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Boston accent

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Boston English redirects here. For the school see English High School of Boston.

The Boston dialect is the dialect characteristic of English spoken in the city of Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts. Sociolinguists frequently group these regions with Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut to form the Eastern New England dialect region.[1][2]

The best-known features of the Boston accent are non-rhoticity and broad A. It is most prominent in often traditionally Irish or Italian Boston neighborhoods and surrounding cities and towns. [citation needed]

Phonological characteristics

All phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (see Help:IPA for English). For example:

are [äː]
ah

Non-rhoticity

The traditional Boston accent is non-rhotic; in other words, the phoneme /r/ does not appear in coda position (where in English phonotactics it must precede other consonants, see English_phonology#Coda), as in some types of British English and all dialects of Australian English; card therefore becomes [kaːd]. After high and mid-high vowels, the /r/ is replaced by [ə] or another neutral central vowel like [ɨ]: weird [wiɨd], square [ˈskweə]. Similarly, unstressed [ɝ] ("er") is replaced by [ə], [ɐ], or [ɨ], as in color [ˈkʌlə]. A well-known shibboleth is park the car in Harvard Yard, where the words park, Harvard and yard are pronounced [paːk], [ˈhaːvəd], and [jaːd] respectively. Note that the r in car would usually be pronounced in this case, because the following word begins with a vowel (see linking R below).

Although not all Boston-area speakers are non-rhotic, this remains the feature most widely associated with the region. As a result, it is frequently the butt of jokes about Boston, as in Jon Stewart's America, in which he jokes that the Massachusetts Legislature ratified everything in John Adams' 1780 Massachusetts Constitution "except the letter 'R'".

In the most traditional, "old-fashioned", Boston accents, what is in other dialects /ɔr/ becomes a low back vowel [ɒ]: corn is [kɒːn], pronounced the same or almost the same as con or cawn.

For some old-fashioned speakers, stressed [ɝ] as in bird is replaced by [ʏ] - [bʏd]; for many present-day Boston-accent speakers, however, [ɝ] is retained. More speakers lose /r/ after other vowels than lose [ɝ].

The Boston accent possesses both linking R and intrusive R: That is to say, a /r/ will not be lost at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel, and indeed a /r/ will be inserted after a word ending with a central or low vowel if the next word begins with a vowel: the tuner is and the tuna is are both [ðə tuːnərɪz]

There are also a number of Boston accent speakers with rhoticity, but they occasionally delete /r/ only in unaccented syllables, e.g., mother or words before a consonant, e.g., car hop.

A good example of the non-rhoticity prevalent in Boston-area accents is the phrase "You park your car in Harvard Yard," which people often ask people with Boston-area accents to say, sounding like "Yah pahk yah cah in Hahvahd Yahd."

Vowels

The Boston accent has a highly distinctive system of low vowels, even in speakers who do not drop /r/ as described above. Eastern New England is the only region in North America where the distinction between the vowels in words like father and spa on the one hand and words like bother and hot on the other hand is securely maintained: the former contain [aː] ([ˈfaːðə], [spaː]), and the latter [ɒː] ([ˈbɒːðə], [hɒːt]). This means that even though heart has no [r], it remains distinct from hot because its vowel quality is different: [haːt]. By contrast, the accent of New York uses the same or almost the same vowel in both of these classes: [ɑː]. The Received Pronunciation of England, like Boston English, distinguishes the classes, using [ɑː] in father and [ɒ] in bother.

On the other hand, the Boston accent merges the two classes exemplified by caught and cot: both become [kɒːt]. So caught, cot, law, water, rock, talk, doll, and wall all have exactly the same vowel, [ɒː]. For some speakers, as mentioned above, words like corn and horse also have this vowel. By contrast, New York accents and southern New England accents have [kɔːt] for caught and [kɑːt] for cot; Received Pronunciation has [kɔːt] and [kɒt], respectively.

Some older Boston speakers – the ones who have a low vowel in words like corn [kɒːn] – do not undergo the so-called horse–hoarse merger, i.e., they maintain a distinction between horse and for on the one hand and hoarse and four on the other. The former are in the same class as corn, as [hɒːs] and [fɒː], and the latter are [ˈhowəs] and [ˈfowə]. This distinction is rapidly fading out of currency, as it is in almost all regions of North America that still make it.

