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Memories of the 28th Century

Dropping R’s and Shifting Vowels

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Some People Do Drop Their R’s


It has been said many times that New Englanders drop their R’s, but it is not true. I knew a little about linguistics, but not all that much, and even my maternal unit, who was a fairly good linguist opined that New England accents dropped R’s. Who was I to disagree?

So there I was in Lebanon, New Hampshire working with a guy from South Carolina, a guy from West Virginia, and the regional manager was from Maine. The South Carolinian had a broad drawl, and he slid all his vowels back a bit. It just happened that there was someone we worked with who was from an old Pilgrim family in Southeastern Massachusetts, and he spoke with an accent that I’d never run into before. Well, I’d run into less extreme examples, but this guy dropped his r’s. I mean there was no r sound in many places where I expected one. One word that I especially remember was “makket”, which was “market” without the R. The South Carolinian and West Virginian claimed not to notice any difference between the way that I spoke and the way that guy spoke, but it was a huge difference to me and to the guy from Maine, because both of us spoke the general New England speech.

I tried to pin down the difference in the South Carolinian’s speech in my non-expert fashion, but I didn’t until one day he wanted to amuse himself with the difference between his speech and the English language. He asked me to say “barbed wire”, which I did, and when he again tried to say “barbed wire” in his distorted version of English I realized that he had change the vowels and said “bourb wore”. He and I were using R’s the same way, but we had big differences in vowels.

I spent a few days thinking about other examples where different vowels sounds had given someone the false impression that a speaker of proper English had dropped a R. One example was from an anecdote my mother had told me about someone mispronouncing “pears” as “purrs”. I mentioned my observation about the vowel sounds, and she quickly understood what I meant and thought of a few similar items.

I thought to write about this after reading a Facebook thing by a native of the Boston area who lives elsewhere but who is proud of her speech. Unfortunately, she falsely claimed to say "watah" for "water" and "pahlah" for parlor, and maybe a few others. That was because she didn't realize that her pronunciation is quite correct, and there are other people with trouble saying "water" instead of whatever they mispronounce water into.

As someone who speaks proper and correct English I have little trouble understanding most of the odd accents that are out there. But the speakers of those odd things sometimes have trouble understanding the correct language. I remember a fellow I knew in college who claimed that he could only understand about 85% of my speech. I responded that I that was odd, because I had no trouble understanding him, even though he mispronounced many words. He was from Indiana, so what can we expect?

As a general matter it may be a good idea to ignore small differences in accents and save the complaints for people in Central India who would rather you would think they were in Texas, even though no one in Texas talks like that.

Comments

  1. Pompey Bum's Avatar
    Interesting post, Peter. I grew up about 16 miles from Boston, and while I have none of the notorious Mayor Quimby accent, my experience is that the situation is more complicated--or maybe localized is a better word-- than you say. "Bourb wore" is the way they talk in Rhode Island, so it's not surprising that the guy you mention came from southeastern Massachusetts. Accents are nuanced, and don't care about the Welcome to Massachusetts sign in any case. It's very difficult to transliterate the way someone from Somerville (aka "Sumaviw") right next to Boston would have pronounced it, but it would be a lot closer to the classic dropped R.

    There are other variables, too. Family's important. My parents were both uprooted Midwesterners, so I didn't have the Yankee patois as a model, at least not from them. The kind of education you have matters, too. Where I went to school, we were actively taught not to speak like poor whites from the city. I mean, they didn't put it that way, but the teachers did tell us that dropping "Rs" was a lazy way to talk, and newcomers to the middle class end up ruing their backstreet ways. And of course, the "Townies" from the city gave it right back to us.

    So I never picked up the accent; but I can do it perfectly. It's not only the "Rs": vowel sounds are just as important. It's (something like) Meery, not Mary, and the "A" in fAth(eh) is also different. If you have any Latin, it's like the subtle difference between short "A" and "A" with a macron (the Boston "A" is the latter). And now that I think of it, the "th" is a little smoother than other places--like the way they say "th" in New York City (but not quite that smooth). Plus the whole word just sounds different. You need to know how to say it without thinking.

    Which gets me to the funniest part, which is that the dopes in Hollywood, for the life of them, cannot do this accent. They either use a New York Jewish accent (because, what the hell, that's Northeast, right?), or worse, they try to do the Boston city accent and completely botch it. There was a guy in The Perfect Storm who thought he'd give it a try and ended up sounding like he came from the 9th Ward in New Orleans. Why he assumed Gloucester fisherman talked like they came from Somerville is another matter (there's a lot more of that long Latin "A" on Cape Ann); as is the reason they didn't just hire actors from Gloucester in the first place.

    The only actor who ever got it right was Johnny Depp in a movie called Blow (I think). I don't know if he lived here once, or went to school here, or maybe he's just a good mimic, but he could have passed for a local as far as I was concerned. The woman who played his mother tried, but only got as far as New York.

    That's it f'now Peateh. :)
    Updated 07-16-2015 at 02:50 PM by Pompey Bum
  2. PeterL's Avatar
    It is a very nuanced matter, and I only touched on one salient feature. I would never try to describe how a Gloucester fisherman spoke; they all talk differently, don't they?

    Actually, there is a big problem around the world with vowels before R's. The vowels change in different ways depending on where one is. There's also the class matter; although that has changed a lot over the decades. I have never lived in Boston; although there are people who have accused me of having done so, but I am quite familiar with the accent from having grown up in the next regional, Eastern New England (the pure, unaccented version of English).

    There is a detailed map of New England accents, but I couldn't find it. The person who drew it did a lot of work, but there were mistakes.

    I would guess that you grew up in the direction of Needham or Wellesley.
  3. Pompey Bum's Avatar
    I'll PM you.