|
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. Alternative meanings: Boston (disambiguation) The 18th-century Old State House in Boston is surrounded by tall buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries. ...
Modern New England, the six northeastern-most states of the United States, indicated by red The New England region of the United States is located in the northeastern corner of the country. ...
American English or U.S. English is the diverse form of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. ...
State nickname: The Pine Tree State Other U.S. States Capital Augusta Largest city Portland Governor John Baldacci Official languages None Area 86,542 km² (39th) - Land 80,005 km² - Water 11,724 km² (13. ...
State nickname: The Granite State Other U.S. States Capital Concord Largest city Manchester Governor John Lynch Official languages English Area 24,239 km² (46th) - Land 23,249 km² - Water 814 km² (3. ...
State nickname: Bay State Other U.S. States Capital Boston Largest city Boston Governor Mitt Romney Official languages English Area 27,360 km² (44th) - Land 20,317 km² - Water 7,043 km² (25. ...
State nickname: The Ocean State Other U.S. States Capital Providence Largest city Providence Governor Donald Carcieri Official languages None Area 4,005 km² (50th) - Land 2,709 km² - Water 1,296 km² (32. ...
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.
For a more detailed explanation of Boston phonology, see the related article: Boston Accent. Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), or phonemics, is a subfield of grammar (see also linguistics). ...
The International Phonetic Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. ...
Phonetics (from the Greek word phone = sound/voice) is the study of speech sounds (voice). ...
In computing, Unicode is the international standard whose goal is to provide the means to encode the text of every document people want to store in computers. ...
Technical Note: Most IPA symbols are not included in Times New Roman, the default font for Latin scripts in Internet Explorer for Windows. ...
The Boston accent is characteristic not only of the city of Boston itself, but more generally of all of eastern Massachusetts. ...
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). 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is the junior United States Senator from Massachusetts. ...
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. Southern American English is a dialect of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from central Kentucky and northern Virginia to the Gulf Coast and from the Atlantic coast to eastern Texas. ...
Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ...
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.
Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which diphthongs are raised before voiceless consonants (e. ...
Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...
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: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum The Wizard of Oz (1939 movie) starring Judy Garland The Wizard of Oz (stage) Stage versions starting in 1903 The Wizard of Oz (animated series) The Wizard of Oz (game) The Wizard of Oz (movie) Various film versions See also...
See Also The Boston accent is characteristic not only of the city of Boston itself, but more generally of all of eastern Massachusetts. ...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
American English or U.S. English is the diverse form of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. ...
This is a list of varieties of the English language. ...
References - Allan Metcalf, How We Talk, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2000
|
Feeds |
Contact