ABSTRACT
The Middle Western dialect speech is the only form of American speech that is not undergoing any radical changes other than those that ordinarily affect every language. It is the only form of American speech spreading across regional boundaries and modifying the dialectal speech of those areas. One of the most characteristic variants to be found in the General-American speech of the Far Western, Southwestern, and Northwestern states is the use of Western drawl. The Western drawl is not as musical as the Southern drawl. It may be said that the Southerner uses a gliding drawl while the Westerner uses a more restrained drawl. One of the most characteristic speech habits of the Middle Westerner is his reduction of most of the unstressed vowel sounds to UH, particularly in informal speech. In almost all cases, no matter what the spelling, if the vowel sound is unstressed it is usually pronounced as UH.
