Palin's Insanity Deepends, Chapter....I lost count

[Caliga]

She has an Idaho accent, just like my (mostly awful) father's side of the family.  That's partially it.

I will agree that her accent is grating... but you should still be happy she isn't from South Boston.

[derspiess]

she's the american hockey mum version of Vladimir Zhirinovsky. 

The Hyperbole Police would like you to come downtown for some questioning.

[Queequeg]

She has an Idaho accent, just like my (mostly awful) father's side of the family.  That's partially it.

I will agree that her accent is grating... but you should still be happy she isn't from South Boston.

Boston accents are fascinating from a linguistic perspective.  Idaho isn't, and again I have personal reasons for hating her accent and her lifestyle and mindset. 

[derspiess]

I would put the Boston accent at the top of my "most grating" list, actually.

[Caliga]

Boston accents are fascinating from a linguistic perspective.  Idaho isn't

What makes one accent fascinating, and another one not?  I know the Boston accent has a fairly complicated genesis, as well as very pronounced local differences--having lived there for 14 years--but I know next to nothing about Idaho's accent so I can't say that it's not fascinating.

[Queequeg]

Boston accents are fascinating from a linguistic perspective.  Idaho isn't

What makes one accent fascinating, and another one not?  I know the Boston accent has a fairly complicated genesis, as well as very pronounced local differences--having lived there for 14 years--but I know next to nothing about Idaho's accent so I can't say that it's not fascinating.

Boston's accent is older, and from what I understand in some respects more conservative than most Northern accents (in that it retains a lot of stuff from the British Isles, not that it adheres to 'proper' English more).  I think it is also quite a bit more different from standard Mid-West/California English than the Idaho accent.

Again, a part of it is personal preference, though.  Boston underclass=The Departed.    Sarah Palin=My extremely unpleasant maternal grandmother. 

[garbon]

The Hyperbole Police would like you to come downtown for some questioning.

They'd like him to come downtown to face extensive questioning with enhanced interrogation techniques.

[Caliga]

Boston's accent is older, and from what I understand in some respects more conservative than most Northern accents (in that it retains a lot of stuff from the British Isles, not that it adheres to 'proper' English more).  I think it is also quite a bit more different from standard Mid-West/California English than the Idaho accent.

Again, a part of it is personal preference, though.  Boston underclass=The Departed.    Sarah Palin=My extremely unpleasant maternal grandmother.

Oh, I can assure you that the Boston underclass contains many more unpleasant individuals than your mother's family.

As far as the Boston accent goes, my impression is that it has changed quite a bit since the mid-19th century, when it was dramatically influenced by Irish immigration.  I would imagine the rustic accents one finds in upstate New Hampshire and Vermont are closer to 'original' American English (I deliberately excluded Maine since in upstate Maine one encounters a large French Canadian population).

Having spent a good bit of time in rural upstate New Hampshire and Vermont, I personally think that these accents bear a noticable resemblance to Appalachian English (i.e. what one finds in east Kentucky, a swath of West Virginia, and through much of rural Pennsylvania).  There is a quality that sounds like Southern English--but you would still never mistake someone from rural Vermont for someone from rural western North Carolina.

[KRonn]

Hey now, what's wrong with my Bawstun accent!?      So it's hahd to find a place to pahk yaw cah in town... big deal!     

[Valmy]

Hey now, what's wrong with my Bawstun accent!?      So it's hahd to find a place to pahk yaw cah in town... big deal!     

I go by the law of conservation of 'r's.

Everytime somebody in Boston washes his cah, somebody in Oklahoma warshes his car.

[Caliga]

Hey now, what's wrong with my Bawstun accent!?      So it's hahd to find a place to pahk yaw cah in town... big deal!     

Your accent isn't NEARLY that strong.

[Queequeg]

That would make a lot of sense, as Appalachian English is, for the most part, pretty conservative, as the people who colonized that area, like Vermont and Boston (before the Irish) were directly from the British Isles and came with their own dialect of English.  Presumably the Boston accent would be a mix (I want to say a creole but it is presumably intelligible, at least when sober) of the older English-derived accent and the new Irish one. 

The same cannot be said, obviously, of most of the Mid-West.  The German population that settled the area seems to have adopted their new language and culture to the point of becoming more "American" than the Americans, resulting in "accent less" English and an architectural style that bears little resemblance to the motherland.  This makes a fascinating comparison with German migrants to Brazil and Argentina who are still purported to speak some German and have constructed entire neighborhoods in German style.


IIRC The Horse, The Wheel and Language, a very interesting book about the Indo-European expansion, uses the Mid-West as an example of cultural-linguistic assimilation

[KRonn]

Hey now, what's wrong with my Bawstun accent!?      So it's hahd to find a place to pahk yaw cah in town... big deal!     

Your accent isn't NEARLY that strong.

I know, but they can't tell by my posts!   

[Sheilbh]

I like the Boston accent.  But I like accents generally.  I can't really think of any that grate, but a number that bore (Birmingham ).

[Queequeg]

I like the Boston accent.  But I like accents generally.  I can't really think of any that grate, but a number that bore (Birmingham ).

Brummies are great, as is Birmingham.  Decayed industrial cities FTW.  Spent some influential years of my youth there, and ever since I've loved cities in varying degrees of decay.