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Mid-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, spoken in the Mid-Atlantic states of the United States. This variety of English centers most strongly around Philadelphia and Reading, Pennsylvania; Wilmington, Delaware; Baltimore, Maryland; and Atlantic City and Trenton, New Jersey. The Mid-Atlantic dialect is primarily united by some features in common with both the New York City dialect (a marked absence of the cot-caught merger, a raising and diphthongizing of , and a short-''a'' split system) as well as the Midland/Southern dialects (''r''-fulness and strong fronting of , , and ). The variety's most widely studied subsets are Philadelphia English and Baltimore English. ==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. The ''caught'' class is raised and diphthongized towards . *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.) Generally, in the Mid-Atlantic system, the vowel is tensed (towards ) before the consonants , , , , and in a closed syllable (so, for example, ''bats'' and ''baths'' do not have the same vowel sound, being pronounced and , respectively), and in any words directly inflectionally derived from root words with this split. Therefore, ''pass'' and ''passing'' use the tense , but ''passage'' and ''passive'' use the lax . The lax and the tense reflexes of 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, in the closed-syllable set, ''began, ran,'' and ''swam'' alone remain lax. See ''Phonemic /æ/ tensing in the Mid-Atlantic region'' or click "show" below for more details. *Extreme fronting (followed by glides) in the starting places of these vowels: (for example, towards ), (for example, towards ) and (for example, towards the diphthongized ), 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mid-Atlantic American English」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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