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Boston accent

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Template:Short description Template:AboutTemplate:Redirect Template:IPA notice A Boston accent is a local accent of Eastern New England English, native specifically to the city of Boston and its suburbs. Northeastern New England English is classified as traditionally including New Hampshire, Maine, and all of eastern Massachusetts, while some uniquely local vocabulary appears only around Boston.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> A 2006 study co-authored by William Labov claims that the accent remains relatively stable,<ref name="Labov 2010">Labov, William (2010). The Politics of Language Change: Dialect Divergence in America. The University of Virginia Press. Pre-publication draft. p. 53.</ref> though a 2018 study suggests the accent's traditional features may be retreating, particularly among the city's younger residents, and becoming increasingly confined to the historically Irish-American neighborhood of South Boston.<ref>Browne, Charlene; Stanford, James (2018). "Boston Dialect Features in the Black/African American Community." University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 24 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. p. 19.</ref>

Phonological characteristicsEdit

Vowels of the traditional Boston accent
Front Central Back
Template:Small Template:Small Template:Small Template:Small Template:Small Template:Small
Close Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Mid Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Open Template:IPA link Template:IPA link Template:IPA link
Diphthongs {{#invoke:IPA|main}}

Boston accents typically have the cot-caught merger but not the father-bother merger. This means that instead of merging the historical "short o" sound (as in [[lexical set|Template:Sc2]]) with the "broad a" (as in Template:Sc2) like most other American accents, the Boston accent merges it with the "aw" vowel (as in Template:Sc2). Thus, lot, paw, caught, cot, law, wand, rock, talk, doll, wall, etc. all are pronounced with the same open back (often) rounded vowel Template:IPAblink, while keeping the broad a sound distinct: Template:IPAblink, as in father, spa, and dark. So, even though the word dark has no {{#invoke:IPA|main}} in many Boston accents, it remains pronounced differently from dock because it belongs to Boston's Template:Sc2–Template:Sc2 class of words versus the Template:Sc2–Template:Sc2 one: dark {{#invoke:IPA|main}} versus dock {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.<ref>Labov et al. 2006 The Atlas of North American English Berlin: DeGruyter</ref>Template:Page needed Thus, while New York accents have {{#invoke:IPA|main}} for paw and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} for lot, and Standard British accents have a similar distinction ({{#invoke:IPA|main}} versus {{#invoke:IPA|main}}), Boston accents only have one merged phoneme for both: {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.

In general, Eastern New England accents have a "short a" vowel {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, as in Template:Sc2, that is extremely tensed towards {{#invoke:IPA|main}} when it precedes a nasal consonant; thus, man is {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and planet is {{#invoke:IPA|main}}. Boston shares this system with some of the American Midwest and most of the West, though the raising in Boston tends to be more extreme. This type of modern General American {{#invoke:IPA|main}}-raising system is simpler than the systems of British or New York City accents. However, elements of a more complex pattern exist for some Boston speakers; in addition to raising before nasals, Bostonians (unlike nearby New Hampshirites, for example) may also "raise" or "break" the "short a" sound before other types of consonants too: primarily the most strongly before voiceless fricatives, followed by voiced stops, laterals, voiceless stops, and voiced fricatives, so that words like half, bath, and glass become {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, respectively.<ref>Wood, Jim. (2010). "Short-a in Northern New England". Journal of English Linguistics 20:1–31. pp. 146, 149.</ref> This trend began around the early-mid to mid-twentieth century, replacing the older Boston accent's London-like "broad a" system, in which those same words are transferred over to the Template:Sc2 class {{#invoke:IPA|main}} Template:See below.<ref name="Wood, 2010, p. 139">Wood, 2010, p. 139.</ref> The raised {{#invoke:IPA|main}} may overlap with the non-rhotic realization of Template:Sc2 as {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.

Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions between short and long vowels before medial {{#invoke:IPA|main}} than many other modern American accents do: hurry {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and furry {{#invoke:IPA|main}}; and mirror {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and nearer {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, though some of these distinctions are somewhat endangered as people under 40Template:Clarification in neighboring New Hampshire and Maine have lost them. In this case, Boston shares these distinctions with both New York and British accents, whereas other American accents, like in the Midwest, have lost them entirely.

