The Boston accent is the local accent of Eastern New England English spoken specifically in the city of Boston, its suburbs, and much of eastern Massachusetts. Eastern New England English also traditionally includes New Hampshire and Maine, though some uniquely local lexical characteristics appear only in eastern Massachusetts.
Phonological characteristics
Non-rhoticity
The traditional Boston accent is non-rhotic, particularly in the early 1900s. Recent studies have shown that younger speakers use more of a rhotic accent than older speakers from the Boston region.
The phoneme /r/ does not appear in coda position (where in English phonotactics it must precede other consonants, see English phonology#Coda), as in many dialects of English in England and all dialects of Australian English; card therefore becomes [kÊ°aËd]. After high and mid-high vowels, the /r/ is replaced by [É™] or another neutral central vowel like [ɨ]: weird [wiɨd], square [ˈskweÉ™]. Similarly, unstressed /É/ ("er") is replaced by [É™], [É], or [ɨ], as in color [ˈkʰʌɫə]. A famous example is "Park the car in Harvard Yard", pronounced [pÊ°aËk ðə ˈkÊ°aËɹ‿ɪn ˈhaËvÉ™d ˈjaËd], or as if spelled "pahk the cah(r) in Hahvuhd Yahd". Note that the r in car would usually 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 subject 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 /É"r/ becomes a low back vowel [É']: corn is [kÊ°É'Ën], pronounced the same or almost the same as con or cawn.
For some old-fashioned speakers, stressed /É/ as in bird is replaced by [Ê] - [bÊd]; for many present-day Boston-accent speakers, however, /É/ is retained (generally as [Éš] or [əɹ]).
The Boston accent possesses both linking R and intrusive R: That is to say, an /r/ will not be lost at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel, and indeed 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 tÊ°uËnəɹɪz].
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 one of the few regions in North America where the distinction between the vowel phonemes exemplified by father and bother is widely maintained. (A variable distinction is maintained in New York City.) Example include words like father and spa which contain [äË] ([ˈfäËðə], [späË]) and bother and dock which contain [É'Ë] ([ˈbÉ'Ëðə], [dÉ'Ëk]). This means that even though dark has no [ɹ], it remains distinct from dock because its vowel quality is different: [daËk] vs. [dÉ'Ëk]. By contrast, most US English uses the same or almost the same vowel in both of these classes: [É'Ë]. The Received Pronunciation of England, like Boston English, distinguishes the classes, using [É'Ë] in father and [É'] in bother.
The Boston accent merges the two classes exemplified by caught and cot: both become [kÊ°É'Ët]. So caught, cot, law, water, rock, talk, doll, and wall all have the same vowel, [É'Ë]. By contrast, New York accents and southern New England accents have [kÊ°É"É™t] for caught and [kÊ°É't~kʰät] for cot; The UK's Received Pronunciation has [kÊ°É"Ët~kÊ°oËt] and [kÊ°É't~kÊ°É"t], respectively. In Boston and some other parts of New England, a few words ending in /t/, e.g., hot and got, can be exceptions, sounding instead like hut and gut, respectively.
Some older Boston speakers â€" the ones who have a low vowel in words like corn [kÊ°É'Ën] â€" do not undergo the so-called horseâ€"hoarse merger, i.e., they maintain a distinction between both horse and for, and hoarse and four. The former are in the same class as corn, as [hÉ'Ës] and [fÉ'Ë], and the latter are [ˈho(w)É™s] and [ˈfo(w)É™]. This distinction is rapidly fading out of currency, as it is in almost all regions of North America that still make it. Regardless, for some Boston speakers, the words tot, tort, and taught may all be homophones.
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 (but also, on a continuous scale in some other environments); thus, man is [meən] and planet is [ˈpʰɫeənət]. Boston shares this system with the accents of the southern part of the Midwest and the major cities of the West, though the raising of this vowel in Boston tends to be more noticeable and extreme than elsewhere. By contrast, England's Received Pronunciation uses [æ] regardless of whether the next consonant is nasal or not, and New York City uses [eə] before a nasal at the end of a syllable ([meən]) but not before a nasal between two vowels ([ˈpʰɫænət]).
