I've heard mention Brown copped the "Massachussetts accent" during the campaign.

[Roland99]

He was interviewed on the Today Show this morning. I didn't hear anything New England-ish in his voice. Certainly nothing like Teddy spoke.

[rox63]

1. Most people here don't talk like that n/t

[Captain Hilts]

2. On certain words you can hear it. Kind of like how Rhode Is. folks screw up the letter 'w'

and 'l' in the pronunciation of some words.

[newscott]

3. Rudd Eyelandahs sound more like New Yawkuz......

Very different.

[Captain Hilts]

8. RI'ers do not sound like Mass types. The 'w' is a lot like NYers say it. Yes. nt

[Chemical Bill]

20. That's Ro Dilandas.... n/t

[blondeatlast]

4. They do to non-Massers. I don't think I have a midwestern accent, but every one of my friends

say I do.

I haven't lived in the midwest in 30 years.

[pipi_k]

13. That's right...it starts out in Boston, then gets progressively less

obvious the farther west one travels.

In Springfield and points west, we sound more like Mid-Westerners. No trace at all of the mixed "ah" and "r".

[FBaggins]

5. There is no such thing as a "Massachusetts accent".

It's the rest of the country that has an accent. :)

[rox63]

7. Yeah, what you said

:)

[Tailormyst]

12. yup yup

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. Brown has mastered doublespeak, official language of the GOP.

Otherwise known a "forked tongue syndrome"

[Overseas]

9. Apparently Republican Brown didn't mention he was Republican very much.

I heard on Bill Press this morning that Brown's ads didn't mention his party much at all.

Democrats will need to remind their voters that their opponents are from the Greedy Obstructionist Plutocrats' party.

And be ready to characterize their opponents as such, even when they have comfortable leads in their states.

He's from the party that wanted to defeat any health care reform. He's from the party that wanted to preserve the status quo of the GWB Gang.

[DainBramaged]

11. Correctamundo he played the Moderate Independent and fooled a LOT of people

who in retrospect, deserve what they got if they didn't know who they were voting for.

[Overseas]

17. Let's remember to use the word Republican in all our references to 2010 candidates.

Make sure Dems include the word whenever referring to their GOP opponents.

[pipi_k]

15. On the way back from voting yesterday I heard a radio ad for him in which

the word "Independent" was used a couple of times.

As in "Independent thinker", etc.

subliminal advertising? who knows...



All I know is that I feel rather soiled. Similar to how I felt the second time Bush got "elected". Like I had to run around apologizing to the world for my stupid country. Now I feel like I have to apologize for my really stupid state. :(

[Overseas]

18. I think tossing the word "independent" in a lot was deliberate.

To pretend he wasn't tied to the miserable Republicans who destroyed our country.

I have been ashamed of my Democrats for not going strongly FDR as soon as President Obama took office. Lots of people crossed party lines to vote for President Obama because they knew the GOP had destroyed the country and we needed very serious, thorough, FDR-type reform.

[JVS]

10. Wicked Pissah!!

[Bitwit1234]

14. I still don't think Coakley was the best candidate and

she fiddled around because she thought she had the seat "in the bag". She didn't put herself out at any time except in the stretch when she started failing.

[Igel]

16. The older Kennedy family members would speak a rather different dialect.

Older Bostonian speech varieties were based partly or geography and partly on class. Remember William Buckley's Boston Brahmin? It's about as extinct as the Old Moscovite dialect is for Russian (which was Moscovite, but not that old--one of the people on my diss committee speaks it).

Brown, if Wiki's right, is from the N Boston area, near Peabody -- whichever relative he was staying with -- so he grew up speaking the local dialect. On the other hand, he's also educated, college and a law degree, and he's served in the National Guard for a long time and done stints away from his home dialect base. Since the dialect isn't nearly as prestigious as Kennedy's was, he might well have lost it (since there was no reason to keep it) or developed the same kind of code-switching ability Obama and much of the country has. Most regional dialects in English are frowned upon and judged to reflect intellectual ability. It's stupid, but there you have it.

Note that you may not be listening for the right things. Pronouncing rhotics is a fairly easy thing to do. Bostonian English is famously non-rhotic, i.e., "car" sounds like "kaah"--not quite like a Southerner would say it, but the same general idea. Still, there are those that do "pronounce their rs" and change little else. Getting all the vowels "back" in place is a bit harder, esp. the low vowels.

Wiki, as with most things linguistic, does a fairly good job: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_accent

If you like maps, there's this (and I'm hoping it doesn't embed):
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/MapsNE/Map1NE.html

For a verbal explanation of what's encapsulated in the map (probably Labov's) there's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_English .

[JVS]

19. Question: Does Barbara Walters have a speech impediment or is that her Boston accent?