User talk:Erinius

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

In case you are curious, btw, in addition to Avis (1961) The 'New England Short o': A Recessive Phoneme as you had found:

• Collester (1907) Notes on the "New England Short o."
• Trudgill (1998) "Short o" in East Anglia and New England
• German (2026) New England Short u and Short o (published just 3 weeks ago!)

It's not entirely gone, either. I think Trudgill's examples are still fairly accurate to today, at least for speakers who still have the feature:

• [ʊ] in hood
• [ɵ] in road (though rounding seems optional, perhaps approaching [ɤ̟ ~ ɤ̽])
• [oʊ] in go and low

It's not dissimilar to how you might hear American speakers from various areas (not just New England) pronounce words like room and roof with a vowel that sounds somewhere between [ʊ] and [ʌ] (i.e. [ɤ̞]-ish), as partially described in Phonological history of English close back vowels § Shortening of /uː/ to /ʊ/ and the foot–strut neutralization described in the section after. ~ oklopfer (💬) 01:52, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! I found those sources myself very recently, haven't read them all yet. Cool to hear it's still around. I don't think I've ever noticed that "[ɤ̞]-ish" sound in words like room or roof, maybe it's just not really a thing in southern California or maybe I'd just interpreted it as a fronted/lowered variant of strut. That's really interesting. Erinius (talk) 02:14, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

You guys have a whole other thing going on with the California vowel shift. It's quite possible that you are already so accustomed to foot centralizing toward strut that it sounds rather unremarkable to your ears. Another very interesting case! ~ oklopfer (💬) 02:33, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Haha yeah. Anyway, do you know where this kind of pronunciation occurs? Or where I could read about it? Just curious, thanks. Erinius (talk) 05:21, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Presuming you mean occurrence of it in SoCal, off the top of my head the best example I know of is the very "lax" way that I hear SoCal speakers say put. It sounds almost like a diphthong [ʊʌ] to me, but also feels too short for a true diphthong. Nesler (2022) California Vowel Shift in Southern California: A Comparison of Regional Phonetics might be a good start?

If you were referring to that room/roof oddity instead, I know that I hear it frequently in Upper Midwest speakers. Rounding again is seemingly optional, [ʊ̞ ~ ɤ̽] is what I hear. I'd have to do some looking if there are any studies that mention it. Supposedly also occurs in Texas.

What makes the New England occurrence of the vowel distinct is that, whereas it is a realization of foot for all of those other regions, it is a realization of goat in NE, and supposedly historically used for as many as foot, lot, strut, and goose in addition to goat, though to what extent is not known, and not all concurrently.

Bonus: Philly strut is also near this sound. ~ oklopfer (💬) 12:55, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

I was asking about room/roof but yeah, cool to hear. Erinius (talk) 22:10, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

In that case, I found a good one which examines said foot lowering in MN and compares it to other dialects: Koffi (2016) The Lowering of High Lax Vowels in Central Minnesota English

I won't bother you more on this, just happened to be reading a lot about the NE short o lately and looking for similar instances of the phone in other AmE dialects, so it had struck a chord for me when your edit brought it up. Best wishes and thanks for entertaining. ~ oklopfer (💬) 23:35, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for all this! Erinius (talk) 02:09, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

Hi there! Thanks for signing up for the June 2026 GAN backlog drive! We have noticed that you have made little to no reviews during the drive. We, the coordinators, would appreciate if you'd pick up at least one GAN to review until the end of the month! Thank you. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 12:16, 18 June 2026 (UTC)