What about 'Chicago Accent'?

The big difference between California and the Great Lakes region is...I think...Most people from Inland North have the NCVS, so they sound different (from General American)...As for California, most people DON'T HAVE the Californian accent, but the CC merged version of General American...

I've been watching a local Tv from SF Bay area* and...I can ''hear'' the Californian accent very rarely (20-25% people have it, mostly young girls)...

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*
this is the tv channel:
mms://media.vitalstream.com/8783_live_ctv1.asf?media=394186&package=382788&event=0

I don't come across the CC merger all that much (I don't have it) and it threw me for a loop last week when a girl from California was talking about her boss "Dawn", I could of sworn she said "Don" and my first thought was "Don hasn't worked here in years".

''it threw me for a loop last week when a girl from California was talking about her boss "Dawn", I could of sworn she said "Don" and my first thought was "Don hasn't worked here in years".''

Thick Chicago accent has [dAEn]* for ''Don'', and [dan] for Dawn.
Californian accent has [dAn] for both (but it can also have [dQn] for both, especially in Valspeak.)


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*AE as in General American last, pass, rap...

>>Thick Chicago accent has [dAEn]* for ''Don'', and [dan] for Dawn. <<

Do you mean [dAn] here by [dan]? I would doubt that it actually fronts historical /O:/ all the way to [a].

Right, well, I don't quite have that sort of (or strong) Chicago accent (I did grow up in Chicago, but my parents and extended family did not). I still use [O] for the 'aw' and 'au' sounds in English, I said these words to myself to make sure of that (perhaps that is one of my several east-coast holdovers that were unconsciously pounded into me by my family and grandparents who are mostly from New England and NYC). But I do get accused of having the local accent, which is what brought me to reading this thread to begin with. That being said, I do occasionally get thrown off by the CC merger, for a split second I have to stop and think about what word is being said. Now some of that NCVS stuff (not all mind you), yes, I suppose I'm guilty as charged ;)

I have [dan] for Don, and [dQn] or sometimes [dOn] for Dawn.

I do not recall ever hearing [dan] for Dawn in any Inland North dialect.

''I do not recall ever hearing [dan] for Dawn in any Inland North dialect.''

it depends on a person, try listening to that Chicago commercial
the woman has [a] for the traditional General American /Q/ and [{] for the traditional General American /A/

[A] shifts to [a] and
[a] shifts [{]
------------------------------compare:

unmerged General American:

Don [dAn] - Dawn [dQn]
cot [kAt] - caught [kQt]
stock [stAk] - stalk [stQk]

merged General American (Western):

Don/Dawn [dAn]
cot/caught [kAt]
stock / stalk [stAk]

merged General American (Boston, WestPA):
Don/Dawn [dQn]
cot/caught [kQt]
stock / stalk [stQk]

Canadian/Californian shift:

[A] shift to [Q]: Don/Dawn [dQn]
[{] shifts to [a]: black [blak]


Northern Cities vowel shift:

1st shift:
[Q] shifts to [A]: law [lQ] ---> law [lA]; dawn [dQn] ---> dawn [dAn]
[A] shifts to [a]: pop [pAp]-->pop [pap]; block [blAk]-> block [blak]

2nd shift:
[A] shifts to [a]: law [lA]---> law [la]; dawn [dAn]---> dawn [dan]
[a] shifts to [{]: pop [pap]-> pop [p{p]; block [blak]-->block [bl{k]

so, the most likely a person will have a distinction
Dawn:Don [dAn: dan] or Dawn:Don [dan:d{n]

Dawn: Don [dAn: d{n] is less probable


''I do not recall ever hearing [dan] for Dawn in any Inland North dialect.''
sounds like a Californian person saying:

''I do not recall ever hearing [gQd] for God in any Western dialect.''

but try listening to the song ''Valley Girl''...God is pronounced like [gQd] in that F. Zappa's song: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9eEvLzoSVsw

for the advanced form of Inland North dialect...try the movie
Against the Ropes with M. Ryan
she has a thick Detroit accent in that movie: to a speaker of General American her saying ''New Kids on the block'' sounds exactly like ''New Kids on the black''. That's why it would be just to exclude the Great Lakes region from the ''General American accent region''.

Actors from California don't need to get rid of their accent in the Hollywood movies, unlike the actors from the Great Lakes area...
Sean Hayes (Jack from Will & Grace) is from Chicago, but he's never used Chicagoan accent in the sitcom, he sounds like someone from the West; the same is true of Kathy Griffin (Vicki from Suddenly Susan) who is from Oak Park, Illinois.

Oprah Winfrey lives in Chicago, but her accent is a mixture of General American and Californian, without any trace of the Great Lakes area accent.

