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Northern Cities Vowel Shift


The Northern Cities Vowel Shift (or simply Northern Cities Shift) is a chain shift in the sounds of some regional American English vowels, and the defining accent feature of Inland Northern American English, heavily centering on the Great Lakes region, though also variably found to some degree in Upper Midwest American English and Southwestern New England English.

The name of the shift comes from the region where it occurs, a broad swath of the United States along the Great Lakes, beginning some 50 miles (80 km) west of Albany and extending west through Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Flint, Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, and north to Green Bay.

William Labov, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that the trend may have started in the early 19th century during the construction of the Erie Canal. Migration of workers from the East Coast to the Great Lakes area brought together speakers of different varieties of English, a situation in which language change can be expected to proceed quickly (Haynie 2007).


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