Talk:Central Pennsylvania dialect

Why no cited sources?
This article does not cite sources because it is largely original work, based upon over 20 years of informal research by a native speaker of the the Central Pennsylvania dialect, who studies languages and dialects when not practicing law. vonratt68.83.178.70 23:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
 * That is a problem when it comes to wikipedia policy because No original research states that "Wikipedia is not the place for original research." and continues further saying "Citing sources and avoiding original research are inextricably linked: the only way to demonstrate that you are not doing original research is to cite reliable sources..." Unless this article can be proven as not being original research, then it does not belong on Wikipedia. MBob 23:46, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I think this article should be kept because of it's vital importance and inherent curiosity for readers. I found this to be very intresting but I think wide revisions need to be done along with back up citing if possible.Bronayur 04:57, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed. My family is of central Pennsylvanian origin and the accent as described is, insofar as I remember, extremely accurate.--Caliga10 22:54, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I live in Juniata County, and I think that most points in this article are fairly accurate. I disagree with one point, but I have not taken the liberty to edit it myself, since I have no way of backing it up with any formal citations. I agree with the comments above...that the article should remain on Wikipedia because it is interesting and important. The way communications have changed with the internet, tv, email, etc, our local dialects and ways of speaking are starting to melt together. It would be nice to preserve a record of the dialects that may not be present in the future, or may not necessarily be know in Central PA only.--Gypsywalker 12:48, 4 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I asked my father, who is a native of this region, to read this article and he also agrees that it is mostly accurate. He did suggest some additions which I'll try to fold into the article.--Caliga10 13:06, 5 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I am from this area and some of my relatives still live there. Our wide flung family has circulated this article amongst ourselves and agree that most of it sounds exactly like local people speak. Although Wikipedia is not the place for original research, not everything that has been researched has been published in journals. There has been much work on things Pennsylvanian in the past 75 years but this work seems often to have been chronicled only in unpublished MSC work and the like, or in places that are difficult to find. For example, I remember reading of the tonal qualities of the Central PA dialect which are a rising inflection at the end of sentences, even if they are not questions. This is widely enough known that I have been identified as a Central Pennsylvanian by a linguist on the basis of my residual rising inflection, even though my accent has changed very much over my years away. I have no way to track down the published references to this tonal quality, however. For what it is worth, I remain unable to pronounce "eagle" after living away for almost 40 years. parsnip13


 * Ok i am from Blair county Pennsylvania. Almost everything in this article is very accurate. I notice alot of these accents in the older generations. I have heard everything listed on this page spoken in life at school, home, or work. Everything is accurate and this article should not be deleted.
 * Seems that if the article is accurate, there's no need for original research as it's common knowledge of those who would know. If there's no objection outside of the 'original research' objection, it should be maintained. If there are extraneous objections to it, or grammar objections to the article itself, then those should be dealt with inside the article. LH 08:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm from southern Dauphin County, some of these I recognize, but why no mention of odd inflection? For example, when asking some questions we inflect the end of the sentence as if it were declaratory rather than interrogatory.  "Ya hungry." instead of "Are you hungry?"  "Wanna go fur a ride." instead of "Do you want to go for a ride?"  That's the most apparent distinction I can think of when it comes to the regional dialect.--71.207.53.189 (talk) 01:01, 13 March 2011 (UTC)


 * You've got to keep this!!! I grew up in Alexandria and never knew anyone there had an accent until I moved away for too many years. Upon returning after many years, I could then hear the accent. This article has a LOT of truth in it.  I may decide to quibble with a few items but by and large, it should definitely be kept.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.194.246.78 (talk) 01:29, 11 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I have lived in York, Pennsylvania for my entire life and if heard someone speak in the manner this article describes, I would think that they were either A, dumb as a rock, or B, a waitress in a roadside diner. I've never heard the word goonie... ever. I think there needs to be a clearer distinction that the dialect described here is exclusive among only the most uneducated, rural population. Any resident of the York city and suburbs would mock this type of speech if they heard it spoken.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.237.105.92 (talk) 16:12, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Adding and changing quote that's not fully explained
''It bears little resemblance to the Southeastern Pennsylvania accent spoken in the Philadelphia area, which is more similar to New York-New Jersey English than to accents spoken in the rest of Pennsylvania. For the most part, the speech of Central Pennsylvania is an accent, but there are enough distinguishing features for one to argue that it is not just an accent, but a dialect.''

