Friday, January 30, 2009

Great America Vowel Shift

Well, some call it the Northern Cities Shift because it started our in the Great Lakes Region near Detroit, but it has since spread far and wide. As far west as Kansas City and as far south as Kentucky. This new way of pronouncing words will cause "old movies" from the 1990's to sound funny to a new younger generation. Right now we are undergoing a great vowel shift.

The peculiar sound of 80's american english language is cause by a vowel chain shift; in other words, the sounds of all vowels or almost all vowel are shifted down. For example BOX becomes BACKS. Also BUCKS becomes BOX. This messes everything up. When you shift one vowel all the others are shifted as well. The shift occurs amongst the young in cities, whereas old farmers still speak preshifted english. The Great American Vowel Shift is but one big demarcation line between the old prewar world of the 20th century and the new post WWIII world of the 21st. A time traveller from the future would sound funny to us, like with a foreign accent. This is because the language continues to change.

For people born in the 2030's the old prewar movies have in them people wearing funny clothes that talks funny and acts so strange. It is to them like a different world. A world with cars going down the highway. People in the future are trying to rebuild after WWIII.

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