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Boston accent

January 19, 2024

This article is about the manner of pronunciation. For the album, see Matt Nathanson.
"Boston English" redirects here. For the school, see The English High School.
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

A Boston accent is a local accent of Eastern New England English, native specifically to the city of Boston and its suburbs. Northeastern New England English is classified as traditionally including New Hampshire, Maine, and all of eastern Massachusetts, while some uniquely local vocabulary appears only around Boston.[1][2] A 2006 study co-authored by William Labov claims that the accent remains relatively stable,[3] though a 2018 study suggests the accent's traditional features may be retreating, particularly among the city's younger residents, and becoming increasingly confined to the historically Irish-American neighborhood of South Boston.[4]

Phonological characteristics edit

Vowels of the traditional Boston accent
Front Central Back
lax tense lax tense lax tense
Close ɪ i ʊ u
Mid ɛ eɪ ə ʌ oʊ
Open æ a ɒ
Diphthongs aɪ   ɔɪ   aʊ   (ɪə   ʊə   ɛə   oə)

Boston accents typically have the cot-caught merger but not the father-bother merger. This means that instead of merging the historical "short o" sound (as in LOT) with the "broad a" (as in PALM) like most other American accents, the Boston accent merges it with the "aw" vowel (as in THOUGHT). Thus, lot, paw, caught, cot, law, wand, rock, talk, doll, wall, etc. all are pronounced with the same open back (often) rounded vowel [ɒ] ⓘ, while keeping the broad a sound distinct: [a] ⓘ, as in father, spa, and dark. So, even though the word dark has no /r/ in many Boston accents, it remains pronounced differently from dock because it belongs to Boston's START–PALM class of words versus the LOT–THOUGHT one: dark /dak/ versus dock /dɒk/.[5][page needed] Thus, while New York accents have /ɔ/ for paw and /ɑ/ for lot, and Standard British accents have a similar distinction (/ɔː/ versus /ɒ/), Boston accents only have one merged phoneme for both: /ɒ/.

In general, Eastern New England accents have a "short a" vowel /æ/, as in TRAP, that is extremely tensed towards [eə] when it precedes a nasal consonant; thus, man is [meən] and planet is [ˈpʰleənɪʔ]. Boston shares this system with some of the American Midwest and most of the West, though the raising in Boston tends to be more extreme. This type of modern General American /æ/-raising system is simpler than the systems of British or New York City accents. However, elements of a more complex pattern exist for some Boston speakers; in addition to raising before nasals, Bostonians (unlike nearby New Hampshirites, for example) may also "raise" or "break" the "short a" sound before other types of consonants too: primarily the most strongly before voiceless fricatives, followed by voiced stops, laterals, voiceless stops, and voiced fricatives, so that words like half, bath, and glass become [hɛəf], [bɛəθ] and [ɡlɛəs], respectively.[6] This trend began around the early-mid to mid-twentieth century, replacing the older Boston accent's London-like "broad a" system, in which those same words are transferred over to the PALM class /a/ (see § Declining features, below).[7] The raised [ɛə] may overlap with the non-rhotic realization of SQUARE as [ɛə].

Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions between short and long vowels before medial /r/ than many other modern American accents do: hurry /ˈhʌri/ and furry /ˈfəri/; and mirror /ˈmɪrə/ and nearer /ˈnɪərə/, though some of these distinctions are somewhat endangered as people under 40[clarification needed] in neighboring New Hampshire and Maine have lost them. In this case, Boston shares these distinctions with both New York and British accents, whereas other American accents, like in the Midwest, have lost them entirely.

The nuclei of the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ (PRICE and MOUTH. respectively) 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 phenomenon, more famously associated with Canadian accents, is known by linguists as Canadian raising.

The nuclei of /oʊ/ and /u/ (in GOAT and GOOSE) are significantly less fronted than in many other American accents. The latter may be diphthongized to [ʊu] or [ɵu].

The weak vowel merger is traditionally absent. This makes Lenin /ˈlɛnɪn/ distinct from Lennon /ˈlɛnən/.[8]

Speakers of the more deeply urban varieties of the Boston accent may realize the English dental fricatives /θ, ð/ as the dental stops [t̪, d̪], giving rise to a phonemic distinction between dental and alveolar stops; thus, those may sound closer to doze.

