<p>Atomom, that greaZy pronunciation from Iowa I think is an ethnic pronunciation. My dad also called the sink a zink. He was the child of East European immigrants.</p>
<p>I also dropped the “to be” until my East Coast husband corrected me, so I think that one stretches to the Midwest.</p>
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<p>Yes, that’s how I say it. Just going through the alphabet and picking a few words -</p>
<p>Mad, bad, glad are tense. Sad, pad, lad, cad, dad, fad, grad, had are lax. (Lax itself is lax.) </p>
<p>Rad (as in radical) or trad (as in tradition) would be lax as well. </p>
<p>If you said “bad tradition” - the a in “bad” wouldn’t have the same sound as the a in “tradition,” would it? But if you sad “sad transition” it would.</p>
<p>No one is saying that in Michigan they say cat like cait (as in rhyming with the name Kate). They are using cait to sort-of-depict what a tense a sounds like, that’s all. Kind of like k-eee-at, elided together.</p>
<p>Of the words listed above - “tradition” is the only I pronounce differently. All the rest have the same “a” sound.</p>
<p>(Meanwhile, my mother is wondering why I am sitting here saying misc words out loud!)</p>
<p>PG–I never really thought about it, but you’re right: I don’t say bad exactly like sad. Both short A’s, but not the same one.</p>
<p>I think the East seems to have more in-btween vowel sounds than the Midwest does.</p>
<p>Atomom–for me, the first syllable in Kerry is Keh (same sound as Met). so: Keh-ree. The first syllable in Carrie is Cah (same sound as mat) so, Cah-ree. Neither would rhyme with Mare.</p>
<p>Ok - go with that.<br>
Say tradition.<br>
Now say transition. </p>
<p>Focus on the first syllable of each. Hear the difference? </p>
<p>Without hearing you, my guess is that you’re saying tradition lax, and transition tense. Those are the two a’s we are talking about.</p>
<p>PG–yes, that’s how I read what HG is saying about cat, too. YOu captured that flat nasally midwest sound well in your second to last post. Do you study linguistics?</p>
<p>PG, Hug specifically said cat sounded like the ai in hair. It does not. Not at all.</p>
<p>I know she doesn’t mean ai like in Cait. She means the ai like in hair. Which is still nothing like the a in cat.</p>
<p>Pizza girl, great example. I can now quit saying random words aloud and annoying my family.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl your post 115 was right on the money for me.</p>
<p>Oh and re/ the ai sound of hair, you can call it a bent a or a tensed a but if you say the word hair, and listen to the sound the middle part makes (the ai part) like in the word air, now take the r off the end of it, you get the sound of the letter a I am trying to convey. The Michiganders I met at U.Michigan could not hear themselves doing it and they thought I was speaking in a British accent since I didn’t bend my a sounds. I could hear the clear difference between mine and a British accent; they could not.</p>
<p>And RGE says, “PG, Hug specifically said cat sounded like the ai in hair. It does not. Not at all.” Well, I respectfully disagree in that my perception of what I was hearing for 4 years sure sounded to my ear like the ai sound of the word hair placed into words I would pronounce differently. Or perhaps you say the word hair differently than I say it. At the end of the day (lolling here) we used to just look at each other and say, “You talk weird.”</p>
<p>I never heard “It needs painted” until I came to Ohio from Va.</p>
<p>And I hate it when dictionaries (or spelling books) give helpful pronunciation hints: “a like the a in ‘hair’” --it’s an r-controlled vowel and I can’t extract the “a” from it! Maybe other people can.</p>
<p>Freshman year one funny girl poked fun at the Midwest pronunciations she heard. “We grow a lotta carn here.” “We go to church to pray to the Lard.”</p>
<p>I say sorry, Florida, and orange with the first syllable rhyming with car, but when I lived in St Louis and they pronounced forty that way (farty), it seemed funny! I love accents and actually used to listen to tapes intended to coach actors through different accents. I have no formal education in it, though, to garland’s q.</p>
<p>Hug, that’s fine. I just take issue with the fact that you call it a Michigan accent. It’s not. </p>
<p>I have taken many linguistics classes. I know what parts of the mouth I use to say different sounds. The hair and cat sounds are very much different. I’m sorry you got exposed to some strange accent here in Michigan, but it’s not our general accent. </p>
<p>Question: did the words “pear” and “hat” have the same sound? Because pear rhymes with hair and cat with hat.</p>
