Eastern New England English
Eastern New England English (also called "Boston English", "New England English", or "Northeastern [American] Coastal English") is a [sub-]dialect of American English generally spoken by people living in coastal Maine and New Hampshire, Eastern Massachusetts, and parts of Rhode Island.
Eastern New England English is marked by its unique vocabulary, as well as the prevalence of certain phonetic variations, like the "cot-caught" merger and non-rhoticity.
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Phonology
For a more detailed explanation of Boston phonology, see the related article: Boston Accent.
R-Dropping
Eastern New England English (ENEE), like New York, Southern, and certain British varieties of the language, is known for its non-rhoticity. Note than not all (but many do) ENEE speakers drop their r's, and those that do may not do it in all situations.
The easiest way to understand r-dropping in ENEE is to simply drop all r's from syllable codas, and then re-introduce them when the following syllable begins with another r (as in "parrot" or "merry"), or when an intrusive r would occur (as in "generation").
A dropped r is generally replaced with a schwa, as in "bore" /bɔə/ or "beer" /biə/. When r acts as a vowel (as in "bird" or "girl"), the schwa may be pronounced with varying degrees of height, rounding, and rhoticity, depending on the word and the speaker. Also, the sequence "ar" in words like "car" and "bar" is usually pronounced [aː] rather than [aə].
Intrusive R
Another characteristic of non-rhotic ENEE is the adding of r's where they don't otherwise belong. If a syllable ends in /a/, /ɔ/, /ɒ/, or any sort of schwa, and the following syllable begins with a vowel, an r /ɹ/ sound is inserted to separate the vowels. For example, the phrase "park the car in Harvard Yard" is actually pronounced something like "pahk the cah-r-in Hahvid Yahd". The intrusive r does not appear in the coda of "car", from whence the r was already dropped, but between the two words.
Intrusive r will occur anywhere the conditions are right. For example, in the sentence "Ma is in the kitchen", the first two words would be pronounced "ma-r-is". For this reason, you often hear speakers of ENEE talking about "drawring" a picture, or telling you what their wonderful "idear" is.
If a word occurs often in a context where it would end with an intrusive r, some ENEE speakers will begin attaching an r to the end of the word wherever it occurs. This quirk can become even more pronounced when a speaker tries to "correct" his or her speech to sound more like General American. You can hear this over-correction in 2004 U.S. Presidential candidate John Kerry's speeches, where he often says "idears" instead of "ideas" (an intrusive r would actually be out of place because of the s on the end of the word).
Vowels
Other than vowels affected by dropped r's, Eastern New England English has a vowel system that is similar (but not identical) to General American.
Broad A
In ENEE, the first vowel in "father" is not pronounced the same as the first vowel in "bother". The former uses /a/ instead of the General American /ɑ/. This sound, called broad a, is similar to the vowel in the word "sky" as pronounced in Southern American English, or in "hot" as pronounced in Chicago.
ENEE broad a is found in words like "father", "ma", and "pa", as well as many loanwords like "spa" and "pasta". Among the upper classes of Boston, broad a may appear in some words normally using /æ/, such as "glass".
Other Differences
- The vowels in "cot" and "caught" are usually merged. Both are typically pronounced /ɒ/, though the sequence "or" is still pronounced /ɔə/ by many people.
- The vowels in "merry", "Mary", and "marry" are not merged. These words are pronounced /mɛɹi/, /meɹi/, and /mæɹi/, respectively.
- The nuclei of the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ may be centralized to something like /ɐ/. The effect is similar to (though less pronounced than) that of Canadian Raising.
- The vowel /æ/ ("bat", "dad") is sometimes raised to /ɛə/ or /eə/, though this is independent from the similar change in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. This shift is especially pronounced when /æ/ precedes nasals, as in "can" and "dam".
- The nuclei of /u/ and /ou/ are never fronted, but may become slightly centralized or unrounded.
Flipped T's and D's
Like many dialects of American English, ENEE tends to reduce intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to /ɾ/ (similar to the r sound in Spanish). This has produced large pronunciation shifts in certain words; for example, "potatoes" sounds more like "b'daydas" in ENEE.
Vocabulary
Some words and phrases used in Eastern New England English but not in many other American English dialects are (non-ENEE translations in parentheses):
- bubbler (water fountain)
- soda, tonic (pop, coke)
- carriage ([shopping] cart)
- [trash] barrel (trashcan, trash bin)
- brook (creek)
- cuss (curse)
- ayuh (yes)
- down cellar (into the basement)
- elastic (rubber band)
- common (park, commons)
- Down East (coastal Maine)
- packie (Liquor store)
Wicked
Especially in the Boston area, the word "wicked" is used as an intensifying adverb. For example, a Bostonian might say, "That concert was wicked awesome", or "Bob is wicked smart". Wicked is also used in the normal sense, as in "the wicked witch of the West" from The Wizard of Oz.
See Also
References
- Allan Metcalf, How We Talk, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2000
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