Non-rhoticity edit

The traditional Boston accent is widely known for being non-rhotic (or "r-dropping"), particularly before the mid-20th century. Recent studies have shown that younger speakers use more of a rhotic (or r-ful) accent than older speakers.[9] This goes for black Bostonians as well.[10] Non-rhoticity means that the phoneme /r/ does not appear in coda position (for where in English phonotactics /r/ precedes other consonants, see English phonology § Coda), as in most dialects of English in England and Australia; card therefore becomes /kad/ "cahd" and color /ˈkʌlə/ "culluh". Words such as weird /wɪəd/ and square /skwɛə/ feature centering diphthongs, which correspond to the sequences of close and mid vowels + /r/ in rhotic AmE. The phonemicity of the centering diphthongs /ɪə, ʊə, ɛə, oə/ depends on a speaker's rhoticity. Also, the stressed sequence /ɜr/ inside a closed syllable, as in NURSE, is most likely to take on a rhotic [ɝ] pronunciation among Bostonians.[9][11]

An example of non-rhoticity (plus a fronted START vowel) is "Park your car in Harvard Yard", pronounced [pʰak jə ˈkʰaɹ‿ɪn ˌhavəd ˈjad], or as if spelled "pahk yah cah(r) in Hahvud Yahd".[12][13] The r in car would usually be pronounced in this case, because the Boston accent possesses both linking R and intrusive R: an /r/ will not be lost at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel, and an /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 ˈtunər‿ɪz/.

Declining features edit

Many characteristics of the Boston accent may be retreating, particularly among younger residents. In the most old-fashioned of Boston accents, there may be a lingering resistance to the horse–hoarse merger, so that horse has the pure vowel /ɒ/, while hoarse has the centering diphthong /oə/; this can potentially cause the NORTH–LOT–THOUGHT merger, so that tort, tot and taught are phonemically all /tɒt/. The result is that, for an older Boston accent, the NORTH–LOT–THOUGHT vowel is distinct from the FORCE vowel. Another two example words that would traditionally be distinguished, thus, are for /fɒ/ versus four /foə/. This distinction was rapidly fading out of currency in the second half of the 20th century with the words belonging to the NORTH class being transferred over to the FORCE class, undoing the merger of NORTH with LOT–THOUGHT, as it is in almost all regions of North America that still make it. For non-rhotic speakers, the modern-day situation in Boston is that both horse and hoarse, as well as both for and four, take the centering diphthong /oə/.

A feature that Boston speakers once shared with Britain's Received Pronunciation, though now uncommon in Boston, is the "broad a" of the BATH lexical set of words, making a distinction from the TRAP set (see Trap–bath split). In particular words that in other American accents have the "short a" pronounced as /æ/, that vowel was replaced in the nineteenth century (if not earlier and often sporadically by speakers as far back as the late eighteenth century)[14] with /a/: thus, half as /haf/ and bath as /baθ/.[15] Fewer words have the broad a in Boston English than in the London accents, and fewer and fewer Boston speakers maintain the broad a system as time goes on, with its transition into a decline occurring in speakers born from about 1930 to 1950 (and first documented as a decline in 1977).[7] Boston speakers born before about 1930 used this broad a in the words after, ask, aunt, bath, calf, can't, glass, half, laugh, pasture, path, and perhaps other words, and born from about 1930 to 1950 use it only in aunt, calf, half, laugh, and pass. Speakers born since 1950 typically have no broad a whatsoever and, instead, slight /æ/ raising (i.e. [ɛə]), for example, in craft, bad, math, etc.)[15] with this same set of words and, variably, other instances of short a too.[15] Only aunt maintains the broad a sound in even the youngest speakers, though this one word is a common exception throughout all of the Northeastern U.S. Broad a in aunt is also heard by occasional speakers throughout Anglophone North America; it is quite commonly heard in African American speech as well.

In popular culture edit

Although not all Boston-area speakers are non-rhotic, non-rhoticity remains the feature most widely associated with the region. As a result, it is frequently the subject of humor about Boston, as in comedian Jon Stewart joking in his book America that, although John Adams drafted the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, "delegates from his state refused to ratify the letter 'R'".[16]

Being conspicuous and easily identifiable as regional, Boston accents are routinely featured by actors in films set in Boston, particularly for working-class white characters, such as in Good Will Hunting, Mystic River, The Departed, Manchester by the Sea, The Town, Ted, The Fighter, and Black Mass.[17][18] Television series based within a Boston setting such as Boston Public and Cheers have featured the accent. Simpsons character Mayor Quimby talks with an exaggerated Boston accent as a reference to the former US Senator Ted Kennedy.[19] Television comedy sketches have featured the accent, including "The Boston Teens" and "Dunkin Donuts" on Saturday Night Live, as well as "Boston Accent Trailer" on Late Night with Seth Meyers.[17]

In The Heat, the family members of Shannon Mullins all speak with the Boston accent, and confusion arises from the pronunciation of the word narc as nahk /nak/. In the video game Team Fortress 2, the character Scout, who is himself a Boston native, talks with a distinct Boston accent, although it sometimes lapses into a Brooklyn accent.

Notable lifelong native speakers edit

Gina McCarthy's voice
Thomas Menino's voice
Marty Walsh's voice

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Schneider, Edgar; Bernd Kortmann (2005). A Handbook of Varieties of English: A Multi-Media Reference Tool. Mouton de Gruyter. p. 270. ISBN 978-3-11-017532-5.
  2. ^ Millward, C.M. (1996). A Biography of the English Language. Wadsworth Publishing. p. 353. ISBN 978-0-15-501645-3.
  3. ^ Labov, William (2010). The Politics of Language Change: Dialect Divergence in America. The University of Virginia Press. Pre-publication draft. p. 53.
  4. ^ Browne, Charlene; Stanford, James (2018). "Boston Dialect Features in the Black/African American Community." University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 24 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. p. 19.
  5. ^ Labov et al. 2006 The Atlas of North American English Berlin: DeGruyter
  6. ^ Wood, Jim. (2010). "Short-a in Northern New England". Journal of English Linguistics 20:1–31. pp. 146, 149.
  7. ^ a b Wood, 2010, p. 139.
  8. ^ Wells (1982), p. 520.
  9. ^ a b Irwin, Patricia; Nagy, Naomi (2007). "Bostonians /r/ Speaking: A Quantitative Look at (R) in Boston". University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. 13 (2).
  10. ^ Browne, Charlene; Stanford, James (2018). "Boston Dialect Features in the Black/African American Community." University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 24 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. p. 19.
  11. ^ Fish, Jody (Spring 2018). Gende(r) in the Boston Accent: A linguistic analysis of Boston (r) from a gender perspective (BA thesis). Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society. pp. 4, 8. urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23112. Retrieved May 15, 2023.
  12. ^ Vorhees, Mara (2009). Boston. Con Pianta. Ediz. Inglese. Lonely Planet. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-74179-178-5.
  13. ^ Randall, Eric (August 25, 2015). "Blame Harvard for this annoying Boston accent test". The Boston Globe.
  14. ^ Wood, 2010, p. 138.
  15. ^ a b c Wells (1982), p. 523.
  16. ^ Stewart, John et al. (2014). The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book) Teacher's Edition: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. Grand Central Publishing.
  17. ^ a b Gottlieb, Jeremy (2017). Hollywood has a Boston problem". The Washington Post.
  18. ^ "Setting Your Movie in Boston? Bettah Get the Accent Right". NPR. August 2014.
  19. ^ Brown, John Robbie (2 July 2007). "Kennedy backs city's 'Simpsons Movie' campaign". Boston.com. NY Times Co.
  20. ^ Roberts, Sam (2006-01-16). "Mayor's Accent Deserts Boston for New York". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-02-26.
  21. ^ Rubin, Joel (2008-12-07). "Police chief says he still has plenty to prove". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2009-02-26.
  22. ^ Miller, Gregory E. (2018) "Bill Burr vows to never become an 'old cornball'". New York Post. NYP Holdings, Inc.
  23. ^ Sullivan, Jim (2001-04-18). "Lenny Clarke Deftly Handles Nightschtick". The Boston Globe.
  24. ^ Cumbie, Ty (2004-10-30). "Chick Corea". All About Jazz. Retrieved 2009-03-17.
  25. ^ Mitter, Siddhartha (2008-02-29). "A banjo, a piano, and two willing masters". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-03-17.
  26. ^ Juul, Matt (2015). "Watch: Dorchester comic riffs on Boston, Gronk, and more". Boston.com. Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC.
  27. ^ Calhoun, Ada (2004-03-29). "Did You Hear The One About The @&%#! Comic?". New York. Retrieved 2009-03-17.
  28. ^ Sletcher, Michael, ed. (2004). New England: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 186. ISBN 0-313-32753-X.
  29. ^ Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame, 'Don Kent,' ca. 2010 https://www.massbroadcastershof.org/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-2007/don-kent/
  30. ^ Concannon, Jim (May 12, 2009). "Mel's Vision". The Boston Globe.
  31. ^ King, Dennis (1989). Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism. New York: Doubleday. p. 306.
  32. ^ Littlefield, Kinney (2008-07-01). "Radio's 'Car Talk' guys reluctantly tackle TV". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-02-26.
  33. ^ Leibovich, Mark (2005-05-04). "Oh, Brother: 'Car Talk' Guy Puts Mouth in Gear". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-02-26.
  34. ^ Roberts, Randy (2005). The Rock, the Curse, and the Hub: A Random History of Boston Sports. Harvard University Press. p. 222
  35. ^ NewSoundbites (YouTube user; uploaded 2013) "Boston accent goes national with President Obama's pick for EPA." YouTube. Excerpted from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show.
  36. ^ Moraski, Lauren (2014-10-30). "Joey McIntyre on appeal of "The McCarthys," future of NKOTB". CBS News.
  37. ^ a b Baker, Billy (2013-11-17). "In Walsh, students of Bostonese have found their avatah". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2015-06-15.
  38. ^ Mooney, Brian C. (2006-02-19). "The nonpolitician who would be governor". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-02-26.
  39. ^ Gardner, Amy (2009-02-11). "A Time to Reevaluate Family Ties". Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-02-27.
  40. ^ Allis, Sam (2004-01-25). "It's tough to talk like a true Bostonian". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2009-02-27.
  41. ^ Bizjak, Marybeth (February 2007). "Mr. Fix-It". Sacramento Magazine. Retrieved 2009-03-17.
  42. ^ Jensen, Sean (2004-12-03). . Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Archived from the original on 2014-06-11. Retrieved 2009-02-26.

