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Re: New Englishisms

From:Sally Caves <scaves@...>
Date:Thursday, March 11, 1999, 6:58
So did you see the movie Dolores Claiborne?  What did you think
of the practiced New England accents?  Sally

Brian Betty wrote:

> Well! While we're on the topic of regionalisms, let me make some > observations about New English speech (New Englanders ... ) > > 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. > 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. > 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). > 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. > 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. > > 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. > > BB > > ********* > I'm a kinky, queer, bisexual genderfucker. And they say, "write what you > know." -Cecilia Tan, 'Writing Sex,' OutWrite 1999 > > You need to have a magpie mind. I think you need to like shiny things. > -Samuel R. Delaney on what it takes to be a scifi writer, OutWrite 1999 > > Only 297 shopping days left before the end of the world.