Regional Accents In Massachusetts

Shot from the cah, not fah from the bahn, in Cahvah.... OK, it's Ryegate Farm in Plympton, but I didn't feel like driving up to Harvard for one stupid cah-in-yahd picture....

Massachusetts is known world-wide for her brutal accents. I don't need to tell you that, you live it.

Our job today will be to examine what makes up the Boston Accent, how far it spreads, where it stops, what stops/changes it, and what it then becomes. We also wish to define lesser-researched terms like "South Shore Accent" and "Cape Cod Accent."

I want to state right here that, although I have Historian credentials, I got into Journalism as a sportswriter, and anything beyond sports-writing greatly involves the chance of my intellect running into a wall. As the causal agent in the intellect/wall encounter, I might not be aware when it happens. If you read an article on quantum physics that Neil DeGrasse Tyson wrote and you disagree with it, he's probably right and you're probably wrong. That might not be the case today when you and I speak about Linguistics.

I should also add that the author is fiercely parochial. I firmly believe that Plymouth, America's longest-running settlement for white people, is home to the true American accent. Once you start heading West and South, this true American accent gets corrupted.

Massachusetts was English territory, and English is the main language here. However, Massachusetts also was an ocean away from England, and we sort of got our own thing going on eventually. Massachusetts has had a lot of immigration, so we now have a lot of English being spoken by non-English people who are taking an earnest crack at it. Throw in the great mixtape of Time, and here we are discussing different local accents.

Remember, if you go by Years, our main dialect is Algonquian. If I remember, I'll call the Wampanoag Language Research people and ask if the more eastern Wampanoag speakers drop their Rs.

Any accent flexed in Massachusetts falls under the broad umbrella of New England English. This is a grouping of 3-10 local accents, depending on who you count. Two super-dialects exist within this grouping:

-Western New England English is spoken in Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Vermont and northern New Hampshire.

- Eastern New England English (which encompasses the Boston Accent), which was the language of most of New England for much of her White Guy history, is utilized in eastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and coastal Maine.

We'll draw a map for those who got confused by that.

Western New England English, which you might know as Hick Speak or How They Talk In Places With Mountains or Those People Who Use Rs, is first up to bat. It seems to run along the Connecticut River, and was spread by trade.

While grouped in the same general accent, Connecticut and Vermont speak differently, but they are more like each other than they are ("ah") like Boston. The same goes for Western Massachusetts.

Western Massachusetts is sort of a merger zone for the CT and VT versions of the accent, and Merger Zones are a subject we'll revisit soon enough.

As with most things New England, I doubt Connecticut's loyalty. However, the consensus among linguists is that the Mountain Speak hasn't been overridden by the powerful Noo Yawk influence coming from the big city to the SW.

Anyhow, the Syrup States are some other website's problem. My area of concern is east of Connecticut through Cape Cod, and then up the coast to Maine.

BOSTON

Boston is the hahhtland of the Boston Accent, and- by proxy- the North East New England English accent. They are most frequently associated with dropping their R sounds, a habit known as non-rhotic speech. We also use Broad A sounds, which is where my own powerful Boston accent screws up the narrative... I can't imagine in my head what the non-Boston version of the trap-bath split is.

You've heard a zillion actors take a crack at the Boston accent. Cheers was famous for it. Norm made a weak effort at the accent. Sam didn't try at all. Fraser and Diane sort of flex a Brahmin accent, and Carla sounds like she's from the Bronx. Cliff (the actor who played him was from Connecticut) tried hard, overdid it, and sounded very much like a non-drawling Mainer.

Johnny Depp, who can do anything, couldn't do the Boston accent. Jack Nicholson, with a shelf full of Oscars, never even tried to fake one in The Departed. Ben Affleck did the very rare "had the Boston accent, sort of had it altered in acting school, and then had to re-learn it when Boston movies came into vogue" movement. Chief Brody can't do one, even with his Islander wife helping him.

I know from how we market this page that, if you're reading this, you don't need me to explain to you what the Boston accent is.

