A couple of days back, I mentioned to my friend Dave ________ that the automated female voice activated when someone pushes the emergency button at Chicago Transit Authority stations is easily the most annoying string of cacophonous words it's been my extreme displeasure to encounter in at least the past decade.

I had assumed this harpylike blast of aural pain to be part of some public-transit accent diversity program. Not so, as Dave explains. Turns out that what I dismissed as the grating, high-pitched intonations of a South Side Anglo-Irish dialect actually reflects an accent change that's cutting a swath through American mouths.

It's called the "northern cities vowel shift" and Dave has been following it for some time.

Related links

NPR: "American Accent Undergoing Great Vowel Shift"

PBS: "Do You Speak American?"

Wikipedia: "Northern cities vowel shift"

Chicago Transit Authority Official site

This is Grand: Stories of Chicago's Rapid Transit

Chicago-L.org - Your Chicago Rapid Transit Internet Resource

Frank Lloyd Wright weighs in on Route 66.

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