travel2.nytimes.com/2006/03/...cent.html
It's Not the Sights, It's the Sounds - New York Times

"Thee-at painting?" Ms. Austin suddenly said. "A man from around here made it. Can I get you some more coffee? How 'bout this cold snee-ap?"

Bless you, Lori Austin, I said to myself. You just gave me the two raised vowels before voiceless stops I'd driven 350 miles for.

"Nobody with the Chicago-Rochester dialect makes a fuss about it," Professor Labov said. "They aren't as self-conscious or aware of it. Give a New Yorker or a Southerner a piece of paper with a word on it and ask them to say it, they'll start sweating."

Thanks so much! I missed this. I'm pretty sure I used one of Labov's books while I was getting my linguistics degree.

Quite cool, this. I haven't heard such a concise explanation. Great report.

Craig in Arcata

wow. they're still talking about that? I remember being so fascinated by it that I wrote a whole summary/layman's explanation of the talk for the engineers I worked with on a speech recognition project. Too bad I don't have the summary anymore. It went down with the company.