The most powerful and natural usage of a Boston Accent that I ever heard was when I was installing office furniture in the 1980s with the V Crew, a bunch of Southie guys who took a lot of Valium. While I can't repeat it here, it involved the meanest V Crew guy loudly encouraging a man who he thought might be a black homosexual to go through the crosswalk more quickly. While the racial slur was textbook non-rhoticism, he managed to stretch "queer" out to three syllables without even thinking about using an R sound. I'd write it, but I have no idea how to. It would need an A, a Y and a perhaps several Hs.

There is at least one Facebook page where you have to even SPELL in a Boston Accent.

As far as "where does the accent start to change" part, it may be easier to look at the borders. We already looked at the WNEE accent out west. The Boston accent slams into that once you get out of Worcester.

We'll get to the South Shore and the Cape in a moment, but we first need to do some of that Merger Zone work.

MAINE 

There are two Maine accents. The main Maine accent is the inland one, where you ask a guy a question and he answers with an "ayup." That old dude from the Pepperidge Farm commercials rocked this sort of Maine accent. Stephen King, when he speaks instead of writes, also has a strong Maine accent.

They say that the Pepperidge Farm guy (Parker Fennelly, born in the 19th Century) has pretty much what would be a textbook Yankee accent. All of New England sounded like him before the Industrial Revolution. Boston accents, imitating England-English dialects of the 1800s, sprung up 200 years after the Yankee accent. It was all Ahhhhhhhhhhh after that.

When you get too close to Boston, the accent shifts heavily to Massachusetts. Boston-influenced Mainer is the other Maine accent. The Boston accent follows the coast, through parts of New Hampshire, from Cape Cod to southern and central Maine. Maine is where it merges with the other Maine accent.

Inland Maine is heavily influenced by the Vermont accent and even the French accent dropping down from the Great White North.

There's a touch of Maine to the Cape Cod accent, but we'll get to that in a minute.

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SOUTH COAST

Rhodey is an itty-bitty state with a unique position in this discussion. They are the home of the Southeast New England English Accent accent.

In short, Rhode Island has a very New York tinge to their accent. They are non-rhotic, but very distinct from Boston. The second word of "Rhode Island" starts with a "D" when a true Rhode (Island) Scholar is speaking, and is closely related to her neighbor, Lon-Guy-Land.

It is notable in that they are not connected to New York other than through Connecticut, and Connecticut isn't as Noo Yawk-sounding. That's not easy to pull off.

It might have to do with tourists, and definitely is related to Rhodey's healthy Italian population. Italians are able to resist the Boston accent somewhat, but they go under in a second for a Rhode Island accent. Rhode Island is also the top location in America for another Romance language bunch, the Portuguese.

It pushes out of Rhodey onto the South Coast somewhat, but it hits a wall once you get out of her cities. "New Beffuh" was coined by someone having fun with this accent.

Probably the best representative is Peter from The Family Guy, a show that is very up-in-your-face Rhode Island. He sounds like he's from New York, which is OK in Rhode Island. "Plunderdome" Buddy Cianci is was also a known heavyweight among Rhodey accent users.

CAPE COD

You'd be tempted to say "Ted Kennedy" here, but remember that he was born in Dorchester. Cape Cod won him over, but- as a Dorchester kid myself- I can tell you that the Dot never leaves the Rat.

Cape Codders have several factors at work when they speak. This is a key merger zone, and you'll notice that whoever I stole that Accents Map from didn't even try to score Cape Cod.

Whether the Cape Cod accent exists as a distinct entity is subject to some debate. It's a little bit of Maine, a smidgen of New York, a touch of Connecticut, a whiff of Rhode Island, a hint of Florida and a heaping dollop of Boston.

They are at the tail end of the Boston Accent, and it is the main influence on year-round residents. Ask someone from the Cape to say "Yarmouth" or "Barnstable" if you need an example, although I'd recommend doing so once the Summer People leave.

