UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report

A phonetic study of the vowel spaces of 535 young speakers of Californian Englishshowed that participation in the California Vowel Shift, a sound change unique tothe West Coast region of the United States, varied depending on the speaker’s selfidentifiedethnicity. For example, the fronting of the pre-nasal hand vowel varied byethnicity, with White speakers participating the most and Chinese and South Asianspeakers participating less. In another example, Korean and South Asian speakers ofCalifornian English had a more fronted foot vowel than the White speakers. Overall,the study confirms that CVS is present in almost all young speakers of CalifornianEnglish, although the degree of participation for any individual speaker is variable onaccount of several interdependent social factors.