The problem with this statement is that it only mentions one influence of the Southeastern Pennslyvania dialect. In this quote, it's similar to New York-New Jersey English. That's partly true, however, the most relevant accent to the Philadelphia dialect (most of southeast PA is in Delaware Valley) is the accent spoken in the Mid-Atlantic.

Also, to say people in Southeastern Pennsylvania have a similar accent to New Jersey, in the context it's used, may not be correct. It says New Jersey speaks an accent similar to New York, yet much of New Jersey, including the southwestern and central-west parts of NJ in the Delaware Valley, already has the same accent to Philadelphia. Read these this quote from the intro of the Philadelphia dialect Wikipedia page.

Unlike the dialects found in much of the rest of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia dialect shares some unusual features with the New York dialect and Southern American English, although it is a distinct dialect region.

Now read this quote from the intro of the Central Pennsylvania accent.

Central Pennsylvania speech is closely related to Western Pennsylvania speech, which is generally referred to as Pittsburgh English, although the speech extends beyond just the city of Pittsburgh, and also is closely related to the Southern accent, spoken in the Southeastern United States.

So if Philadelphia has features influenced by Southern American English, and the Yinzer which is closely related to the southern accent is similar to Central Pennsylvania's, wouldn't it mean that both places have similarities to Southern American English? Therefore, wouldn't there be a flaw in saying that Southeastern Pennsylvania's accent is not relevant to the rest of Pennsylvania's?

The Philadelphia dialect is, however, in most respects similar to the dialects of Wilmington, Delaware and Baltimore, together with which it constitutes what Labov describes as the "Mid-Atlantic Dialect".

This is also a quote from the intro part of the Philadelphia dialect page. In other words, while southern American English and the New York accent may have similarities to the Philadelphia/Southeastern PA accent, it's most relevant to the Mid-Atlantic (Delaware/Maryland/D.C/Northern Virginia).

I'm sure many of you who've studied dialects of Pennsylvania have studied various parts and may live in this state. Therefore, I'm sure you saw the Coatesville fires.

If you didn't, you could find it on Youtube. They interview many people who's homes were burnt. Coatesville is at the end of Chester county, which is branching towards the end of Southeastern PA and going into more of the Susquehanna type dialect, but I don't know if that's technically apart of Central Pennsylvania.

My point in watching those people who were being interviewed (I watched on Fox Philly), these people sounded very similar and resembled various lingual traits to both the central Pennsylvania, Yinzer, the southern United States and Mid-West. Honestly, it sounded even more relevant to that than it did to the Mid-Altantic accent. But this dialect in no way resembled the New York-North Jersey dialect, nor any other accent you may see in the Northeastern United States, excluding Northeastern Pennsylvania and South/Central New Jersey.

So here's what I'll be doing. I'll be resturcturing and adding to the quote on the intro part of this article, based on the evidence I've shown.

''It bears little resemblance to the Southeastern Pennsylvania accent spoken in the Philadelphia area, which is more similar to New York-New Jersey English than to accents spoken in the rest of Pennsylvania.

I'll change it to this:

''Although Southerneastern and Central Pennsylvania both have accents related to Southern American English, the Central Pennsylvania accent bears little resemblance to the Southeastern Pennsylvania accent. The accent spoken in the Philadelphia is more similar to Mid-Atlantic English and New York-New Jersey English than to accents spoken in the rest of Pennsylvania.''

I know the explanation was long, but I figured it was important since it's on the intro of the article, which is what people see when coming on here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.73.230.11 (talk) 20:43, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Major revision to the "Features" section.
I went through and did some major revisions to the Features section, bringing it more in line with linguistic norms. For example, I added IPA pronunciations and made some terminology changes. I've not added any sources, though, but just edited what was already there. This might help with making it easier to find sources for it. 207.255.35.246 (talk) 07:25, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Boring Boring and not useful to the lay reader
It has been a while since I checked the status of article. I must ask in all seriousness: What was the purpose of removing the sentence examples? To make the article less useful? More boring? Boringness is not a Wikipedia requirement. The examples made the piece come alive and made it useful to visitors to Central Pennsylvania who otherwise would be mystified by local speech. My brother-in-law recounts, even after 20 years, the first time someone asked him the incomprehensible "Where younz at?". If he had read this article (old version), he would have known to answer "Over yonder."

