Accent Influences

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Rick. I’m in Augusta, Maine.

Hi, you’re Rick.

Augusta, Maine.

How are things in Augusta?

I have lived all over the United States, most recently in Texas, but moved up here for family reasons.

And I’ve been noticing the accents of the people around me quite a bit.

And the other day, I was driving, you know, going to a fast food place, right?

And I heard the lady’s accent. It was on the, you know, through the speaker. And I said, are you from Boston? And she said, no, I’m from up here in Maine. And but my family’s from from Massachusetts. And I go, do they speak like, you know, they speak like Mainers.

And so I called you immediately after that because I was wondering, have there been any studies done that establish accents through just environment versus breeding versus genetics?

I don’t know, because it just seems weird to me that she sounded very Massachusettsian.

Is that a main term?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

But she sounded not quite from Boston, but she sounded like she was from Massachusetts.

But her family was from that area.

But she swears to me that they all speak like a Mainer.

You know, they use the wicked good and the I weren’t going to the store the other day, that sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But she said, I’m telling you, and she never lived in Boston.

She said never.

She lived in Florida and up here.

That’s it.

So her family was originally from Boston.

Is that what you’re saying?

Yes.

Right, right.

You’re on to something there, right?

I suppose, but I don’t, you know, I mean, I have not met her family.

It was just a drive-through thing, but, you know, we had this conversation,

And I was like, that is just so weird, so I thought I’d ask you guys.

You’re the word people, so.

A huge amount of work has been done in this realm, lots and lots of work.

You can still do plenty of, there’s still plenty left to do.

But there are a couple things here.

Martha, some of this is old hat to you, probably all of it,

But here’s the biggest news.

The thing that has the least influence on the way you talk is the media.

This surprises most people when I say this.

Yeah, does it surprise you, Rick?

It surprises me.

Yeah, it surprises me, actually.

If you’ve lived all over, also you’ve been exposed to the second most common influence on your language,

And that is the people around you.

These are the people that you work with, the people you go to school with, your neighbors,

The people that you talk to every day,

Which leads us to the most important influence in your language,

And this is your family, your parents and your siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles, those

Points of view. If they’re speaking the same language you’re speaking, they have by far and

Away the most influence on the way you speak. And we know this because we can track certain

Features of language down generations. There was a study done and presented at the Linguistic

Society of America conference last year where a woman talked about Jewish New Yorkers who don’t

Speak a lick of Yiddish or any of the East European languages like Polish or German or that sort of

Thing. And yet, in their English, you could still find certain semantic and syntactic traces of those

Old languages because they were passed down from grandparents to parents to children and so forth.

So by far and away, it’s your family. Anyway, maybe that’s more than you wanted to know, Rick.

No, no, I completely accept your premise.

Hey, Rick, is there some Maynard term for saying goodbye?

Not that I can think of, but then again, I try not to incorporate Maynard language because it

It makes me crazy that they use verbs wrong.

I weren’t going to the store.

But anyway, not that I can think of.

I’m sorry.

But I do appreciate you guys talking to me today.

All right.

Well, Rick, I hope it was helpful.

I hope I didn’t go on too long.

No, no.

Never.

Too long is never a problem.

You guys have a great day.

Take care of yourself.

Not when it’s Grant speaking.

Heck no.

You’re the most interesting person.

Yes.

All right.

All right.

Bye-bye, Rick.

Bye-bye.

I don’t need to be flattered.

Get out the shovel.

That’s right.

Yeah.

Shovel, yeah.

Well, the tomatoes are going to grow fine this year.