minnesota-St. Paul region, also a central low unrounded cot/caught merger, but unfortunately not mentioned in prof. Labov's Atlas).
Yup, professor Labov tells us (in his Atlas), Tucson AZ is the place of low central merger (another place where this happens is: St. John's NL, also mentioned in his atlas, and may I add Minnesota-St. Paul region, also a central low unrounded cot/caught merger, but unfortunately not mentioned in prof. Labov's Atlas).