Pacific Northwest English

Pacific Northwest English (also known, in American linguistics, as Northwest English) is a variety of North American English spoken in the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon, sometimes also including Idaho. Due to the internal diversity within Pacific Northwest English, current studies remain inconclusive about whether it is best regarded as a dialect of its own, separate from Western American English or even California English and/or influenced by Canadian English with which it shares its major phonological features. The dialect region contains a highly diverse and mobile population, which is reflected in the historical and continuing development of the variety.

Pacific Northwest English
Region	Cascadia, Northwestern United States (Oregon, Northern California and Washington)
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Ingvaeonic Anglo-Frisian Anglic English North American English American English Western American English Pacific Northwest English
Early forms	Old English Middle English Early Modern English
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

History

The linguistic traits that flourish throughout the Pacific Northwest attest to a culture that transcends boundaries. Historically, this hearkens back to the early years of colonial expansion by the British and Americans, when the entire region was considered a single area and people of all different mother tongues and nationalities used Chinook Jargon (along with English and French) to communicate with each other. Until the Oregon Treaty of 1846, it was identified as being either Oregon Country (by the Americans) or Columbia (by the British).

Linguists immediately after World War II tended to find few patterns unique to the Western region, as among other things, Chinook Jargon and other "slang words" (despite Chinook Jargon being an actual separate language in and of itself, individual words from it like "salt chuck", "muckamuck", "siwash" and "tyee" were and still are used in Pacific Northwest English) were pushed away in favor of having a "proper, clean" dialect. Several decades later, linguists began noticing emerging characteristics of Pacific Northwest English, although it remains close to the standard American accent.

Note that "Pacific Northwest" is a US notion, cutting off at the Canada-US border. In Canada the region north of the Canada-US border is generally called "West Coast".

Phonology

The Pacific Northwest English vowel space. Based on TELSUR data from Labov et al. The /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are indistinguishable in the F1/F2 means for three speakers from Vancouver, British Columbia, two speakers from Seattle, Washington, and three from Portland, Oregon.

Commonalities with both Canada and California

• Pacific Northwest English has all the phonological mergers typical of North American English and, more specifically, all the mergers typical of Western American English, including the cot–caught merger.
• Younger speakers of Pacific Northwest English also show features of the Canadian/California Vowel Shift, which moves front vowels through a lowering of the tongue:
  • /ɑ/ is backed and sometimes rounded to become [ɒ]. Most Pacific Northwest speakers have undergone the cot–caught merger. A notable exception occurs with some speakers born before roughly the end of World War II. In addition, one study found that in Portland, Oregon, a distinction might still be made by some speakers, especially women.
  • Throughout the Pacific Northwest, /æ/ is often backed towards [a] among younger speakers.
• There are also conditional raising processes of open front vowels. These processes are often more extreme than in Canada and the North Central United States.
  • Before the velar nasal /ŋ/, /æ/ becomes /eɪ/. This change makes for minimal pairs such as rang and rain, both having the same vowel /eɪ/.
  • Among some speakers in Portland and southern Oregon, /æ/ is sometimes raised and diphthongized to [eə] or [ɪə] before the nasal consonants [m] and [n]. This is typical throughout the U.S.
  • While /æ/ raising is present in Canadian, Californian, and Pacific Northwest English, differences exist between the groups most commonly presenting these features. Pre-nasal /æ/ raising is more prominent in Washingtonian speakers than in Canadian speakers.
• The close central rounded vowel [ʉ] or close back unrounded vowel [ɯ] for /u/ is found in Portland and some areas of Southern Oregon, as well as in Seattle and Vancouver. This fronting does not happen before /l/, where the vowel is backed instead. This is common throughout the country.

Commonalities with Canada

These commonalities are shared with Canada and the North Central United States which includes the Minnesota accent.

• Pacific Northwestern speakers tend to realize [oʊ] as in boat and [eɪ] as in bait with almost monophthongal values ([o] and [e]) instead of the diphthongs typical of most of the U.S.
  • In Cowlitz County, Washington, this is actually reversing, and the onset and upglide of /oʊ/ are getting further apart in apparent time.
• /ɛ/ and, in the northern Pacific Northwest, /æ/ tend to merge with /eɪ/ before the voiced velar plosive /ɡ/: egg and leg are pronounced to rhyme with plague and vague, with the merged vowel being in between /ɛ/ and /eɪ/. This feature is most frequently found in the areas north of Seattle, and is a feature shared by many northern Midwestern dialects and the Utah accent. In addition, sometimes bag will be pronounced bayg.
  • While /æ/ raising is present in Canadian, Californian, and Pacific Northwest English, differences exist between the groups most commonly presenting these features. /æ/ raising is more common in younger Canadian speakers and less common in younger Washingtonian speakers.
  • /ɛ/ and /eɪ/ may continue to be distinguished before /g/ by some speakers through length, with /ɛ/ being shorter than /eɪ/.

