Dialects in the Classroom

Features that affect the encoding and decoding of words

A diphthong is a combination of two vowels in the nucleus of a single syllable.  If you pronounce wide in Standard American English, for example, you’ll notice that when you pronounce the vowel you start with your mouth in position for /a/ and glide to /ɪ/.  All of what we call “long vowels” in English today are in fact diphthongized.  Historically they were actually short vowels held longer – thus the name.  You can get a feel for what this means by pronouncing teeth and teethe; you’ll notice that you hold the vowel longer in the second word.  Today they have been diphthongized, but the term long vowel has stuck.  In any case, in some dialects, /aɪ/ is now monophthongized (i.e. reduced to one vowel) to /a:/ (the colon indicates that the sound is held longer, i.e. lengthened).  Thus, wide may be pronounced [wa:d] rather than [waɪd].  


On the other hand, the /ɔɪ/ diphthong may interchange with /ər/.  This is a classic feature of New Orleans English, though it is not limited to the city and is (or was, at least) found in many American dialects – perhaps most famously that spoken in New Jersey.  Today it is not heard as often as it once was, but it’s not unusual to come across people who use it.  Speakers may pronounce spoil as sperl or oil as earl.  The reverse phenomenon (girl as goyl) is extremely rare these days and you’re unlikely to come across it at all (and if you do, again, we’d love to hear from you!). 


In many American dialects, including here in New Orleans, the vowels /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ sound the same when they appear before a nasal (as in pen or hem).  These vowels are already so similar that even children who distinguish them in all contexts often have trouble learning the sound-letter correspondences, even when the sound is not followed by a nasal; those who attest the merger may encounter a little more confusion.


Likewise, the vowels in feel and fill (/i/ and /ɪ/) can sound the same before the l sound – even though speakers may pronounce these sounds differently in other contexts (for example, in beat vs. bit). As with the PIN-PEN merger, it helps to be aware of the specific contexts where this merger occurs, and be aware that some spelling/reading confusion may occur for speakers with this merger.


The vowels in car and core are neutralized before /r/ in dialects across South Louisiana.  This can result in occasional confusion (for example, carpet and corporate can sound nearly identical, as can car door and corridor) for instructors from elsewhere who don't have the merger and may have never encountered it.  Perhaps the most important effect of this merger that we’ve encountered is the frequent use in writing of are for or and vice-versa (“would you like chocolate are vanilla ice cream?” “Or you coming with us?”).  It’s worth checking with a student who appears to be misusing these words to see if it might be linked to their pronunciation. 


A major sound change that is currently underway in America, originating in the West and Midwest and spreading nationwide, is the merger of /a/ and /ɔ/ so that caught and cot (or Dawn and Don) are indistinguishable from each other.  This merger is not widespread in New Orleans, but confusion may arise when teachers with merged vowels teach those with distinct vowels or students with a merger encounter teachers who main'tain a distinction.


In places where the phonemes are distinct, the difference may be readily apparent to speakers with the merger (classically, New York, as immortalized by Mike Meyers on Saturday Night Live with his series of “Coffee Talk” sketches in the 1990s), or it may pass unnoticed.  In New Orleans, the distinction is clear to speakers who have it, but it may not be heard by those with a merger.  


Many teaching materials (notably, at least the first edition of CKLA) do not address this variation, often insisting that the vowels are distinct, and directing teachers to ask students to identify the vowel based on their own production of a series of words.  While these materials assure teachers it’s okay if students have trouble with the exercise, they also insist that the exercise is valuable. This type of exercise has the potential to produce frustration or at least confusion, however, when someone with a merger asks students to identify a distinction they don't make or when students with a merger are asked to identify a vowel distinction that is irrelevant to their literacy and in fact very difficult for them to distinguish, if they can do so at all.


An easy trick to get students who do not read yet and may not know the word cot (or understand what you mean when you ask them to give the past tense of the word catch) is to show them a picture of a hotdog and ask them what it is.  Those with the merger will pronounce both syllables with the same vowel.  Even if you have the merger, you should be able to hear the difference for those who distinguish it (though it may be subtle), since the syllables are adjacent to each other.  


Historically, across America, these three words were pronounced differently.  In many dialects today, two or even all three of these words are pronounced the same, as a result of a merger in the pronunciation of the vowels preceding /r/.  In New Orleans, you may encounter students for whom Mary and merry are pronounced [mɛri] but marry is [mari].  Other words affected include character and other words in which orthographic A precedes R.  


