Our Changing Language

The evolving dialects of the Pacific Northwest

Story by Ben Johnson

If English in the Pacific Northwest was a person, how would you describe it?

Kristin Denham leans back in her chair, taken aback by the question. She looks up at the ceiling in her office, thinking for a few seconds before suddenly jerking forward with the answer.

“Surprising,” she says with a smile.

Denham, a professor of linguistics and department chair at Western, wrote a book on linguistics — literally, a thick green textbook titled “Linguistics for Everyone” which she compiled with fellow Western professor Anne Lobeck.

While the region is associated with fish-throwing, coffee drinking and tech companies, the Pacific Northwest doesn’t have a reputation for a unique accent.

“Many people here think it’s a standard way of speaking,” Denham says.

But the West, once categorized by linguistic giant William Labov as an “area defined by the absence of features found in the Northern and Southern regions,” is developing its own quirks, habits and dialects throughout Washington, Oregon and California

In Washington, it starts with little things like eggs, bags and bagels.

Research by Alicia Wassink and Valerie Freeman at the University of Washington (2014) suggests English speakers in Seattle are changing the pronunciation of words that include an “a” sound followed by a “g”, like in the words above.

For example, say the word “bag” out loud. Do you find yourself saying something more like “beyg”? If so, you’re not alone.

This shift in pronunciation is called a “velar pinch,” and occurs when speakers merge the ending of their vowel sounds with the beginning of a “voiced velar,” which means the sound is formed between the hard palate, or roof of your mouth, and the soft palate in the back of your mouth. The “g” in bag is an example of this sound.

While many dialects in the United States experience this phenomenon, Washington State is unique because the raising occurs whenever this vowel comes before a voiced velar.

This leads to a vowel sound in “bag” that sounds more like the vowel in “bet.” When this occurs, linguists say the vowel has been raised.

It may be a subtle change, but Wassink’s research found widespread raising in Seattleites of all age groups and ethnicities in 2014.

Dialect changes are taking place across the country, with speakers in each region shifting the pronunciation of different groups of vowels. In the Midwest, the “Northern Cities Shift” describes the raising of vowels in words like “but”, which can transform into “bot” and then “bat”, according to research by Corrine McCarthy at Northwest University. Shifts are also currently taking place in the southern United States and in California.

If English in the Pacific Northwest were a person, it would share with its neighbors. According to research by Tyler Kendall, one of Wassink’s associates, features of Californian and Washingtonian English are also found in Oregon.

According to Kendall, changes like the velar pinch are pervasive, rapid and constant. Language is always changing, Kendall says, which doesn’t make his job as a linguistic researcher more difficult.

“It just makes it more interesting,” Kendall says.

Kendall is a professor at the University of Oregon who focuses his studies on the past — specifically a time when Portland was less weird, he says.

The most unifying linguistic feature of Pacific Northwest is called the “caught-cot merger,” and may have originated as early as the 1890’s, Kendall says.

The merger focuses on the two vowels in the words “cot” and “caught”, or like in the names “Dawn” and “Don.” In most parts of the country, the word “caught” is pronounced with a very specific vowel sound.

“Think of Woody Allen saying the word coffee — kawfee,” Kendall says.

But in the Pacific Northwest, this vowel sound has merged, creating an almost identical pronunciation for the words cot and caught. Surprisingly, recordings on wax cylinders — a precursor to vinyl records — from the 1890s show a nearly complete merger of these words in Oregonians, Kendall says.

While Kendall’s research focuses mostly on the past, he believes more targeted, specific dialects may become apparent in the west.

“Rather than one big dialect, the West may fracture into sub regions over time,” Kendall says.

Back in her office at Western, Denham says the history of linguistic change gives linguists a good idea about what to expect in the future.

She grabs a pen and paper on her desk and begins writing the words “egg” and “bag” as with characters from the International Phonetic Alphabet. She writes the raised versions of each vowel in bubbly blue cursive until the vowels are raised as high as they can go. Egg becomes “ayg”, bag becomes “bayg”. She points to the word “bayg,” now at the peak for vowel pronunciation.

“You can only raise so much until speakers are forced to lower again,” Denham says. “The words still need contrast or speakers won’t be able to communicate effectively.”

She draws an arrow that starts at the highest word and circles back to the bottom of the list. When vowel sounds reach the height of their pronunciation, they drop back down to the bottom for the process to start again, Denham says.

If the language of the Pacific Northwest was a person, it would always be changing.