Ravenswing
Iconoclast
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2020
- Messages
- 1,102
- Reaction score
- 3,471
I just want to clarify, are you saying you have a heavy Boston accent, or are you saying a unique accent has been passed down in a small niche of your family that you inherited from your parents ?
Neither. I've just plain got a unique accent, unrelated to anyone else in my family, period, and have had all my life. There's no consensus among non-New Englanders as to whether there's any trace of "Boston" accent -- it's been attributed to English, Scottish, Irish, Scandinavian, Australian (this last been a complete gigglefit for my friend who grew up in Queensland), etc. (And tosses a fried clam at BedrockBrendan) Pfft. Born in Quincy, moved to the Plymouth area when I was ten. I'm Irish, after all!
Asen, for your benefit, the linguistic bands around here are unusually narrow. Though it's fading through pop culture, eastern and western Massachusetts have differing accents as well as idiom: the "Boston" accent travels up the coast through south coastal Maine, while western Massachusetts starts to fall into the New York orbit. Classic regionalisms as to what one calls "fizzy soft drinks" or "sandwiches served in long rolls" differ across those dividing lines. Also, there are settlement patterns. That "Irish after all" thing -- as a near-invariable thing, second- and third-generation Italian immigrants to Boston moved out north of the city, and second- and third-generation Irish immigrants moved out south of the city.
Let's just say that New England is a demographer's dream.