“You guys want me to git you anything when I’m at the groshry store?
I’m gonna run real quick into Meijer’s and git some pop and melk and
mangoes.”
— A stereotypical sentence in the Hoosier dialect
Indiana occupies an unusual place
in American linguistics. While geographically part of the North and the
Midwest, much of the state is considered to speak a dialect similar to
that of the Southern United States. The extreme Northwestern corner of
the state, including Gary and Hammond, is part of the Northern Inland
region, along with its neighbor Chicago. Northern and Southern Indiana
have been noted for their differences in dialect, especially in
pronunciation. The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) places Indiana in ten different dialect regions.
Indiana was a frontier state that entered the union in 1816. White settlers in the 19th
century largely came from other parts of the United States, bringing
their dialects with them. The state can, for our purposes, be divided
into Northern and Southern portions, with the dividing line roughly
drawn at the capital, Indianapolis, in the center of the state. Settlers
from the South arrived relatively early in the 1800s, with settlers
from Northern states coming largely after the 1840s.
The Southern influence on the Hoosier dialect has continued into the
present day and has possibly spread as far north as Indianapolis. This
part of Indiana that appears to be linguistically part of the American
South is often termed the Hoosier Apex.
As a result, the “Hoosier dialect” is actually a
combination of multiple dialects, roughly fitting into three major
dialectical regions: the Inland North (Gary, Hammond, and the Indiana
section of Chicagoland), the Northern Midlands (Northern Indiana
including South Bend, Fort Wayne, and extending as far south as
Indianapolis) and the Southern Midlands (the Indianapolis area and
Southern Indiana, Including Bloomington, Terre Haute, and Evansville).
 |
| A very rough division of
Indiana’s dialectical regions: 1. The Inland North, 2. The Northern
Midlands, 3. The Southern Midlands. Map from Google Maps, notation by
the author of this blog. |
Phonology
When asked if they have an accent, many Hoosiers,
especially from the northern part of the state, say they don’t—they in
fact consider themselves to sound like the people heard on national
broadcasting. Northern Hoosiers often consider their Southern
counterparts to have an accent.
While Hoosiers may not have an accent as iconic and recognizable as
those found in New York or Chicago, they have a wide phonological range
within their state.
Notable sound changes
A merger is when the difference between
sounds disappears. Certain dialects of American English are currently
undergoing a series of vowel mergers, including some forms of the
Hoosier dialect. The Low-Back merger, which causes the vowel sounds in
“cot” and “caught” to be the same, is ongoing throughout Indiana, though
this change appears to have largely missed Fort Wayne and Gary in the
north, Indianapolis in Central Indiana, and Evansville in the South.
 |
A map (based on W. Labov, S. Ash, and C. Boberg, Atlas of North American English (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006)) showing the /ɔ/ and /ɑ/
merger’s prevalence in Indiana. Yellow dots represent places where the
merger is ongoing, blue dots where the merger has not occurred, and
green where the merger is complete. |
|
There's a chance that if you ask for something to write with in
Southern Indiana, you might be given a "pin" rather than a "pen." This
is the result of the pen/pin merger of the Southern vowel shift, the
progress of which is visualized to the right. Beginning in the American
South, it has crept north into Southern Indiana. The vowel in "set" /ɛ/
becomes the vowel in "sit" /ɪ/. This especially occurs before the nasal
consonants /m/, /n/, /ŋ/.
 |
| Diagram of the Southern Shift. Chart from the University of Pennsylvania. |
 |
| Purple
represents the pen/pin merger caused by the Southern Shift. Note that
the merger extends as far north as Indianapolis but misses the
southeastern Ohio River Valley and Northern Indiana. Map based on W.
Labov, S. Ash & C. Boberg, The Atlas of North American English (Mouton de Gruyter, 2006). |
Indiana’s northern border is geographically part of the Great Lakes
region, one of the locations currently experiencing the Northern Cities
Vowel Shift. This shift has produced the distinct “Chic-aaago” accent,
where the cot/caught vowel, usually /ɑ/ becomes /æ/ like in “cat.” This shifts the standard English /æ/ up to /ɛ/ or /ɪ/. This
sound change is only heard in the small section of Northern Indiana
considered part of the Northern Inland, which includes Gary. The whole change can be seen below.
 |
| The Northern Cities Shift. Chart from the University of Pennsylvania. |
Other Hoosier phonetic phenomenon
Coalescence
Coalescence is the phonetic process by
which consonants fuse together. This is common in all parts of Indiana.
Common Hoosier coalescences include:
- “Going” [goɪŋ] becomes “gonna” [gʌnʌ]
- “Caramel” is pronounced [karmʌl]
- “Ordinary” is pronounced [ornari], with an almost, if not totally nonexistent /d/
- The state bird, the cardinal, is pronounced [kardnʌl]
- Hoosier children color with crayons, pronounced [krænz]
The [ɛ] and [ɪ] vowel switch
One common phonological change is a switch between
[ɛ] and [ɪ], best illustrated by the Hoosier pronunciations, heard
throughout the state, of “get” and “milk.”
