User:Frrurtu/Sandbox3

Whitsoot English is a dialect of American English spoken in the metropolitan area of Whitsoot, Oregon.

Phonology

Whitsoot English is distinguished by the following phonological features:

• The California Shift, which has spread upwards from California into much of Oregon and Washington, involves a counterclockwise shifting of multiple front vowel sounds:

• /ɪ/ is lowered to something like [ɛ~ɛ̝].
• /ɛ/ is lowered to [æ].
• /æ/ is lowered to [a].

• The cot-caught merger, through which the vowel sounds /ɑː/ and /ɔː/ merge. This feature is common throughout most of North America besides the Upper Midwest, South, and Northeast. The resulting quality is something like [ɑ~ɒ].
• The pin-pen merger, through which /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ merge before /n/ and /m/. The merged quality also participates in the California Shift, and may be realized anywhere from [ɛ̝] to [æ]. This feature is best known as part of Southern American English, but also exists elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest - see Pacific Northwest English.
• /ʊ/ is fronted to something like [ʊ̈]. This is common elsewhere in the Western United States.
• /uː/, however, stays fairly backed in the mouth, around [u] or [ʊu] at the furthest front. Within the United States, this feature is mostly reserved to the Upper Midwest and Northeast and to certain ethnicity-specific dialects such as African-American Vernacular English and Chicano English.
• The sew-so split, a feature unique to Whitsoot English, which involves /oʊ/ splitting into two phonemes:

• A fronted vowel whose quality can range from [ɜʊ~əʊ] to [øː~øʉ]. This is used after coronal consonants except before /l/ and labial consonants (soak, toad, note, stoat, dose, joke - but not soul, dope, Toby), in open syllables (sew, know, row), and in conjugations of these morphologically open syllables (sewed, knows, rows - but not nose or rose).
• A backed, monophthongized vowel [oː]. This is used in all other phonetic environments (boast, loan, roach, moan), in some function words where the fronted vowel would be expected (so, though, ago) as well as in many foreign or novel words (Osaka, lo mein, Kodak).

• Some raising of /æ/ before nasals and /g/, but unlike most of the Western United States, it only raises to about [æə] or [ɛ̞ə] at the highest.
• Limited to nonexistent raising of front vowels before /ŋ/ - for example, sing is just [sɛ̝ŋ] instead of [siŋ].
• Limited to nonexistent Canadian raising of either /aɪ/ or /aʊ/.
• Initial /θ/ voices to /ð/ when the consonant after the next vowel is also voiced. For example, thanks is pronounced [ðaŋks], which is often written "the-anks" in eye dialect as a hallmark of Whitsoot English. Thick and thin [θɛk ən ðɛn] is another common shibboleth.
• /ɔɪ/ is unrounded to [ʌɪ~ɤi]. A well-known billboard near the edge of Whitsoot, which greets new residents and is a common location for photographs by tourists, says "Movin' to Whitsoot? Ya made a good chice!"