In an earlier post, I spoke about how I’ve been teaching children in Sunday school how to speak with an Eastern New England accent. That has gotten me thinking about Eastern New England accents — for there is more than one accent indigenous to the region.
Wikipedia has a fairly good article on Boston English, and they do recognize that different socio-economic classes in the region have different accents (alas, their article on the upper class “Boston Brahmin” accent is barely a stub). In addition to explaining non-rhoticity, the Wikipedists point out some pronunciation peculiarities that I didn’t know I had, such as the caught-cot merger. But they don’t include one key phonological characteristic that I have noticed over they years: the presence of the glottal stop as a consonant. Thus, for example, people from certain parts of the Boston area pronounce “metal” with a glottal stop in place of a “t.” Similarly, many of us pronounce “yup” with a glottal stop in place of the “p.”
There used to be fairly strong class and regional differences within Eastern New England. When I was working as a salesman twenty years ago, I could almost tell what town someone came from by their accent — if, that is, they were working class. Middle class accents differed from working class accents, and had less regional differentiation within the broader Eastern New England region, but there were still broad distinctions in the Boston area between North Shore, urban, and South Shore accents. I did not come into contact with many upper class accents, but they were clearly distinct from working class and middle class accents.
While the distinctive Eastern New England accent has been changing in recent years, and fading with the onslaught of people migrating in from out of state, it still exists. There are still some regional differences within Eastern New England — I certainly noticed a distinct difference in accent when I moved to New Bedford five years ago. Providence and Boston still have their distinctive accents, as does the coast of Maine.
I would love to hear from my readers about your experiences with the Eastern New England accent (whether you’re a native speaker or an outsider). What regional differences have you noticed within the Eastern New England accent? How about some good regional vocabulary I can teach the kids (e.g., Marybeth has already suggested “bubblah”)?
I took several linguistic courses in college. Too often we use the work “accent,” whereas the correct work to use is “dialect.” There are quite a number of dielects in New England and they are in a constant stage of change.
If you want more detailed information about dialects in New Englande or in other areas you might look for books such as (I’m not sure of the titel) “The Linguistec Atlas of New England.”
The atlases contain maps and show how words are pronounced in various regions.
One problem with english is that our alphabet has only 26 letters, but our language contains about 40 sounds (phonemes). Linguists use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent all of the sounds.
“Non-rhotic” … who knew. It only comes back to me now, after too many decades in the Midwest, when I’ve had a glass of wine or two. Or, the Red Sox ahh winnin’!
Here are some words for you:
“Jimmies” which is, as I recall, the local word for “chocolate sprinkles.” And, despite some urban myth that “jimmies” is racist, well, it’s not. I wrote a blog entry on this awhile ago: http://jeanharper.org/?p=78
“Frappe” — a milkshake.
“Rotary” — not a club of well-meaning middle managers, oh no. This is scary roundabout in a roadway, where all rules are suspended.
How about pronunciation?
My-ehn. As in, “that’s my-ehn, not you-ahs.”
Conner. As in, “Put the sofer in the conner, honey.”
Ah… what fun all this is.
Nathan, in the words of the Wikipedia article on dialect: “A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology, including prosody). Where a distinction can be made only in terms of pronunciation, the term accent is appropriate, not dialect.”
Maine has at least a few different accents. You have the what I will call the old Yankee accent (inland farmers), the Down East accent (fishermen on the coast) and the Mill Town accent (predominantly Franco American in origin).
All of these are diminishing rapidly, and appear to be blending into one overall accent for the working class and little to none (or Midwestern English) for the professional class. I wonder if the same thing has happened in other areas? It would make for an interesting study. I have recorded interviews with a couple of my great-grandfathers (Yankee and Franco accents), and those voices are just really not heard anymore, especially the Yankee one.
To Paul: Linguists use a more rigorous approach to the use of whether accent or dialect is correct than that used in Wikipedia. Accent to a linguists referes to the stress put on certain syllables in a word.
There are also subtile differences in word use among the various dialects. Some people say “frying pan,” but in other regions the word used is “skillet.” In the region around Philadelphia the word used for baby carriage was “coach.” North of the Mason-Dixon line we hear the word “greasy”; south of the line we hear “greazy.”
Much of this is leveling out because of the use of television and the mobility of the population. When a linguistic atlas of the gulf states was undertaken some 30 years ago, the researchers looked for people who lived in the area all their lives and whose parents spent their lives there as well. The researchers had a hard time finding people who met their criteria.
Anyway, I’m not going to wage a campaign about “correctness” in language use. Linguists describe the language as they hear it; they do not prescribe correctness.
To chime in on the accent/dialect question: I have taken no courses on linguistics, but from my experience learning foreign languages (mostly German), my understanding has been that, when talking about languages in general, Paul O is correct — “accent” refers to regional differences in pronunciation and “dialect” to grammatically distinct regional subgroups of a language (such as the Bavarian dialect, which is absolutely not just a different way to pronounce German — referring to “Bavarian accent” simply makes no sense to anyone who has experience with it).
In the context of English (which doesn’t appear to really have dialects in the same way other languages do — not sure why), there is a tendency to use “dialect” to refer to regional/cultural differences in pronunciation. I’ve long assumed that was a English-centric misunderstanding about the difference between “dialect” and “accent” — Nathan’s comment is the first time I’ve heard that this was an accepted usage in academic circles.
