New England: phonology Summary

As we have shown, NE presents a complex linguistic profile. There are a number of both consonantal and vowel patterns that preserve the distinction between NE English and other varieties present in the U.S. Some of these features are uniformly distributed across NE, while others illustrate the maintenance of distinct dialect subregions. It appears that, as people more frequently move into the area from all over the country, New Englanders increasingly sound like other AmE speakers. However, some local features remain. Many New Englanders still “drop their r’s,” though no longer as consistently or in as many words as they used to. Others substitute glottal stop for T, and many retain a variety of fairly subtle vowel differences. Thus, much as found by the scholars who documented the linguistic patterns of this region in the early 20^th century, both the NE dialect and its regional subdialects operate as relevant markers of NE identity today.