u: fronting and happY tensing in American English

jlukeitaly   Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:59 am GMT
Hi, I'm italian and I've been studying the American Accent for about 4 years. I've been reading about u: fronting and happY tensing.. Can somebody explain to me these things? Are they General American? is there some recording on the internet to show these two things?
Thanks in advance
Travis   Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:54 am GMT
Happy tensing is practically universal in North American English outside of some Southern dialects. What this is is the raising of historical final /ɪ/ so that it merges with /i(ː)/. In the Southern dialects without it, historical final /ɪ/ is instead lowered so that it merges with /eɪ/.

As for /u(ː)/ fronting, this is the fronting (either generally or in the form of diphthongization) of historical /u(ː)/. Such fronting is generally to either [ʉ(ː)], [ʉ̯u], or [ɨ̯u] when it does occur. Note that this is somewhat unspecified in General American, which may or may not have it in practice.