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,^[1] spoken in the southern Mid-Atlantic states of the United States (i.e. the Delaware Valley, southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland).

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

This dialect of English centers most strongly around 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 closer rhymes) from most varieties of Midland and Southern American English (in which on and dawn are closer 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] See /æ/-tensing#Philadelphia and Baltimore or click "show" below for more details.

• 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]),^[9] 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 fully 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).
• 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, normally called "sprinkles" in New York and the rest of the United States.

Notable speakers

• Philly Boy Roy.^[10]

• Benjamin Netanyahu^[11]

• Barbara Mikulski.^[12]

• Laura Vitale^[13]

• Chris Matthews

• Jim Cramer^[14]

References

Bibliography

• Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016746-8.