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North-Central American English (also known as the Upper Midwestern or North Central dialect in the United States) is an American English dialect native to the Upper Midwestern United States, excluding the geographically somewhat overlapping Inland North dialect region and areas to its east.〔 The North Central dialect region forms a definitive band stretching from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to eastern Montana, including between these the northern tip of Wisconsin, the whole northern half of Minnesota, some of northern South Dakota, and most of North Dakota; however, many speakers of the dialect are also found throughout Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Wisconsin (except for metropolitan Milwaukee), as well as in the northern half of Iowa.〔(Phonological Atlas of North America: Nation Map )〕 The North Central dialect's pronunciation quality is often popularly (though imprecisely and stereotypically) recognized as a Minnesota accent. It is considered a residual dialect region, distinct from the neighboring regions of the American West, the North, and Canada. A sub-dialect is spoken in Southcentral Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley, which was settled in the 1930s by Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin immigrants.〔Purnell, T., Raimy, E., & Salmons, J. (2009). "Defining dialect, perceiving dialect and new dialect formation: Sarah Palin's speech." Journal of English Linguistics 37 (pp. 331–355). pp. 346, 349.〕 Another sub-dialect is local to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, largely influenced by the immigration of Finnish speakers to that area at the turn of the nineteenth century. ==Phonology== The sounds of the North Central dialect follow a General American pronunciation system, except for these distinctions: * (the vowel in the word ''boot'') and (the vowel in ''boat'') are conservatively formed in the back of the mouth, when compared to General American (in which the tongue is typically more fronted). and (the vowel in ''bait'') may even lose their glide-like quality, moving towards a "glideless" (monophthongal) and , respectively. is more commonly pronounced as a monophthong than , and a monophthong is more common in ''coat'' than in ''ago'' or ''road'', which indicates phonological conditioning. Monophthongs are more common in the northernmost states like Minnesota and the Dakotas than in Iowa and Nebraska. *Universal /æ/ tensing: the "short ''a''" sound (as in ''had'', ''bag'', ''past'', etc.) is slightly raised and lengthened to approximately (as in ''head'', ''beg'', ''pest'', etc.), or even diphthongized to . * */æ/ tensing especially before /ɡ/ and /ŋ/: The near-close vowel /æ/ is strongly tensed before voiced velars (as in ''bag'', ''rag'', etc.) and (as in ''bang'', ''rang'', etc.) to open-mid or even close-mid , or to the diphthong ; thus, the ''bag'' and ''magazine'' , for instance, sounds very similar to ''beg'' and ''mega-zeen'' , or even higher in the mouth, like the vowel in the first syllable of ''bagel'' or ''pagan'': thus ''bag'' and ''magazine'' as and . The "short ''a''" vowels of ''flag'', ''lag'', ''sag'', ''tag'', ''dragon'', ''agriculture'', etc. often shift so that their stressed syllables rhyme with ''plague'' or ''vague''.〔 *Both variants of Canadian raising: For the first element in the diphthongs (as in ''pie'') and (as in ''pow''), the tongue is raised to the sound in certain words—the sound change in these two diphthongs are considered two variants of a phenomenon known as "Canadian raising" that is spreading throughout North America. Raising of is more common than raising of . Raising mostly occurs before voiceless consonants, but sometimes before voiced consonants, in particular words like ''fire'', ''tiger'', and ''spider''. Canadian raising causes a distinction, for example, between ''rider'' and ''writer'' , and in the vowels of ''bowed'' versus ''bout'' ). Raising of may result in a diphthong like (so that ''bout'' may almost sound like ''boat''). * *Unraised → : The diphthong , when not subject to raising, often starts with a back vowel, . * The vowels of ''roof'' and ''root'' , usually pronounced with the same vowel as ''boot'', are sometimes shortened with , the same vowel as ''foot''. *Traces of a pitch accent: As in Norwegian, a pitch accent may persist in some areas of heavy Norwegian or Swedish settlement, and among people who grew up in those areas, some of whom are not of Scandinavian descent. *Cot–caught merger:〔 The vowel as in ''ought'' and as in ''odd'' (as well as historical as in ''ah'') are merged to a centrally-located, unrounded, open-mouth vowel sound . *Mary–marry–merry merger: Words like ''perish'', ''parish,'' and the name ''Parrish'' all become homophones, because all three of their vowel sounds merge into before any ''r'' sound. This is a common phenomenon throughout the United States, including in many General American accents. 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「North-Central American English」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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