Bibliography edit

  • Baker, Adam; Mielke, Jeff; Archangeli, Diana (2008). "More velar than /g/: Consonant Coarticulation as a Cause of Diphthongization" (PDF). In Chang, Charles B.; Haynie, Hannah J. (eds.). Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. pp. 60–68. ISBN 978-1-57473-423-2.
  • Boberg, Charles (2008). "Regional phonetic differentiation in Standard Canadian English". Journal of English Linguistics. 36 (2): 129–154. doi:10.1177/0075424208316648. S2CID 146478485.
  • Duncan, Daniel (2016). "'Tense' /æ/ is still lax: A phonotactics study" (PDF). In Hansson, Gunnar Ólafur; Farris-Trimble, Ashley; McMullin, Kevin; Pulleyblank, Douglas (eds.). Supplemental Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Vol. 3. Washington, D.C.: Linguistic Society of America. doi:10.3765/amp.v3i0.3653. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  • Labov, William (2007). "Transmission and Diffusion" (PDF). Language. 83 (2): 344–387. doi:10.1353/lan.2007.0082. JSTOR 40070845. S2CID 6255506.
  • Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-016746-7.
  • Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Vol. 3: Beyond the British Isles (pp. i–xx, 467–674). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-52128541-0 .

Further reading edit

  • McCarthy, John (1993). "John McCarthy".
  • Metcalf, Allan. How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

External links edit

 
Look up park the car in Harvard Yard in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
  • Guide to Boston English
  • Glossary of Boston English
  • Article on Boston accent
  • "So don't I" - a unique grammatical construct
Recordings of the Boston accent
  • 37-year-old female
  • 18-year-old female
  • 73-year-old male
  • Medford City Councilor
  • , and compare with other accents from the US and around the World.

