This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject Linguistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of linguistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinguisticsWikipedia:WikiProject LinguisticsTemplate:WikiProject LinguisticsLinguistics
This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions.
This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject Chicago, which aims to improve all articles or pages related to Chicago or the Chicago metropolitan area.ChicagoWikipedia:WikiProject ChicagoTemplate:WikiProject ChicagoChicago
This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject New York (state), a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of New York on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.New York (state)Wikipedia:WikiProject New York (state)Template:WikiProject New York (state)New York (state)
This redirect is within the scope of the WikiProject Cleveland, the scope of which includes Cleveland and the Greater Cleveland Area. If you would like to join us, please visit the project page; if you have any questions, please consult the FAQ.ClevelandWikipedia:WikiProject ClevelandTemplate:WikiProject ClevelandCleveland
This redirect is within the scope of WikiProject Michigan, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of Michigan on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MichiganWikipedia:WikiProject MichiganTemplate:WikiProject MichiganMichigan
Short of internalizing the IPA symbols and being able to "hear" them in my head as I read, I find my only avenue to really comprehend articles on this and alike subjects is to use the helpfully-provided rhymes. This article is a prime example of one that would benefit from recordings, because the subject matter is wholly auditory and the two current methods of explaining the subject matter are either inaccessible to the layperson, or a halfway measure dependent on the reader's own awareness of their distance from General American. 108.54.168.177 (talk) 15:27, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You can't use rhymes on such pages because:
Dialects differ in the amount of vowels, and sometimes their distribution. As a non-native near-RP speaker, I differentiate /ɑː/ (as in "father") from /ɒ/ (as in "lot") and /ɔː/ (as in "thought"). Such three-way distinction is impossible in most US accents, where either /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ merge into [ɑː] (called father–bother merger) or, as in Boston, /ɒ/ and /ɔː/ merge into [ɒː] (called cot-caught merger). Furthermore, many US speakers have bothfather-bother and cot-caught mergers, and therefore use only one vowel, namely /ɑː/. See how complicated this is? And this is not even the end: some non-cot-caught-merged US accents have /ɔː/ in some words (like "dog"), which I (as well as most UK/Australian/New Zealand speakers) pronounce with /ɒ/.
Dialects differ considerably in the realization of vowels. It is also not unusual for realizations of one vowel from a certain accent to overlap the realization of another vowel in another accent - even in speakers within the same city. For instance, Cockneysoup may sound identically to RPsoap - [səʊp].[1]
At present this article cites only one article specifically about the Northern Cities Shift, Gordon 2001. Most of the citations appear to be descriptions of specific dialects (Hillenbrand 2003; Mannell 2009), though some do specifically mention Northern Cities Shift (e.g. Labov, Ash, and Boberg 1997). A quick skim of the article doesn't show anything I know to be false, but I'd prefer to see more citations of work specifically dealing with the chain shift in question. Cnilep (talk) 03:55, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
