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.
The ANAE argues that, though geographically located in the Northern United States, current-day New York City, Eastern New England, Northwestern U.S., and some Upper Midwestern accents do not fit under the Northern U.S. accent spectrum, or only marginally. Each has one or more phonological characteristics that disqualifies them or, for the latter two, exhibit too much internal variation to classify definitively. Meanwhile, Central and Western Canadian English is presumed to have originated, but branched off, from Northern U.S. English within the past two or three centuries.[4][5]
Most broadly, the ANAE classifies Northern U.S. accents as rhotic, 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[6] (though the latter feature appears to be changing among the younger generations).
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.
A cultivated or elite Northeastern U.S. accent, sometimes known as a "Boston Brahmin accent" within Boston, was once associated with members of upper-class Northeastern (largely, New England and New York City) families in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The documentary "American Tongues" in 1988 interviewed two Brahmin speakers who estimate that were about 1000 of them left. Notable example speakers included many members of the Kennedy family born in this time period including President John F. Kennedy, whose accent is not an ordinary Boston accent so much as a "tonyHarvard accent".[24] This accent included non-rhoticity (and even, variably, a non-rhotic pronunciation of NURSE), a resistance to the cot-caught merger, and a resistance to the Mary-marry-merry merger. Variably, speakers dipped into other then-prestigious features, such as the TRAP–BATH split ([æ] versus [a]), no happY tensing, and a backed pronunciation of START, though some New England speakers pronounced it more fronted. This accent corresponds in its time-frame and in much of its sound with a cultivated transatlantic accent also associated with prestigious Northeastern boarding schools and, more famously, promoted in theatrical elocution courses in the same era.[25]
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;[26] 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. Northwestern accents are not yet identified by linguists as settling into a singular stable variety; its speakers share major commonalities with both Californian and Canadian accents.
^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.
^Knight, Dudley. "Standard Speech". In: Hampton, Marian E. & Barbara Acker (eds.) (1997). The Vocal Vision: Views on Voice.Hal Leonard Corporation. pp. 160.
^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.