Many of us do not prefer IPA conventions and IPA is certainly not useful for lay readers. There is no harm in retaining the simplified phonetics of the original piece or in using any of the other formal phonetic conventions that are more familiar to the non-specialist reader such as respelling systems used by major doctionaries.

I applaud the link to the linguistics map and continue to wish someone had time to go over to State and look up more references. They exist but they are not online. (And no, I can't do it I live on another continent.) Parsnip13 (talk) 02:48, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I am from the area discussed and have generations from the area. All that was stated in the earlier edition was valid and was great examples for viewers. I looked up the topic again today and was highly disappointed to see all the examples of sentences and speech was removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.114.2.101 (talk) 00:08, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Interesting, probably correct, but Original Research
I have mixed feeling about this article. There isn't one reference in the whole thing - so there's no special reason to believe it. Except it sounds reasonable, perhaps the "wisdom of the crowds" has come through where no academic or even journalist has published anything. According to current rules, this WP:OR doesn't belong here. It also sounds a bit like "those ignorant rustics - see how funny they talk" which is a pretty ignorant attitude in itself. Well I won't ask that the article be deleted as long as it strikes me as providing some good information, but others likely will, and they'll have a good case unless somebody finds some sources. Smallbones (talk) 05:31, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. This is definetly WP:OR. I think it should be deleted. Gerry D (talk) 00:55, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Let me see what Dr. Labov of Penn and Dr. Johnstone of Carnegie-Mellon have, if anything, on the particular region. While there very well could be significant original research here, in my view the Central PA dialect is significantly different from Pittsburgh English to be something separate--only Pittsburghers turn "ow" into "ah" ("downtown" famously becomes /dɒntɒn/--"dahntahn"), while (I think only) Central PA people pronounce "color" as /kɛlr/ ("keller"); Pittsburghers, Philadelphians, and Baltimoreans certainly don't.  It is otherwise quite different from Philiadelphia English and Baltimore English.  Central PA people do not pronounce "water" as /wʊɾər/ ("wooder") like Philadelphians and Northern Baltimoreans.  The 2nd person plural pronoun is /yʊnz/ ("yunz") in Central PA as opposed to "youse guys" for Philadelphians and generally "you" for Baltimoreans (and /yɪnz/ ("yinz") for Pittsburgers).  Central PA people do not front their vowels, unlike Philadelphians (/oʊ/ shifts to [ɜʊ] and /uː/ shifts to [ʉu]) and unlike Baltimoreans ([oʊ] shifts to [eʊ])--they also wouldn't be caught dead shouting "eeeeʊʊʊʊʊ!" for the "Oh" in "Oh! Say does that Star Spangled Banner..." during the National Anthem, thank God!  Weyandt (talk) 16:54, 28 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Improvements and expansion are very welcome. Note, too, that since July 2011 the original research has been removed and reliable sources added (difference between versions). Cnilep (talk) 02:44, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Goin' with???
As someone born in the heart of Central PA --the geographic center of the Commowealth is Axeman near Milesburg-- I found this article delightful. You've but scratched the surface but it was kind of validating reading this article. Remember "strubly" means unkempt. Keep workin' it.User:JCHeverly 09:54, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Lumpers and splitters
On 3 October 2013, User:Wolfdog redirected this page to Western Pennsylvania English. Some dialectologists (apparently including the one Wolfdog consulted) do describe the variety described here as similar or identical to Western Pennsylvania, though others (e.g. Kurath 1949; Carver 1989) specifically note a Central Pennsylvania variety. (Still others would collapse both into Midland American English.)

