Re: New Englishisms

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
>
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