Western Pennsylvania English

thumb|right|250px|A sign using "Dahntahn" to mean "Downtown" in [[Downtown Pittsburgh]]

Western Pennsylvania English, known more narrowly as Pittsburgh English or popularly as Pittsburghese, is a dialect of American English native primarily to the western half of Pennsylvania, centered on the city of Pittsburgh, but potentially appearing in some speakers as far north as Erie County, as far east as Harrisburg, as far south as Clarksburg, West Virginia, and as far west as Youngstown, Ohio. The dialect is commonly associated with the working class of Pittsburgh; users of the dialect are colloquially known as "Yinzers".

Overview

Scots-Irish, Pennsylvania Dutch, Polish, Ukrainian and Croatian immigrants to the area all provided certain loanwords to the dialect (see "Vocabulary" below). Many of the sounds and words found in the dialect are popularly thought to be unique to Pittsburgh, but that is a misconception since the dialect resides throughout the greater part of western Pennsylvania and the surrounding areas. Central Pennsylvania, currently an intersection of several dialect regions, was identified in 1949 by Hans Kurath as a subregion between western and eastern Pennsylvania, but some scholars in the 20th century onwards have identified it within the western Pennsylvania dialect region. Since Kurath's study, one of western Pennsylvania's defining features, the cot–caught merger, has expanded into central Pennsylvania, moving eastward until being blocked at Harrisburg. Perhaps the only feature whose distribution is restricted almost exclusively to the immediate vicinity of Pittsburgh is monophthongization in which words such as house, down, found, and sauerkraut are sometimes pronounced with an "ah" sound, instead of the more standard pronunciation of "ow", rendering eye spellings such as hahs, dahn, fahnd, and sahrkraht.

Speakers of Pittsburgh English are sometimes called "Yinzers" in reference to their use of the second-person plural pronoun "yinz." The word "yinzer" is sometimes heard as pejorative, indicating a lack of sophistication, but the term is now used in a variety of ways. Older men are more likely to use the accent than women "possibly because of a stronger interest in displaying local identity...."

Phonology

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

|+ Vowels of Western Pennsylvania English

! rowspan="2" |

! colspan="2" | Front

! Central

! colspan="2" | Back

! Close

! Mid

!Open

! Diphthongs

| colspan="6" |

A defining feature of Western Pennsylvania English is the cot–caught merger, in which (as in ah) and (as in aw) merge to a rounded (phonetically ). As in most other American dialects, the father–bother merger also occurs. Therefore, cot and caught are both pronounced ; Don and dawn are both . While the merger of the low back vowels is also widespread elsewhere in the United States, the rounded realizations of the merged vowel around is less common, except in Canada, California and Northeastern New England. That is one of the few features, if not the only one, restricted almost exclusively to western Pennsylvania in North America, but it can sometimes be found in other accents of the English-speaking world, such as Cockney and South African English. so that tile is pronounced ; pile is pronounced ; and iron is pronounced . That phenomenon allows tire to merge with the sound of tar: .

The vowel (phonemically an sequence) is phonetically close-mid .

Johnson notes a tendency to diphthongize to not only before nasals (as in GenAm) but also before all voiced consonants (as in bad ) and voiceless fricatives (as in grass ). This has since been reversed and now is confined to the environment of a following nasal, matching the GenAm allophony.

An epenthetic (intruding) sound may occur after vowels in a few words, such as water pronounced as , and wash as . For example, well is pronounced as ; milk as or ; role as ; and cold as . The phenomenon is also common in African-American English.

The word mirror can be pronounced as the single-syllable mere.

