american english - Where in the US are these vowels mispronounced? "got" -> "gat"


It is rather rare to hear a speaker pronounce vowels like this, so I would like to know where it comes from. I live in North America, so my only experience is with American English.


Most notably, I have heard /ɑ/ in "got" pronounced as /æ/. As well, "no" as "nɛ". And come to think of it, "actually" which should use /æ/ is being pronounced as /ɛ/.


A more common occurrence may be the /e/ in "okay" substituted for /ə/, /ɪ/, or /i/.


I have found a couple of examples from this video, such as "end" as [ɪ]nd. It's not necessary to watch but may help. It's not the prominent accent that I've heard, as in the first example.


But my question is where did this begin, and where in the US does it occur most?



Answer



/a/ ⟹ /æ/ is part of the ongoing sound change now occurring in northern urban speech groups in American English called the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.


This is a big change in English vowels, as complex and thorough as the Great Vowel Shift that moved all the long vowels in English but left the short ones in the same place, thus producing Early Modern English from Middle English.


Diagrams and examples of both of these shifts are available here.


The Northern Cities Shift been a focus of study by sociolinguists for several decades. It also includes a number of other pronunciation variants that you may be familiar with, as shown on the charts.


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