Midland American English

[4][5] As of the early 21st century, these general characteristics of the Midland regional accent are firmly established: fronting of the /oʊ/, /aʊ/, and /ʌ/ vowels occurs towards the center or even the front of the mouth;[6] the cot–caught merger is neither fully completed nor fully absent; and short-a tensing evidently occurs strongest before nasal consonants.

[12] The dialect region of the Mid-Atlantic States—centered on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; and Wilmington, Delaware—aligns to the Midland phonological definition except that it strongly resists the cot–caught merger and traditionally has a short-a split that is similar to New York City's, though still unique.

The Western Pennsylvania accent, lightheartedly known as "Pittsburghese", is perhaps best known for the monophthongization of MOUTH (/aʊ/ to [aː]), such as the stereotypical Pittsburgh pronunciation of downtown as dahntahn.

[39] Today, the city of Charleston, South Carolina, clearly has all the defining features of a mainstream Midland accent.

[8] Also, the older, more traditional Charleston accent was extremely "non-Southern" in sound (as well as being highly unique), spoken throughout the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, but it mostly faded out of existence in the first half of the 20th century.

While there is no evidence for a phonemic split, the phonetic conditioning of short-a in conservative Cincinnati speech is similar to and originates from that of New York City, with the raising environments including nasals (m, n, ŋ), voiceless fricatives (f, unvoiced th, sh, s), and voiced stops (b, d, g).

Also, some St. Louis speakers, again usually the oldest ones, have /eɪ/ instead of more typical /ɛ/ before /ʒ/—thus measure is pronounced [ˈmeɪʒɚ]—and wash (as well as Washington) gains an /r/, becoming [wɒɹʃ] ("warsh").

This 20th-century St. Louis accent's separating quality from the rest of the Midland is its strong resistance to the cot–caught merger and the most advanced development of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCS).

Texan cities classifiable as such specifically include Abilene, Austin, San Antonio and Corpus Christi.

Austin, in particular, has been reported in some speakers to show the South Midland (but not the Southern) variant of /aɪ/ deletion mentioned above.

According to Labov et al.'s (2006) ANAE , the strict Midland dialect region comprises the cities represented here by circles in red (North Midland) and orange (South Midland). In the past, linguists considered the Midland dialect to cover an even larger area, extending eastward through Pennsylvania to the Atlantic Ocean. The color blue on this map indicates the Inland North dialect , which is intruding southward into the middle of this region towards St. Louis, Missouri , and Peoria, Illinois , which show variation between the Midland and Inland North dialects. [ 1 ] The distinction between the North and South Midland regions is that the South Midland shows a tendency for extra features usually associated with Southern American dialects : notably, strong /oʊ/ fronting, a pin–pen merger , and a glide weakening of /aɪ/ before sonorant consonants .
Based on Labov et al., ' averaged F1/F2 means for speakers from Western Pennsylvania. The merger of /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ is complete for 11 out of 14 speakers; [ 10 ] /ʌ/ is backer and lower than in the rest of the North Midland.
Based on Labov et al.; averaged F1/F2 means for speakers from the (North) Midland (excluding Western Pennsylvania and the St. Louis corridor). /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are close but not merged.