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Let's use "bank" as an example. Some Americans pronounce it /bæŋk/, using the vowel of TRAP. Others pronounce it /beŋk/, using the vowel of FACE.

Where are these two pronunciations found?

Joe
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    Well, it's a feature of what's called the Northern Cities Vowel Shift in the United States. In dialects undergoing this shift (still going on in the inner cities of the N.E. USA), the woman's name Ann(e) is often confused with non-dialectal pronunciation of the man's name Ia(i)n, both as /'iyən/ ['ʔijɨn]. – John Lawler Sep 08 '14 at 21:29
  • @Josh61, I am not. The pronunciation I'm referring to is further forwards and more raised than either example at that link, pronouncing "bank" with the same vowel as "bane". – Joe Sep 08 '14 at 21:31
  • I would never have imagined that anyone anywhere used the ban vowel in bank rather than the bane vowel. There are no common words ending in -enk to contrast with the many that end in -ank. – tchrist Sep 09 '14 at 00:15
  • @Joe: Well, it wouldn't sound like that. That's a different environment. The pattern is different from the Great Vowel Shift, where only long vowels changed position. This applies to most American English vowels, but not always the same way. Here's the chart for both vowel shifts. – John Lawler Sep 09 '14 at 00:19
  • OP: Archaic forms like blenk, renk, venk have all been respelled as blank, rank, fang, while ones like clenk, enk, kent have all turned into clink, ink, rink. I don’t think you will find enough distance between the three /æŋk, eŋk, iŋk/ sounds to support all three of those as phonemically distinct sequences. @JohnLawler: The only quasi-[en]-like sequence I can think of at/near a word’s end is in some speakers’ pronunciation of orange as [ˈɔɻʷẽʒ] — which I may be misapprehending myself. Maybe bang counts, though. – tchrist Sep 09 '14 at 00:30
  • I pronounce it that way. I'm from mid-Michigan. Pretty normal around here. By the way, I asked a similar question before: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/90681/pronunciation-of-bank-tank-etc-bay-nk-ray-nk-or-baen-k-or-raen-k – curious-proofreader Sep 09 '14 at 00:36
  • @Joe I know: you are saying that bank has the TRAP vowel not the FACE vowel. I would never have thought of it that way; I think that in my accent, it has to be the FACE vowel. This might be the “apparent” bag–beg merger (which isn’t, but anyway), which I never thought I had. I didn’t realize it was considered part of the GNC vowel shift. (Native accent: Milwaukee area.) Do please note that the nasal following it will mutate the vowel somewhat anyway, which is why I did not use BAN or BANE for my lexical sets. – tchrist Sep 09 '14 at 00:45
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    Before nasals, especially, the distinction between lax front vowels is very weak. Americans often can't distinguish pin from pen. – John Lawler Sep 09 '14 at 00:50
  • @JohnLawler Yes, but I am not one of the pin–pen people; I should have the same accent as you do, or near enough as to make no difference. I guess though the nasal-muddies-it-effect is why I couldn’t see a lot of distinction between /æŋ, ɛŋ, ɪŋ/, and I am frankly surprised that others can. :( – tchrist Sep 09 '14 at 00:53
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    I rather wish you would not phrase it in terms of “long a” versus “short a”; I find those terms extremely confusing. Those are Hooked-On-Fonix™ terms used to teach six-year-olds, not something internationally understandable like IPA. Even lexical sets would be better. But I have never heard anyone say bank the same way as Ban Ki-moon starts, as you apparently do (and as the OED also reports). It is strange. Maybe we are only thinking we hear things. – tchrist Sep 09 '14 at 00:59
  • @tchrist, I agree about the nature of "long-a" terms, just wanted something for non-IPA-savvy folks. My experience is the opposite of yours: bank goes with TRAP, hearing it with FACE was quite surprising. – Joe Sep 09 '14 at 01:03
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    I strongly suspect your answer is to be found here, starting from where they talk about /æ/ tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent. It specifically says, in bold: Nearly all American English speakers pronounce /æŋ/ somewhere between [æŋ] and [eɪŋ], though Western speakers specifically favor [eɪŋ]. Where are you from that this should surprise you? – tchrist Sep 09 '14 at 01:12
  • Now that's throwing me off even more. /æ/ tensing is in my own dialect, but never before /ng/. – Joe Sep 09 '14 at 01:16
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    Like tchrist, I don't think I've ever heard bank with TRAP. John Lawler says it's a Northern thing, but everyone down South (in both SAE and AAVE) uses FACE and I think we'd interpret a TRAP vowel as a Northern pronunciation (rightly or wrongly). – user0721090601 Sep 09 '14 at 02:24
  • So is TRAP bank a northern pronunciation or a southern one? – Joe Sep 09 '14 at 02:25
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    If you are talking about American accents, could you edit in the [american-english] tag? Because in British English, bank is pronounced as in "Ban Ki-Moon" /bæŋk/, and a real clipped British RP can make bank into /beŋk/ which can sound a bit like /beiŋk/ (although I've never heard it go that far). – Andrew Leach Sep 09 '14 at 06:18
  • You're talkin about one of the vowel changes ([æ]➝[e]) in the Northern Cities Chain Shift (p.2 of the handout linked here; p.1 is the Great Vowel Shift, separating Middle from Early Modern English). – John Lawler Nov 19 '14 at 01:11
  • @JohnLawler, this particular vowel change appears to be far more widespread than the Northern Cities Shift. – Joe Nov 19 '14 at 01:28

2 Answers2

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I think the pronunciation /beŋk/ is found all over the U.S. (although certainly lots of Americans say /bænk/). We have comments saying that it occurs in the Northeast, the South, the Upper Midwest, and the West. I know it's also found in the Midland accent (the lower Midwest). What proportion of speakers use it probably varies regionally, but I don't know if any studies have been done on this.

I also don't know how old this feature of the American accent is, but judging from how widespread it is, it must be fairly old.

See also this blog entry.

Wikipedia says it happens in California English, but I believe it's much more widespread in the U.S. than that.

Peter Shor
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    I don’t usually do this, but Peter, that’s a really fascinating blog entry, so thanks very much for sharing. – tchrist Sep 17 '14 at 00:02
  • When you say "this pronunciation", do you mean /eŋk/ or /æŋk/? – Joe Sep 17 '14 at 00:21
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I often heard the pronunciation /æŋk/ growing up in Connecticut. I hear it less often now, though in fairness I no longer live there... Still, I do hear it once in a while when I'm in town.

Adam
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Audra
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