Mid-Atlantic American English

It has been suggested that this article be merged into Philadelphia English. (Discuss) Proposed since March 2021.

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,^[1] 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.^[2]

Phonological characteristics[]

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.^[3] The caught class is raised and diphthongized towards [oə]~[o̝ə].^[4]
• 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).^[5]
• 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.)^[6] Generally, in the Mid-Atlantic system, the vowel /æ/ is tensed (towards [eə]) before the consonants /m/, /n/, /f/, /s/, and /θ/ in a closed syllable (so, for example, bats and baths do not have the same vowel sound, being pronounced [bæts] and [beəθs], respectively), and in any words directly inflectionally derived from root words with this split. Therefore, pass and passing use the tense [eə], but passage and passive use the lax [æ].^[7] The lax and the tense reflexes of /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.^[8]

• Strong fronting in the starting places of these vowels: /aʊ/ (for example, towards [æʊ~ɛɔ]), /oʊ/ (for example, towards [ɘʊ~ɜʊ]) and /uː/ (for example, towards the diphthongized [ʉu]),^[25] 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.^[8]

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).^{[citation needed]}
• Positive anymore may be used without its negative polarity to mean "nowadays," as in "Her hoagies taste different anymore."^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}
• 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.^{[citation needed]}

Notable speakers[]

This list is incomplete; you can help by . (March 2017)

• Jim Cramer^[26]
• Bam Margera^[26]
• Chris Matthews^[26]
• Benjamin Netanyahu^[26]

References[]

Bibliography[]