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The Boston accent is found not only in the city of Boston, Massachusetts itself but also much of eastern Massachusetts. The Boston accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. In Linguistics, an accent is a manner of Pronunciation of a language The Commonwealth of Massachusetts ( is a state located in the New England region of the northeastern United States. New Hampshire ( is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The State of Maine ( is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean These regions are frequently grouped together with Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut by sociolinguists under the cover term Eastern New England accent. Rhode Island ( officially named the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is a state in the New England region of the United States Connecticut ( is a state located in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of Society, including cultural norms expectations and context on the way Language is used The best-known features of the Boston accent are non-rhoticity and broad A. English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups the rhotic (ˈroʊtɪk and non-rhotic, depending on when the sound typically represented Trap-bath split The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English (including Received Pronunciation It is most prominent in blue collar—and often traditionally Irish or Italian—Boston neighborhoods, such as Charlestown, South Boston, Hyde Park, Dorchester, East Boston and Brighton, as well as in nearby cities such as Medford and Somerville. Hyde Park is the most southern Neighborhood of the City of Boston, Massachusetts. Dorchester is a neighborhood of Boston Massachusetts. It is named after the town of Dorchester in the English county of Dorset, from which East Boston was annexed by the City of Boston in 1836 and is separated from the rest of the city by Boston Harbor and bordered by Winthrop, Revere Brighton is a neighborhood of the City of Boston, Massachusetts, located in the northwest corner of the city Medford is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in the United States, on the Mystic River, just a few miles north of Boston. Somerville (pronunciation ˈsʌmərvɪl is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. The accent is also quite prominent in the South Shore exurbs, as well as working-class cities throughout the Greater Boston area, such as Lowell, Waltham, Lynn, and Brockton. South Shore of Massachusetts is a geographic region stretching South and East from Boston along the Shore of Massachusetts Bay A commuter town is an urban community that is primarily residential from which most of the Workforce commute out to earn their livelihood Greater Boston is the area of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts surrounding the city of Boston Massachusetts. Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. As of the 2000 census the city had a total population of 105167 One of the early centers of the Industrial Revolution in northern America Waltham is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States Lynn is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. Brockton is a city in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States.

Contents

Phonological characteristics

All phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (see help:Pronunciation). Phonetics (from the Greek φωνή ( phonê) "sound" or "voice" is the study of the physical sounds of human speech Transcription is the conversion into written typewritten or printed form of a Spoken language source such as the proceedings of a court hearing The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic For example:

how are you? [hoˈwaːjə]

Non-rhoticity

The traditional Boston accent is non-rhotic; in other words, the phoneme [r] does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant, as in some types of British English. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU British English or UK English ( BrE, BE, en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the Thus, there is no [r] in words like park [paːk], car [kaː], and Harvard [haːvəd]. 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]. In Linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain Syllables in a word

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 states that the Massachusetts Legislature ratified everything in John Adams' 1780 Massachusetts Constitution "except the letter 'R'". Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz; November 28 1962 is an American Comedian, Satirist, Actor, Writer, and America (The Book A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction is a 2004 non-fiction Bestseller written by Jon Stewart and other writers of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts ( is a state located in the New England region of the northeastern United States. John Adams (October 30 1735 July 4 1826 was one of the most influential Founding Fathers of the United States.

In the most traditional and 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 tunərɪz]

Some speakers who are natively non-rhotic or partially non-rhotic attempt to change their accent by restoring [r] to word-final position. Linking R and intrusive R are phonological phenomena that occur in many non- rhotic dialects of English. For example, on the NPR program Car Talk, hosted by the Boston-native Magliozzi brothers, one host has castigated the other on air for saying [kaː] instead of [kɑɹ]. Car Talk is a Radio Talk show broadcast weekly on National Public Radio stations throughout the United States and elsewhere Occasionally such speakers may hypercorrect and "restore" [r] to a word that never originally had it. Hypercorrection is a Linguistic phenomenon which may take any of the following forms an elaborate prescriptively based correction of common This usage is frequent when a word ending in a vowel is followed by a word starting with a vowel. Speakers will say "I have no idea," but add an r if they say "The idea-r is. . . " (which is a linking R). With the hypercorrection, "I have no idea-r" is used even at the end of an utterance.

There are also a number of Boston accent speakers with rhoticity, but they sometimes delete [r] only in unaccented syllables or words before a consonant.

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]). History See also History of New England New England's earliest inhabitants were Algonquian -speaking Native Americans including the Father-bother merger The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English 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 New York dialect of the English language is spoken by most European Americans and some non-European Americans who were raised in New York City and The Received Pronunciation of England, like Boston English, distinguishes the classes, using [ɑː] in father and [ɒ] in bother. Received Pronunciation ( RP) is a form of Pronunciation of the English language (specifically British English) which has long been perceived as

On the other hand, the Boston accent (unlike the Rhode Island accent) merges the two classes exemplified by caught and cot: both become [kɒːt]. Father-bother merger The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English 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 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. The English language has undergone a number of phonological changes before the historic phoneme /r/. 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 ['howəs] and ['fowə]. 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". Trap-bath split The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English (including Received Pronunciation 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]. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the Boston shares this system with the accents of the southern part of the Midwest. 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]. Trap-bath split The trap-bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in southern varieties of English English (including Received Pronunciation (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 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 blend the vowel sound. The English language has undergone a number of phonological changes before the historic phoneme /r/. Phonemic differentiation is the phenomenon of a Language maximizing the acoustic distance between its Phonemes presumably to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding 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. Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless This effect is known usually as Canadian raising, though it is less extreme in New England than in most of Canada. Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which Diphthongs are "raised" Canadian English ( CanE, en-CA) is the variety of English used in Canada. Furthermore, some Boston dialects have a tendency (similar to the Upper Midwest) to raise the /au/ diphthong in both voiced and voiceless environments.

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

Non-rhoticity elsewhere in New England

Non-rhoticity outside 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 of 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.

Well-known speakers of/with the Boston accent

Lexicon

Some words used in the Boston area but not in many other American English dialects (or with different meanings) are:

Recordings of the Boston accent

References

  1. ^ About Beat Charlie Moore ESPN Outdoors
  2. ^ Frappe Definition at Boston-Online. com
  3. ^ "milk shake" in the American Heritage Dictionary
  4. ^ Hoodsie Glossary at Boston-Online. com
  5. ^ Milkshake Definition at Boston-Online. com

See also

External links

Several dialects of American English are spoken in New England. The Boston Brahmin accent is a New England accent associated with the Boston Brahmin.
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