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Boston Accent
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, though some uniquely local vocabulary appears only around Boston. A 2006 study co-authored by William Labov claims that the accent remains relatively stable,Labov, William (2010). The Politics of Language Change: Dialect Divergence in America'. The University of Virginia Press. Pre-publication draft. p. 53. 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 historically Irish-American neighborhood of South Boston. Phonological characteristics Boston accents typically have the cot-caught merger but not the father-bother merger. This means that instead of merging the historical "short ''o''" sound (as in ) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regional Accent
In sociolinguistics, an accent is a way of pronouncing a language that is distinctive to a country, area, social class, or individual. An accent may be identified with the locality in which its speakers reside (a regional or geographical accent), the socioeconomic status of its speakers, their ethnicity (an ethnolect), their caste or social class (a social accent), or influence from their first language (a foreign accent). Accents typically differ in quality of voice, pronunciation and distinction of vowels and consonants, stress, and prosody. Although grammar, semantics, vocabulary, and other language characteristics often vary concurrently with accent, the word "accent" may refer specifically to the differences in pronunciation, whereas the word "dialect" encompasses the broader set of linguistic differences. "Accent" is often a subset of "dialect". History As human beings spread out into isolated communities, stresses and peculiarities develop. Over time, they can develop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |