New England English

New England English is not a single American dialect, but a collective term for a number of dialects and varieties that are close geographic neighbors within New England, but which differ on a spectrum that broadly divides New England English into a unique north versus south (specifically, a northern merger of the LOT and THOUGHT vowels, versus a southern merger of the LOT and PALM vowels), as well as a unique east versus west (specifically, an eastern pronunciation of the "r" sound only before vowels, versus a western pronunciation of all "r" sounds). Regarding the former feature, all of northern New England (most famously including Boston, but going as far southeast as Cape Cod and as far north as central Maine) historically merges the open and open-mid back rounded vowels (so that, for instance, pond and pawned are pronounced the same, which is commonly called the cot–caught merger), while southern coastal New England (including Rhode Island) historically maintains a noticeable distinction between these two vowels. Regarding the second feature, all of Eastern New England is historically non-rhotic (famously pronouncing "car" like "kah"), while all of Western New England is historically rhotic (or "r-ful"). Therefore, four combinations of these two features are possible, and coincidentally all four exist among New England English speakers, largely correlated with the exact geographic quadrant in New England in which a speaker was raised.

Commonalities

All of New England

The extent that speakers raise the tongue in the "short a" vowel, or TRAP vowel, varies in New England; however, across the board, New Englanders demonstrate a definite "nasal" short-a system, in which the vowel is always raised the absolute strongest whenever occurring before the nasal consonants /m/ and /n/ (so that, pan, for example, nearly approaches the sound of the word paean

Certain words have a tendency to use distinct phonemes when compared against the rest of the country: for example, aunt as /ɑːnt/, the noun route as /ruːt/, and syrup as /ˈsiːrəp/.

Vocabulary

The following terms originate from and are used commonly and nearly exclusively throughout New England:

• grinder for sub, a long, large sandwich (with Italian sandwich specific to Maine English)^[14]
• hamburger meat^[15]
• package store or packie for liquor store (predominant in Boston and Southern New England English)^[14]
• tag sale for garage sale or yard sale (predominant in Southwestern New England English)^[14]
• rotary for traffic circle or roundabout^[14]
• wicked is used as an intensifier word, common before adjectives or adverbs (predominant in Northern, Central, and Eastern New England English, famously Boston).^[16]

As in the rest of the Northeast, sneakers is the primary term for

athletic shoes, tractor trailer for semi-trailer truck, cellar is a common alternative for basement

, brook is common for stream, and soda is any sweet and bubbly non-alcoholic drink. Many Boston-originating local terms have dispersed throughout Eastern New England and, prominently, all the rest of Massachusetts.

Eastern New England English

Main article: Eastern New England English

Eastern New England English encompasses

Mary–marry–merry distinction.<^[19]

Western New England English

Main article: Western New England English

Western New England English encompasses the accents of Vermont, western Massachusetts, and Connecticut. They are largely perceived as

new chain shift of the vowels since the 20th century. Some Western New England English speakers do have some of this shift's features, though it is not yet fully understood if and how New England directly influenced the Inland North dialect region.^[22]

See also

• Boston accent
• Maine accent
• New England French
• North American English regional phonology § New England
• Regional accents of English speakers
• Regional vocabularies of American English

Citations

1. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 148.
2. ^ Boberg (2001), pp. 24–5.
3. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 226; Stanford (2019), pp. 120, 160–161.
4. ^ Boberg (2001), p. 3.
5. ^ ^{a b c d} Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 225.
6. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 1.
7. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 227, 229, 231.
8. ^ Boberg (2010), p. 156.
9. ^ Stanford (2019), p. 54.
10. ^ Jones (2021), p. 1; Reeves (2009), p. 1.
11. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 84.
12. ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 82.
13. ^ Flemming & Johnson (2007), pp. 83–96; Wells (1982), pp. 167, 520.
14. ^ ^{a b c d} The Harvard Dialect Survey, 'What do you call the long sandwich that contains cold cuts, lettuce, and so on?'.
15. ^ Hirshberg (1981), pp. 33–52.
16. ^ Szelog (2012), p. 1.
17. ^ Wolfram & Schilling-Estes (1998), pp. 126–150.
18. ^ Fitzpatrick (2006), pp. 63–70.
19. ^ Kim et al. (2019), pp. 151–194.
20. ^ Boberg (2001), pp. 19–27.
21. ^ Nagy & Roberts (2004), pp. 270–281.
22. ^ McCarthy (2010), p. 12; McCarthy (2004), p. 7.

