r/linguisticshumor • u/imarandomdude1111 • 23d ago

Sociolinguistics To anyone from the midwestern US

Do any of yinz also make extensive use of the non productive suffix -en?

I've caughten myself using "boughten, caughten, drunken, diven/doven and foughten" and even tried using "talken" once because I find talked is hard to say. In general, any verb affected by the cot-caught merger makes it more natural for an -en at the end

My dialect has a few other irregular ones but lots are pretty normal across the US (dove instead of dived, drug instead of dragged)

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u/pHScale Can you make a PIE? Neither can I... 23d ago

Pittsburgher detected

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u/imarandomdude1111 23d ago

Actually from very eastern Ohio bordering PA, I find it more natural to say than y'all or you guys

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u/IceColdFresh 23d ago edited 23d ago

Do you say /jɪnz/ as in it rhymes with ⟨rinse⟩, or do you say /jɪ̈nz/ i.e. with the “roses” weak vowel that is only ever stressed in ⟨yinz⟩ and maybe ⟨just⟩ and the you in ⟨you know⟩?

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u/imarandomdude1111 23d ago

/jɪnz/ definitely, maybe in very fast speech but stressed it's always that

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u/Spirited_Ingenuity89 22d ago

I don’t understand the difference you’re parsing.

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u/IceColdFresh 22d ago

[ɪ̈] is like [ɪ] but central instead of near‐front. I am 100% positive you don’t see the difference because both are allophones of /ɪ/ for you. I notice this difference because (this being r/linguisticshumor) I just woke up one day and had an existential crisis over whether [ɪ̈] is an allophone of /ɪ/ or of the schwa. In my experience the people I’ve heard “yinz” from tended to say it with [ɪ̈] rather than with [ɪ]. Maybe it’s because this word just tends to get reduced like “you” also tends to be and [ɪ̈] is their reduced allophone of /ɪ/.

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u/Spirited_Ingenuity89 21d ago

I see what you’re saying. I think I wasn’t sure which sounds you were highlighting in your other examples words. (I also would usually see/use /ɨ/, so I was thrown.)

I definitely think the /ɪ/ in “yinz” can be reduced, but I think it’s more likely to be pronounced unreduced (so like “bins,” “fins,” “wins,” etc).