Talk:Boston accent/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Hypercorrection?

I'm removing the small section about non-rhotic speakers trying to change their accents by hypercorrection that uses the hosts of the Car Talk program as an example.

Beyond that fact that there appears to be no citation, it is factually incorrect. I was born and raised in urban, lower-middle class Massachusetts. I have the accent in question and do sometimes add the letter "r" to the end of words that do not have it. However, crucially, I do not do so on purpose. As far as I can tell, for whatever reason, it's simply part of my accent.

I only discovered this when I moved from Massachusetts to the Midwest and obtained a teaching job. My accent was only a mild novelty until I said the word "idea". If fact, I think I said the exact phrase, "I have no idea." It came out like "idear" and my students got quite the chuckle out of it. Since moving from the Boston area, I have become proud of my accent, as a matter of cultural heritage. However, I wish like hell I could get the "r" off of the words like "idea". It's an oddity that I can't quite explain but it is most certainly not deliberate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.254.84.90 (talk) 23:19, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move to Boston accent. Good discussion, but only opposition to moving is two votes including one anon IP. Four in favor including nom and one anon IP. Argument against "accent", mostly about lexicon, is impressive, but so is the point about how limited the lexicon is. Rather than simply removing the lexicon as suggested by some, I suggest considering moving it into a new separate article... perhaps Boston lexicon, thus clearly limiting the scope of this article unquestionably to the accent both in terms of content and title. Born2cycle (talk) 16:09, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Boston English → Boston Accent — Relisting  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 22:23, 30 September 2010 (UTC) No consensus for original move[1] to current title and current title goes against WP:ENGLISH as "Boston Accent" is the most common term. As a Boston area resident myself, I was dumbfounded when I tried to find the page and was redirected to the current name. Also, both words in the new title should be capitalized as it is a proper noun, not a descriptive title. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 00:42, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Support in part because the article does not belong where it is but the correct name would appear to be Boston accent. As the article Dialect explains, and this article shows, native speakers in Boston have an accent, not a dialect. The vocabulary and idiomatic differences are not sufficient to constitute a dialect. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 01:24, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Support in part the title should be Boston accent. Boston English should redirect to English High School of Boston. --Pgp688 (talk) 03:11, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Support it's commonly referred to as "accent" not "English" ~DC ^{We Can Work It Out} 03:23, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose it includes a lexicon of Boston English terms, which is where accent and dialect diverge, dialects have their own vocabulary. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 04:14, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

That's what the section intro claims, but the claim lacks a source. I also doubt the claim because in my experience most of those terms are American dialect more generally, not specific to the Boston area. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 05:01, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

