Boston accents typically have the
cot-caught merger but not the
father-bother merger. This means that instead of merging the historical "short
o" sound (as in lexical set|) with the "broad
a" (as in ) like most other
American accents, the Boston accent merges it with the "aw" vowel (as in ). Thus,
lot,
paw,
caught,
cot,
law,
wand,
rock,
talk,
doll,
wall, etc. all are pronounced with the same open back (often) rounded vowel , while keeping the broad
a sound distinct: , as in
father,
spa, and
dark. So, even though the word
dark has no in many Boston accents, it remains pronounced differently from
dock because it belongs to Boston's –
class of words versus the – one:
dark versus
dock . Thus, while
New York accents have for
paw and for
lot, and
Standard British accents have a similar distinction ( versus ), Boston accents only have one merged
phoneme for both: . In general, Eastern New England accents have a "short
a" vowel , as in , that is extremely tensed towards when it precedes a
nasal consonant; thus,
man is and
planet is . Boston shares this system with some of the American Midwest and most of the West, though the raising in Boston tends to be more extreme. This type of modern
General American -raising system is simpler than the systems of British or New York City accents. However, elements of a more complex pattern exist for some Boston speakers; in addition to raising before nasals, Bostonians (unlike nearby New Hampshirites, for example) may also "raise" or "break" the "short
a" sound before other types of consonants too: primarily the most strongly before
voiceless fricatives, followed by
voiced stops, laterals, voiceless stops, and voiced fricatives, so that words like
half,
bath, and
glass become , and , respectively. This trend began around the early-mid to mid-twentieth century, replacing the older Boston accent's London-like "broad
a" system, in which those same words are transferred over to the class . The raised may overlap with the non-rhotic realization of as . Boston accents make a greater variety of distinctions between
short and long vowels before medial than many other modern American accents do:
hurry and
furry ; and
mirror and
nearer , though some of these distinctions are somewhat endangered as people under 40 in neighboring New Hampshire and Maine have lost them. In this case, Boston shares these distinctions with both New York and British accents, whereas other American accents, like in the Midwest, have lost them entirely. The nuclei of the diphthongs and ( and . respectively) may be raised to something like before
voiceless consonants: thus
write has a higher vowel than
ride and
lout has a higher vowel than
loud. This phenomenon, more famously associated with
Canadian accents, is known by linguists as
Canadian raising. The nuclei of and (in and ) are significantly less fronted than in many other American accents. The latter may be diphthongized to or . The
weak vowel merger is traditionally absent. This makes
Lenin distinct from
Lennon . Speakers of the more deeply urban varieties of the Boston accent may realize the English
dental fricatives as the
dental stops , giving rise to a phonemic distinction between dental and alveolar stops; thus,
those may sound closer to
doze.
Non-rhoticity The traditional Boston accent is widely known for being
non-rhotic (or "
r-dropping"), particularly before the mid-20th century. Recent studies have shown that younger speakers use more of a rhotic (or
r-ful) accent than older speakers. This goes for black Bostonians as well. A famous example of non-rhoticity (plus a fronted vowel) is "Park your car in
Harvard Yard", pronounced , or as if spelled "pahk yah cah(r) in Hahvud Yahd". The
r in
car would usually be pronounced in this case, because the Boston accent possesses both
linking R and intrusive R: an will not be lost at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel, and an will be inserted after a word ending with a central or low vowel if the next word begins with a vowel:
the tuner is and
the tuna is are both . This example has been used since at least 1946, to the point where some locals find requests to say the phrase annoying. Actual parking in Harvard Yard is prohibited, except by permission in rare cases for loading and unloading, contractors, or people needing accessible transport directly to
Harvard Memorial Church. with : thus,
half as and
bath as . Fewer words have the broad
a in Boston English than in the London accents, and fewer and fewer Boston speakers maintain the broad
a system as time goes on, with its transition into a decline first occurring in speakers born from about 1930 to 1950 (and first documented as a decline in 1977). Boston speakers born before about 1930 used this broad
a in
after,
ask,
aunt,
bath,
calf, ''can't
, glass
, half
, laugh
, pasture
, path
, and other words, while those born from about 1930 to 1950 normally use it only in aunt
, calf
, half
, laugh
, and pass
. Speakers born since 1950 typically have no broad a
whatsoever and, instead, slight /æ/ raising (i.e. in craft
, bad
, math
, etc.) with this same set of words and, variably, other instances of short a
too. Only aunt
maintains the broad a
sound in even the youngest speakers, though this one word is a common exception throughout all of the Northeastern U.S. Broad a
in aunt'' is also heard by occasional speakers throughout Anglophone North America; it is quite commonly heard in African American speech as well. ==In popular culture==