Re: New Englishisms

At 10:58 PM 3/10/99 -0800, Sally wrote: So did you see the movie Dolores
Claiborne?  What did you think of the practiced New England accents?  Sally"

I didn't. Although so often we forget that there are a zillion different
regional accents, all shading into each other. For example, in Newport, RI
there is a very distinctive accent; my grandmother and her neighbors have a
*really* different accent from those living 15m away on Jamestown Island
(10m over one bridge towards the mainland) and in Narragansett (over the
bridge connecting Jamestown to the island). My father, therefore, speaks
significantly differently - within the boundaries of New English speech,
that is - from my mother, who grew up 20m away from him on the mainland! My
mother tends to drop all her rs like a Rho Dailind@ (Rhode Islander),
whereas my father says /ka:r/ for the thing you drive to work. My
grandmother even says /va:z/ for the thing you put flowers in ... I say
/veys/ like my both my parents. So while my neighbors tend to say /sI'In/
while my grandmother and father say /sIrIN/. This last -r- is the flapped-d.

And forget about other states - hell, some people in Maine actually sound
like that gorilla-shaped doctor from Murder, She Wrote - you know, with the
funny little lilt, lengthened vowels, and R > a: or A ...

By the way, I'll try to avoid using this system I've evolved for
representing English phonemes - I've accidentally been using longmarks to
note the vowel quality differences in ENglish vowels, a very bad habit. I
don't know how to show American short /a/, like "uh" or "suds" in
cyberspace - you know, it looks like a capital A missing the crossbar, only
it's small. In the meantime I'll continue to use a: for non-A letter a,
since this vowel is longer in duration anyway.


BB

*********
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