Boston English has a so-called "nasal short-a system". This means that the "short a" vowel [æ] as in cat and rat becomes a mid-high front diphthong [eə] when it precedes a nasal consonant: thus man is [meən] and planet is [ˈpleənət]. Boston shares this system with the accents of the southern part of the Midwest, though the raising of this vowel in Boston tends to be more noticeable and extreme than elsewhere. By contrast, Received Pronunciation uses [æ] regardless of whether the next consonant is nasal or not, and New York uses [eə] before a nasal at the end of a syllable ([meən]) but not before a nasal between two vowels ([ˈplænət]).

A feature that some Boston English speakers share with Received Pronunciation is the so-called Broad A: In some words that in other accents have [æ], such as half and bath, that vowel is replaced with [aː]: [haːf], [baːθ]. (In Received Pronunciation, the Broad A vowel is almost identical to [ɑː].) Fewer words have the Broad A in Boston English than in Received Pronunciation, and fewer and fewer Boston speakers maintain the Broad A system as time goes on, but it is still noticeable. The word aunt, however, remains almost universally broad.

Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions between [[English-language vowel changes before historic r|short and long vowels before medial [r]]] than many other modern American accents do: Boston accents maintain the distinctions between the vowels in marry [ˈmæri], merry [ˈmɛri], and Mary [ˈmeəri], hurry [ˈhʌri] and furry [ˈfɝri], mirror [ˈmɪrə] and nearer [ˈniərə], though some of these distinctions are somewhat endangered as people under 40 in neighboring New Hampshire and Maine have lost them. Boston shares these distinctions with both New York and Received Pronunciation, but the Midwest, for instance, has lost them entirely.

The nuclei of the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ may be raised to something like [ɐ] before voiceless consonants: thus write has a higher vowel than ride and lout has a higher vowel than loud. This effect is known usually as Canadian raising, though it is less extreme in New England than in most of Canada. Furthermore, some Boston accents have a tendency to raise the /aʊ/ diphthong in both voiced and voiceless environments and some Boston accents may raise the /aɪ/ diphthong in certain voiced environments.

The nuclei of /oʊ/ and /uː/ are significantly less fronted than in many American accents.

Non-rhoticity elsewhere in the New England area

Non-rhoticity north of the Boston area decreased greatly after World War II. Traditional maps have marked most of the territory east of the Connecticut River as non-rhotic, but this is highly inaccurate for contemporary speakers. The Atlas of North American English, for example, shows none of the six interviewed speakers in New Hampshire (a historically non-rhotic area) as having more than 10% non-rhoticity.

Use in media

As a conspicuous, easily identifiable accent, the Boston accent is routinely featured in Boston area films such as The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Good Will Hunting, "Ted", Mystic River, The Departed, Blow, The Town, Blown Away, The Fighter, and Gone Baby Gone. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, a character mentions the accent in parody, giving his "best regahds". Television series such as M*A*S*H had David Ogden Stiers' character, Charles Emerson Winchester III using it as evidence of the character's Boston origin, and other series based within a Boston setting, like Boston Public and Cheers have also featured it. Simpsons character Mayor Quimby talks with a Boston accent as reference to the former US Senator Ted Kennedy. 30 Rock character Nancy Donovan speaks with a pronounced Boston accent. In the video game Team Fortress 2, the character Scout, who is himself a Boston native, talks with a distinct Boston accent. Many elements of the Boston accent can be heard on the animated TV series Family Guy, which is set in the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island. The Saturday Night Live sketch The Boston Teens with Jimmy Fallon (who is imitating) and Rachel Dratch (who really does use it) also uses it frequently.[citation needed]

Much to the irritation of eastern New Englanders, imitators of the accent generally fail to ring true. This is especially noticeable when a specific locale is identified, such as South Boston or Gloucester, each of which has its own distinctive variation.

