Low-back-merger shift
Vowel shift
Summary
The low-back-merger shift is a chain shift of vowel sounds found in several accents of North American English, beginning in the last quarter of the 20th century and most significantly involving the low back merger accompanied by the lowering and backing of each of the front-lax vowels:, , and.
Originally created by Greetingz
6/10/2006, 4:51:19 PM
Modified
5/13/2026, 1:23:35 AM
Recent revisions
/* California */ skinv
/* Canadian Shift */ skinv
Resolve CS1 error: invisible characters
/* Similar shifts in the United States */ the info is from the 2020s
Added doi-broken-date. | [[:en:WP:UCB|Use this bot]]. [[:en:WP:DBUG|Report bugs]]. | Suggested by GoingBatty | [[Category:CS1 errors: invisible characters]] | #UCB_Category | Whitelisted category 185/312
1isall moved page [[Low-Back-Merger Shift]] to [[Low-back-merger shift]]: [[Special:Permalink/1346243346#M3R|Requested]] by Un assiolo at [[WP:RM/TR]]: Sentence case per [[MOS:AT]].
Clean up/copyedit; [[MOS:CAPS]]; [[MOS:NOTSEEALSO]]
/* California */ removed sentence punctuation from non-sentence
/* California */ add archive url, date to ref
/* New York City */ add missing date info to ref
/* The South */ ce [rm just-added wl for consistency]
/* The South */ ce [wls, punct]
/* Canadian Shift */ add s2cid to ref
formatting [hyphens -> en dashes, italics]
/* Canadian Shift */ add url to ref
/* Canadian Shift */ add pub. year to ref
/* The South */ add date to ref
vowel was already diphthongized beforehand
[[Wikipedia:MOSNUMscript|script]]-assisted date audit and style fixes per [[MOS:NUM]]
