ABoston accent is alocal accent ofEastern New England English, native specifically to the city ofBoston and its suburbs.Northeastern New England English is classified as traditionally includingNew Hampshire,Maine, and all ofeastern Massachusetts, while some uniquely local vocabulary appears only around Boston.[1][2] A2006 study co-authored byWilliam Labov claims that the accent remains relatively stable,[3] though a 2018 study suggests the accent's traditional features may be retreating, particularly among the city's younger residents, and becoming increasingly confined to the historicallyIrish-American neighborhood ofSouth Boston.[4]
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| lax | tense | lax | tense | lax | tense | |
| Close | ɪ | i | ʊ | u | ||
| Mid | ɛ | eɪ | ə | ʌ | oʊ | |
| Open | æ | a | ɒ | |||
| Diphthongs | aɪ ɔɪ aʊ (ɪə ʊə ɛə oə) | |||||
Boston accents typically have thecot-caught merger but not thefather-bother merger. This means that instead of merging the historical "shorto" sound (as inLOT) with the "broada" (as inPALM) like most otherAmerican accents, the Boston accent merges it with the "aw" vowel (as inTHOUGHT). Thus,lot,paw,caught,cot,law,wand,rock,talk,doll,wall, etc. all are pronounced with the same open back (often) rounded vowel[ɒ]ⓘ, while keeping the broada sound distinct:[a]ⓘ, as infather,spa, anddark. So, even though the worddark has no/r/ in many Boston accents, it remains pronounced differently fromdock because it belongs to Boston'sSTART–PALMclass of words versus theLOT–THOUGHT one:dark/dak/ versusdock/dɒk/.[5][page needed] Thus, whileNew York accents have/ɔ/ forpaw and/ɑ/ forlot, andStandard British accents have a similar distinction (/ɔː/ versus/ɒ/), Boston accents only have one mergedphoneme for both:/ɒ/.
In general, Eastern New England accents have a "shorta" vowel/æ/, as inTRAP, that is extremely tensed towards[eə] when it precedes anasal consonant; thus,man is[meən] andplanet is[ˈpʰleənɪʔ]. Boston shares this system with some of the American Midwest and most of the West, though the raising in Boston tends to be more extreme. This type of modernGeneral American/æ/-raising system is simpler than the systems of British or New York City accents. However, elements of a more complex pattern exist for some Boston speakers; in addition to raising before nasals, Bostonians (unlike nearby New Hampshirites, for example) may also "raise" or "break" the "shorta" sound before other types of consonants too: primarily the most strongly beforevoiceless fricatives, followed byvoiced stops, laterals, voiceless stops, and voiced fricatives, so that words likehalf,bath, andglass become[hɛəf],[bɛəθ] and[ɡlɛəs], respectively.[6] This trend began around the early-mid to mid-twentieth century, replacing the older Boston accent's London-like "broada" system, in which those same words are transferred over to thePALM class/a/ (see§ Declining features, below).[7] The raised[ɛə] may overlap with the non-rhotic realization ofSQUARE as[ɛə].
Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions betweenshort and long vowels before medial/r/ than many other modern American accents do:hurry/ˈhʌri/ andfurry/ˈfəri/; andmirror/ˈmɪrə/ andnearer/ˈnɪərə/, though some of these distinctions are somewhat endangered as people under 40[clarification needed] in neighboring New Hampshire and Maine have lost them. In this case, Boston shares these distinctions with both New York and British accents, whereas other American accents, like in the Midwest, have lost them entirely.
The nuclei of the diphthongs/aɪ/ and/aʊ/ (PRICE andMOUTH. respectively) may be raised to something like[ɐ] beforevoiceless consonants: thuswrite has a higher vowel thanride andlout has a higher vowel thanloud. This phenomenon, more famously associated withCanadian accents, is known by linguists asCanadian raising.
The nuclei of/oʊ/ and/u/ (inGOAT andGOOSE) are significantly less fronted than in many other American accents. The latter may be diphthongized to[ʊu] or[ɵu].
Theweak vowel merger is traditionally absent. This makesLenin/ˈlɛnɪn/ distinct fromLennon/ˈlɛnən/.[8]
Speakers of the more deeply urban varieties of the Boston accent may realize the Englishdental fricatives/θ,ð/ as thedental stops[t̪,d̪], giving rise to a phonemic distinction between dental and alveolar stops; thus,those may sound closer todoze.
