Philadelphia English

History

Linguistic features

Pronunciation

Vowels

• vowel: A feature unique to Middle Atlantic speakers and southern New Englanders is the raising and diphthongizing of, as in, to or even higher. The raised variants often appear as diphthongs with a centering glide. As a result, Philadelphia is resistant to the cot–caught merger. Labov's research suggests that this pattern of raising is essentially complete in Philadelphia and seems no longer to be an active change.
• Southeastern vowel fronting: One of the features that Philadelphia shares with dialects of the whole Southeastern United States is the fronting of a variety of vowels. This includes and ; the resulting allophones are around and, respectively. Generally, greater degrees of fronting are heard when the vowels appear in "free" positions than in "checked" positions. Fronting does not occur in the context of following liquids leading to a significant difference between, e.g., goat and goal. The fronting of and is well established in Philadelphia, though cross-generational data show that it remains an active change. Fronted nuclei in are well established in Philadelphia speech as in New York. More recent research has noted a tendency among the middle-aged and younger generation of Philadelphians to raise the vowel, resulting in., the vowel in foot, is sometimes fronted though not to the degree seen with and.
• Short-a split: As in New York and Baltimore accents, historical "short a" has split into two phonemes: lax and tense . Their distribution in Philadelphia along with Baltimore, however, is different from that of New York City: for instance, the words mad and sad do not rhyme in Philadelphia or Baltimore, but do for New York City and most other English dialects. Not all Philadelphians have this feature and some are beginning to favor the more General American tensing of short a only before nasals ; in fact, as a general rule, native Philadelphians only consistently have this split system if their own parents are native Philadelphians.
• Mary–marry–merry three-way distinction: As in New York accents and most native English accents outside North America, there is a three-way distinction between Mary ~, marry, and merry ~. However, in Philadelphia some older speakers have a merger of and before , so that merry is merged instead with Murray. Labov, Ash, and Boberg report that about one third of Philadelphia speakers have this merger, one third have a near-merger, and one third keep the two distinct. Relatedly, as in New York, many words like orange, Florida, and horrible have before rather than the used in many other American dialects.
• Canadian raising occurs for but not for . Consequently, the diphthong in like may begin with a nucleus of mid or even higher position, which distinguishes it from the diphthong in line. Canadian raising in Philadelphia occurs before voiceless consonants, and it is extended to occur before some voiced consonants as well, including intervocalic voiced stops as in tiger and spider. Fruehwald argues that has actually undergone a phonemic split in Philadelphia as a result of Canadian raising. The raising of is unusual as the innovators of this change are primarily male speakers while the other changes in progress are led primarily by females. The sociolinguistic evidence suggests this raising is a fairly recent addition to Philadelphia speech.
• ,, and vowels: Traditional Philadelphia speech shows lowered and/or laxed variants of were common:. The recent sociolinguistic evidence indicates a reversal of this trend such that the vowel is now commonly raised and fronted. This raising is heard primarily before consonants. The Linguistic Atlas researchers recorded lax variants of near. As with, recent research suggests this trend is being reversed by raising and fronting of the vowel often to a position well beyond. This raising occurs before consonants ; in word-final position, remains lowered and lax. Both of these can lead to nonstandard phonemic incidence.
• Labov's research has indicated a tendency toward lowering of the lax vowels and. This pattern is not yet well established and is labeled by Labov as an "incipient" change.
• Many Philadelphians use a rather high, back, and perhaps even rounded vowel for as in ; something near. The so-called horse–hoarse merger takes place, and the merged vowel is typically mid to high back; it can be as high as. As noted in New York, these tendencies toward backing and raising of and may constitute a chain shift. The evidence suggests the movement of began this shift, and this vowel is relatively stable today, while generational differences are heard in the shifting of.
• , as in may be more raised than in other dialects; sometimes it is as high as.
• , as in, may show raised and back variants. In some cases, the vowel is in the high, back corner of the vowel space near. This is reportedly a recent development and is one more common among male speakers.

