maine english phonology

7/31/2019 Maine English Phonology

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Phonology of English in Maine

Peter Sipes


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Sociolinguistic considerations 1.3 million people 95% white 92.9% speak English at home

4.7% speak French at home (Source: MLA Language Map) Poverty and education levels similar to US average

Home-ownership rate above US average Highest median age in the US (source: Maine DHHS) Settled by the English in 17th Century

Data source: US Census Bureau, 2010 census data, unless noted


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Similar to Boston accent ( Good Will Hunting ) Native Mainers claim to be able to tell the difference

Nearly identical to New Hampshire accent Not the same as Vermont

Western New England accent Northeastern Maine has a different accent due to

prevalence of French (22.4% speak at home inAroostook County)


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Some lexical notes ayuh wicked some jeezum

Some syntactic notes Some speakers use double negatives Adjectives (e.g. some, wicked) as adverbs So don't I


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Rhoticity R-deletion

not universal never in onsets only possible in coda

immediately after a vowel some consonants may follow heart, hard, harsh

never between vowels (in theory, I've heard otherwise) allows for English words to end in lax vowels lobster ['lbst]


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Rhoticity R-deletion

leads to rounding of some vowels were [w]


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Rhoticity R-insertion

only r-deleters do this same as r-deletion, but in reverse always between vowels (in theory, I've heard

otherwise) an idea of it [n edir v t]

people are aware of this phenomenon motor oil [mot l ]


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Ayuh ['j] or ['j] or [ei] may also be ingressive


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Vowels in General // backed to [a], for some speakers

cut in half [kt n hf]

// raised to // in many situations lobster ['lbst] notch [nt] the reverse of what we're doing in Chicago

some // fronted to /a/ father ['fa]


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G dropping many speakers will use the morpheme /n/ instead

of //

probably more of a sociolinguistic thing than phonological


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Mary, merry, marry merger Nagy and Roberts say that some areas have no

merger, other areas (Calais) has a two-way merger

/mei/ for Mary and marry /mi/ for merry

variable throughout Final t glottalization

// for /t/, particularly word end is typical of Vermont can also be heard here from NH (similar to ME)

www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/newhampshire-

ipa.php


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Your turn Bar Harbor Katahdin Biddeford Millinocket Kennebunkport

maine english phonology

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