The nuclei of the diphthongs {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} (Template:Sc2 and Template:Sc2. respectively) may be raised to something like {{#invoke:IPA|main}} before voiceless consonants: thus write has a higher vowel than ride and lout has a higher vowel than loud. This phenomenon, more famously associated with Canadian accents, is known by linguists as Canadian raising.

The nuclei of {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and {{#invoke:IPA|main}} (in Template:Sc2 and Template:Sc2) are significantly less fronted than in many other American accents. The latter may be diphthongized to {{#invoke:IPA|main}} or {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.

The weak vowel merger is traditionally absent. This makes Lenin {{#invoke:IPA|main}} distinct from Lennon {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.Template:Sfnp

Speakers of the more deeply urban varieties of the Boston accent may realize the English dental fricatives {{#invoke:IPA|main}} as the dental stops {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, giving rise to a phonemic distinction between dental and alveolar stops; thus, those may sound closer to doze.

Non-rhoticityEdit

The traditional Boston accent is widely known for being non-rhotic (or "r-dropping"), particularly before the mid-20th century. Recent studies have shown that younger speakers use more of a rhotic (or r-ful) accent than older speakers.<ref name="Irwin Nagy 2007">Template:Cite journal</ref> This goes for black Bostonians as well.<ref>Browne, Charlene; Stanford, James (2018). "Boston Dialect Features in the Black/African American Community." University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 24 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. p. 19.</ref> Non-rhoticity means that the phoneme {{#invoke:IPA|main}} does not appear in coda position Template:Crossref, as in most dialects of English in England and Australia; card therefore becomes {{#invoke:IPA|main}} "cahd" and color {{#invoke:IPA|main}} "culluh". Words such as weird {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and square {{#invoke:IPA|main}} feature centering diphthongs, which correspond to the sequences of close and mid vowels + {{#invoke:IPA|main}} in rhotic AmE. The phonemicity of the centering diphthongs {{#invoke:IPA|main}} depends on a speaker's rhoticity. Also, the stressed sequence {{#invoke:IPA|main}} inside a closed syllable, as in Template:Sc2, is most likely to take on a rhotic {{#invoke:IPA|main}} pronunciation among Bostonians.<ref name="Irwin Nagy 2007"/><ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref>

A famous example of non-rhoticity (plus a fronted Template:Sc vowel) is "Park your car in Harvard Yard", pronounced {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, or as if spelled "pahk yah cah(r) in Hahvud Yahd".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The r in car would usually be pronounced in this case, because the Boston accent possesses both linking R and intrusive R: an {{#invoke:IPA|main}} will not be lost at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel, and an {{#invoke:IPA|main}} 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 {{#invoke:IPA|main}}. This example has been used since at least 1946, to the point where some locals find requests to say the phrase annoying.<ref name="Wickedpedia">Template:Cite news</ref> Actual parking in Harvard Yard is prohibited, except by permission in rare cases for loading and unloading, contractors, or people needing accessible transport directly to Harvard Memorial Church.<ref name="Wickedpedia" />

Declining featuresEdit

Many characteristics of the Boston accent may be retreating, particularly among younger residents. In the most old-fashioned of Boston accents, there may be a lingering resistance to the horse–hoarse merger, so that horse has the pure vowel {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, while hoarse has the centering diphthong {{#invoke:IPA|main}}; this can potentially cause the Template:Sc2–Template:Sc2–Template:Sc2 merger, so that tort, tot and taught are phonemically all {{#invoke:IPA|main}}. The result is that, for an older Boston accent, the Template:Sc2–Template:Sc2–Template:Sc2 vowel is distinct from the Template:Sc2 vowel. Another two example words that would traditionally be distinguished, thus, are for {{#invoke:IPA|main}} versus four {{#invoke:IPA|main}}. This distinction was rapidly fading out of currency in the second half of the 20th century with the words belonging to the Template:Sc2 class being transferred over to the Template:Sc2 class, undoing the merger of Template:Sc2 with Template:Sc2–Template:Sc2, as it is in almost all regions of North America that still make it. For non-rhotic speakers, the modern-day situation in Boston is that both horse and hoarse, as well as both for and four, take the centering diphthong {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.

