Do You Speak Bostonian?
Scholars say U.S. regional accents are alive, well--and getting stronger
In fact, accents similar to Boston's--found in New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts--are growing more distinctive and different from one another, according to Naomi Nagy, a University of New Hampshire linguist. She found that in Massachusetts, fewer than 33 percent of those surveyed said that the second letter in father and bother sound the same. Just over the border, in southern New Hampshire, 34 to 67 percent said the words rhymed--that there was no distinction between the a in father and the o in bother. The fact that more people in Massachusetts considered the sounds separate, Nagy says, shows a desire for individuality and reflects a guarded animosity between the two states.
"The people in southern New Hampshire have more contact with Boston, so for them it's more important to be different," she says. "It's a way of expressing identity. As long as people don't see themselves as one big happy family, they will continue to be different."
Difference is not the whole story, however. In Dallas and Atlanta, Labov has found that the migration of Northerners into these cities has had a significant effect on accents: Young people in Dallas and Atlanta say I, not the Ah that is traditional Southern speech.
In general, the more transient segment of the population--especially those who have had some higher education--often uses TV-news-anchor English, which sprang from the old speaking style of the Midwest but no longer has a regional identity.
Labov didn't focus on rural areas or small towns, where other researchers have found that some accents are fading. Linguist Walt Wolfram, for example, has been recording the Ocracoke, N.C., dialect because he believes infiltration of tourists may have endangered it.
And there are some scholars who don't believe they are seeing a regionalist renaissance. The data-gathering process of charting an accent trend can take years, so it's hard to form a picture of an entire country before speech patterns begin to change again--and that makes for disagreements. William Stewart, for one, is a linguist at the Graduate School of the City University of New York who believes the language is moving toward homogeneity. "I don't like it, but I see that is clearly the trend," he says, pointing to Charleston, S.C., as one example of a place where young people aren't speaking in the strong brogue that some old-timers do. Data supporting the homogeneity theory are scarce, but Stewart says that's because linguists look for differences. "I detect a nostalgia in people," he says. "There's something romantic about it. People want [accents] to be there."
But University of Texas linguist Guy Bailey, who also has researched accent trends, agrees that regional differences are flourishing. "`Labov has a national survey. I have a national survey," he says. "When you talk to people . . . you can tell" that they have accents. "The notion that they are disappearing is overblown." The reason, says Texas A&M University linguist Lisa Ann Lane, is simple: "As long as identity is important, then we're not going to see homogenization."
The way we talk now A team of linguists is compiling an atlas of American dialects. Among their findings:
Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo. A shift in the pronunciation of the vowel e in Ked (as in the sneaker) makes the word sound more like cud. The word pat now sounds like piat; the o in pot now sounds like the a used to sound in pat.
Birmingham, Ala.; Tulsa, Okla. Though each Southern state has unique versions of twang, most hold tight to a distinctly Dixie pronunciation: A change in the letter e means Ked sounds more like kid or key-ed.
Philadelphia. The letter l is disappearing from the middle of words like cellar and dollar. So if you walk into a Philadelphia sneaker store and ask for "New Bounce," you will be shown a pair of New Balance shoes.
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