January 19, 2024
boston, accent, this, article, about, manner, pronunciation, album, matt, nathanson, boston, english, redirects, here, school, english, high, school, this, article, contains, phonetic, transcriptions, international, phonetic, alphabet, introductory, guide, sym. This article is about the manner of pronunciation For the album see Matt Nathanson Boston English redirects here For the school see The English High School This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA For an introductory guide on IPA symbols see Help IPA For the distinction between and see IPA Brackets and transcription delimiters A Boston accent is a local accent of Eastern New England English native specifically to the city of Boston and its suburbs Northeastern New England English is classified as traditionally including New Hampshire Maine and all of eastern Massachusetts while some uniquely local vocabulary appears only around Boston 1 2 A 2006 study co authored by William Labov claims that the accent remains relatively stable 3 though a 2018 study suggests the accent s traditional features may be retreating particularly among the city s younger residents and becoming increasingly confined to the historically Irish American neighborhood of South Boston 4 Contents 1 Phonological characteristics 1 1 Non rhoticity 1 2 Declining features 2 In popular culture 3 Notable lifelong native speakers 4 See also 5 References 6 Bibliography 7 Further reading 8 External linksPhonological characteristics editVowels of the traditional Boston accent Front Central Backlax tense lax tense lax tenseClose ɪ i ʊ uMid ɛ eɪ e ʌ oʊOpen ae a ɒDiphthongs aɪ ɔɪ aʊ ɪe ʊe ɛe oe Boston accents typically have the cot caught merger but not the father bother merger This means that instead of merging the historical short o sound as in LOT with the broad a as in PALM like most other American accents the Boston accent merges it with the aw vowel as in THOUGHT Thus lot paw caught cot law wand rock talk doll wall etc all are pronounced with the same open back often rounded vowel ɒ while keeping the broad a sound distinct a as in father spa and dark So even though the word dark has no r in many Boston accents it remains pronounced differently from dock because it belongs to Boston s START PALM class of words versus the LOT THOUGHT one dark dak versus dock dɒk 5 page needed Thus while New York accents have ɔ for paw and ɑ for lot and Standard British accents have a similar distinction ɔː versus ɒ Boston accents only have one merged phoneme for both ɒ In general Eastern New England accents have a short a vowel ae as in TRAP that is extremely tensed towards ee when it precedes a nasal consonant thus man is meen and planet is ˈpʰleenɪʔ Boston shares this system with some of the American Midwest and most of the West though the raising in Boston tends to be more extreme This type of modern General American ae raising system is simpler than the systems of British or New York City accents However elements of a more complex pattern exist for some Boston speakers in addition to raising before nasals Bostonians unlike nearby New Hampshirites for example may also raise or break the short a sound before other types of consonants too primarily the most strongly before voiceless fricatives followed by voiced stops laterals voiceless stops and voiced fricatives so that words like half bath and glass become hɛef bɛe8 and ɡlɛes respectively 6 This trend began around the early mid to mid twentieth century replacing the older Boston accent s London like broad a system in which those same words are transferred over to the PALM class a see Declining features below 7 The raised ɛe may overlap with the non rhotic realization of SQUARE as ɛe Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions between short and long vowels before medial r than many other modern American accents do hurry ˈhʌri and furry ˈferi and mirror ˈmɪre and nearer ˈnɪere though some of these distinctions are somewhat endangered as people under 40 clarification needed in neighboring New Hampshire and Maine have lost them In this case Boston shares these distinctions with both New York and British accents whereas other American accents like in the Midwest have lost them entirely The nuclei of the diphthongs aɪ and aʊ PRICE and MOUTH respectively 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 phenomenon more famously associated with Canadian accents is known by linguists as Canadian raising The nuclei of oʊ and u in GOAT and GOOSE are significantly less fronted than in many other American accents The latter may be diphthongized to ʊu or ɵu The weak vowel merger is traditionally