Our Shifting Vowels
The way we talk in Michigan has been changing. Vowels don't sound the way they used to.
by Linda Stephan
(2.29.2008) In Michigan -- the way we pronounce some of our vowels is shifting.
Something called the Northern Cities Vowel Shift is taking over the way we talk.
It's a way of pronouncing words that didn't exist 75 years ago.
It's spreading from Michigan's cities out to the countryside.
As Linda Stephan reports, if you don't have this new dialect -- you daughter likely will.
It's not clear why -- but linguists say -- much like many new fashions -- women generally pick up changes in language much faster than men.
And the younger you are, the more likely it is that you've succumbed to the Northern Cities shift.
In a shopping mall recently -- I found some high school girls with an inkling they have an accent...
VOX girls apple Yeah -- whenever I go to California they're always like, oh you must be from the Midwest, you have a really, like thick Midwest accent.
Do they ever say what it is that sounds different?
Uh, you really pronounce you're a's a lot, like apple, you say aaaa...
SFX song: "You say laughter and I say laughter, you say after....
VOX girls ... "and then, um mom -- over there they say, like mum, and here we're like, mom -- MAAAM yeah .. (laughter)
Now what does that remind you of?
Remember the movie French Kiss -- Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline...
Sfx movie clip "bub, bub, bub -- like Bub Dillion? Oh, BOB. Oui, Bob..."
I asked Dennis Preston what the Northern Cities Vowel Shift sounds like...
He said: Something like nails running down a chalkboard!
At least that's his answer as a Kentucky native.
"Of course when I'm being a linguist I dare not say any of that."
Of course not!
Preston is a professor at Michigan State University.
And as a linguist -- he says it's not just outsiders -- even many Michiganders admit the accent doesn't sound all that pleasant...
To a linguist NO accent is good or bad.
Language is just constantly shifting.
The way we speak in Michigan has changed recently -- and it's a big shift.
Picture your vowels as if they were people in crowded room.
One moves -- and the group starts shifting around...
"The vowel of bag -- b-a-g -- starts to move forward and up, and eventually in Michigan starts to sound something like be-ag. Now -- since this bag position is emptied -- then the vowel of hot moves into that old position and begins to sound like hot, and so caught can come down and move into a cot-like position. ThisThis vowel rotation simply reflects, I think, the fact that we've got only so much space in our mouths to make vowels, and if we crowd one area, then somebody else'll move into the area that's emptied."
This Northern Cities shift has roots in a very complicated vowel system used on the East Coast -- think New Yawkas...
The cities near the Great Lakes have taken parts of that accent and simplified it -- creating something uniquely ours.
And with each new generation, it spreads.
But as speakers, we seem to have hardly noticed.
We still cling to this belief that we speak some sort-of Standard American dialect -- when in fact -- the way we speak has recently changed -- pretty dramatically.
"People's brains are in the way of their ears. So that Michiganders are brought up to believe that they speak some kid of upper Midwestern English which they believe -- foolishly -- of course -- is a national standard. Now, once you believe you're a standard speaker, then all kinds of acoustic evidence -- stuff that you actually hear -- is just easy to wash out, right? It's good for you to say, no, life's good. I'm from Michigan, and I'm a really swell talker. And all the counter evidence presented to me don't amount to a hill of beans."
Preston says there's no evidence we'll be discriminated against, for example in education or the job market -- as Southerners have often faced.
The Northern Cities Dialect is spoken today in Up State New York, Detroit, and there are signs of it as far west as St. Louis.
In Michigan, it's now bleeding into the countryside, and north --even infiltrating my hometown -- Traverse City.
Preston says -- to some extent -- you can hear it when I talk.
"This change is inevitable. You are in the grips of it. And, I guess to paraphrase popular culture, resistance is futile."
