21st-century research unites the whole grey-brown region of this map as a Northern U.S. super-dialect region. Notice that the Northwest and much of New England are not included.
Northern U.S. accents are often distinguished from Southern U.S. accents by retaining /aɪ/ as a diphthong (unlike the South, which commonly monophthongizes this sound) and from Western U.S. and Canadian accents by mostly preserving the distinction between the /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ sounds in words like cot versus caught (except in the transitional dialect region of the Upper Midwest and variably in other Northern areas, especially among younger Americans).[6]
In the very early 20th century, a generic Northern U.S. accent was the basis for the term "General American", though regional accents have now since developed in some areas of the North.[7][8]
The ANAE defines a Northern linguistic super-region of American English dialects as having:
/oʊ/ (as in goat, toe, show, etc.) and traditionally /u/ (as in goose, too, shoe, etc.) pronounced conservatively far in the back of the mouth.
"r-fulness" or rhoticity (though r-dropping is possible in Rhode Island and some areas that are geographically though not linguistically Northern: New York City and eastern coastal New England).
A common lack of the cot–caught merger, meaning that words like pond and pawned, or bot and bought, are not pronounced identically (with the second of this class of words being pronounced usually farther back in the mouth and with more rounded lips); however, the merger is common in northern New England and spreading among younger Northerners generally.
The North has historically been one of the last U.S. regions to maintain the distinction between /ɔr/ and /oʊr/, in which words like horse and hoarseorwar and wore, for example, are not homophones;[15] however, the merger of the two has quickly spread throughout the North. The KIT vowel [ɪ]ⓘ was once a common Northern U.S. sound in the word creek, but this has largely given way to the FLEECE vowel [i]ⓘ, as in the rest of the country.[16]
Northeastern American English occurs in the red areas, particularly along the Atlantic coast.
A Northeastern Corridor of the United States follows the Atlantic coast, comprising all the dialects of New England, Greater New York City, and Greater Philadelphia (including adjacent areas of New Jersey), sometimes even classified as extending to Greater Baltimore, Washington D.C., and New York's Hudson Valley. This large region, despite being home to numerous different dialects and accents, constitutes a huge area unified in certain linguistic respects, including particular notable vocabulary and phonemic incidence (that is, basic units of sound that can distinguish certain words).
These phonemic variants in certain words are particularly correlated with the American Northeast (with the more common variants nationwide given in parentheses):[13]
cauliflower with the "i" pronounced with the FLEECE vowel /i/ (in addition to the KIT vowel /ɪ/)
centaur rhyming with four (in addition to the variant rhyming with far)
miracleas/ˈmɛrəkəl/or/ˈmirəkəl/ (in addition to /ˈmɪrəkəl/)
route rhyming with shoot (in addition to shout)
syrupas/ˈsirəp/or/ˈsɪrəp/ (in addition to /ˈsɜrəp/)
tour and tournament with /tɔr/ (like tore)
vaseas/veɪz/or/vɑz/ (rhyming with staysorspas, in addition to the more General American/veɪs/, rhyming with space)
The Northeast tends to retain a contrastive /ɔ/ vowel (in words like all, caught, flaw, loss, thought, etc.): specifically, this is realized as [ɒ~ɔə]. Northern New England and many younger speakers do not retain this vowel, however. Non-rhoticity or "r"-dropping is variable in Eastern New England and New York City, though gradually declining.
The recent Northern cities vowel shift, beginning only in the twentieth century, now affects much of the North away from the Atlantic coast, occurring specifically at its geographic center: the Great Lakes region. It is therefore a defining feature of the Inland North dialect (most notably spoken in Chicago, Detroit, and western New York State). The vowel shift's generating conditions are also present in some Western New England English;[24] otherwise, however, this vowel shift is not occurring in the Northeastern United States.
North-Central American or Upper Midwestern English, based around Minnesota, northern Wisconsin, and North Dakota, may show some elements of the Northern cities vowel shift and the ANAE classifies it as a transitional dialect between the Inland North, Canada, and the West. Many Upper Midwesterners have a full cot-caught merger, however, which disqualifies this dialect from the ANAE's traditional definition for a "Northern" dialect region in the United States.
Northwestern American English similarly does not qualify under the ANAE definition, instead falling broadly under Western American English, not Northern. Also a transitional dialect, its speakers share major commonalities with Californians and Canadians.
^It is arguable whether or not the Pacific Northwest dialect region falls under the Northern super-dialect region. In American linguistics, "North" typically only refers to the "traditional North": the Northeastern and North Central States, while excluding the Northwestern States.
^Labov, William; Sharon Ash, Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 134.
^Labov, William; Sharon Ash, Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 148.
^"Canadian English". Brinton, Laurel J., and Fee, Marjery, ed. (2005). Ch. 12. in The Cambridge history of the English language. Volume VI: English in North America., Algeo, John, ed., pp. 422–440. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN0-521-26479-0, 978-0-521-26479-2. On p. 422: "It is now generally agreed that Canadian English originated as a variant of northern American English (the speech of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania)".
^"Canadian English". McArthur, T., ed. (2005). Concise Oxford companion to the English language, pp. 96–102. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-280637-8. On p. 97: "Because CanE and AmE are so alike, some scholars have argued that in linguistic terms Canadian English is no more or less than a variety of (Northern) American English".
^Labov, William; Sharon Ash, Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 133.
^"Brook" and "Runs". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. 2017. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
^Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (1997). "Dialects of the United States." A National Map of The Regional Dialects of American English. University of Pennsylvania.
