Maine accent

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The Maine accent is the local traditional accent of Eastern New England English spoken in parts of Maine, especially along the "Down East" and "Mid Coast" seaside regions.[1] It is characterized by a variety of features, particularly among older speakers, including r-dropping (non-rhoticity), resistance to the horse–hoarse merger,[2] and a deletion or "breaking" of certain syllables. The traditional Maine accent is rapidly declining; a 2013 study of Portland speakers found the older horse–hoarse merger to be currently embraced by all ages; however, it also found the newer cot–caught merger to be resisted,[3] despite the latter being typical among other Eastern New England speakers, even well-reported in the 1990s in Portland itself.[2] The merger is also widely reported elsewhere in Maine as of 2018, particularly outside the urban areas.[4] In the northern region of Maine along the Quebec and the New-Brunswick border, Franco-Americans may show French-language influences in their English.[5] Certain vocabulary is also unique to Maine.

  1. ^ Wolfram, Walt; Ward, Ben (eds.) (2006). American Voices: How dialects differ from coast to coast. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. p. 73.
  2. ^ a b Labov, William; Ash, Sharon; Boberg, Charles (2006), The Atlas of North American English, Berlin: Mouton-de Gruyter, pp. 226–7, ISBN 3-11-016746-8
  3. ^ Ryland, Alison (2013). "A Phonetic Exploration of the English of Portland, Maine". Swarthmore College.
  4. ^ Kim, Chaeyoon et al. (2018). "Bring on the crowd ! Using online audio crowdsourcing for large-scale New England dialectology and acoustic sociophonetics". American Speech Volume 94, Issue 2. Duke University Press.
  5. ^ Wolfram, Walt; Ward, Ben (eds.) (2006). American Voices: How dialects differ from coast to coast. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. p. 74-75.