  Consonants

• Philadelphia forms the core of the one fully rhotic major region of the traditional American East Coast. This area runs from Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey down to Delaware and northern Maryland, and remains fully r-pronouncing today.
• *Non-rhoticity can be found in some areas of Philadelphia, however such as among working-class male speakers specifically from South Philadelphia, especially those born in the first half of the twentieth century and of Italian or Jewish descent. On the other side of the socioeconomic spectrum, non-rhoticity in speakers from the Philadelphia Main Line may be a result of wealthy families sending their children to expensive boarding schools in the United Kingdom up until the 1960s and thus acquiring a "Transatlantic" accent. Non-rhoticity is most prevalent among black Philadelphians, who largely do not demonstrate the regional speech features of Philadelphia English; instead, many black Philadelphians speak African-American Vernacular English.
• Consonant changes, especially reductions and lenitions, are very common in informal conversational speech, so that:
• *The sibilant is palatalized to before. Thus, the word streets might be pronounced "shtreets".
• * L-vocalization is quite pervasive in Philadelphia speech. Phonetically it may be realized as something like or a velar or labio-velar glide, or, or the consonant may be deleted altogether. Among Philadelphians, as in other dialects, vocalization occurs quite frequently in word-final and pre-consonantal contexts. In a more unusual development, vocalization may also occur inter-vocalically in Philadelphia. This tendency is more common when appears following low vowels bearing primary word stress. This variable also shows some lexical conditioning, appearing, for example, with exceptionally high frequency in the pronunciation of the name of the city. This, in part, leads to the stereotype of Philadelphia being pronounced as "Fluffya" or "Filelfia."
• * As in other areas, the interdental fricatives and are often realized as stops, and or affricates and in Philadelphia speech. This variation appears to be a stable class-stratified feature with the non-fricative forms appearing more commonly in working class speech.
• * The yew–hew merger can be found, as in New York City, in which words like human and huge, which begin with an cluster, the is commonly deleted giving and.
• * Consonant cluster reductions, such as removing the "t" sound from consonant clusters, so that "mustard" sounds more like "mussard," or "soft" like "sawff."

  Phonemic incidence

• On is traditionally pronounced, phonemically matching the South and Midland varieties of American English, thus rhyming with dawn rather than don. However, the Northern has also been reported.
• The word water is commonly pronounced , rather than the more standard English. This is considered by many to be the defining characteristic of a Philadelphia dialect, even among young Philadelphians.
• The word towel is commonly pronounced, like tal in the word tally.
• Both long-e and long-a sounds may be shortened before. Eagle rhymes with giggle ; league rhymes with big ; vague and plague rhyme with peg. For some Philadelphians, colleague and fatigue also have . However, these are words learned later, so many speakers use the more standard American and.
• In words like gratitude, beautiful, attitude, Baltimore, and prostitute, the i may be pronounced with the ee sound, as in bee.

  Lexicon

Notable examples of native speakers

Lifelong speakers

• Chuck Barris — "Barris' Philly accent"
• Bob Brady — "a thick Philly accent."
• David Brenner — "he never tried to dump his Philadelphia accent"
• Jim Cramer — "his pronounced Philly accent"
• The Dead Milkmen — "meandering punk rock, and heavy Philly accents"
• Tim Donaghy — Philly accent remains as thick
• Johnny Dougherty — "thick Philadelphia accent"
• Joan Jett — "her distinct Philadelphia accent & swagger"
• Joe Kerrigan — "with his curt Philadelphia accent"
• Jim Lynam — "speaks in a fast, choppy tone with a distinct Philadelphia accent."
• Herb Magee — "Philadelphia University coach, whose accent, Irish mug, and hoops pedigree epitomize the hometown he's never left"
• Bam Margera — "Not sure if you’ve heard the Philly patois?...star Bam Margera, who is from nearby West Chester, has it."
• Chris Matthews — "I don’t think I ever realized I had a Philadelphia accent"
• Mike Mayock — "With his thick Philly accent"
• Kathleen McGinty — "McGinty intones in a Philadelphia accent."
• Patrick Joseph Murphy — "Murphy hasn't lost his thick Philly accent"
• Jimmy Pop of Bloodhound Gang — noted for singing in a "Philly accent."
• Kellyanne Conway — of whom it was once observed that "she’s such a hoagiemouth that it’s impossible to even say her name without sounding like you, too, speak hoagiemouth"

  Lifelong non-rhotic South Philadelphia speakers

• Joey Bishop — "an accent as thick as a porterhouse steak"
• Larry Fine — "mimic Fine's Philadelphia accent"
• William Guarnere and Edward "Babe" Heffron — "the old South Philly accent"
• Dom Irrera — "distinctive Philadelphia accent"

  Marginal speakers

• Gloria Allred — "slightly nasal, Philadelphia-accented voice that can drip with sarcasm"
• Kevin Bacon and Bruce Willis — "two native sons, Bruce Willis and Kevin Bacon, who, at least in interviews early in their career, before accent reduction training kicked in, let their diphthong freak flags fly."
• Jill Biden — "She exaggerates her Philadelphia suburbs accent, which is already pretty strong."
• Noam Chomsky — "I speak with the accent from a certain area in northeastern Philadelphia where I grew up."
• Garrett "G. Love" Dutton — "a watered-down Philadelphian accent"
• Tina Fey — "Pennsylvania-native Tina Fey showcased the accent"
• Benjamin Netanyahu — "his Philly-flecked American English a vestige of his childhood years in suburban Cheltenham."

  In media