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Pacific Northwest English (also known, in American linguistics, as Northwest English) is a variety of
North American English North American English (NAmE, NAE) is the most generalized variety of the English language as spoken in the United States and Canada. Because of their related histories and cultures, plus the similarities between the pronunciations (accents), ...
spoken in the U.S. states of
Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
and
Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...
, sometimes also including
Idaho Idaho ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Monta ...
and the
Canadian province Within the geographical areas of Canada, the ten provinces and three territories are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British Nor ...
of
British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, for ...
. 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 or
Standard Canadian English Standard Canadian English is the largely homogeneous variety of Canadian English that is spoken particularly across Ontario and Western Canada, as well as throughout Canada among urban middle-class speakers from English-speaking families, ex ...
, 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.


History

The linguistic traits that flourish throughout the Pacific Northwest attest to a
culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
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 The Oregon Treaty is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States that was signed on June 15, 1846, in Washington, D.C. The treaty brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to ...
of 1846, it was identified as being either
Oregon Country Oregon Country was a large region of the Pacific Northwest of North America that was subject to a long dispute between the United Kingdom and the United States in the early 19th century. The area, which had been created by the Treaty of 1818, co ...
(by the Americans) or
Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region i ...
(by the British). Linguists immediately after World WarII 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 favour 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.


Phonology


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: ** is backed and sometimes rounded to become . Most Pacific Northwest speakers have undergone the ''cot–caught'' merger. A notable exception occurs with some speakers born before roughly the end of World WarII. In addition, one study found that in Portland, Oregon, a distinction might still be made by some speakers, especially women. * 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 , becomes . This change makes for
minimal pair In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate ...
s such as ''rang'' and ''rain'', both having the same vowel . ** Among some speakers in Portland and southern Oregon, is sometimes raised and diphthongized to or before the nasal consonants and . This is typical throughout the U.S. **While raising is present in Canadian, Californian, and Pacific Northwest English, differences exist between the groups most commonly presenting these features. Pre-nasal raising is more prominent in Washingtonian speakers than in Canadian speakers.


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 as in ''boat'' and as in ''bait'' with almost
monophthong A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, wh ...
al values ( and ) instead of the
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
s typical of most of the U.S. ** In Cowlitz County, Washington, this is actually reversing, and the onset and upglide of are getting further apart in apparent time. * and, in the northern Pacific Northwest, tend to become before the voiced velar plosive : ''egg'' and ''leg'' are pronounced to rhyme with ''plague'' and ''vague''. 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 raising is present in Canadian, Californian, and Pacific Northwest English, differences exist between the groups most commonly presenting these features. raising is more common in younger Canadian speakers and less common in younger Washingtonian speakers. ** and may continue to be distinguished before /g/ by some speakers through length, with being shorter than .


Commonalities with California

* Back vowels of the California Shift: The Canadian/California Shift developing in Pacific Northwest English also includes these additional features only reminiscent of California English but not Canadian English (especially among working-class young-adult females): ** The close central rounded vowel or close back unrounded vowel for is found in Portland and some areas of Southern Oregon, but it is generally not found further north, where the vowel remains the close back rounded . ** In speakers born around the 1960s, there is a tendency to move the tongue forward in the first element of the diphthong . This is reminiscent also of Midland, Mid-Atlantic, and Southern U.S. English. This fronting does not appear before and , for example, in the word ''home''. * Absence of
Canadian raising Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
: For most speakers, (though, in Seattle, not ) remains mostly lax before voiceless
obstruent An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...
s, 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 .)


Miscellaneous characteristics

* Some speakers perceive or produce the pairs and close to each other, for example, resulting in a merger between ''pen'' and ''pin'', most notably for some speakers in
Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast. As of the 2020 United States Census, ...
and
Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the ...
.


Lexicon

Several English terms originated in or are largely unique to the region: * ''cougar:'' mountain lion * ''duff:''
forest litter The forest floor, also called detritus, duff and the O horizon, is one of the most distinctive features of a forest ecosystem. It mainly consists of shed vegetative parts, such as leaves, branches, bark, and stems, existing in various stage ...
* ''(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 A woodlouse (plural woodlice) is an isopod crustacean from the polyphyleticThe current consensus is that Oniscidea is actually triphyletic suborder Oniscidea within the order Isopoda. They get their name from often being found in old wood ...
Vaux, Bert and Scott Golder. 2003
The Harvard Dialect Survey
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
* ''spendy:'' expensive * '' sunbreak:'' a passage of sunlight in the clouds during dark, rainy weather (typical west of the Cascade Mountains) *''tolo:'' Sadie Hawkins dance *''spodie:'' An outdoor high school party in which attendees pay for and drink from a central container of mixed alcohol and sugary drinks. Generally limited to the
Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...
area.


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 speech science and phonetics, a formant is the broad spectral maximum that results from an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract. In acoustics, a formant is usually defined as a broad peak, or local maximum, in the spectrum. For harmoni ...
in following , and . 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 Canadian English (CanE, CE, en-CA) encompasses the varieties of English native to Canada. According to the 2016 census, English was the first language of 19.4 million Canadians or 58.1% of the total population; the remainder spoke French ( ...
*
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...
* Chinook Jargon * Chinook Jargon use by English Language speakers


Notes


References

* * * * * *


Further reading

* ''Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages''.
Peter Ladefoged Peter Nielsen Ladefoged ( , ; 17 September 1925 – 24 January 2006) was a British linguist and phonetician. He was Professor of Phonetics at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught from 1962 to 1991. His book '' A Cour ...
, 2003. Blackwell Publishing. * ''Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics''. Suzanne Romaine, 2000. Oxford University Press. * ''How We Talk: American Regional English Today''. Allan Metcalf, 2000. Houghton Mifflin. *


External links


Hear Pacific Northwest English


{{Languages of the United States American English Canadian English English language in Canada Culture of the Pacific Northwest Languages of Canada