Vowel raising

Vowel raising was such a big part of my research that it deserves its own page here!

What is vowel raising?

Vowel raising is a phenomenon that happens only in some dialects of Ladino. Importantly, for the Seattle dialects, vowel raising can generally be found in the rodesli dialect, but not any of the turkino dialects. This means that in Seattle Ladino, vowel raising serves to split speakers into two linguistic groups.

Vowel raising is a phonological process, which means that it's a pronunciation difference. When Ladino speakers raise their vowels, they pronounce the mid vowel /e/ as [i] or the mid vowel /o/ as [u]. For example, instead of [rodes], a Rhodesli speaker might say [rodis], and instead of [ladino], they might say [ladinu]. Because the mid vowels /e/ and /o/ are actually pronounced as high vowels [i] and [u], this is called vowel raising.

What's so interesting about vowel raising?

1. Vowel raising is really recognizable by speakers, and they understand well that Rhodeslis raise and Turkinos do not. Vowel raising serves as the primary distinguishing characteristic between the two main dialects of Ladino spoken in Seattle today.

2. Seattle Ladino speakers generally hae really strong attitudes about vowel raising, kind of like American English speakers might think that British accents sound "fancier" and that some dialects of English sound "less pleasant" or "uneducated." All of these attitudes are arbitrary feelings that result from social meaning that we associate with different ways of speaking. All this to say, these attitudes are not based on any facts. One Seattle Ladino speaker, Sylvia, told me:

3. Vowel raising is variable, for a lot of reasons. The same speaker can pronounce the same word differently in back-to-back sentences, two speakers can pronounce the same word differently, and a single speaker can raise some -- but not all -- raiseable vowels in a single word. This makes vowel raising fun (and challenging) to study!