Re: New Englishisms

On Wed, 10 Mar 1999 16:56:36 -0500 Brian Betty <bbetty@...> writes:
>Well! While we're on the topic of regionalisms, let me make some
>observations about New English speech (New Englanders ... )
Here comes the NYCer :) .... it's pretty much the same thing for me.

>1. clip everything. I say ev'ry, ev'rything, p'sition (not position,
>but
>pzishin). This often leads to a weird vowel harmony thingie when you
>get
>this really long word with all the vowels collapsed /klaepst/ to /i/
>or
>/@/. Prescription /pr@skripshn/. Elimination /ilimineyshn/. Christmas
>/krismis/. Et cetera.
Yup....ev'ry, /pr@skrIpSIn/, /@lImInejSIn/, /krIsmIs/.  But i say
"p'zishin" with a little [@], and "cuh-llapsed" with a more definite [V].

>2. Intervocalic -d-, -t- become flaps. Sweater sounds like /swerR/;
>even
>'sudden' is almost /sar-n/. My favorite, though, is when I actually
>make a
>dental stop into a rolled r: this happens most often with: "What are
>you
>doing?" > /'(h)warryu 'du:ing?/. Really. I get quite a roll into it
>without
>even noticing it.
I have the flapped Ds, although i'm not sure exactly how flapped and how
/d/ it is in "what are you (doing)", which, as everyone knows :) , in
NYCer is "whaddaya..."

>3. talk really, really fast, so that when you travel out of New
>England
>people say "What? What? What?" all the time. Usually followed by,
>"Slow
>down, say it again."
>4. I say /o:fn/ (o: is aw in law).
Yup, me too.

>5. I claim to recognise the audible difference between Mary, marry,
>and
>merry, which to my Oregonian roommate is all /meri:/ (here r =
>American r)
>and to me is /maeri:/, /mae:ri:/ and /meri:/, respectively.
I don't know your phonetic orthography, but "Mary, marry, merry" in
"N'yawka" are /me@ri/, /m&ri/, /mEri/, the first one having the /e@/
diphthong found in other words such as "pale", "care", "bad", and
"grass".

>6. many New Englanders don't have ahs (rs), as is probably familiar to
>many
>people on this list. Others, like myself, overcompensate and have rs
>coiled
>up like a little ball of rubber bands. Uberrhotic, I reckon.
>7. Also, ts are frequently replaced by glottal stops, especially in
>syllable-final position: hi' for hit. si' for sit.
I'm not sure about this one...

>The oddest thing is that people in New England also say y'all. That
>might
>be because of the influence of the universities ... But y'allses is
>definitely out.
Here people say the long form, "you all"....probably to not sound like
'hicks' ( = the rest of the country) :) .

>BB
>
>*********

-Stephen (Steg)
 "hhalomot zeh b'emet"

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