Boston accent


The Boston accent is a local accent of Eastern New England English native specifically to the city of Boston and its suburbs. Eastern New England English also traditionally includes New Hampshire, Maine, all of eastern Massachusetts, and arguably Rhode Island, though some uniquely local vocabulary appears only around Boston. Some of the characteristics of traditional Boston accents may be retreating, particularly among younger residents. Linguist William Labov, however, claims that, in the twenty-first century, there remains a relatively stable Boston accent.

Phonological characteristics

The phonemicity of the centering diphthongs depends on rhoticity; see below.
Instead of merging the historical "short o" with the "broad a", the Boston accent merges it with the "aw" as in "paw", so that caught, cot, law, wand, rock, talk, doll, and wall all are pronounced with the same open back rounded vowel that contrasts with the of father and spa, which means that even though dark has no in many Boston accents, it remains distinct from dock because it belongs to the – class instead of the –– one: vs.. By contrast, New York accents and southern New England accents have for caught and for cot. RP has for the former and for the latter. In Boston and some other parts of New England, a few words ending in, e.g., hot and got, can be pronounced with an entirely different phoneme, however, sounding instead like hut and gut, respectively.
Eastern New England English has a so-called "nasal short-a system". This means that the "short a" vowel as in cat and rat is diphthongized to when it precedes a nasal consonant ; thus, man is and planet is. Boston shares this system with some of the Midwest and most of the West, though the raising in Boston tends to be more noticeable and extreme than elsewhere. This system is not shared with London or New York City accents. In addition to raising before nasals, Bostonians also tend to somewhat "raise" or "break" the "short a" sound the most before voiceless fricatives, so that words like half, bath, and glass become, and, respectively. 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 class .
The raised overlaps with the non-rhotic realization of as, so that half, bath and glass are effectively pronounced as if spelled haref, bareth and glaress. The difference is that they do not have an alternative pronunciation with postvocalic, unlike, and therefore those words do not belong to that lexical set.
Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions between short and long vowels before medial than many other modern American accents do: hurry and furry ; and mirror and nearer, 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 and may be raised to something like 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, and it is less extreme in New England than in most of Canada. Furthermore, some Boston accents may raise either or both of the diphthongs in not only voiceless but also voiced environments.
The nuclei of and are significantly less fronted than in many American accents. Both have may be diphthongized to approximately or.
Speakers of the more deeply urban varieties of the Boston accent may realize the English dental fricatives as the dental stops, giving rise to a phonemic distinction between dental and alveolar stops.

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 does not appear in coda position, as in most dialects of English in England and Australia; card therefore becomes "cahd" and color "culluh". Words such as weird and square feature centering diphthongs, which correspond to the sequences of close and mid vowels + in rhotic AmE.
A famous example is "Park the car in Harvard Yard", pronounced, or as if spelled "pahk the cah in Hahvud Yahd". Note that the r in car would usually be pronounced in this case, because the following word begins with a vowel.
The Boston accent possesses both linking R and intrusive R: That is to say, an will not be lost at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel, and indeed an 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.

Declining features

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. In Boston, horse has the phoneme; in other words, the accent features the –– merger, so that tort, tot and taught are phonemically all. It is distinct from the vowel, as in hoarse. Other words fall into these distinct classes too, like for vs. four: vs., mirroring RP as spoken at the beginning of the 20th century. This distinction is rapidly fading out of currency, as it is in almost all regions of North America that still make it. For rhotic speakers, both and are + : . The remaining centering diphthongs also disappear in the rhotic variety, so that near, cure and square are instead of the traditional.
A feature that Boston speakers once shared with greater London, though now uncommon, is the "broad a" of the lexical set of words, making a distinction from the set. In particular words that in other American accents have the "short a" pronounced as, that vowel was replaced in the nineteenth century with : thus, half as and bath as. 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 occurring in speakers born from about 1930 to 1950. Boston speakers born before about 1930 used this broad a in the words after, ask, aunt, bath, calf, can't, glass, half, laugh, pasture, path, and perhaps other words, and born from about 1930 to 1950 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 with this same set of words and, variably, other instances of short a too. 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.

In popular culture

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'."
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. 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. 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.
In The Heat, the family of Shannon Mullins all speak with the Boston accent and confusion arises from the pronunciation of the word narc 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.

Lexicon

Some words most famously associated with the Boston area are:
Many words common to Boston are also common throughout the New England dialects: blinkers for "automobile turn signals", packie for "liquor store", and rotary for "traffic circle".

Notable lifelong native speakers