General and cited references

• ISBN 9781139491440
  .
• Boberg, Charles (Spring 2001). "The Phonological Status of Western New England". American Speech. 76 (1): 3–29.
  S2CID 143486914
  .
• Fitzpatrick, Jim (2006). "Beantown Babble (Boston, MA)". In W. Wolfram; B. Ward (eds.). American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 63–70.
  ISBN 978-1-4051-2109-5
  .
• Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter.
  ISBN 978-3-11-016746-7
  .
• Nagy, Naomi; Roberts, Julie (2004). "New England phonology". In Burridge, Kate; Kortmann, Bernd; Mesthrie, Rajend; Schneider, Edgar W.; Upton, Clive (eds.). A handbook of varieties of English. Volume 1: Phonology. Berlin, FRG: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 270–281.
• Stanford, James (2019). New England English: Large-Scale Acoustic Sociophonetics and Dialectology. New York: Oxford University Press.
  OCLC 1100425163
  .
• Wells, John Christopher (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press.
  OCLC 7578097
  . Retrieved November 26, 2023.
• Wolfram, Walt; Schilling-Estes, S. (1998). American English: Dialects and Variation. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 126–150.
  ISBN 978-0-631-20487-9
  .
• Flemming, E.; Johnson, S. (2007). "Rosa's roses: reduced vowels in American English". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 37 (1): 83–96.
  doi:10.1121/1.4783597
  .
• Kim, Chaeyoon; Reddy, Sravana; Stanford, James N.; Wyschogrod, Ezra; Grieve, Jack (May 1, 2019). "Bring on the Crowd! Using Online Audio Crowd-Sourcing for Large-Scale New England Dialectology and Acoustic Sociophonetics". American Speech. 94 (2). Duke University Press: 151–194.
  ISSN 0003-1283
  .
• Hirshberg, Jeffrey (1981). "Regional Morphology in American English: Evidence from Dare". American Speech. 56 (1): 33–52.
  JSTOR 454477
  .
• Reeves, Larkin (August 6, 2009). Patterns of Vowel Production in Speakers of American English from the State of Utah (MS thesis). Brigham Young University.
  hdl:1877/etd3133
  .
• Jones, Jennifer G. (October 11, 2021). "Do Utahns Talk Funny?". Y Magazine. Brigham Young University. Retrieved November 26, 2012.
• McCarthy, Corrine (March 21, 2010). "The Northern Cities Shift in Real Time: Evidence from Chicago Selected papers from NWAV 37". rUniversity of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics. p. 12.
• McCarthy, Natalie (2004). "The Northern Cities Shift and Local Identity in a Suburban Cleveland Group" (PDF). p. 7.
• Szelog, Mike (2012). "Ayuh, the Northern New England Accent in a Nutshell". The Heart of New England. Retrieved November 26, 2023.
• "What do you call the long sandwich that contains cold cuts, lettuce, and so on?". The Harvard Dialect Survey. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Linguistics Department. Retrieved November 26, 2023.

External links

Look up Appendix:List of shibboleths in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Szelog, Mike. "Ayuh, the Northern New England Accent in a Nutshell". The Heart of New England.
• "Rhode Island 1". International Dialects of English Archive. 9 November 2012. Age: 34, Providence, Rhode Island male Caucasian