What's with the Rhode Island accent/language? (family, sound)

[btuc]

The accent is overhyped. Unless you're from the scum up north (Prov, Pawtucket) or Cranston, you won't really find too many people with a thick case of the traditional Rhode Island accent. I live in North Kingstown and spend a lot of time all over the state- the only people I know of who have thick accents are from Cranston! Yeah, I'm occasionally lazy with my R's but not as bad as you'd think. I will admit, though, I have a TERRIBLE time pronouncing "barrel"!

[artsymeg]

I was born in Rhode Island and I have a "Wicked cool" accent. Living in Houston TX now. Everyone loves my accent and they think it is cute. :P

[nimchimpsky]

My wife is from RI. She doesn't pronounce her R's and she says "ear" and "air" the same. She also says "chowda" for chowder. But she's a genius. She was reading by age 1 and reading medical textbooks by age 4. Dialects and speech patterns in general are not indicative of intelligence. Linguists have done a lot of research on what goes into dialects, and what they have found is that how someone speaks is a factor of region, class, gender, and other social factors, but is not a factor of that person's intelligence. You can look up dialectology and sociolinguistics to find out more and if you want to understand more about how dialects work.

BTW we live in the South now and people think her accent is awesome here too.

[nimchimpsky]

Originally Posted by K-Luv

Native accents are fine, except when you can't understand what the heck they are saying. I once had a guy try to explain to me how to get somewhere. It took me about ten minutes before I realized he was telling me the location was near the airport (ay-uh-paht).

It took me two years of knowing my wife before I realized when she was saying "spare" she meant "sphere"! Lol. I felt so stupid when I finally figured it out.

[RedSoxFan4eva]

Well,I'm from Mass.,and I didn't realise I had a accent,until I went to N.Carolina,and people said I did. We don"t pronounce are Rs such as Worcester (Woosta) car (cah) or Harvard(Havid) and so on. I am moving to N.Carolina this spring,and will bring my (accent) with me!

[ChorusGirl]

What accent? I live in southern RI, and although we have an accent, as everyone does, everyone can pronounce their rs and uses faitly proper grammar. We are lazy on ours ts, though...then again, my school is one of the best ranked in the state.

[tntim]

My wife is from Cranston. Her accent is one of the many things that attracted me to her. She will point out that she may drop her R’s, but I will put them in where they don’t belong.
“I am going to warsh the car”

[bethmarywhite]

Originally Posted by TimeToLetItGo

How many years ago was that spelling bee? It just may be time to let go that you were tossed from the first round of your first spelling bee competition!!!! You say potatoe, I say potato

Tell that to Dan Quayle!

[bethmarywhite]

Originally Posted by some boring guy

No love for Al Cerrone??

The cah commercials may be one of my most endearing RI memories!

The Farrelly Brothers used part of the Al Cerrone commercial in their movie, "Kingpin".

[Crown Vic...]

Just watch Family Guy