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A Boston accent is a local accent of Eastern New England English, native specifically to the city of Boston and its suburbs. Northeastern New England English is classified as traditionally including New Hampshire , Maine , and all of eastern Massachusetts , while some uniquely local vocabulary appears only around Boston.
New England English is, collectively, the various distinct dialects and varieties of American English originating in the New England area. [1] [2] Most of eastern and central New England once spoke the "Yankee dialect", some of whose accent features still remain in Eastern New England today, such as "R-dropping" (though this and other features are now receding among younger speakers). [3]
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can be used to represent sound correspondences among various accents and dialects of the English language. These charts give a diaphoneme for each sound, followed by its realization in different dialects. The symbols for the diaphonemes are given in bold, followed by their most common phonetic values.
The early 20th-century accent of the Inland North was the basis for the term "General American", [6] [7] though the regional accent has since altered, due to the Northern Cities Vowel Shift: its now-defining chain shift of vowels that began in the 1930s or possibly earlier. [8]
Boston speech also originated many slang and uniquely local terms that have since spread throughout Massachusetts and Eastern New England. [43] Although mostly non-rhotic, the modern Boston accent typically pronounces the r sound in the NURSE vowel, /ɜr/, as in bird, learn, turkey, world, etc.
Jeremy Renner dropped the inside scoop on how he perfected his Boston accent for 2010’s The Town. “I remember meeting with Ben [Affleck] on that, and that’s the first time I’d met him ...
Reporter Ellen Fleming just shared an outtake where her Boston accent kicks in during one of her recent reports.
Both types of accent are most commonly labeled a Mid-Atlantic accent [8] [9] or Transatlantic accent. On the other hand, the linguist Geoff Lindsey argues that many Northern elite accents were not explicitly taught but rather persisted naturally among the upper class; [ 10 ] the linguist John McWhorter expresses a middle-ground possibility.