Whether this warrants a full article or simply a section of a more general one seems like a decision that bears wider discussion. Therefore, I have restored the October 2015 content. Cnilep (talk) 01:15, 13 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree that a wider discussion is warranted, since, in our difference of opinions, both our opinions are justified. My go-to (and more relatively recent) source for U.S. dialects is currently the Atlas of North American English (ANAE), which categorizes the center of Pennsylvania not as a single dialect area, but, rather, as a messy crossroads between at least 3 established dialects: the Western PA, (Inland) Northern, and Philadelphia dialects (if not also the Midland dialect[s]!). Central Pennsylvania is demonstrated to be a diverse and not-at-all-clearcut area of the country dialectally; certainly no single uniform dialect leaps out from that region, according to the TELSUR studies. Here's a look at variation among the central PA cities studied in the ANAE:
 * Harrisburg seems to be undergoing the Canadian Shift (p. 132), although it shows a full resistance to the cot-caught merger, having a caught vowel much like in Philadelphia or NYC (p. 123).
 * State College, meanwhile, does not resist the above merger (p. 123), and in fact is classified under the Western PA dialect due having the cot-caught merger as well as that dialect's unique monophthongization (p. 132, 136)
 * Williamsport, considered the home of a Midland dialect (p. 136), is the only one of the studied central PA towns to have an extreme nasal short-a tensing system, similar to New England.
 * The absence or presence of the cot-caught merger (called the "low back merger" in the ANAE), to focus on just one element, is not simply a trivial marker in U.S. dialectology, but, instead, "One of the major events in the differentiation of North American dialects is the low back merger" (19). Right now, Central Pennsylvania dialect presents some notion of a single homogeneous dialect in central PA, which does not appear to be the case, at least from the widely-regarded 2006 ANAE. I originally went with my lumper merger solution due to the information on this page otherwise aligning quite neatly within the focus of Western Pennsylvania English (WPE). However, admittedly, the ANAE does not really justify that all of central PA speaks WPE. But then are we justified in keeping a whole page about a nebulous, inconsistent linguistic concept that doesn't really amount to a strict dialect of its own? I'd recommend that fragments of this article be merged or sectioned off into parts of other, existing dialect articles. But if the consensus ends up being to go ahead with the splitter solution and keep this as a stand-alone article, I think at least a rename and rewording of the article might be in order. Wolfdog (talk) 02:05, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I was born, raised, and still live in Central Pennsylvania. While there are some similarities between the dialects, obviously, they are still very much not the same. I actually found out these two pages were merged because I was discussing the differences between the Western and Central Pennsylvania dialects with a friend whose family is from the western end of the state. We were discussing the differences between the common phrases and words we grew up with and realized we learned some wildly different things growing up. I remembered this great article on Wikipedia that used to have a long list that basically covered every "Central PA-ism", but when I tried to bring it up for us to check out to compare and contrast, all I got was a redirect to Western Pennsylvania English. We were both upset, because neither of us feels the two are the same, and we both have some affection for our separate "accents".
 * There definitely should NOT be a merge of the two pages; they are way too different. If anything, the Central PA Dialect is closer to an odd merging of English and Pennsylvania Dutch, which is itself a dialect of German. We often use German word order in our English sentences, and we use a lot of "English-ified" versions of German words. Example: "Throw the horse over the fence some hay," is a normal way of ordering sentences in the Central PA Dialect, whereas Western PA natives would probably give us strange looks.
 * I know there were issues with the fact that the list of distinctions had no citations. However, there doesn't seem to be any actual published works on the Central Pennsylvania Dialect.  I can, however, assure you that it exists, and that it is distinctly different and separate from the Western Pennsylvania English.  Nothing on the Western PA English page really reflects Central PA English much at all; it is entirely unrepresented. I know I probably shouldn't feel so personally about it, considering it's just a Wikipedia article, but I do.  It seems to me that due to a lack of "officially published" works, knowledge of the dialect as it's own separate entity is being lost.
 * That is why all that the old version of the article had was original research; there just isn't any "official" research out there, or, if there is, then it is very hard to find.
 * Please reconsider the redirect and the removal of the original research unless an until someone can find "official" research instead. 8.20.65.4 (talk) 17:00, 7 April 2022 (UTC)