Areff
Guest
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| Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 8:58 pm
Post subject: Article on Northwest AmE |
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Today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer (aka "The P-I") has a front page
article on the Pacific Northwest dialect:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/225139_nwspeak20.html
One interesting suggestion, which, however, strikes me as bogus, is that
Northwest speakers use creakiness to compensate for the loss of vowel
diversity (as from the cot/caught merger). The article says
that it's mainly women who use creaky voice, which we already know is a
national phenomenon (dubbed by yours truly as "Contemporary Throat Creak"
and as native to Brooklyn as it might be to Seattle).
Also interesting is the suggestion that Northwest speakers like to
emphasize the 's' sound. This confirms something I had observed in, at
least, male Seattle-area speakers, a lisping quality (different from the
notorious Chicago lisp or excessive sibilance, which may or may not be
related to an /s/ /z/ merger [supposedly absent from ErkE {Westernmost
Dialect of ChiE}]). |
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