How do you pronounce "egg" and "leg"??? (places, accent)
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I've witnessed this weird phenomenon in many places I've lived where some people pronounce words like "egg" and "leg" with a similar Vowel to words like "face" or "tame". It sounds like "ayg" and "layg". Where does this odd pronunciation come from? I know it's not regional as I've heard it everywhere I've traveled but never at a high enough occurrence that it could be placed to a particular region.
Drag, Snag, Tag are the same way, northern cities vowel shifted, otherwise known as Canadian raising- common in the Upper Midwest.
Hmmm, those saying it's NCVS...
In NCVS, short e is more similar to "u" than long a. So a word like definitely or bread would sound like dufinitely and brud. Also, I think Canadian Raising is limited to only long I and OW sounds. So like becomes luik and about becomes abuhoot/aboat.
I've heard this in the South and in Baltimore, areas where NCVS is not present.
For me, the vowel of egg/leg is a little more open than the vowel of met/bet, but shorter than that of face/tame and without the glide (it's not ayyyyg). So it is somewhere between the two choices, not exactly either one of them.
I was going to hypothesize that the vowel of those words changes in the environment of the following -g, but I don't do this with "beg." Beg has the same vowel as met.
I'm in California, nowhere near any northern cities. And I don't have any vowel shift in bag, tag, etc.
Born and raised in the Midwest, at least in Iowa and Illinois it's pronounced the first way, like met or bet.
In Chicago, most say them with the same vowel as met but some select very few people say ayg or layg. These people sometimes also say warsh for wash. So I wonder if it made its way up from downstate, where those things are more common?
In NCVS, short e is more similar to "u" than long a. So a word like definitely or bread would sound like dufinitely and brud. Also, I think Canadian Raising is limited to only long I and OW sounds. So like becomes luik and about becomes abuhoot/aboat.
I've heard this in the South and in Baltimore, areas where NCVS is not present.
Hmmmm....it sounds a little...Irish to me?
Baltimore and Philly have virtually the same accent. Baltimore accent is a Midland accent, not a Southern accent.
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