Summer People come from all points of the globe, bringing their accents with them and sometimes staying for 1/3 of the year. This can be very influential, as most Cape towns double in population in the summer. Families in cottage neighborhoods tend to spread out among that neighborhood when the kids get older, meaning that a Brewster neighborhood may have a rather large bloc of people who speak with the same sub-species of a Noo Yawk accent.

Many other Cape Codders are snowbirds, meaning that they have some other strong influence on their speech for 6-10 months a year. This effect is compounded by the fact that so many of our Snowbirds do their thing in Florida. Fortunately, a lot of Florida's snowbird population comes from Massachusetts, so the tinge is weakened somewhat.

In short.. although "cosmopolitan" is not a term normally ascribed to Mashpee, it does technically fit. This is the best explanation I can give you for the differences between Boston and Cape Cod's accents.

The Kennedy clan wield the most famous version of the accent, although there is a heavy Boston influence. People under 40 may or may not know that "Diamond" Joe Quimby, the eternal mayor of Homer Simpson's Springfield, is doing a Kennedy impression. Between Quimby and the Kennedys, the Boston accent is sort of the American Politician accent.

THE SOUTH SHORE

Time changes many things. I sure look worse now than when I was a kid... and I wasn't a good-looking kid, believe me. Time also changes accents.

If you ever read "Cape Cod Folks," which was written about 1860s Southern Plymouth, you'll be amazed at the dialogue. People who live where my Hahvahd Yahd ass does used to talk like drawling ("Becky was mad, and wouldn't speak to teacher, along o' teacher's goin' with Beck's beau.") Maine people. I saw not one dropped R, and the author, a socialite English teacher from New York, would have noticed such a thing.

Like we said earlier, most of New England spoke with the Maine accent right up until it became fashionable in Boston to drop Rs after vowels. It took some time to drift out into the deep suburbs and rural areas.

I'm not old enough to do anything but guess at this, but I'd say that the South Shore started changing when Going To The Beach became a major American leisure activity. The changes accelerated when Route 3 was built, opening up the South Shore as a home for Boston workers.

When busing hit in the 1970s, anyone with money fled Boston. Much of the South Shore was undeveloped, or existed in cottage/cabin form. This changed, and most towns on the South Shore saw their population double from 1950 to 1980... some even doubled from 1970 to 1980.

This influx of Southie/Dorchester/Roxbury/Hyde Park people changed the phonic character of the South Shore. By the 1980s and perhaps long, long before, the South Shore was the second home for the Boston Accent.

There is a possibility that the South Shore may soon out-Boston Accent the actual people from Boston. Boston always has and will continue to draw immigrants, both from America and abroad. They will do so at a rate much, much higher than somewhere insular like Pembroke will. Southie is only 80% white, and is 8% black. Duxbury is 99.4% white. Southie is rapidly gentrifying, while Cohasset doesn't look that much different demographically than it did in 1986. This will change the Boston accent... in Boston.

That's right, folks.... we're really not that far from a day when a mob movie is being shot in Massachusetts, and people from Southie get turned down in casting because they don't sound "Southie"enough for the mob movie. This actually happened once (visually) with Dawson's Creek, a show about Cape Cod that was shot in North Carolina because Cape Cod didn't look Cape Cod enough for the producers). When that day comes, don't be shocked if the set of the gritty urban mob movie looks a lot like a Marshfield High School reunion.

I hunted for the South Shore accent all over those there Internets. I may eventually find what I'm looking for, but the best line I saw came in a so-bad-I-won't-link-to-it "People from California Try To Pronounce New England Town Names" video. Looking at "Scituate," some gnarly dude said "It looks like the degree you get if you study Science Fiction in college."

You may also enjoy this forum where someone moving to the South Shore posted a query as to "Which South Shore Town Do I Move To If I Don't Want My Kids To Get The Boston Accent?" Unfortunately for her, the answer is "Plymouth, 1835."

There are some differences between the coastal South Shore accent and the interior Plymouth County one, but they are minor enough that we won't bother with them unless a fight starts in the comments.

The best simple explanation is that the South Shore Accent is similar to the tourist-altered Cape Cod accent, but every tourist on the South Shore is from Hyde Pahhhhhk.