Well-known speakers of/with the Boston accent

3

Lexicon

Some words used in the Boston area are:

  • banger - a wicked bad headache
  • barrel - a trash can, garbage can
  • blinkers - automobile directional signals[35]
  • breakdown lane - the shoulder on a highway
  • bullshit - has a second meaning of "very angry"
  • bundles - full bags of groceries from the supermarket
  • carriage - shopping cart
  • cellar - Another term for basement used frequently in New England
  • clambake - clams, corn on the cob, lobster and other seafood
  • clamboil - clams, quahogs, mussels, linguica, chourico, potatoes
  • "clicker/channel changer" - a television remote control
  • coffee regular - coffee with half and half or light cream and 2 sugars.
  • elastics - rubber bands
  • gonzo - crazy, bizarre; the term originated in South Boston but is now used nationally[citation needed]
  • grinder - pronounced "grinda"; a baked submarine sandwich, but not the equivalent of a toasted sub.
  • guzzle - a small inlet on a beach creating a tidal pool. Also drinking beer or an alcoholic drink quickly.
  • Hoodsie – A small cup of ice cream, the kind that comes with a flat wooden spoon (from HP Hood, the dairy that sells them.)[38] Also (very offensive slang), a teenage girl.[35] Elsewhere occasionally known as a dixie cup.
  • The Hub - Boston. A reference to the Oliver Wendell Holmes' statement that the Massachusetts State House, located in Boston, was the "Hub of the Solar System." The phrase was gradually changed to the "Hub of the Universe," then shorted to simply "the Hub." "The Hub" is also a pictorial representation of Boston as the center of a wheel, encircled by Route 128 and the terminal point of various roadways from north, south and west.
  • jimmies – 'chocolate ice cream sprinkles[39]
  • nylons - women's pantyhose
  • parlor - living room. This is an Anglo-Irish term as in the well-known popular song If You're Irish Come Into The Parlour
  • piazza - a porch, typically on the back of a three-decker house.
  • pissa - means something akin to "great" either realistically or sarcastically. Also spelled 'pissah'. This is just the word "pisser" with a Boston accent. Often combined with "wicked" to yield "wicked pissah".
  • quahog - a large clam-like seafood
  • rotary – 'traffic circle'[39] (although rotary has a more precise definition than traffic circle, and these high-speed circular intersections are unusually common in Greater Boston, especially as one moves toward Cape Cod). These are common in England, as well.
  • ice cream soda - ice cream and soda water (or soft drink, for example Coke) served in a large wax paper cup with a long plastic spoon and a straw.
  • steamers - clams
  • Staties - Massachusetts State Troopers
  • a time - a social event, usually a retirement party or political function
  • Southie – Refers to blue-collar neighborhoods in South Boston
  • townie – Refers to someone who has lived most of their life in the same town
  • triple-decker - house having three apartments, one on each of three levels, normally with a flat roof.
  • whiffle - a crew cut or male haircut done with electric clippers.[35]
  • wicked - 'very', in the extreme; as in 'wicked cold' meaning 'very cold'.

See also

Look up park the car in Harvard Yard in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

