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Interesting. So the R is one feature that has lasted despite demographic shifts?
What are some other ones that stick out?
Boston accent extends inland only about as far as Worcester and environs. I'm from 90 miles west of Boston, (Springfield) and there's not a trace of it there, except when you hear people who moved to western Massachusetts from the coast. The Boston accent extends into N.H. but Maine really has its own. R.I. sounds Boston-ish, too.
Another feature: although that accent has no "R," there IS an "R" added to the ends of words that end in a vowel, like when Jesus gently scolds Martha while visiting her and her sister, Mary:
"MAH-ther, MAH-ther!"
Makes me want to pull my teeth out, just to hear it.
....Someone ALMOST gets into a car wreck, and yells out: "Oh, my HOT!" (Just kill me now. It hurts my ears. Make it stop!)
Boston accent extends inland only about as far as Worcester and environs. I'm from 90 miles west of Boston, (Springfield) and there's not a trace of it there, except when you hear people who moved to western Massachusetts from the coast. The Boston accent extends into N.H. but Maine really has its own. R.I. sounds Boston-ish, too.
Another feature: although that accent has no "R," there IS an "R" added to the ends of words that end in a vowel, like when Jesus gently scolds Martha while visiting her and her sister, Mary:
"MAH-ther, MAH-ther!"
Makes me want to pull my teeth out, just to hear it.
....Someone ALMOST gets into a car wreck, and yells out: "Oh, my HOT!" (Just kill me now. It hurts my ears. Make it stop!)
As a school kid in California, I remember listening to JFK talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 on TV. Sometimes instead of saying "Cuba" it sounded like "Cuber" - another example of a word with a vowel at the end that gets an "R" sound added on. That was my earliest memory of hearing a Boston-type accent.
I am Irish born just south of Cork, Ireland. My family came to Boston when I was a kid. We lived in South Boston and then Brighton in the first years. Later settling in Taunton.
I had a very thick Irish accent but the combination and influence of the Eastern Mass accent, has made me sound somewhat Australian. I have been mistaken for Australian many times. The accent has faded somewhat through the years, but it still appears quite often.
What tickled me the most when I lived in Boston was the way the locals said "ir" words like "shirt" and "bird."
"Short sleeve shirt" sounded like "Shot sleeve sherrrt" (I can't even represent that phonetically!)
And a coworker, to describe someone who was very angry, would say "She had a BIRRRRRRD!" really elongating that bizarre sound. It's kind of like a German "ü" sound while your lips are forming an R. Made me laugh every time.
One theory of how the "Great Lakes" accent originated was that it came from the Irish immigrants who migrated to Upstate NY to dig the Erie Canal back in the early 19th century. Many of them settled there and most of the towns and cities along it from Albany to Buffalo have huge populations of Irish ancestries to this day. Their accent spread along the route of the canal westward along the cities of the Great Lakes: Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo, Chicago and Milwaukee (for some odd reason, linguists found that Erie, PA never developed it). You can hear it in the strong Rs, and in words like pop, on, top, fog, etc. Many Irish people call their mothers "Mam" and you'll hear the same pronunciation from Americans who have a strong GL accent when they pronounce the word "Mom".
As a school kid in California, I remember listening to JFK talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 on TV. Sometimes instead of saying "Cuba" it sounded like "Cuber" - another example of a word with a vowel at the end that gets an "R" sound added on. That was my earliest memory of hearing a Boston-type accent.
If you listen carefully, you'll notice they put the R in there only when the next word starts with a vowel:
"Cuber is an island nation." vs. "Cuba makes the best rum."
As a school kid in California, I remember listening to JFK talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 on TV. Sometimes instead of saying "Cuba" it sounded like "Cuber" - another example of a word with a vowel at the end that gets an "R" sound added on. That was my earliest memory of hearing a Boston-type accent.
I believe that the "intrusive r" is also in British English too; it's not just a Boston thing.
In fact there's a song in the musical Matilda (I believe it's "school song") where they go through every letter of the alphabet as they sing, using some word to emphasize it. The word they use to emphasize the letter "r" doesn't actually have an "r" in it. I think it might be the word "a(r)sked", instead of "asked".
Quote:
Originally Posted by aries63
What tickled me the most when I lived in Boston was the way the locals said "ir" words like "shirt" and "bird."
"Short sleeve shirt" sounded like "Shot sleeve sherrrt" (I can't even represent that phonetically!)
Lmao. I wouldn't know how to pronounce "shirt" without it sounding like "shert". To me it's the same sound as the ending of "yogurt".
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