"Shack" has negative connotations? Not here it doesn't, at least not to the extent you seem to be suggesting. In my part of the world you can pay a million$+ for a beach shack and be pretty proud of it! If you want to be negative about someone's dwelling you call it a hovel, a dump, a hole or a dive. And that's when you're being polite .

It's not even accurate to say shack is unique in pronunciation, never mind its supposed 100% pejorative meaning.

"Radio Shack" is a long-established retail store chain selling electronics that is ubiquitous nationwide in the U.S.

The phrase "music shack" returned over 47,000 hits on Google.

And don't forget love shack, the grooviest kind of all! :2hearts:

Steven

I don't have first hand experience with the vowel shift phenomenon. I imagine if I heard a speaker from the region in question pronounce "shock" it would sound close to the way I say "shack" and I might misinterpret it. However that speaker might pronounce "shack" in a way subtly different from his pronunciation of "shock," so that other people in that region would not get confused. Gyro, is this consistent with what you are asserting?

If you read about vowel shift in one of the links already provided (or any of the thousands returned by Google for "northern cities vowel shift"), you will learn how the vowel of shack is evolving, too, as part of a pattern involving a larger set of vowels.

Linguistic phenomena are the subject of rigorous and well-documented research and can be described with precision. Unfortunately, speculation by those without academic background or first-hand experience just serves to confuse and implicitly suggests that it's all a matter of opinion.

But it's not all a matter of opinion; even though everyone may have one, it won't necessarily be any more valuable than if you asked a layperson questions about any other field of physical or social sciences. And soliciting the opinion of the least informed yet most intransigent contrarian amounts to nothing more than feeding a troll.

Steven

Currawong - I liked your story about the spears.

While we are on the topic of vowel shifts - there is a region of Massachusetts southwest of Worcester which has a unique dialect and particularly obscure usages with 'r' sounds. A good friend of mine - who was away from home for the first time at college- and sitting around the dinner table with some new friends - noticed a woman at the table who had lost some silverware. He asked her "Oh, would you like a fork?" in such a unique manner that everybody's eyes lit up. He had no idea what was going on.