Western Pennsylvania English speakers may use falling intonation at the end of questions, for example, in "Are you painting your garage?" (with pitch rising in intonation up to just before the last syllable and then falling precipitously).

cubberd - (n.) closet
craw - (n.) crawfish
diamond - (n.) town square
doll baby - (n.) complimentary term for an attractively childlike girl or woman (reversal of "baby doll")
drooth - (n.) drought
Dubbya - (n.) Letter "W", Often used when saying "www." Or a local station
dupa - (n.) parental term (of Polish origin) for a child's backside
feature - (v.) to think about, understand, or imagine
grinnie - (n.) chipmunk
gumband - (n.) rubber band; to tease (often, jag off or jag around)
jumbo - (n.) bologna lunch meat
n'at () - et cetera; and so on; a "general extender";
neb - (v.) to pry into a conversation or argument intrusively or impertinently
reverend - (adj.) extreme;
Squill - (n.) shortening of Squirrel Hill.
Stillers - (n.) alternate pronunciation of the Pittsburgh Steelers
sweep - (v.) to vacuum
sweeper - (n.) vacuum cleaner (also used in Ohio and Indiana; from carpet sweeper)
tossle cap - (n.) knit hat designed to provide warmth in cold weather
trick - (n.) a job shift (as used in West-Central Pennsylvania)
yins, yinz, yunz, you'uns, or youns - (pronoun) plural of you (second-person personal plural pronoun from Scots-Irish English)

Grammar

All to mean all gone: When referring to consumable products, the word all has a secondary meaning: all gone. For example, the phrase the butter's all would be understood as "the butter is all gone." This likely derives from German.
"Positive anymore": In addition to the normal negative use of anymore it can also, as in the greater Midland U.S. dialect, be used in a positive sense to mean "these days" or "nowadays". An example is "I wear these shoes a lot anymore". While in Standard English anymore must be used as a negative polarity item (NPI), some speakers in Pittsburgh and throughout the Midland area do not have this restriction. This is somewhat common in both the Midland regions (Montgomery 1989) and in northern Maryland (Frederick, Hagerstown, and Westminster), likely of Scots-Irish origin.
Reversed usage of leave and let: Examples of this include "Leave him go outside" and "Let the book on the table". Leave is used in some contexts in which, in standard English, let would be used; and vice versa. Used in Southwestern Pennsylvania and elsewhere, this is either Pennsylvania Dutch or Scots-Irish. Examples of this include "The car needs washed", "The cat wants petted", and "Babies like cuddled". More common constructions are "The grass needs cutting" or "The grass needs to be cut" or "Babies like cuddling" or "Babies like to be cuddled"; "The car needs washing" or "The car needs to be washed"; and "The cat wants petting" or "The cat wants to be petted." Found predominantly in the North Midland region, this is especially common in southwestern Pennsylvania. Need + past participle is the most common construction, followed by want + past participle, and then like + past participle. The forms are "implicationally related" to one another (Murray and Simon 2002). This means the existence of a less common construction from the list in a given location entails the existence of the more common ones there, but not vice versa. The constructions "like + past participle" and "need + past participle" are Scots-Irish. While Adams argues that "want + past participle" could be from Scots-Irish or German,
Kurt Angle
Tom Bradley
Steve Byrne
Myron Cope – Cope's colorful vocabulary added dozens of words to the dialect, including his most famous, "Yoi!"
Bill Cowher
Mike Ditka
Rich Fitzgerald
Billy Gardell – Although he grew up some of the time away from the city, Gardell sports a heavy Pittsburgh accent.
John Kasich
Michael Keaton
Joe Manganiello
Sophie Masloff
Billy Mays
Pat McAfee
Arnold Palmer
Trent Reznor
Fred Rogers – Rogers' accent is an example of the softer variation of the accent that was spoken by the middle class of the era that he grew up in.
Art Rooney
Dan M. Rooney

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

Pittsburgh Speech & Society, University of Pittsburgh
"It's Not the Sights, It's the Sounds", New York Times article, March 17, 2006 /9"Pittsburgh is the Galapagos Islands of American dialect")
"American Varieties: Steel Town Speak", part of PBS's Do You Speak American?
Pittsburghese: Welcome!, Duquesne University
Pittsburghese.com