A feature that Boston speakers once shared with England's standard "Received Pronunciation," though now uncommon, is the so-called "broad a": In particular words that in other American accents have the "short a" as in half or bath pronounced as [æ], that vowel was replaced in the nineteenth century (if not earlier and often sporadically by speaker) with [aË~É'Ë]: [haËf], [baËθ]. 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. Boston speakers born before about 1930 used this broad a in the words half, path, ask, and can't. Speakers born between about 1930 to 1950 use the broad a only in half and pass, otherwise slightly raising and diphthongizing the vowel of this set of words (and, variably, other instances of short a) to [ɛə]. Speakers born since 1950 typically have no broad a whatsoever and, instead, slight /æ/ tensing across the board (i.e. [ɛə]), for example, in craft, bad, math, etc. The word aunt, however, remains almost universally broad.
Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions between short and long vowels before medial [ɹ] than many other modern American accents do: hurry [ˈhʌɹi] and furry [ˈfÉɹi]; and mirror [ˈmɪɹə] and nearer [ˈniəɹə], 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 /aÊŠ/ may be raised to something like [É] 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 (one of the two phenomena of) 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 /aÊŠ/ diphthong in both voiced and voiceless environments and some Boston accents may raise the /aɪ/ diphthong in certain voiced environments.
The nuclei of /oÊŠ/ and /uË/ are significantly less fronted than in many American accents. /uË/ may be diphthongized to approximately [ÊŠu] or [ɵu].
Consonants
The more deeply urban varieties of the Boston accent may use the dental stops [t̪, d̪] to replace the normal English dental fricatives [θ, ð].
Use in media
As a conspicuous, easily identifiable accent, the Boston accent is routinely featured in Boston-setting films such as The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Good Will Hunting, Ted, Mystic River, The Departed, Blow, The Town, Blown Away, The Fighter, Black Mass, and Gone Baby Gone. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, a character mentions the accent in parody, giving his "best regahds". 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 reference to the former US Senator Ted Kennedy. In The Heat, FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn meets the family of Shannon Mullins, who (except Shannon) all speak with the Boston accent and momentarily left Ashburn confused when one of them asked if she was a narc (pronounced as "nahk"). 30 Rock character Nancy Donovan speaks with a pronounced Boston accent. 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. Many elements of the Boston accent can be heard on the animated TV series Family Guy, which is set in the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island. The Saturday Night Live sketch The Boston Teens with Jimmy Fallon (who is imitating) and Rachel Dratch (who really does use it) also uses it frequently.
Notable lifelong native speakers
Lexicon
Some words used in the Boston area are:
- blinkers
- turn signals on a car (also U.K., Australia and New Zealand). The Massachusetts Department of Transportation has displayed signs reminding motorists to "Use Yah Blinkah", a phonetic representation of the phrase as spoken with a Boston accent.
- bubbler (or water bubbler)
- drinking fountain, pronounced "bubblah". This term is also used in Wisconsin and Australia.
- frappe
- a beverage mixed with milk and ice cream, a.k.a. milkshake (in most other places), or if in Rhode Island (and especially if coffee flavored), called a "cabinet". From French, meaning "shaken or stirred".
- Hoodsie
- A small cup of ice cream, the kind that comes with a flat wooden spoon (from HP Hood, the dairy that sells them.) Also (very offensive slang), a teenage girl. Elsewhere occasionally known as a dixie cup.
- jimmies
- Chocolate ice cream sprinkles. Also common in the Philadelphia area.
- packie
- liquor store (from "package store")
- pissah
- means something akin to "great" either realistically or sarcastically. Also spelled 'pissa'. This is from the word "pisser" with a Boston accent, but used as an adjective. Occasionally combined with "wicked" to yield "wicked pissah".
- rotary
- traffic circle. These full-speed circular intersections are common in Greater Boston.
- spa
- A convenience store that has tonic on tap and (usually) sells sandwiches.
- tonic
- soft drink; known elsewhere as soda
- whiffle
- a crew cut or male haircut done with electric clippers.
- wicked
- Generally means "very" or "super" and is used as an adverb. "That hockey game was wicked awesome!" It can also be used to infer tones and moods, for example, "Ugh, that guy is wicked slow."
See also
- Eastern New England English
- New England English
- North American English regional phonology
- Regional vocabularies of American English
References
Bibliography
- McCarthy, John (1993). "John McCarthy".Â
- Metcalf, Allan. How We Talk: American Regional English Today. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Â
- Wells, John C. (1982), Accents of English: Beyond the British Isles, 3, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University PressÂ
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.