To get back on topic, my favorite regionalism is the word used for a sweetened non-alcoholic carbonated beverage. I grew up in the Boston area and learned that the word for that item was “tonic” — I even remember walking down the aisles of groceries stores in the 1970s and seeing an aisle with a label of “tonic,” though I think most of those now say “Soda” or “Soft Drinks” now. popvssoda.com has some good maps of regional variations between “soda,” “pop,” “Coke,” and “other” (which is how the immediate Boston area is marked on the map).
What is interesting is that in New England you may have differences in dialect as well. The Franco Americans in New England often used some odd wording and expressions based on a semi-translated French (like idioms).
And even within New England for the former French speakers, you had differences between the Quebecois and Acadians (most of the latter went on to Louisiana, but some remained in the St. John River valley in extreme northern Maine).
I worry that this stuff is not well documented and will disappear, along with so many languages. I agree with Nathan about “leveling out” and wonder how far it will go.
One reason for the wide variation in English in New Englans is that the languagy was undergoing a considerable amount of change in England during the 17 and 18th centuries. As wave after of wave of colonists arrived on these shores, they brought their language with them. As they pushed west, they carried their speech patterns with them as successive colonists arrived on the coast. The migration patterns of early settlers are fairly clearly shown in the linguistic atlases.
In isolated communities, the speech pattern did not undergo as much change. Every once in a while, someone vgisiting Appalachia thinks he has rediscovered the speech patterns of Shakespeare. Actually, the patterns in that area more closely reflect 18th century English, the language of Alexander Pope.
Language changes more quickly when it is not codified, when a majority of the population are able to read and write. Then there emerges a sense of language “correctness.”
It’s probably not an appropriate dialect word to offer to kids, but the one that amused me most when I visited my brother in Boston was “packy.” When I told my friends back in Seattle about the word, very few of them could make any sense of it, and immediately thought it racist, but fortunately I (and my brother), being Southerners originally, were familiar with the term “package store,” and we had the accurate etymology to hand. It’s still a term that makes me wince a bit, even as I laugh at my brother when he uses it.
Nathan @ 1 — Thanks for the distinction between “accent” and “dialect.” As for the linguistic geography that you mention, I have looked at that, some years ago, but I would suspect that it’s now somewhat dated. Anyone else have info on this book?
Jean @ 2 — “My-ehn” — oh, good one — I’ll be sharing that with the kids on Sunday.
And you win the prize for actually answering my question about things I can present to the kids!
Paul Oakley @ 3 — Eastern New England English does have a somewhat different vocabulary, and there are a few grammatical variations (e.g., “So don’t I” is good ENE English grammar). Maybe I should have called it a dialect, within which there are various accents.
Jeremiah @ 4 — In my observation, class status has a major impact on accent in New England. And while the old accents/dialects are fading, I am still not clear whether they are disappearing or morphing into something different. I think they are fading, but I remember reading an article perhaps twenty years ago about accent/dialect in the Philadelphia area, and at that time linguists were finding that while accents were changing, they were also becoming more pronounced in younger people. Maybe I’m just a middle-aged fart wishing for the days of my childhood. I guess I’d need to ask a working linguist as to whether Eastern New England dialect is really fading.
paul @ 6 — You write: “In the context of English (which doesn’t appear to really have dialects in the same way other languages do — not sure why),…”
I have to differ with you on this point. Jamaican English, Scottish English, Irish English, various forms of Indian English, North American English — all differ substantially from English English. And within English English, there are quite a few dialects, e.g., Yorkshire dialect, etc. Each of these could fit the criteria of having different grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation — sometimes to the point of being mutually unintelligible. At the same time, some languages (German is a good example, as is Chinese) having stronger dialects than does English.
paul @ 7 — “Tonic” was definitely a city word, in my memory — we said “soda” (or “soder,” for those of us who added “r” to the ends of words ending in vowels).
Jeremiah @ 8 — Ah yes, the Franco-New-English accent — very distinct grammar. New Bedford has a Portuguese-New-English accent. And let’s not forget the various other ethnic influences — e.g., I’d be interested to know if Hispanic English has an Eastern New England variation. African American accents differ in New England — my sense is that African Americans in Boston tend towards a pan-U.S. African American accent, while the African Americans I knew in New Bedford sounded more like white New Bedfordites (probably because race is so complicated in New Bedford — many people who would be considered black had significant Wampanoag and/or Cape Verdean ancestry).
Mad Gastronomer @ 10 — We always spelled it “packie.” I take that word so much for granted, I had to think how it could possibly have a racial connotation — an example of how regional dialects can lead to serious misunderstanding. Like when a Brit asks an American for a “rubber” (no, it’s not a condom, it’s an eraser).
The racial connotation isn’t so much in the local dialect where I live, but in British dialect, where “Paki” is a pretty loaded and awful word. My friends are just mostly Anglophiles.
Oh, is that how you spell it? My brother only said it out loud.
Sorry I couldn’t actually suggest a useful one, I just don’t know enough New England dialect. Now, if you asked about Southern dialect, I could help you out there a little better.
Oh, Dan: you should read “The Redneck Manifesto” — fascinating!