Mid-Atlantic American English

Mid-Atlantic American English, Middle Atlantic American English, or Delaware Valley English is a class of American English, considered by The Atlas of North American English to be a single dialect, spoken in the southeastern part of the Mid-Atlantic United States and especially the Delaware Valley, comprising the Philadelphia and Baltimore subsets of English. The dialect is found throughout southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, some southern parts of Central Jersey, Delaware, and eastern and especially northeast Maryland.

The dialect consists mainly of the widely studied subsets known as Philadelphia English and Baltimore English.

This dialect of English centers most strongly on Philadelphia and Reading, Pennsylvania; Wilmington, Delaware; Baltimore, Maryland; and Atlantic City and Trenton, New Jersey.

Phonological characteristics

A chart of all vowels of Mid-Atlantic American English

	Pure vowels (Monophthongs)
English diaphoneme	Mid-Atlantic realization	Example words
pronounced as //æ//	pronounced as /[æ]/	act, pal, trap
	[æə~ɛə~eə]	ham, pass, yeah
pronounced as //ɑː//	pronounced as /[ɑː]/	blah, father
pronounced as //ɒ//		bother, lot, top, wasp
	pronounced as /[ɔə]~[ɒ̝ə]/	dog, loss, cloth
pronounced as //ɔː//		all, bought, taught, saw
pronounced as //ɛ//	pronounced as /[ɛ]/	dress, met, bread
pronounced as //ə//	pronounced as /[ə~ɜ]/	about, syrup, arena
pronounced as //ɪ//	pronounced as /[ɪ~ɪ̈]/	hit, skim, tip
pronounced as //iː//	pronounced as /[iː]/	beam, chic, fleet
pronounced as //ʌ//	pronounced as /[ʌ]/	bus, flood, what
pronounced as //ʊ//	pronounced as /[ʊ]/	book, put, should
pronounced as //uː//	pronounced as /[ʉu]/	food, glue, new
Diphthongs
pronounced as //aɪ//	pronounced as /[äɪ]/	ride, shine, try
	pronounced as /[ɐɪ]/	bright, dice, pike
pronounced as //aʊ//	pronounced as /[æʊ~ɛɔ]/	now, ouch, scout
pronounced as //eɪ//	pronounced as /[eɪ]/	lake, paid, rein
pronounced as //ɔɪ//	pronounced as /[ɔɪ~oɪ]/	boy, choice, moist
pronounced as //oʊ//	pronounced as /[ɘʊ~ɜʊ]/	goat, oh, show
R-colored vowels
pronounced as //ɑːr//	pronounced as /[ɑɹ]/	barn, car, park
pronounced as //ɪər//	pronounced as /[iɹ]/	fear, peer, tier
pronounced as //ɛər//	pronounced as /[er]/	bare, bear, there
pronounced as //ɜːr//	pronounced as /[əɹ~ɜɹ]/	burn, first, herd
pronounced as //ər//	pronounced as /[əɹ]/	doctor, martyr, pervade
pronounced as //ɔːr//	pronounced as /[ɔɹ~oɹ]/	hoarse, horse, poor score, tour, war
pronounced as //ʊər//
pronounced as //jʊər//	pronounced as /[jɔɹ~joɹ~jəɹ]/	cure, Europe, pure

The Mid-Atlantic dialectal region is characterized by several unique phonological features:

• No cot-caught merger: There is a huge difference in the pronunciation between the cot class of words (e.g. pot, glob, and rock) and the caught class (e.g. thought, awe, and call), as in New York City. The caught class is raised and diphthongized towards pronounced as /[oə]~[o̝ə]/.
• Lot-cloth split

Similarly, the single word "on" has the vowel of "dawn", and not the same vowel as "don" etc. Labov et al. regard this phenomenon as occurring not just in the Mid-Atlantic region, but in all regions south of a geographic boundary that they identify as the "ON line", which is significant because it distinguishes most varieties of Northern American English (in which on and Don are rhymes) from most varieties of Midland and Southern American English (in which on and dawn are rhymes).

• Short-a split system

The Mid-Atlantic region uses a short-a split system similar to, but more limited than, the New York City short-a split system. (In the Trenton area, an intermediate system is used, falling between the typical Mid-Atlantic and the New York City system.) Generally, in the Mid-Atlantic system, the vowel is tensed (towards pronounced as /[eə]/) before the consonants pronounced as //m//, pronounced as //n//, pronounced as //f//, pronounced as //s//, and pronounced as //θ// in a closed syllable (so, for example, bats and baths do not have the same vowel sound, being pronounced pronounced as /[bæts]/ and pronounced as /[beəθs]/, respectively), and in any words directly inflectionally derived from root words with this split. Therefore, pass and passing use the tense pronounced as /[eə]/, but passage and passive use the lax pronounced as /[æ]/. The lax and the tense reflexes of pronounced as //æ// are separate phonemes in these dialects, though largely predictable using the aforementioned rules. There are exceptions, however; the three words bad, mad, and glad become tense, and irregular verbs ending in "-an" or "-am" remain lax.

• Strong fronting in the starting places of these vowels: (for example, towards pronounced as /[æʊ~ɛɔ]/), (for example, towards pronounced as /[ɘʊ~ɜʊ]/) and (for example, towards the diphthongized pronounced as /[ʉu]/), none of which occur in New York City English but are, rather, similar to Midland U.S. English, and even Southern U.S. English.
• Rhoticity

The Mid-Atlantic dialect, unlike the traditional New York City dialect, is mostly rhotic.

Lexical characteristics

• To refer to a sweetened, flavored, carbonated soft drink, the term soda is preferred (rather than pop or the generic coke which are common to the west and to the south, respectively).
• Positive anymore may be used without its negative polarity to mean "nowadays," as in "Her hoagies taste different anymore."
• The term jimmies is sometimes used in this and the Boston dialect to refer to small confectionaries used to top ice cream and icing, generally called sprinkles in New York and the rest of the United States.
• The term rail drink may be used in parts of the Mid-Atlantic region, in particular in much of the Washington, D.C./Baltimore metro area, for what is known as a "well drink" in bars and pubs in much or most of the rest of the U.S.

Notable speakers

• Jim Cramer
• Bam Margera
• Chris Matthews

Bibliography

• Book: Baker. Adam. Mielke. Jeff. Archangeli. Diana. 2008. More velar than /g/: Consonant Coarticulation as a Cause of Diphthongization. Chang. Charles B.. Haynie. Hannah J.. Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. 60–68. Somerville, Massachusetts. Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 978-1-57473-423-2. http://www.lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/26/paper1656.pdf.
• Boberg. Charles. 2008. Regional phonetic differentiation in Standard Canadian English. Journal of English Linguistics. 36. 2. 129–154. 10.1177/0075424208316648.
• Book: Duncan , Daniel . 2016. 'Tense' /æ/ is still lax: A phonotactics study. Hansson. Gunnar Ólafur. Farris-Trimble. Ashley. McMullin. Kevin. Pulleyblank. Douglas. Supplemental Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology. 3. Washington, D.C.. Linguistic Society of America. 10.3765/amp.v3i0.3653. http://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/amphonology/article/viewFile/3653/3370. PDF.
• Labov. William. 2007. Transmission and Diffusion. Language. 83. 2. 344–387. 10.1353/lan.2007.0082. 40070845.
• Book: Labov. William. Ash. Sharon. Boberg. Charles. 2006. The Atlas of North American English. Berlin. Mouton de Gruyter. 978-3-11-016746-7.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Philadelphians have a unique accent, with pronunciation evolving over the decades. Retrieved 2018-08-24.