This feature appears to be relatively new in New Orleans, though it is well-documented in other varieties of North American English, notably that spoken in Canada, to which it has become ideologically linked.  We’re talking about the pronunciation of about, often mischaracterized in Canadian speech as aboot.  About, however, is pronounced entirely differently.  What is actually happening is that the initial vowel of the diphthong in /aʊ/ (also transcribed /aw/) is raising and centralizing to /ə/.  This only happens before voiceless consonants.  So, lout and loud have different vowels because of the voicing of the consonant that follows.  


The same process occurs for many speakers to the diphthong /aɪ/:  in many dialects, eyes and ice have different vowels, as do ride and right or prize and price.


In both cases, speakers may not even notice the difference in pronunciation, but we have encountered people who recognized it, so we present it here.


R-lessness (i.e. not pronouncing /r/ after vowels, as in Park the car at Harvard Yard → Pahk the cah at Hahvahd Yahd) was used by almost all New Orleanians in the 1950s.  Today, however, as in many places where r-lessness is attested, it is in rapid decline.  Many speakers still retain it, however; most notably, it remains a feature of African American English.


Most American literacy materials don't deal with the issue of r-lessness.  We recommend looking to British material for teachers who need to address it in their classroom.


In some dialects, most notably African American English, final -s may be deleted.  While this is generally interpreted as the deletion of a morpheme, as the -s affected is usually the one found in plural (bags), possessive (Mary’s), or third person singular (she walks) suffixes, some analyses have proposed that the process may be phonological instead, as non-morphemic -s may also be affected.  In New Orleans, you can find this in the pronunciation of names such as Tchoupitoulas or Ursulines, which you may encounter as Tchoupitoula and Ursuline.  


Similarly, the past tense marker, spelled -ed but pronounced /t/, /d/, or /əd/ depending on phonological context, may also sometimes be deleted.  Consequently, students may not pronounce the suffix when reading aloud, and may omit it when writing as well.  For example:  “Sorry for any confusion this may have cause.”

Conversely, the word mine may appear with a word final /s/.  This occurs as a result of a process linguists call paradigm leveling:  speakers make an analogy with other items in the same paradigm.  In this case, the analogy is with the rest of the set of possessive pronouns (yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs), all of which have a final /s/. So why shouldn’t mine?  The feature is widespread across South Louisiana and can also be found elsewhere in North America.  


All speakers of North American varieties of English reduce groups of consonants in certain contexts.  For example, in casual speech, it is normal to delete the /t/ in left when it precedes a word beginning with a consonant, such as side.  When the following word begins with a vowel, however (such as arm), the /t/ is retained.  Thus, left in left side is pronounced [lɛf] but it remains [lɛft] in left arm.1   


In some dialects, however, the final /t/ may be deleted even if the following word begins with a vowel.  While even in these dialects it is not systematically deleted, it presents a possible location for misspelling to occur. 


A very common feature of English dialects spoken in South Louisiana (and indeed around the country and the world, especially for speakers whose heritage communities did not speak English) is the pronunciation of the interdental fricatives /θ/ (as in thing or bath) and /ð/ (as in this or breathe) as /t/ and /d/ respectively (ting for thing; dis for this), or as /f/ and /v/ (baff for bath; breav for breathe).  This presents little impediment to decoding, but may present occasional issues with encoding – for example, some students when encoding words they may write them with a T, D, F, or V, since this is how they pronounce them out loud.


Metathesis is the technical term referring to the reversal of sounds.  This does not occur in English except as a historical development or by children learning to speak (consider small children who ask if they’re having pesketi (‘spaghetti’) for dinner).  In at least one very well-known case, both forms are retained to the modern day:  the pronunciation of ask as ax (as in Then he axed if he could borrow my pen). This pronunciation dates back to the 8th century AD. It is not specific to New Orleans English, and can in fact be heard just about anywhere English is spoken.  It was famously used by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales.  


For some speakers of New Orleans English, the consonant cluster /str/ may be pronounced /skr/.  Thus, street becomes skreet.  More frequently, however, /str/ is palatalized to become /ʃtr/.  Thus, stress becomes shtress. This is a sound change affecting much of North America, and younger speakers may have difficulty hearing the difference.



As you can see from the list above, many of the features you will hear your students use are not specific to New Orleans, and in fact are forms of variation they will encounter throughout their lives, wherever they go in the US.

Wolfram, Walt & Natalie Schilling. 2016. American English: Dialects and Variation (3rd edition). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.