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Maine-New Hampshire English refers to the speech patterns found mainly in the northern New England states of New Hampshire and Maine . This dialect is more common in more rural parts of each state. It somewhat resembles the Boston Accent (which does take precedence in areas of New Hampshire where there has been large scale immigration from Massachusetts, such as Hillsborough County ), and is known for being Non-rhotic in most words ending in R. "Car" often turns into "cah," and "lobster" becomes "lobstah." In words ending with -ing, the g is dropped. For example, ''working'' changes to ''workin''.http://199.125.75.13/stories/news/recent2002/nh_accent_2002.shtml Concord Monitor: Turnin' back the clock on talk. 15 September 2002. Also, in words that end in "a", an "r" is added. For example, "soder" instead of soda, "idear" instead of idea, etc. Perhaps some of the more notable practitioners of this dialect include New Hampshire celebrity Fritz Wetherbee , Maine Senator Olympia Snowe , Maine comedian Tim Sample (although it is common knowledge that his accent is very exaggerated), and another Maine comedian, Bob Marley , most famous for his role as Detective Greenley in Boondock Saints . The dialect tends to vary from region to region. For example, in the western part of New Hampshire, the dialect may resemble certain aspects of Western New England or Vermont speech, which is known to have a generally muffled sound.http://www.nhpr.org/archive/2006/3/9/term/15001 NHPR: "Ayuh, Linguistically Speaking." In the southern part of the state and in cities such as Nashua and Manchester , the Maine-New Hampshire vernacular is nearly non-existent, and most speech patterns resemble the General American or Boston dialects.http://199.125.75.13/stories/news/recent2002/nh_accent_2002.shtml Concord Monitor: Turnin' back the clock on talk. 15 September 2002. In Maine, the accent is more closely preserved near the coast. Residents of Friendship, Port Clyde, and Tenants Harbor, Maine, as well as the surrounding coastal fishing towns, are infamous for their thick accents. The accent of inland Maine, as opposed to the Maine seacoast, has speech patterns resembling some elements of Canadian English . Some towns, for example Augusta and Bangor , are "transitional." Generally speaking, residents of those areas who were born before 1970 maintain the accent, whereas those born later are more likely to speak with a General American dialect. Some slang phrases include:
In addition, speakers with the accent tend to use some terms from British English which are uncommon in General American English, such as "cellar" (or "cellah") for "basement" and "supper" (or "suppah") for "dinner." However, for most words which vary between British and American English, the American version is retained, such as "gasoline," not "petrol," and "elevator," not "lift." REFERENCES AND FOOTNOTES |
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