Is the "book, good" vowel losing its rounding in some U.S. dialects?

Factual Questions
1

I was listening to several episodes of the Dough Boys podcast with Mike “Mitch” Mitchell and Nick Wiger, who in their day jobs are Hollywood actors/writers/comedians – https://headgum.com/doughboys

The premise of the podcast is that the two hosts plus a guest all get food from a fast food place or chain restaurant and evaluate it.

As a result, the word “good” is often used in conversation. I noticed that particularly with Mitch, a pronunciation of “good” that I hadn’t noticed before.

He seems to be pronouncing it without rounding. Generally “good” is transcribed in I.P.A. as [gʊd] in general American accents. This [ʊ] is the “near-close, back, rounded vowel” (frankly, I preferred the old symbol, [ɷ]).

It’s often called the “short oo” vowel and it’s generally thought of as the vowel in good, book, took, look, nook. It contrasts with the “long oo” vowel–the “close, back, rounded vowel” (Cardinal vowel No. 8)–found in goof, boon, tool, loot, noon.

But when I hear Mitch say “good,” I’m not hearing a rounded vowel. I don’t know exactly where it is. It might be an unrounded [ʊ], that is [ɯ̞], or it might be a lower vowel, such as [ɤ], or maybe even as low as [ʌ].

[ɤ] isn’t really phonemic in general American, so far as I know, but [ʌ] is the “short U” vowel in guff, bun, ton, none, butt, gut, gulf.

Mitch is originally from Boston, but he doesn’t seem to have much of a New England accent currently.

Has anyone noticed this unrounding phenomenon? Does it occur systematically in some dialects? Is it a general trend?

I know that in some dialects (not American ones), the “good” vowel [ʊ] gets pushed forward to [ʏ]. This unrounding sounds completely different from that.

2

I’m not an expert on accents but I am an expert on the Doughboys. Mitch still has a pretty strong accent (Quincy, not Boston) as far as pronunciation goes especially with “O” words, ex. “Gud”, “Pupcorn”, “Hut Dog”, “Mum”.

3

I have no idea, but, as far as I can tell (Great Lakes accent), I don’t round the vowel in “good.” I round the vowel in “food,” but for “good,” my lips don’t have to move and close in (they stay fairly flat) to say the word. It’s a word I can say without moving my lips at all. For “food,” I have to constrict my lips.

4

I’m not at a location where I can listen to the podcast (although I used to see Nick Wiger’s improv group perform regularly). I live in Los Angeles, though, and I know a lot of people born in Southern California and nearby. I don’t know much about phonetics, but I do that when one vowel slides into a second vowel’s territory, that second vowel can then get displaced to another part of the mouth, possibly displacing a third, and so on.

If [ʊ] is becoming [ʌ], then [ʌ] might be going somewhere else also. Angelenos pronounce [ʌ] very strange to me. The phrase “mulled wine”, when someone around here says it, I hear it as “mold wine”.

5

I can unequivocally say yes–as you are describing my accent, which is usually described as sounding like Southern Missourian. (I’m technically a northern Arkansan, but I was taught in school to eschew the “hillbilly” accent. For example, I was specifically taught to get rid of the pin/pen merger, and it’s completely gone from my accent.)

I will say I hadn’t noticed, but, yeah, [ɤ] describes my usual realization of the /ʊ/ vowel. If I’m speaking very carefully, I may round it, but it remains slightly fronted–except in “oul” words like “should,” which gets the full [ʊ] vowel. It surprises me that such a distinction exists.

(That is, when stressed. When unstressed, all /ʊ/ reduces to [ʉ], as also occurs with /u/.)

Note that this is nowhere near [ʌ], which is far more open. That would be like pronouncing /ɪ/ as [ɛ].

6

Correction, that would be like pronouncing /ɪ/ as [e].

Here are the corresponding vowels–for my accent at least

Note that this is nowhere near [ʌ], which is far more open. That would be like pronouncing /ɪ/ as [e].

That is, BTW, how the openness corresponds for me.

/u/ completely fronted becomes /i/
/ʊ/ fronts to /ɪ/
/ʌ/ fronts to /e/
/o/ fronts to /ɛ/
/ɔ/ fronts to /æ/
/ɑ/ fronts to /a/, though this is only in diphthongs.

Oh, and I added bolding for rounded vowels.

7

Your accent fronts all these vowels? I’d be interested in hearing that. I guess I don’t have much awareness of southern Missouri accents.

8

I’m not saying we front all those vowels. It was a correspondence table of openness. It was more to explain why [ʌ] was too open compared to our pronunciation of /ʊ/. Maybe it was pointless, as it mostly corresponds with the IPA vowel chart. Just ignore that post.

That said, we do tend to front /u/, which may carry over to /ʊ/.

9

Here’s the closest I found to my accent on the Speech Accent Archive. It is noticeably closer to General American than any of the Arkansas examples.

(Here’s a list of all English language samples, for those who are curious.)

10

Here’s your correspondence table of openness.

11

Yes. That is what I said in my reply. Thank you, however, for linking the vowel chart.

It mostly matches up with my accent, but not quite, but that is to be expected. The chart deals with the pure vowels and how they are pronounced, while my chart was of the phonemes in my accent, based on me just saying each phoneme out loud and checking if I had to move my jaw.

I believe I was misguided to post that chart. I think you’ll probably get more out of just following that link to hear an accent similar to my own.

12

Actually, watching myself in the mirror, it appears that when I say /ʊ/ there is a range of openness. It’s nowhere near as rounded as /u/, but not necessarily completely unrounded. Like, note the first three examples this UK speaker gives. To me, “would” is rounded, but by the time he gets to “good,” it’s fairly unrounded. And “look” is somewhere in the middle. This is similar to my lip positions for those three words.

Am I seeing that correctly?