>>''I do not recall ever hearing [dan] for Dawn in any Inland North dialect.''
sounds like a Californian person saying:

''I do not recall ever hearing [gQd] for God in any Western dialect.''<<

The thing is your "2nd shift" only applies in areas where the cot-caught merger has already occurred; the only parts of the NCVS area where the NCVS intersects with the cot-caught mergers are Minnesota and the western extreme of Wisconsin; the rest of the NCVS area is cot-caught unmerged. Consequently, one would not have [da~:n] for "Dawn" in most of the NCVS-area outside Minnesota.

Another note is that at least here in southeastern Wisconsin, very many people do not even have the [Q] > [A] shift, even though some have it (either sporadically or consistently) here. This means that very many of us still have [M\Q:] for "law" and [dQ~:n] for "Dawn", even though we have [p_hap] for "pop" and [bM\ak] for "block". For instance, I lack it altogether except on very rare occasions in informal speech, whereas my girlfriend often but not consistenly shifts [Q] > [A], while my mom seems to consistently shift [Q] > [A] after /w/ (and thus lacks the three-way /wa/ ~ /wA/ ~ /wQ/ distinction I have) while preserving [Q] elsewhere.

Travis is right; I can see Dawn being [dan] in Minneapolis, but never in Chicago or Detroit.

As for God as [gQd], I have seen that used by a variety of West Coast speakers, but as you pointed out, it seems to be more common in Southern California.

I have never seen "Against the Ropes", but I will have to look for it. Honestly though, Hollywood, in general, is not known for portraying regional dialects accurately. However, I will have to take a look and see for myself.

''I have never seen "Against the Ropes", but I will have to look for it. Honestly though, Hollywood, in general, is not known for portraying regional dialects accurately''

Well, M. Ryan put a real STRONG accent with very advanced NCVS.
I guess it was easier for her to learn that pronunciation.
The less marked accent would be more difficult to master since
the differences are minimalized. It's a boring movie, but it's one of those
''different accent movies'' (just like Fargo) so it's interesting, in a way.

I'm from Chicago and noticing that clip of i guess what was supposed to be a chicago accent, i didn't notice anything. how was that an accent??

That's because it is generally very hard to perceive your own accent, especially if one's own dialect is not stigmatized in any fashion and there is no diglossia present in one's social group, simply because it is the reference point with which one perceives how everyone else talks. Hell, I for the longest time thought that my more careful speech was actually standard (even though I'm from Milwaukee), and my own ideolect is actually quite phonologically divergent as North American English dialects go... <laughs>

That should be "idiolect" above.

What I think is so interesting is how sometimes international boundaries become less important than economic or cultural zones. For example, in my amateur view, there seems to be somewhat of a social and economic divide between the eastern and western United States (and Canada), while there is a social and economic zone encompassing the west coasts of both Canada and the United States (and even Baja Norte in Mexico), Alaska, and Hawai'i. So, does distribution of accent differences reflect this disparity between political boundaries and social/economic zones?

I was born and raised in Seattle. In 2004 when I was 25, I moved to Vancouver, BC to attend university (to study linguistics, no less). Since then, no one has asked me if I am American. In fact, no one has even asked me where I am from. In Vancouver, Canadian Raising seems less obvious than in Ontario, where I have relatives, and in Seattle, it seems more obvious than in other parts of America, so that the two cities seem almost to converge in extent of Canadian Raising. [aI] seems to be raised in both cities, whereas [au] is raised primarily in Vancouver, if at all. The only other differences I've noticed are among older speakers or transplants from the country or back east: "or" in words such as "tomorrow" rhymes with "oar", "ro" in "process" rhymes with "row", and "again" and "been" are pronounced as "agayn" and "bean". There are a few lexical differences too, such as "bachelor" instead of "studio", but these seem scarce. But among relatively young people born and raised in Vancouver, the English sounds almost identical to the English of Seattle.

However, when I hear some Chicagoans speak, as in the audio clip you provided, Donna, I noticed differences right away in the vowels of words such as "cot". To me, in Chicago English "cot" sounds like "cat", "impossible" like "impassable", "fast" like "f-eee-uh-st", and "dot com" like "dat cam". "Dat cam" was especially obvious and even made me chuckle (non-disparagingly!). To me, Chicagoans sound much more different from Seattleites than Vancouverites do. To my ears, the difference between Chicago and Seattle English is greater than the difference between Vancouver and Seattle English. Maybe this suggests that dialectal differences within a country can sometimes be greater than such differences between countries.

''In large Northern cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and
Buffalo, certain vowel pronunciations are changing in ways that distance
them from Southern vowels. For example, the augh sound of a word like
caught is now pronounced more like the vowel of cot. Meanwhile, a word
like lock sounds something like lack, while tack sounds a little like tech. At
the same time, Southern vowels are changing in different ways. For example, red sounds something like raid, and fish sounds almost like feesh. So much for the presumed homogenization of Northern and Southern speech.''

AMERICAN VOICES How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast
(Edited by Walt Wolfram and Ben Ward) page 18.