absent This makes Lenin ˈlɛnɪn distinct from Lennon ˈlɛnen 8 Speakers of the more deeply urban varieties of the Boston accent may realize the English dental fricatives 8 d as the dental stops t d giving rise to a phonemic distinction between dental and alveolar stops thus those may sound closer to doze Non rhoticity edit The traditional Boston accent is widely known for being non rhotic or r dropping particularly before the mid 20th century Recent studies have shown that younger speakers use more of a rhotic or r ful accent than older speakers 9 This goes for black Bostonians as well 10 Non rhoticity means that the phoneme r does not appear in coda position for where in English phonotactics r precedes other consonants see English phonology Coda as in most dialects of English in England and Australia card therefore becomes kad cahd and color ˈkʌle culluh Words such as weird wɪed and square skwɛe feature centering diphthongs which correspond to the sequences of close and mid vowels r in rhotic AmE The phonemicity of the centering diphthongs ɪe ʊe ɛe oe depends on a speaker s rhoticity Also the stressed sequence ɜr inside a closed syllable as in NURSE is most likely to take on a rhotic ɝ pronunciation among Bostonians 9 11 An example of non rhoticity plus a fronted START vowel is Park your car in Harvard Yard pronounced pʰak je ˈkʰaɹ ɪn ˌhaved ˈjad or as if spelled pahk yah cah r in Hahvud Yahd 12 13 The r in car would usually be pronounced in this case because the Boston accent possesses both linking R and intrusive R an r will not be lost at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel and an 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 de ˈtuner ɪz Declining features edit Many characteristics of the Boston accent may be retreating particularly among younger residents In the most old fashioned of Boston accents there may be a lingering resistance to the horse hoarse merger so that horse has the pure vowel ɒ while hoarse has the centering diphthong oe this can potentially cause the NORTH LOT THOUGHT merger so that tort tot and taught are phonemically all tɒt The result is that for an older Boston accent the NORTH LOT THOUGHT vowel is distinct from the FORCE vowel Another two example words that would traditionally be distinguished thus are for fɒ versus four foe This distinction was rapidly fading out of currency in the second half of the 20th century with the words belonging to the NORTH class being transferred over to the FORCE class undoing the merger of NORTH with LOT THOUGHT as it is in almost all regions of North America that still make it For non rhotic speakers the modern day situation in Boston is that both horse and hoarse as well as both for and four take the centering diphthong oe A feature that Boston speakers once shared with Britain s Received Pronunciation though now uncommon in Boston is the broad a of the BATH lexical set of words making a distinction from the TRAP set see Trap bath split In particular words that in other American accents have the short a pronounced as ae that vowel was replaced in the nineteenth century if not earlier and often sporadically by speakers as far back as the late eighteenth century 14 with a thus half as haf and bath as ba8 15 Fewer words have the broad a in Boston English than in the London accents and fewer and fewer Boston speakers maintain the broad a system as time goes on with its transition into a decline occurring in speakers born from about 1930 to 1950 and first documented as a decline in 1977 7 Boston speakers born before about 1930 used this broad a in the words after ask aunt bath calf can t glass half laugh pasture path and perhaps other words and born from about 1930 to 1950 use it only in aunt calf half laugh and pass Speakers born since 1950 typically have no broad a whatsoever and instead slight ae raising i e ɛe for example in craft bad math etc 15 with this same set of words and variably other instances of short a too 15 Only aunt maintains the broad a sound in even the youngest speakers though this one word is a common exception throughout all of the Northeastern U S Broad a in aunt is also heard by occasional speakers throughout Anglophone North America it is quite commonly heard in African American speech as well In popular culture editAlthough not all Boston area speakers are non rhotic non rhoticity remains the feature most widely associated with the region As a result it is frequently the subject of humor about Boston as in comedian Jon Stewart joking in his book America that although John Adams drafted the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution delegates from his state refused