A history of the English Language

New York City.
Although often considered a part of the Eastern New England dialect, the speech of New 
York City and adjacent counties is on the whole quite different. The occurrence of 
r
has 
increased significantly since World War II, and its frequency among various groups of 
speakers has become a reliable indicator of social class.
32
Cot
and 
caught
are 
phonemically contrasted 
because the 
o
in words like 
cot
and 
top,
before 
voiceless stops, is almost always unrounded. The pronunciation of 
curl
like 
coil, third
as 
thoid
is the characteristic most distinctive of New York City in the popular mind, 
although it should be added that among cultivated New Yorkers 
curl
and 
coil
are 
phonemically distinct 
3. 
Upper North. 
Western New England, upstate New York, and the basin of the Great Lakes share 
features of pronunciation that derive from the original settlement and the spread of the 
population westward through the water route of the lakes. Like the speech of eastern New 
England, the Upper North dialect distinguishes [o] in words like 
mourning
and 
hoarse
from 
in 
morning
and 
horse
. Also like the dialect of eastern New England and in 
contrast with the prevailing forms of the Pennsylvania settlement area, the Upper North 
has [ð] regularly in 
with,
[s] in 
grease
(verb) and greasy, and [U] in 
roots
.
 The Linguistic 
Atlas of the Upper Midwest
(see § 255) shows that traces of the boundary can be 
extended beyond the Mississippi into Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, 
although it is less distinct than the boundary in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, just as the 
boundary in those states is less distinct than that of the original settlements in 
Pennsylvania. Because the speech of the Upper North differs strikingly from that of 
eastern New England in its retention of postvocalic [r] and in the occurrence of the vowel 
[æ] in words like 
ask,
it is necessary to separate these two Northern varieties, with a 
prominent boundary running in a northerly direction from the mouth of the Connecticut 
River to the Green Mountains of Vermont. 
4. 
Lower North.
Like the dialect of the Upper North, that of the Lower North preserves the 
r
in all 
positions and has [æ] in 
fast, ask, grass,
etc. Within the Lower North region one of the 
two major subareas is the Middle Atlantic, which includes the eastern third of 
Pennsylvania below the Northern-Midland line, the southern half of New Jersey, the 
northern half of Delaware, and the adjacent parts of Maryland. The speech of this subarea 
has the unrounded vowel in 
forest
as well as in 
hot,
the [
ε
] of egg in 
care, Mary, merry,
and a merging of [o] and 
before [r] and 
four 
and
 forty
. The other major subarea
32 
See William Labov, 
The Social Stratification of English in New York City
(Washington, DC, 
1966), pp. 63–89, 207–43, 
et passim
. 
A history of the english language 358

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includes the speech of western Pennsylvania and its derivatives in Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois. Although closely related to the Middle Atlantic dialect, it has some differences of 
pronunciation such as the merging of the vowels in