While visiting with family in Massachusetts I decided to take a Trolley tour in downtown Boston, the green one for those who know or are curious. The driver took us around the city showing us the sites and filling us with mindless trivia. During the ride a passenger brought up the “R” question.
The driver responded (in all sincerity) that Bostonians intentionally dropped their R’s as a way of being snobbish. I have personally believed that the accent was a hybrid from the settlers coming to America by way of the Boston harbor.
Is there any truth to this trolley driver’s petitio or is just that?
Since the ‘r’ dropping “Bahstin” accent is found mostly among working-class, blue-collar folk, I find it highly unlikely that it’s meant to be snobbish.
Some TV/movie examples:
Survivor’s “Boston Rob” (who is a construction worker)
Matt Damon & co. in Good Will Hunting
Sean Penn and Tim Robbins in Mystic River (even though they sounded completely wrong, they were attempting it)
And I suppose people in NYC have their accent just to sound rude, and southerners are just tyring to sound stupid so they can cheat northerners. Trust me, a person born in Boston does not think he has an accent, and isn’t putting on airs by taking off "r"s.
The only reason it might be working class is because most locals intentionally lose the sound when they go to college, if they go to a school where the accent isn’t around. Class has nothing to do with it, really; get someone drunk enough and they’ll slip
I believe there is a variant of the Bawstin’ regional accent that you might call the Hahvahd accent. There ahh crusty bluebloods who do actually speak this way. They ahh so painfully hahhd to abide, I’m afraid. Think someting a tad like Thuhhston Howell the Thihhhd.
You’re probably right, I was just speaking from my own limited expereince. All I know is that I’ve lived here for nearly five years and I can’t do even a remote imitation of that accent.
[QUOTE=Loopydude]
There ahh crusty bluebloods who do actually speak this way. They ahh so painfully hahhd to abide, I’m afraid. Think someting a tad like Thuhhston Howell the Thihhhd.
[QUOTE]
I thought the Kennedys were the only people who talked like that in real life…
The Kennedys, and Mayor Quimby, are the only people in the universe who sound the way they do. Joe was working-class Irish who made good, but did not affect an old-money Brahmin accent and didn’t give it to his kids, either.
The Hahvahd look-down-the-nose accent **loopydude ** is referring to was personified by George Plimpton. John Housman in “The Paper Chase” is a good example, too.
There are several accents one can associate with Boston. One is the most familiar nowadays, the working-class accent, heard in all the sources mentioned by Orual. If you are still not sure what I’m talking about, flip on your local NPR station when “Car Talk” is on, and listen to the obvious effort the hosts must put into just pronouncing the name of their program correctly (Back when they were a strictly local program, they referred to it as something along the lines of “Cah Tu-ok”).
There is also the Hahvahd accent, which is an affectation of unknown origin, (but perhaps stems from the Blue Blood accent, below). Any number of Freshman enter speaking like wherever they come from, and emerge sounding like the aforementioned Thurston Howell III (Jim Backus did an excellent one, BTW).
The separate, “snobbish” accent is now more or less an anachronism, a holdover degenerate British accent cultivated among the Brahmin Blue Bloods of Beacon Hill, back when Boston was still considered one of the country’s premier cities. It wasn’t actually affected for snobbishness, but out-of-towners took it that way. The Brahmins have all but disappeared, along with the upper crust accent.
As for the Kennedys, Elvis1Lives has it correct. They are the only ones ever to speak that way (a failed Harvard accent), and actors who sound like Kennedys when pretending to be from Boston always arouse a hearty chuckle among the locals.
