WEBVTT - BrainStuff Classics: How Did Boston and New York's Accents Develop?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.920
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,

0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:09.480
<v Speaker 1>Lauren bolk Bomb here with a classic episode from our

0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:13.760
<v Speaker 1>erstwhile host, Christian Sagar. The team around the currently at

0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.720
<v Speaker 1>home office is continually fascinated by accents and how they work.

0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:20.960
<v Speaker 1>I'm partially because we say things into microphones for a living,

0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:24.080
<v Speaker 1>but the way that accents develop over time is so

0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:27.360
<v Speaker 1>weird and cool. In this episode, Christian takes a look

0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:33.000
<v Speaker 1>at how two distinct American accents came to be. Hey

0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:36.120
<v Speaker 1>brain Stuff, is Christian Saga here? Warm up your vocal cords,

0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:39.519
<v Speaker 1>because today we're diving into the history of Boston and

0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:43.360
<v Speaker 1>New York accents. Now. I'm from the Boston area. Originally

0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.440
<v Speaker 1>in Tourists love to ask if they can park the

0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:50.360
<v Speaker 1>car in Harvard Yard, or rather pack the car and

0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:54.920
<v Speaker 1>have it yead. This question illustrates the stereotypical Boston accent,

0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:59.680
<v Speaker 1>whose origins date back to the seventeen century. Beantown's famous

0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:04.240
<v Speaker 1>Die elect is a melting pot bearing the influence of Quakers, Puritans,

0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:08.840
<v Speaker 1>and Algonquin Indians alike. But by far the Boston accents

0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:13.320
<v Speaker 1>best known quirk is a tendency to drop the R sound.

0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:18.319
<v Speaker 1>This is exchanged for an ah, turning beer into via.

0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:24.720
<v Speaker 1>Until recently, historians attributed the custom to good old Anglophilia. Supposedly,

0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.560
<v Speaker 1>Massachusetts colonists were trying to emulate the high brown norms

0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:31.600
<v Speaker 1>of England's elite, who always made a point to ditch

0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:35.680
<v Speaker 1>their rs. However, this explanation might have it backward. The

0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:40.399
<v Speaker 1>dropped our habit first showed up in southeastern England, where

0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:45.880
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't originally seen as prestigious in Linguist Richard Bailey

0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:49.920
<v Speaker 1>used phonetically written records to show that the trend later

0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:55.320
<v Speaker 1>became popular in pre revolutionary Boston. And yet, according to

0:01:55.400 --> 0:02:00.000
<v Speaker 1>his research, Britain's well off wouldn't embrace the practice until

0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:04.240
<v Speaker 1>the mid eight hundreds. So in other words, it's possible

0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:09.639
<v Speaker 1>that English socialites were copying Boston and not vice versa.

0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:12.959
<v Speaker 1>Oh and for what it's worth, Harvard Yard has very

0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:16.040
<v Speaker 1>strict parking policies, so you might want to leave your

0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.440
<v Speaker 1>vehicle elsewhere. I'm just just telling you that, as was

0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.320
<v Speaker 1>the case in Boston. Though, the first English speakers to

0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:25.239
<v Speaker 1>arrive in the New York region came from the south

0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:28.400
<v Speaker 1>of England. At some point in the eighteenth century, New

0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:32.839
<v Speaker 1>Yorkers started dropping there, ares even the ones originally from

0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:35.920
<v Speaker 1>the north of England picked up the habit. This explains

0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:40.720
<v Speaker 1>why Hyde Parks owned Franklin Delano. Roosevelt said fia instead

0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:44.560
<v Speaker 1>of fear during the biggest address of his life. The

0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:48.880
<v Speaker 1>missing our phenomena began to die down after World War Two,

0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:55.000
<v Speaker 1>but other norms still persist. Say Long Guyland instead of

0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:58.320
<v Speaker 1>Long Island and you'll be pegged for an area native.

0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.560
<v Speaker 1>Some believe this little centric city could be the product

0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:06.160
<v Speaker 1>of Yiddish or Italian influence. However, other linguists aren't convinced.

0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:10.760
<v Speaker 1>Most experts agree that the New York accents basic characteristics

0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:15.320
<v Speaker 1>are British in origin. What's debatable is the exact degree

0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:19.800
<v Speaker 1>to which any non English language affected any specific word

0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:24.919
<v Speaker 1>pronunciations or sentence structures. As such, we may never know

0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:34.080
<v Speaker 1>where coffee or toy Todd Street came from. Today's episode

0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:36.600
<v Speaker 1>was written by Mark Mancini and produced by Tristan McNeil

0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:39.280
<v Speaker 1>and Tyler Klang. For more on this and lots of

0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:42.640
<v Speaker 1>other distinct topics, is it how stuffworks dot com. Brain

0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:45.360
<v Speaker 1>Stuff is production of iHeart Radio or more podcasts my

0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:48.240
<v Speaker 1>Heart Radio. Visit the iHeart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or

0:03:48.280 --> 0:04:00.960
<v Speaker 1>wherever you listen to your favorite shows.