Boston Accent
See! I haven't forgotten about this blog!
On the Fox 25 news right now, Dr. Dennis Becker from The Speech Improvement Co. is discussing a contest for "the worst Boston accent" that Brigham's put on. A winner is being chosen tonight from ten finalists. One of the local newscasters (Maria somebody) asked Dr. Becker whether it's the "a" sound as in "candy" that gives away a Bostonian, or whether it's the lack of /r/s. It's mainly the loss of /r/, said Becker, but "good for you for noticing the 'a'! We've got a flat 'a' and a broad 'a'." (He pronounced both orthographically, e.g. [ey].) I'm not really sure what he was getting at. But I was amused that one of the laypeople who was interviewed in the segment produced "vaniller soder" (utterance-finally) as an example of, I suppose, intrusive /r/. Of course, no native speaker of the Boston dialect would insert /r/ in the _#s environment.
As an aside, Dr. Becker has (to my ear, anyway) subtle traces of a Boston accent, moreso than Maria the newscaster, despite the fact that he is a "speech coach" and says he has "no accent."
5 Comments:
Re: intrusive /r/: Have you ever heard Mayor Quimby introduce Lisa as "Liser Simpson"? (There's the "clam chowda" vs. "chowder" episode in Season 5.)
I'll have to listen for that! I didn't really start watching the show until a couple of years ago, and even now, I only catch it sporadically.
I am a native speaker of the boston dialect and I have been caught with the /r/ at the end of utterances, as in "I like pizzar".
I think utterance-final /r/ occurs in many of the relevant dialects. It's before /s/ that isn't expected.
I am a native speaker of Australian English. I find it very strange to pronounce pizza with a final /r/. It sounds to me as though Shawn and speakers like him are trying to correct their speech in the direction of the U.S. standard, with its /r/s, but because their own dialect doesn't tell them which words should have an /r/ and which shouldn't, they get it wrong.
Australians can do this, too, but only if they are trying to talk like Americans (or sing songs in an American accent). And like Bostonians, they are likely to get it wrong!
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