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Something that I've been thinking about is how Boston is the most ethnically Irish major metro area in the US and there's certainly Irish influences in the accent/dialect, IMO its strongest in the "I". There's a slight "Oi" sound in Bostonian English in words like "Christ" and "Right."
But what's more peculiar is the fact that the traditional Boston accent is non-rhotic yet Irish English is not only rhotic, it's very pronounced, especially when its preceded by an "a" such as in "car" "jar" "park" "hard." Yet in Boston its "cah" "jah" "pahk" and "hahd" which is a feature more like British English than Irish. Funny, here in Minnesota, the R is often pronounced more like the R in Ireland but Boston's R is a bit more quiet.
Is the R in Boston from a separate influence from the Irish (after all, its still New England so maybe its a mainstay of English heritage) or is it something deeper?
Interesting. So the R is one feature that has lasted despite demographic shifts?
What are some other ones that stick out?
The lack of the "father-bother" merger is one that stands out to me. I.e. the broad "a" in "father", "palm", "bra", "spa" is different from the short "o" in "bother", "hot", "shop", "con". The latter vowel is more rounded and backed. This is virtually universal in the UK, Ireland, Australia, etc. but very unusual in the US.
The lack of the "father-bother" merger is one that stands out to me. I.e. the broad "a" in "father", "palm", "bra", "spa" is different from the short "o" in "bother", "hot", "shop", "con". The latter vowel is more rounded and backed. This is virtually universal in the UK, Ireland, Australia, etc. but very unusual in the US.
Interesting. Do you have a link to a video that shows this in a Boston accent?
Uhh at 0:50 in this one Marty Walsh says "I followed my father". Also "got me the help I needed" a bit later has the "followed" vowel
Ahh yea. I feel like that's a carry on slightly from Irish English. There's also an Irish influence in the way he said "years old." Old=Olt. Irish speakers often turn the final D into a T sound (Something German speakers also do)
It's the result of many Irish coming to Boston via Nova Scotia, which was not the case with Irish in NY or Philly. It's also why the accent in coastal Maine four hours away sounds a lot more like a Boston accent than the accent two hours west in the Berkshires who don't have a Boston accent at all.
It was very cheap for Irish people to sail to Nova Scotia and what are now the Canadian maritimes prior to 1920 because it was all part of Britain. However, there wasn't much of an economy up there, so many did a 2nd migration to Boston because it was the closest US city. In 1920, over 200k Massachusetts residents had been born in Canada, more than any other state, and more than the 160k that had been born in Ireland, and most of the English speaking Canadians were Irish heritage who lived in Boston, Cambridge, and nearby towns. They developed a maritime accent that mixed a little English with Irish, not from 17th century Brahmin English, but from English settlers along the coast between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia in the 19th and early 20 centuries.
Many of the Irish heritage Canadians could not afford to travel overland out of Boston, so they stayed nearby. As a result, places like Springfield and most of the state west of Worcester did not get anywhere near as many of these immigrants so the accent faded out quickly as you went west and still does. Coastal towns like Portland, Providence, even New London, CT have the accent in a way that's far more rare in Western Mass.
The accent has nothing to do with original settlers. The English accent itself is only about 200 years old. Puritans and 17th century English people pronounced their r's. That only changed around 1800.
You'll also notice the New York Irish accent wasn't impacted by the mixing because most Irish New Yorkers came directly to New York, they didn't make the stop in Nova Scotia or the Canadian Maritimes. There are some similarities, but they say caw, not cah. The Irish were the dominant immigrant group in both NYC and Boston until about 1880-1890, but Boston would never have developed such a large irish community without its proximity to Nova Scotia and Canada because it didn't have anywhere near the shipping traffic to Europe that NYC did.
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