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Re: New Englishisms

From:Douglas Koller <laokou@...>
Date:Thursday, March 11, 1999, 5:40
Tom Wier wrote:

> Brian Betty wrote:
> > 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.
I do this to a very limited extent. Too much of this, to my ear, sounds like prim, anglophile, little-old-lady speech.
> > "What are you > > doing?" > /'(h)warryu 'du:ing?/.
> That's interesting that you have that voiceless /w/ there. Is it that common > up there?
I use this extensively in careful speech and almost always with interrogatives in sentence initial position.
> > 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."
I haven't felt this. In fact, to me, Maine and rural New Hampshire speech is comedically slow. Southern NE (a la New Canaan) speech might be faster, but I attribute that to the influence of *that* city. For true rapid fire speech, check out Rochester /raSst'/, NY.
> > 4. I say /o:fn/ (o: is aw in law).
> Yeah, I would think so. In my dialect, and I would suppose most > Western dialects, that's become /A/ or even /a/. (For me, the former)
I think I've got /afn/ here, but then, I don't really have a Boston accent. As I've assumed is common in SAE, I don't distinguish between /a/ and /O/. cock/caulk dawn/Don...no discernible difference.
> > 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.
For me, Mary and merry are homonyms, /mEri/; marry is /m&ri/ (I assumed this also was SAE).
> > 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.
Besides my step-mother (from Brockton, MA), no one in my family drops r's. My mother, after several years in NH, began adding r's on some vowel-final words: idear (yuck!). In fairness, though, I pronounce theatre /Tirtr/.
> > 7. Also, ts are frequently replaced by glottal stops, especially in > > syllable-final position: hi' for hit. si' for sit.
Moi aussi, but again, I assumed this was fairly widespread Stateside.
> > 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. > > Well, it does exist in England (or did, at any rate). Coulda come from > there. Or perhaps from the exodus of blacks after the Civil War? > Dunno. What kind of social status does it have? Is it stigmatized?
Granted I've been away a while, but I've never heard *any*one in New England use "y'all" unless they were mimicking or mocking Southern speech. Major stigma time from where I sit. Kou