  1. ^ Schneider, Edgar (2005). A Handbook of Varieties of English: A Multi-Media Reference Tool. Mouton de Gruyter. p. 270. ISBN 978-3-11-017532-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ Millward, C.M. (1996). A Biography of the English Language. Wadsworth Publishing. p. 353. ISBN 978-0-15-501645-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthor= (help)
  3. ^ Template:Cite article
  4. ^ Hendrix, Steve (2002-03-03). "TV's high priest of home repair is woodworker at heart". The Olympian. Retrieved 2009-02-26. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  5. ^ Template:Cite article
  6. ^ Jim, Black (2012-12-31). "The MBBC - Internet Radio Boston[[Radio Station Website]]". Retrieved 2013-01-01. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  7. ^ a b c Roberts, Sam (2006-01-16). "Mayor's Accent Deserts Boston for New York". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-02-26. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  8. ^ Rubin, Joel (2008-12-07). "Police chief says he still has plenty to prove". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2009-02-26. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  9. ^ Template:Cite article
  10. ^ Emily Steel (2009-04-17). "Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will". Wall Street Journal. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  11. ^ Mitter, Siddhartha (2008-02-29). "A banjo, a piano, and two willing masters". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-03-17. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  12. ^ Cumbie, Ty (2004-10-30). "Chick Corea". All About Jazz. Retrieved 2009-03-17.
  13. ^ Calhoun, Ada (2004-03-29). "Did You Hear The One About The @&%#! Comic?". New York. Retrieved 2009-03-17. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  14. ^ Sletcher, Michael, ed. (2004). New England: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 186. ISBN 0-313-32753-X.
  15. ^ "John F. Kennedy". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009.
  16. ^ Metcalf, Allan A. (2004). Presidential Voices: Speaking Styles from George Washington to George W. Bush. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 291. ISBN 0-618-44374-6.
  17. ^ O'Brien, Michael (2005). John F. Kennedy: A Biography. Macmillan. p. 436. ISBN 0-312-28129-3.
  18. ^ a b Simon, Scott (2004-08-27). "Listening Again to Lt. John Kerry on Vietnam". NPR. Retrieved 2009-02-26.
  19. ^ Healy, Patrick (2009-09-02). "A Mannah of Speaking". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-10-18. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  20. ^ King, Dennis (1989). Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism. New York: Doubleday. p. 306.
  21. ^ Gilbert, Matthew (2008-05-23). "But who's counting". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-02-26. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  22. ^ Littlefield, Kinney (2008-07-01). "Radio's 'Car Talk' guys reluctantly tackle TV". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-02-26. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) [dead link‍]
  23. ^ Leibovich, Mark (2005-05-04). "Oh, Brother: 'Car Talk' Guy Puts Mouth in Gear". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-02-26. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  24. ^ Bonin, Liane (2002-10-18). "Teacher's Met". EW.com. Retrieved 2009-02-26.
  25. ^ Mooney, Brian C. (2006-02-19). "The nonpolitician who would be governor". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-02-26. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  26. ^ a b Gardner, Amy (2009-02-11). "A Time to Reevaluate Family Ties". Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-02-27. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  27. ^ Ellin, Abby (2007-05-13). "Girth and Nudity, a Pictorial Mission". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-02-27. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  28. ^ Allis, Sam (2004-01-25). "It's tough to talk like a true Bostonian". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-02-27. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  29. ^ Bizjak, Marybeth (February 2007). "Mr. Fix-It". Sacramento Magazine. Retrieved 2009-03-17. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  30. ^ Tobias, Scott (November 2009). "Interview Bill Simmons". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2012-10-24. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  31. ^ Andrews, David Brooks (2007-10-19). "No walk in the pahk: Attempting a Boston accent is not easy". The Standard-Times. Retrieved 2010-11-10. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  32. ^ Jensen, Sean (2004-12-03). "Despite his unlikely build, Vikings' Wiggins gets it done at tight end". Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Retrieved 2009-02-26. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  33. ^ Campbell, Dave (2004-10-22). "Free agent Wiggins filling important role for Vikes". Sporting News. Retrieved 2009-02-26. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  34. ^ Keelaghan, Bob (2003-01-16). "Steven Wright". FFWD Weekly. Retrieved 2009-02-26. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  35. ^ a b c Boston To English Dictionary at CelebrateBoston.com
  36. ^ http://linguist.emich.edu/issues/5/5-1377.html#1
  37. ^ "Bubbler map - Wisconsin Englishes". Csumc.wisc.edu. Retrieved 2012-06-18.
  38. ^ Hoodsie Glossary at Boston-Online.com
  39. ^ a b "Regional Vocabulary". The New York Times. 2006-03-17. Retrieved 2010-04-26.
  40. ^ Dictionary of American Regional English
  41. ^ "Winship Spa - Brighton, MA". Yelp.com. Retrieved 2012-06-18.
  42. ^ "Montrose Spa - Porter Square - Cambridge, MA". Yelp.com. Retrieved 2012-06-18.
  43. ^ "Hillside Spa Cardoza Brothers - Beacon Hill - Boston, MA". Yelp.com. Retrieved 2012-06-18.
  44. ^ "Hodgkin's Spa - Somerville, MA". Yelp.com. Retrieved 2012-06-18.
  45. ^ "Sam's Spa Convenience - About - Google". Maps.google.com. Retrieved 2012-06-18.
  46. ^ Labov et al., Atlas of North American English

Further reading

Recordings of the Boston accent
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