Commonalities with California

• Back vowels of the California Shift: In speakers born around the 1960s, and also among working-class young-adult females in Portland,(though not in Seattle,) there is a tendency to move the tongue forward in the first element of the diphthong /oʊ/. This is reminiscent of Midland, Mid-Atlantic, Southern U.S. English, as well as California English, but not Canadian English. This fronting does not appear before /m/ and /n/, for example, in the word home.
• Absence of Canadian raising: For most speakers, /aʊ/ (though, in Seattle, not /aɪ/) remains mostly lax before voiceless obstruents, although some variation has been reported. This likens the Pacific Northwest accent with Californian accents and contrasts it with Canadian (notably, though, most speakers from Vancouver, British Columbia, if included, do raise /aʊ/.)
• A recognizable though nonstandard trait is raising the short i /ɪ/ sound to an almost long ee [i] sound before ng, even when the g is dropped, such that the local pronunciation of syllable-medial or -final -ing [iŋ], even with G-dropping ([in]), takes on the same vowel quality as, but remains shorter than, the rime of bean or the traditional British pronunciation of been when stressed ([iːn]).

Miscellaneous characteristics

• Some speakers perceive or produce the pairs /ɛn/ and /ɪn/ close to each other, for example, resulting in a merger between pen and pin, most notably for some speakers in Eugene, Oregon, and Spokane, Washington.
• Some speakers in Cowlitz County may have the Bull-bowl merger.
• Some speakers may distinguish Mary from merry and marry in informal speech, while other speakers do not.

Lexicon

Several English terms originated in or are largely unique to the region:

• cougar: mountain lion
• duff: forest litter
• (high) muckamuck: an important person or person of authority, usually a pompous one (from Chinook Jargon, where it means "eats a lot; much food")
• potato bug: woodlouse
• skookum: (referring to a person) strong, powerful; (referring to a thing) big, good (from Chinook Jargon)
• spodie: An outdoor high school party in which attendees pay for and drink from a central container of mixed alcohol and sugary drinks.
• sunbreak: a passage of sunlight in the clouds during dark, rainy weather (typical west of the Cascade Mountains)
• tolo: Sadie Hawkins dance

Variation among Mormons

In Cowlitz County, Washington, outside the Mormon culture region, there are very few phonological differences between the speech of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and non-Mormons. The only statistically significant difference found was that Mormons had a higher F2 formant in /l/ following /i/, /oʊ/ and /ʊ/. This is in contrast to other studies finding some differences between Mormon and non-Mormon speech within the Mormon culture region.

See also

• California English
• Canadian English
• American English
• Chinook Jargon
• Chinook Jargon use by English Language speakers

References

• Boberg, Charles (2000). "Geolinguistic diffusion and the U.S.–Canada border". Language Variation and Change. 12 (1): 15. doi:10.1017/S0954394500121015. S2CID 144203687.
• Wolfram, Walt; Ward, Ben, eds. (2005). American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast (1st ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 140, 234–236. ISBN 978-1-4051-2109-5. LCCN 2005017255. OCLC 56911940. OL 16950865W.
• Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2005). The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change. Mouton de Gruyter. p. 68. ISBN 978-3-11-020683-8.
• Stanley, Joseph A. (December 1, 2020). "6. The Absence of a Religiolect Among Latter-Day Saints in Southwest Washington". The Publication of the American Dialect Society. 105 (1): 95–122. doi:10.1215/00031283-8820642. S2CID 229413823.
• Ward, Michael (2003). Portland Dialect Study: The Fronting of /ow, u, uw/ in Portland, Oregon (PDF). Portland State University. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 29, 2007.
• Wassink, Alicia Beckford (March 2015). "Sociolinguistic Patterns in Seattle English". Language Variation and Change. 27 (1): 31–58. doi:10.1017/S0954394514000234. ISSN 0954-3945. S2CID 145482971.

Further reading

• Ladefoged, Peter (2003). Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages. Blackwell Publishing.
• Metcalf, Allan (2000). How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Houghton Mifflin.
• Paulson, Tom (May 20, 2005). "Contrary to belief, local linguists say Northwest has distinctive dialect". Seattle Post‑Intelligencer. ISSN 0745-970X. Archived from the original on January 13, 2009.
• Romaine, Suzanne (2000). Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford University Press.

External links

• Hear Pacific Northwest English
• Phonological Atlas of North America