Boston accent

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. The accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and areas of south-western Nova Scotia. 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. The Boston accent is mainly heard on the eastern part of Massachusetts, North Shore, South Shore, and the Greater Boston area.

Contents 1 Phonological characteristics 1.1 Non-rhoticity 1.2 Vowels 2 Non-rhoticity elsewhere in the New England area 3 Use in media 4 Well-known speakers of/with the Boston accent 5 Lexicon 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

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; 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 [skweə]. Similarly, unstressed [ɝ] ("er") is replaced by [ə], [ɐ], or [ɨ], as in color [kʌlə]. A well-known shibboleth is park the car in Harvard Yard, where the words park, Harvard and yard are pronounced [paːk], [haːvəd], and [jaːd] respectively. Note that the r in car would sometimes 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.

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] ([faːðə], [spaː]), and the latter [ɒː] ([bɒːðə], [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 [pleənət]. 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 ([plænət]).

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.

Laferriere (1977) also reports a productive, phonological process raising TRAP and BATH to [ɛə] demonstrated by her younger speakers.

Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions between short and long vowels before medial [r] than many other modern American accents do: Boston accents maintain the distinctions between the vowels in marry [mæri], merry [mɛri], and Mary [meəri], hurry [hʌri] and furry [fɝri], mirror [mɪrə] and nearer [niərə], 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

Due to the constantly evolving nature of dialects, contemporary speakers of Boston English show distinct similarities in pronunciation (though not necessarily accent) with New Jersey English and the New York dialect.

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, 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 and former Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci on whom he is mainly based. In the video game Team Fortress 2, the character Scout 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 Rhode Island.

Well-known speakers of/with the Boston accent

Lexicon

Some words used in the Boston area are:

• banger - a wicked bad headache

• barrel - a trash can, garbage can

• blinkers - automobile directional signals^[37]

• breakdown lane - the shoulder on a highway

• bubbler or water bubbler  – drinking fountain.^[38][39] This term is also used in Wisconsin.

• bullshit - has a second meaning of "very angry"

• bundles - full bags of groceries from the supermarket

• carriage - shopping cart

• clambake - clams, corn on the cob, lobster and other seafood

• clamboil - clams, quahogs, mussels, linguica, chourico, potatoes

• clam diggers - short pants worn in the summer time

• "clicker/channel changer" - a television remote control

• coffee regular - coffee with half and half or light cream and 2 sugars.

• elastics - rubber bands

• frappe (pronounced /fræp/) – 'a blend of ice cream, milk, and syrup'^[40] (In Boston milkshake refers to a concoction without ice cream, but merely with milk blended with flavored syrup by shaking.^[41][42])

• gonzo - crazy, bizarre; the term originated in South Boston but is now used nationally

• 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 a term used to describe 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.)^[43] Also (very offensive slang), a teenage girl.^[37] Elsewhere occasionally known as a dixie cup.

• The Hub - Boston, short for Hub of the Universe

• jimmies – 'chocolate ice cream sprinkles^[44]

• nylons - women's pantyhose

• packie – liquor store (from "package store")^[45]

• parlor - living room

• 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'.

• quahog - a large clam-like seafood

• rotary – 'traffic circle'^[44] (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.

• spa - A convenience store that (usually) sells sandwiches.^{[46][47][48][49][50][51]}

• 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.

• spuckie - 'submarine sandwich'; used in some older inner-city neighborhoods.

• steamers - clams

• Staties - Massachusetts State Troopers

• triple-decker - house having three apartments, one on each of three levels.

• a time - a social event, usually a retirement party or political function

• tonic – soft drink; known elsewhere as soda^[52]

• whiffle - a crew cut or male haircut done with electric clippers.^[37]

• wicked - 'very', in the extreme; as in 'wicked pissa' meaning 'very good'.

See also

• New England English
• Boston Brahmin accent
• North American English regional phonology#Northeastern dialects
• Regional vocabularies of American English

References

Further reading

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

External links

• Guide to Boston English
• Glossary of Boston English
• Article on Boston accent
• "So don't I" - a unique grammatical construct
• Boston Slang Dictionary

Recordings of the Boston accent

• 37-year-old female
• 73-year-old male
• Medford City Councilor
• 'Hover & Hear' a Boston accent, and compare with other accents from the US and around the World.

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