to ratify the letter R 16 Being conspicuous and easily identifiable as regional Boston accents are routinely featured by actors in films set in Boston particularly for working class white characters such as in Good Will Hunting Mystic River The Departed Manchester by the Sea The Town Ted The Fighter and Black Mass 17 18 Television series based within a Boston setting such as Boston Public and Cheers have featured the accent Simpsons character Mayor Quimby talks with an exaggerated Boston accent as a reference to the former US Senator Ted Kennedy 19 Television comedy sketches have featured the accent including The Boston Teens and Dunkin Donuts on Saturday Night Live as well as Boston Accent Trailer on Late Night with Seth Meyers 17 In The Heat the family members of Shannon Mullins all speak with the Boston accent and confusion arises from the pronunciation of the word narc as nahk nak In the video game Team Fortress 2 the character Scout who is himself a Boston native talks with a distinct Boston accent although it sometimes lapses into a Brooklyn accent Notable lifelong native speakers edit source source Gina McCarthy s voice source source Thomas Menino s voice source source Marty Walsh s voiceWilliam J Bratton 20 thick Boston accent 21 Bill Burr the comic s wicked Boston accent 22 Lenny Clarke a Cambridge raised verbal machine gun with a raspy Boston accent 23 Chick Corea 24 his speech still carries more than a trace of a Boston accent 25 Sue Costello Between her thick Boston accent and fearless stand up style Sue Costello is a true embodiment of the city s comedy scene 26 Nick Di Paolo thick Boston accent 27 Jack Haley from Boston as anyone who heard the Tin Man s accent would know 28 Don Kent With his inimitable Boston accent 29 Mel King he has the soft R s of a deep Boston accent 30 Lyndon LaRouche a cultivated New England accent 31 Tom and Ray Magliozzi 32 like drunk raccoons with Boston accents 33 Rocky Marciano He spoke with distinct traces of a Boston accent 34 Gina McCarthy Obama s nominee to head the EPA has that spectacular South Boston accent 35 Joey McIntyre his authentic Boston accent 36 Thomas Menino strong traces of the Boston dialect 37 Christy Mihos speaks unpretentiously in a variation of a Boston accent and drops the g in words like talking or running 38 Brian and Jim Moran The Moran brothers share an unmistakable Massachusetts accent 39 Alex Rocco grew up in blue collar Cambridge 40 Tom Silva New England accent 41 Marty Walsh he demonstrates what many believe to be the strongest Boston dialect in the city s mayoral history 37 Jermaine Wiggins skin as thick as his East Boston accent 42 See also editBoston slang Eastern New England English New England English North American English regional phonologyReferences edit Schneider Edgar Bernd Kortmann 2005 A Handbook of Varieties of English A Multi Media Reference Tool Mouton de Gruyter p 270 ISBN 978 3 11 017532 5 Millward C M 1996 A Biography of the English Language Wadsworth Publishing p 353 ISBN 978 0 15 501645 3 Labov William 2010 The Politics of Language Change Dialect Divergence in America The University of Virginia Press Pre publication draft p 53 Browne Charlene Stanford James 2018 Boston Dialect Features in the Black African American Community University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Vol 24 Iss 2 Article 4 p 19 Labov et al 2006 The Atlas of North American English Berlin DeGruyter Wood Jim 2010 Short a in Northern New England Journal of English Linguistics 20 1 31 pp 146 149 a b Wood 2010 p 139 Wells 1982 p 520 a b Irwin Patricia Nagy Naomi 2007 Bostonians r Speaking A Quantitative Look at R in Boston University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 13 2 Browne Charlene Stanford James 2018 Boston Dialect Features in the Black African American Community University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Vol 24 Iss 2 Article 4 p 19 Fish Jody Spring 2018 Gende r in the Boston Accent A linguistic analysis of Boston r from a gender perspective BA thesis Malmo University Faculty of Culture and Society pp 4 8 urn nbn se mau diva 23112 Retrieved May 15 2023 Vorhees Mara 2009 Boston Con Pianta Ediz Inglese Lonely Planet p 52 ISBN 978 1 74179 178 5 Randall Eric August 25 2015 Blame Harvard for this annoying Boston accent test The Boston Globe Wood 2010 p 138 a b c Wells 1982 p 523 Stewart John et al 2014 The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America The Book Teacher s Edition A Citizen s Guide to Democracy Inaction Grand Central Publishing a b Gottlieb Jeremy 2017 Hollywood has a Boston problem The Washington Post Setting Your Movie in Boston Bettah Get