Talk:Boston Brahmin accent

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Basically, I find it hard to believe that the upper-class Boston Brahmin accent and the upper-class New York accent are more closely related to each other than to the working-class accents of the same cities; this is contrary to what sociolinguists know about upper-class speech in American English. It reads like it was written by someone who is unaware of the differences between New York and Boston accents and just grouped them together because they share one salient upperclass feature (non-rhoticity). For instance, New York has never had the cot-caught merger and even educated Eastern Massachusetts speakers have possessed the merger for many decades. It is also notable that none of the individuals mentioned in the article as exemplars of the "Boston Brahmin" accent are from Boston. Moreover "clipped manner of speaking" and "drawling of both vowels and consonants" are both hopelessly vague as attempted descriptions of an accent. AJD 06:58, 19 August 2006 (UTC)