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Philadelphia dialect


Philadelphia English is a variety or dialect of American English native to Philadelphia and extending into Philadelphia's suburbs in the Delaware Valley and South Jersey, including Atlantic City. The Philadelphia accent is one of the best-studied, as Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania is the home institution of pioneering sociolinguist William Labov. Philadelphia English shares some features with New York City English and Midland American English, although it is still its own distinct dialect. However, the closest relative of the Philadelphia accent is the Baltimore accent, both of which constitute what Labov describes as a single "Mid-Atlantic" regional dialect.

According to linguist Barbara Johnstone, migration patterns and geography affected the dialect's development, which was especially influenced by immigrants from Northern England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Today, the accent is commonly found throughout the Philadelphia metro and South Jersey area, most commonly among the Irish American and Italian American working-class neighborhoods.

Philadelphia English and New York City English had a common ancestor dialect that likely existed in the 1800s, since both modern dialects demonstrate a high /ɔː/ vowel (creating a contrast between words like cot and caught) as well as a phonemic split of the short a vowel, /æ/ (making gas and gap, for example, have different vowels sounds). One important indicator of this is that Philadelphia's short a split is documented as being a simplified variant of New York City's split. Unlike New York City English, however, most speakers of Philadelphia English have always used a rhotic accent (meaning that the r sound is never "dropped").


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