The traditional Boston accent is widely known for beingnon-rhotic (or "r-dropping"), particularly before the mid-20th century. Recent studies have shown that younger speakers use more of a rhotic (orr-ful) accent than older speakers.[9] This goes for black Bostonians as well.[10] Non-rhoticity means that thephoneme/r/ does not appear incoda position(for where in Englishphonotactics/r/ precedes other consonants, seeEnglish phonology § Coda), as in most dialects ofEnglish in England andAustralia;card therefore becomes/kad/ "cahd" andcolor/ˈkʌlə/ "culluh". Words such asweird/wɪəd/ andsquare/skwɛə/ feature centering diphthongs, which correspond to the sequences of close and mid vowels +/r/ in rhotic AmE. The phonemicity of the centering diphthongs/ɪə,ʊə,ɛə,oə/ depends on a speaker's rhoticity. Also, the stressed sequence/ɜr/ inside a closed syllable, as inNURSE, is most likely to take on a rhotic[ɝ] pronunciation among Bostonians.[9][11]
A famous example of non-rhoticity (plus a frontedSTART vowel) is "Park your car inHarvard Yard", pronounced[pʰakjəˈkʰaɹ‿ɪnˌhavədˈjad], or as if spelled "pahk yah cah(r) in Hahvud Yahd".[12][13] Ther incar would usually be pronounced in this case, because the Boston accent possesses bothlinking R and intrusive R: an/r/ will not be lost at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel, and an/r/ will be inserted after a word ending with a central or low vowel if the next word begins with a vowel:the tuner is andthe tuna is are both/ðəˈtunər‿ɪz/. This example has been used since at least 1946, to the point where some locals find requests to say the phrase annoying.[14] Actual parking in Harvard Yard is prohibited, except by permission in rare cases for loading and unloading, contractors, or people needing accessible transport directly toHarvard Memorial Church.[14]
Many characteristics of the Boston accent may be retreating, particularly among younger residents. In the most old-fashioned of Boston accents, there may be a lingering resistance to thehorse–hoarse merger, so thathorse has the pure vowel/ɒ/, whilehoarse has the centering diphthong/oə/; this can potentially cause theNORTH–LOT–THOUGHT merger, so thattort,tot andtaught are phonemically all/tɒt/. The result is that, for an older Boston accent, theNORTH–LOT–THOUGHT vowel is distinct from theFORCE vowel. Another two example words that would traditionally be distinguished, thus, arefor/fɒ/ versusfour/foə/. This distinction was rapidly fading out of currency in the second half of the 20th century with the words belonging to theNORTH class being transferred over to theFORCE class, undoing the merger ofNORTH withLOT–THOUGHT, as it is in almost all regions of North America that still make it. For non-rhotic speakers, the modern-day situation in Boston is that bothhorse andhoarse, as well as bothfor andfour, take the centering diphthong/oə/.
A feature that Boston speakers once shared with Britain'sReceived Pronunciation, though now uncommon in Boston, is the"broada" of theBATHlexical set of words, making a distinction from theTRAP set (seeTrap–bath split). In particular words that in other American accents have the "shorta" pronounced as/æ/, that vowel was replaced in the nineteenth century (if not earlier and often sporadically by speakers as far back as the late eighteenth century)[15] with/a/: thus,half as/haf/ andbath as/baθ/.[16] Fewer words have the broada in Boston English than in the London accents, and fewer and fewer Boston speakers maintain the broada system as time goes on, with its transition into a decline first occurring in speakers born from about 1930 to 1950 (and first documented as a decline in 1977).[7] Boston speakers born before about 1930 used this broada inafter,ask,aunt,bath,calf,can't,glass,half,laugh,pasture,path, and other words, while those born from about 1930 to 1950 normally use it only inaunt,calf,half,laugh, andpass. Speakers born since 1950 typically have no broada whatsoever and, instead, slight/æ/ raising (i.e.[ɛə] incraft,bad,math, etc.)[16] with this same set of words and, variably, other instances of shorta too.[16] Onlyaunt maintains the broada sound in even the youngest speakers, though this one word is a common exception throughout all of the Northeastern U.S. Broada inaunt is also heard by occasional speakers throughout Anglophone North America; it is quite commonly heard in African American speech as well.
Although not all Boston-area speakers are non-rhotic,non-rhoticity remains the feature most widely associated with the region. As a result, it is frequently the subject of humor about Boston, as in comedianJon Stewart joking in his bookAmerica that, althoughJohn Adams drafted the 1780Massachusetts Constitution, "delegates from his state refused to ratify the letter 'R'".[17]
Being conspicuous and easily identifiable as regional, Boston accents are routinely featured by actors in films set in Boston, particularly for working-class white characters, such as inGood Will Hunting,Mystic River,The Departed,Manchester by the Sea,The Town,Ted,The Fighter, andBlack Mass.[18][19] Television series based within a Boston setting such asBoston Public andCheers have featured the accent.Simpsons characterMayor Quimby talks with an exaggerated Boston accent as a reference to the former US SenatorTed Kennedy.[20] Televisioncomedy sketches have featured the accent, including "The Boston Teens" and "Dunkin Donuts" onSaturday Night Live, as well as "Boston Accent Trailer" onLate Night with Seth Meyers.[18]
InThe Heat, the family members of Shannon Mullins all speak with the Boston accent, and confusion arises from the pronunciation of the wordnarc asnahk/nak/. In the video gameTeam Fortress 2, the character Scout, who is a Boston native himself, talks with a distinct Boston accent, although it sometimes lapses into a Brooklyn accent.
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