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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 (sew, toad, note, stoat, dose, joke - but not soul, dope, Toby) and in open syllables.
- A backed, monophthongized vowel [oː]. This is used in some function words where the fronted vowel would be expected (so, though, ago) as well as in