Midland American English - Western Pennsylvania

Western Pennsylvania

See also: Pittsburgh English

The dialect of Western Pennsylvania is, for many purposes, an eastern extension of the North Midland; it is spoken also in Youngstown, Ohio, ten miles west of the state line. Like the Midland proper, the Western Pennsylvania accent features fronting of /oʊ/ and /aʊ/, as well as positive anymore. The chief distinguishing feature of Western Pennsylvania as a whole is that the cot–caught merger is almost complete here (it is complete in Pittsburgh), whereas it is still in progress in most of the Midland. The merger has also spread from Western Pennsylvania into adjacent West Virginia, historically in the South Midland dialect region.

The city of Pittsburgh is considered to have a dialect of its own often known as "Pittsburghese". This region is additionally characterized by a sound change that is unique in North America: the monopthongization of /aʊ/ to . This is the source of the stereotypical Pittsburgh pronunciation of downtown as "dahntahn". Pittsburgh also features an unusually low allophone of /ʌ/ (as in cut); it approaches (/ɑ/ itself having moved out of the way and become a rounded vowel in its merger with /ɔ/).

Erie, Pennsylvania was described as being in the Northern dialect region in the first half of the 20th century. However, unlike other cities in the North, Erie underwent the caught–cot merger and not the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, and now Erie has at least as much in common linguistically with the rest of Western Pennsylvania as with the North. For this reason, Erie has been described as the only major city to change its affiliation from the North to the Midland.

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Other articles related to "pennsylvania, western pennsylvania, western":

Turkeyfoot Valley Area School District - Budget - Enrollment and Consolidation
... The district's enrollment is in the bottom 5% in Pennsylvania ... Over the next 10 years, rural Pennsylvania school enrollment is projected to decrease 8 percent ... most significant enrollment decline is projected to be in western Pennsylvania, where rural school districts may have a 16 percent decline ...
Latrobe Athletic Association - Early Years - First All-Pro Team
... George Shelafo of the Carlisle Indian School, located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, also joined Latrobe that season ... After the team's game against Western University of Pennsylvania, Doggie Trenchard and Eddie Blair, the team's original quarterback who was replaced by Brallier in 1895 ... The championship of western Pennsylvania was expected to be a battle between the Duquesne and Pittsburgh Athletic Club ...
Roundball Classic - Founding
... cofounders of the game, Sonny Vaccaro and Pat DiCesare, were two boyhood friends from the small Western Pennsylvania town of Trafford ... who in the early 60s had organized local high school basketball tournaments throughout Pennsylvania ... Engler Productions had made a name for himself by promoting major concert events in Western Pennsylvania ...
Center For Emergency Medicine Of Western Pennsylvania
... The Center for Emergency Medicine of Western Pennsylvania is a multi-hospital consortium based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ... Medical Center, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, UPMC Mercy, Western Pennsylvania Hospital and Altoona Hospital ...
Western Pennsylvania - Distinctiveness
... Western Pennsylvania is distinctive from the rest of the state due to several important and complex factors The initial difficulty of transportation access from the east across miles of ... initial method of access was to go out of Pennsylvania altogether, follow the Potomac River northwest through Maryland and Virginia, and then re-enter the ... system over the Appalachians and then, later, the Pennsylvania Railroad which extended the railroad systems of the East Coast west to Pittsburgh and the Ohio Valley ...

Famous quotes containing the words pennsylvania and/or western:

    The discovery of Pennsylvania’s coal and iron was the deathblow to Allaire. The works were moved to Pennsylvania so hurriedly that for years pianos and the larger pieces of furniture stood in the deserted houses.
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    O western orb sailing the heaven,
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