I'm going to college in southern California next year to study linguistics, and I've done a lot of studying of various accents in my own free time (I know, I'm weird like that ), but I still find the accents of my homeland to be some of the neatest, most pleasant, and...ok, sometimes pretty amusing . My accent is very mild, although I moved to central New Hampshire from southeastern Massachusetts when I was 10 and found that a true New England accent is even rarer to come by up here, especially in the younger generations.
Granted, we native New Englanders can usually hear a significant difference between the native accents of, say, Maine and Eastern Massachusetts versus Vermont, the Berkshires, and Connecticut...and then the Rhode Island accent is just an anomaly with many New York-like characteristics (the closer to Providence you get, the worse it is...no offense RIers, I'm really half Rhode Islander ) But all in all, there is a certain charm to the way we speak, don't you think? It reminds other Americans of an age that, to them, only exists in textbooks about American history.
I guess, in a way, I fear the decline of our unique linguistic identity in New England (although I don't think the accent in Boston is going to die away anytime soon ...and we'll be hard pressed to lose such essential vocabulary as "wicked"). So, let me know that there are still people out theah who talk kinda weeid.
Granted, we native New Englanders can usually hear a significant difference between the native accents of, say, Maine and Eastern Massachusetts versus Vermont, the Berkshires, and Connecticut...and then the Rhode Island accent is just an anomaly with many New York-like characteristics (the closer to Providence you get, the worse it is...no offense RIers, I'm really half Rhode Islander ) But all in all, there is a certain charm to the way we speak, don't you think? It reminds other Americans of an age that, to them, only exists in textbooks about American history.
I guess, in a way, I fear the decline of our unique linguistic identity in New England (although I don't think the accent in Boston is going to die away anytime soon ...and we'll be hard pressed to lose such essential vocabulary as "wicked"). So, let me know that there are still people out theah who talk kinda weeid.