NCCS

This diagram illustrates the Northern Cities Chain Shift, as described in sociolinguistic literature (see the bibliography). If you click the blue buttons, you will hear monosyllabic words by a young Detroit male talker. If you click the little blue dots, you will hear a progression of /a/ ("job") and /ae/ ("dad") along a synthetic continuum created to mimic the actual movements of F1 and F2 of these vowels.