A feature that Boston speakers once shared with Britain's Received Pronunciation, though now uncommon in Boston, is the "broad a" of the Template:Sc lexical set of words, making a distinction from the Template:Sc set (Template:Crossref). In particular words that in other American accents have the "short a" pronounced as {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, that vowel was replaced in the nineteenth century (if not earlier and often sporadically by speakers as far back as the late eighteenth century)<ref>Wood, 2010, p. 138.</ref> with {{#invoke:IPA|main}}: thus, half as {{#invoke:IPA|main}} and bath as {{#invoke:IPA|main}}.Template:Sfnp Fewer words have the broad a in Boston English than in the London accents, and fewer and fewer Boston speakers maintain the broad a system as time goes on, with its transition into a decline first occurring in speakers born from about 1930 to 1950 (and first documented as a decline in 1977).<ref name="Wood, 2010, p. 139"/> Boston speakers born before about 1930 used this broad a in after, ask, aunt, bath, calf, can't, glass, half, laugh, pasture, path, and other words, while those born from about 1930 to 1950 normally use it only in aunt, calf, half, laugh, and pass. Speakers born since 1950 typically have no broad a whatsoever and, instead, slight /æ/ raising (i.e. {{#invoke:IPA|main}} in craft, bad, math, etc.)Template:Sfnp with this same set of words and, variably, other instances of short a too.Template:Sfnp Only aunt maintains the broad a sound in even the youngest speakers, though this one word is a common exception throughout all of the Northeastern U.S. Broad a in aunt is also heard by occasional speakers throughout Anglophone North America; it is quite commonly heard in African American speech as well.

In popular cultureEdit

Although not all Boston-area speakers are non-rhotic, non-rhoticity remains the feature most widely associated with the region. As a result, it is frequently the subject of humor about Boston, as in comedian Jon Stewart joking in his book America that, although John Adams drafted the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, "delegates from his state refused to ratify the letter 'R'".<ref>Stewart, John et al. (2014). The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book) Teacher's Edition: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. Grand Central Publishing.</ref>

Being conspicuous and easily identifiable as regional, Boston accents are routinely featured by actors in films set in Boston, particularly for working-class white characters, such as in Good Will Hunting, Mystic River, The Departed, Manchester by the Sea, The Town, Ted, The Fighter, and Black Mass.<ref name="Gottlieb">Gottlieb, Jeremy (February 3, 2017). Hollywood has a Boston problem". The Washington Post.</ref><ref>Mostue, Anne. "Setting Your Movie in Boston? Bettah Get the Accent Right". NPR. August 27, 2014.</ref> 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 a reference to the former US Senator Ted Kennedy.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Television comedy sketches have featured the accent, including "The Boston Teens" and "Dunkin Donuts" on Saturday Night Live, as well as "Boston Accent Trailer" on Late Night with Seth Meyers.<ref name="Gottlieb"/>

In The Heat, the family members of Shannon Mullins all speak with the Boston accent, and confusion arises from the pronunciation of the word narc as nahk {{#invoke:IPA|main}}. In the video game Team Fortress 2, the character Scout, who is a Boston native himself, talks with a distinct Boston accent, although it sometimes lapses into a Brooklyn accent.

Notable lifelong native speakersEdit

File:Joseph Curtatone at October 11 2019 Somerville mayoral candidate forum.flac
Joseph Curtatone's voice
File:Rachel Carson (As Told By EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy).ogg
Gina McCarthy's voice
File:Sec. Walsh on Construction Jobs in Infrastructure Bill v2.flac
Marty Walsh's voice

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See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

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BibliographyEdit

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Further readingEdit

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External linksEdit

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Recordings of the Boston accent

Template:BostonMA Template:Languages of Massachusetts Template:Languages of the United States Template:English dialects by continent

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