A Baltimore accent, also known as Baltimorese (sometimes jokingly written Bawlmerese or Ballimorese, to mimic the accent), commonly refers to an accent or sub-variety of Philadelphia English that originates among blue-collar residents of Baltimore, Maryland. It extends into the Baltimore metropolitan area and northeastern Maryland. At the same time, there is considerable linguistic diversity within Baltimore, which complicates the notion of a singular "Baltimore accent". According to linguists, the accent of white blue-collar Baltimoreans is different than the African-American Vernacular English accent of black Baltimoreans. White working-class families who migrated out of Baltimore along the Maryland Route 140 and Maryland Route 26 corridors brought local pronunciations with them. Pronunciation The Baltimore accent that originated among white blue-collar residents closely resembles blue-collar Philadelphia-area English pronunciation in many ways. These two cities are the only major ports on the Eastern Seaboard never to have developed nonrhotic speech among European American speakers; they were greatly influenced in their early development by Hiberno-English, Scottish English, and West Country English. Due to the significant similarity between the speeches of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Delaware and southern New Jersey, sociolinguists refer to them collectively as the Mid-Atlantic regional dialect. In Baltimore accents, sounds around are often "smoothed" or elided. For example, a word like bureau is commonly pronounced (e.g., Federal Beer-o of Investigation) and mirror is commonly pronounced "mere"; the related mare–mayor merger also exists. Vowels Several vowels undergo fronting. fronts to or . fronts to . Similarly, shifts to or even . When word-final and spelled as -ow, it is pronounced like , resulting in colloquial or humorous spellings like pilla for pillow and winda for window. No cot–caught merger: The words cot and caught do not rhyme, with the latter vowel maintaining a raised position. Likewise, the word on rhymes with dawn and not don. As in Philadelphia, the word water is often pronounced as wooder or, more uniquely, warter . As in most Mid-Atlantic cities, short a is pronounced with a phonemic split: for example, the word sad does not rhyme with the word mad . Pronunciation is dependent upon a complex system of rules that differ from city to city. Baltimore follows the Philadelphia pattern. For more details on the Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore systems see :/æ/ raising. The vowel in words like start is often raised and backed, resulting in a vowel close to . Likewise, as in bore can shift as