<p>Correct me if I’m wrong, but what Hugcheck and Pizzagirl are describing as a “Michigan accent” doesn’t seem to correspond at all with what linguists describe as the Northern Cities Vowel shift, as best I can tell. I have occasionally heard people in Michigan pronounce “cat” in a somewhat similar way to what they describe, though; but to me that sounds more an Appalachian accent, not a Michigan accent. Very large numbers of people migrated from Appalachia to Michigan in the 1940s and 50s and 60s, mostly for jobs in the auto industry. At one time there were entire Appalachian neighborhoods in Detroit, Many older folks still speak with heavy Appalachian accents, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of their speech patterns have persisted for a generation or two in some families and some communities, especially in the downriver suburbs of Detroit and some parts of western Wayne County and Macomb County. But that’s not the Northern Cities Vowel Shift which I think is the predominant speech pattern in Michigan; it’s an outlier subculture.</p>
<p>Hugcheck, I’d be curious where exactly the Michiganders you knew came from, if you know.</p>
<p>Ingster and Southfield, if I remember correctly. Long time ago. Interesting theory bclintonk! And Romni, yes, they sad words like cat as if they’d rhyme with pear and care if they had r’s on the end. I also hear that sound in western upstate NY. Not sure but maybe it’s a great lakes thing?</p>
<p>I’m not describing anything as a Michigan accent. Deal me out of that one.</p>
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<p>Well, with Inkster, in the heart of western Wayne County, I’d say it’s a good bet the speech pattern is Appalachian. Southfield it’s harder to say. Back in the day when I spent a lot of time in southeast Michigan, Southfield was largely Jewish; now I understand it’s largely black, but there may have been a phase when it was partly Appalachian, I don’t know.</p>
<p>Linguist William Labov identifies Michigan, and especially Detroit, as the epicenter of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift which extends from western New York State through Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and up through Milwaukee. But that theory says the shift would have the vowel in “cat” pronounced a little more more like the vowel in “bit”. Not “cait.” Though I think you’d hear it more in a word like “that” pronounced as a clipped “thit.”</p>
<p>In Appalachian English, you’d hear two things: first, an elongation and “breaking” of certain vowels, so “red” come out more like “rey-ud.” And second, a shift almost opposite of the Northern Cities shift, so “bat” comes out more like “beyt.” Or, combining the two “bey-ut.” Which is pretty close to what hugcheck remembers hearing, “cait” (or “cay-ut” ) for “cat”. Or “they-ut” for “that.”</p>
<p>And it’s not implausible that you could have heard similar sounds in upstate New York, where the Northern Cities Vowel Shift pretty much hugs the Great Lakes shoreline; just south of there, in New York State’s Southern Tier, is the northern extension of Appalachia, and lots of people migrate from the Southern Tier to Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, </p>
<p>Thing is, the Appalachian shift (an elongated “they-ut” for “that”) is pretty much just the opposite to the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (a clipped “thit” for “that”), so to a deep Michigander, an Appalachian accent sticks out like a sore thumb. Not to say they aren’t among us.</p>
<p>Yes Bclintonk that makes good sense to me. The cay-ut description is very close to what I remember hearing. I recall once making a collect call home and the operator could not understand what I was saying until I added in the ay-ut form to my speech. It was pretty funny. Interesting to learn that this accent is not ubiquitous in Michigan; it sure seemed to be when I was there! </p>
<p>One other way to distinguish the sounds is Aunt vs. Aunt. Do you say Ay-unt (well to my ear it’s more like Ay-ahnt) or Ohhhnt? That’s the distinction for me of the two sounds.</p>
<p>Also it’s interesting to see that ppl take this stuff personally! Accent as social status distinguisher? Ayup.</p>
<p>I lived in Inkster for a while. And Westland, and Wayne, and Plymouth. One of my best friends is from Southfield. Don’t ever remember an accent like that (yes, Southfield is now predominantly African American as is Inkster). Neither he nor I have one. Although we so have different accents. He’s black and I’m white and he speaks with an African American English dialect accent, I do not. I’ll leave it at that.</p>
<p>Being Canadian EH!!! lol. The two words that drive me nuts when I hear them are roof as the ROOF of a house but so many accents make it sound like a Rough of a house and the other one is Foyer, it is french word and is not pronounced as Foyier, the best I can explain how to say it Foy (sounds like toy with an F) then end it with the EH sound. I am enjoying this thread and really hope most people are taking it in fun. When I was in Martinique a few years ago I over heard our taxi driver (tour guide) speaking patois and I was able to understand what he was saying and started speaking to him in French, well we got the royal tours as he was so happy to speak french and by the end of the day we were starting to speak patois. I love listening to the different accents and my only problem is that I some how pick up the accents and start speaking that way within hours and it drives my W around the bend.</p>