- [gɛt] becomes [gɪt], rendering “get” as “git.”
- [mɪlk] becomes [mɛlk], meaning Hoosiers go to the store to buy “melk” rather than “milk.”
For a historical example, this switch appears in
James Witcomb Riley’s poem “Little Orphant Annie,” where the final lines
of each stanza are “An' the Gobble-uns 'at git you / Ef you / Don't /
Watch / Out!”
- [gɛt] > [gɪt]
- [ɪf] > [ɛf]
The /ɪ/ > /ɛ/ merger that comes from this change
is often observed in front of the nasal consonants (/m/, /n/, and /ŋ/).
This is especially prevalent in Southern Indiana.
- Bring [brɪŋ] > “breng” [brɛŋ]
- Rinse [rɪns] > “rense” [rɛns]
- Hinder [hɪndər] > “hender” [hɛndər]
The epenthetic (or intrusive) /r/
An epenthetic sound is inserted into a
word where the sound technically does not exist. A pronunciation that
was once common in the Midlands, Indiana included, was the epenthetic
/r/ after /ɑ/ in some words,
meaning you “warsh” ([wɑrʃ]) your hands and the first president of the
United States was George Warshington ([wɑrʃɪŋtən]). This pronunciation
become less common in Indiana and today appears to be largely limited to
the older population.
The /s/ > /ʃ/ merger
Some Hoosiers have been observed to merge certain instances of /s/ with /ʃ/:
- “Grocery” [grosəri] > “groshry” [groʃri] (note the coalescence)
- “Anniversary” [ænɪvɜrsəri] > “annivershery” [ænɪvɜrʃəri]
- “Nursery” [nɜrsəri] > “nurshary” [nɜrʃəri]
Hoosier Lexicon
Most non-academic descriptions of the Hoosier
dialect focus on the words and phrases common to Indiana. These are used
in other parts of the country but are especially prevalent in Indiana.
- Pop – Like most of the Midwest, Northern Indiana calls
carbonated beverages “pop.” The exception is Southern Indiana and the
Indianapolis area, which more frequently uses “coke” regardless of
brand.
- Mango – Green pepper
- Sweeper – Vacuum sweeper
- Davenport – A genericized trademark for sofa (like “Kleenex” as a
generic name for “tissue”), this was especially prevalent in the 20th century.
Indiana is well-known for having unusual town
names. Some of them are merely odd (like Santa Claus) and others are
interesting from a linguistic perspective. The earliest European
inhabitants were the French. The main French influence on the language
of Indiana is in place names, which Hoosiers pronounce differently from
the original French.
- Terre Haute – Pronounced [ˌtɛrəˈhoʊt] in Hoosier, [tɛʁ ot] in French
- Versailles – Pronounced [vərˈseɪlz] in Hoosier, [vɛərˈsaɪ] or [vɜːrˈsaɪ] in French
- Vincennes - Pronounced [vɪnˈsɛnz] in Hoosier, [vɛ̃sɛn] in French
Morphology and syntax
Many Hoosier speech patterns are often unfortunately considered uneducated, though this is usually the influence of classism.
Hoosiers, like speakers of any other dialect, simply have their own way
of talking, regardless of education level. Much like the vocabulary
mentioned above, these formations occur in other dialects of American
English, but are especially prevalent in Indiana:
- “Where are you at?” meaning “Where are you?”
- “Anymore” to mean “nowadays,” as in “Mangoes are expensive anymore.”
- “Real quick” to mean “quickly,” as in the sentence “I need to run into Meijer’s real quick.”
- The formation “X thing actions Y action” in place of “X actions to be Y action.” for example “The floor needs sweeping” rather than “The floor needs to be swept” or “The cat wants out” rather than “The cat wants to go out."
- “You guys” is the most common form of the second person plural,
regardless of the gender being addressed. This construction often
results in the possessive “you guys’s,” pronounced [ju gɑɪzˈəz]. Despite the influence of the American Southern dialect, “y’all” is rarely if ever heard in Indiana.
 |
Everyone's favorite Midwestern groshry store
|
The Unnecessary Possessive Attached to a BusinessAn unusual morphological phenomenon, often seen in
Indiana and Michigan, is the addition of the possessive “-‘s” to names
of businesses, especially stores. The grocery stores Meijer and Kroger,
both major businesses in Indiana, are often called “Meijer’s” and
“Kroger’s,” despite there being no apostrophe in their proper names.
“How To Speak Hoosier”
The video series on YouTube entitled “How to Speak Hoosier” is a humorous yet accurate depiction of the Hoosier dialect.
[13]
[13] Brad Bryan,
How to Speak Hoosier, Episode 1 - “There’s Lots of Uses of 'S,” accessed April 30, 2020,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swqaM4TiX2I.
Indiana