the Accent Right NPR August 2014 Brown John Robbie 2 July 2007 Kennedy backs city s Simpsons Movie campaign Boston com NY Times Co Roberts Sam 2006 01 16 Mayor s Accent Deserts Boston for New York The New York Times Retrieved 2009 02 26 Rubin Joel 2008 12 07 Police chief says he still has plenty to prove Los Angeles Times Retrieved 2009 02 26 Miller Gregory E 2018 Bill Burr vows to never become an old cornball New York Post NYP Holdings Inc Sullivan Jim 2001 04 18 Lenny Clarke Deftly Handles Nightschtick The Boston Globe Cumbie Ty 2004 10 30 Chick Corea All About Jazz Retrieved 2009 03 17 Mitter Siddhartha 2008 02 29 A banjo a piano and two willing masters The Boston Globe Retrieved 2009 03 17 Juul Matt 2015 Watch Dorchester comic riffs on Boston Gronk and more Boston com Boston Globe Media Partners LLC Calhoun Ada 2004 03 29 Did You Hear The One About The amp Comic New York Retrieved 2009 03 17 Sletcher Michael ed 2004 New England The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures Greenwood Publishing Group p 186 ISBN 0 313 32753 X Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame Don Kent ca 2010 https www massbroadcastershof org hall of fame hall of fame 2007 don kent Concannon Jim May 12 2009 Mel s Vision The Boston Globe King Dennis 1989 Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism New York Doubleday p 306 Littlefield Kinney 2008 07 01 Radio s Car Talk guys reluctantly tackle TV The Boston Globe Retrieved 2009 02 26 Leibovich Mark 2005 05 04 Oh Brother Car Talk Guy Puts Mouth in Gear The Washington Post Retrieved 2009 02 26 Roberts Randy 2005 The Rock the Curse and the Hub A Random History of Boston Sports Harvard University Press p 222 NewSoundbites YouTube user uploaded 2013 Boston accent goes national with President Obama s pick for EPA YouTube Excerpted from MSNBC s The Rachel Maddow Show Moraski Lauren 2014 10 30 Joey McIntyre on appeal of The McCarthys future of NKOTB CBS News a b Baker Billy 2013 11 17 In Walsh students of Bostonese have found their avatah The Boston Globe Retrieved 2015 06 15 Mooney Brian C 2006 02 19 The nonpolitician who would be governor The Boston Globe Retrieved 2009 02 26 Gardner Amy 2009 02 11 A Time to Reevaluate Family Ties Washington Post Retrieved 2009 02 27 Allis Sam 2004 01 25 It s tough to talk like a true Bostonian The Boston Globe Retrieved 2009 02 27 Bizjak Marybeth February 2007 Mr Fix It Sacramento Magazine Retrieved 2009 03 17 Jensen Sean 2004 12 03 Despite his unlikely build Vikings Wiggins gets it done at tight end Saint Paul Pioneer Press Archived from the original on 2014 06 11 Retrieved 2009 02 26 Bibliography editBaker Adam Mielke Jeff Archangeli Diana 2008 More velar than g Consonant Coarticulation as a Cause of Diphthongization PDF In Chang Charles B Haynie Hannah J eds Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics Somerville Massachusetts Cascadilla Proceedings Project pp 60 68 ISBN 978 1 57473 423 2 Boberg Charles 2008 Regional phonetic differentiation in Standard Canadian English Journal of English Linguistics 36 2 129 154 doi 10 1177 0075424208316648 S2CID 146478485 Duncan Daniel 2016 Tense ae is still lax A phonotactics study PDF In Hansson Gunnar olafur Farris Trimble Ashley McMullin Kevin Pulleyblank Douglas eds Supplemental Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology Vol 3 Washington D C Linguistic Society of America doi 10 3765 amp v3i0 3653 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a journal ignored help Labov William 2007 Transmission and Diffusion PDF Language 83 2 344 387 doi 10 1353 lan 2007 0082 JSTOR 40070845 S2CID 6255506 Labov William Ash Sharon Boberg Charles 2006 The Atlas of North American English Berlin Mouton de Gruyter ISBN 978 3 11 016746 7 Wells John C 1982 Accents of English Vol 3 Beyond the British Isles pp i xx 467 674 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 52128541 0 Further reading editMcCarthy John 1993 John McCarthy Metcalf Allan How We Talk American Regional English Today Boston Houghton Mifflin External links edit nbsp Look up park the car in Harvard Yard in Wiktionary the free dictionary Guide to Boston English Glossary of Boston English Article on Boston accent So don t I a unique grammatical construct Boston Slang DictionaryRecordings of the Boston accent37 year old female 18 year old female 73 year old male Medford City Councilor Hover amp Hear a Boston accent and compare with other accents from the US and around the World Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Boston accent amp oldid 1193046496, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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