So bubblers are water fountains across the US? grinders are submarine sandwiches (why would Subway be called Subway then?) ? rotaries are traffic circles? 76.66.200.95 (talk) 12:16, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, let's consider "grinder" meaning a kind of sandwich. DARE maps it and finds it chiefly in New England. DARE lists only two words with special meanings chiefly or originally in Boston: "cleanser" and "coast". 69.3.72.249 (talk) 17:17, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't seem to be very general American to me, since it is New England, and not the entire US. 76.66.200.95 (talk) 04:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Bubblers certainly are water fountains in Portland, Oregon. When I hear "grinder", I think "sandwich", and I've never been near Boston. "Rotary" is a new one for me, but most US cities haven't got traffic circles at all. -GTBacchus^(talk) 01:32, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. The term accent properly refers only to pronunciation variants; dialect refers to varieties distinguished by phonology (pronunciation), syntax (grammar), and lexicon (Lippi-Green 1997; O'Grady et al. 2001; Meecham and Rees-Miller 2001. See linked articles for full reference). Since this article contains a section on lexicon, it does not describe an accent per se. Note, too, that this article was moved from Boston English to Boston accent 25 October 2009, then back to Boston English 3 November 2009. It may be advisable to keep this discussion open until a well-supported consensus emerges, even if that takes more than seven days. Cnilep (talk) 13:29, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Also note that it was originally "Boston accent" and was moved to "Boston English" on September 29, 2009 with the rationale "asked" before being moved back to its original title on October 25, 2009 and then once again to "Boston English" without consensus on November 3, 2009, as stated above. What needs to be realized here is that there is an established term for the English spoken in Boston whether it be logically correct or not. If necessary I would advocate removing the lexicon, as that seems to be just a fun little section added onto the article that is mainly about the accent. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 13:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I've just checked a few prominent texts. Wolfram and Schillings-Estes (2006) refer to "Boston English"; Laferriere (1979) "the Boston dialect"; Labov, Ash and Boberg (1997) and Kurath and McDavid (1961) both use "Eastern New England" dialect. Kurath and McDavid also refer to Boston without labeling it dialect, accent, or Boston English. Each description centers primarily on pronunciation. This treatment is less consistent than my description of the field above would lead one to expect. Cnilep (talk) 14:18, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely correct. It should be at accent per WP:COMMONNAME. ~DC ^{We Can Work It Out} 14:16, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Do you have evidence that this is the most commonly used name? Intuitions are notoriously unreliable in this respect. My very incomplete survey does not suggest that accent is the common name. Cnilep (talk) 14:20, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Google search for both. Guess which one has 90,000 hits and which has 5,000. ~DC ^{We Can Work It Out} 14:25, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Google search results, especially those returning more than a couple hundred estimated results, are also unreliable. There is, though, reliable support for your intuition. The Corpus of Contemporary American English shows 21 results for "Boston accent" in newspapers and magazines, compared to three for "Boston English" and none for "Boston dialect". None of the three appears in scholarly texts in COCA, so I searched Google Scholar and went to the last results page in order to over-ride the estimated results. "Boston accent" appears in 517 Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities papers, "Boston English" 391, and "Boston dialect" 55. Cnilep (talk) 14:36, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Boston English could also refer to English High School of Boston. ~DC ^{We Can Work It Out} 14:41, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Google search results do not distinguish Boston accent from Boston dialect. Just because alot of Google hits are for Boston accent do not mean that they are about Boston dialect, as Boston does indeed have an accent, as does England-RP, which is the "English accent", which only refers to the accent and not the dialect known as British English. Did you verify that all usages of Boston accent in those Google hits refer to the dialect, or do they only refer to the funny pronounciation that Bostonians use? 76.66.200.95 (talk) 04:19, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

• Comment - if 'accent' is used, shouldn't it be Boston accent, not Boston Accent? Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 05:01, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Correct, it's not a proper noun. Also, it's probably a good time to close or re-list this, since it's been up for over 2 weeks (I forgot about until you commented). ~DC ^{We Can Work It Out} 05:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Well my thoughts were that with lowercase it is just a descriptive title, but "Boston Accent" is a term and therefore in my view a proper noun. Like "South Station" for example, that is the name it's not the station that is south. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 12:12, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Do the article's sources use it as a proper noun? Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 16:24, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm having trouble figuring out where this discussion is at this point. We (I think) have determined that Boston accent is the common name, but that doesn't mean that's what the article about. Looking at:

• bubbler or water bubbler – 'drinking fountain'

makes me think that this article is about a dialect and not an accent, which as previously stated means a pronunciation variant. I suggest that it be called Boston English dialect if this article being confused with the school is really a major concern. --WikiDonn (talk) 19:24, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Remove the lexicon then. I would classify it as trivia anyway. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 19:30, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree it should be removed. And I'm not sure it qualifies as a dialect if only a dozen or so words are different, while grammar and usage remain the same (Southern American English has grammatical variations). ~DC ^{We Can Work It Out} 06:01, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Boston lexicon

NOTE: If anyone moves the Lexicon section of this article somewhere else, please fix the redirect at Boston slang (currently points directly to the Lexicon section of this article) accordingly. --Born2cycle (talk) 16:15, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Misleading bullet item under Lexicon.

The "blinkers" bullet item currently reads: blinkers - automobile directional signals (commonly used in Eastern Massachusetts). While directional signals are commonly referred to as blinkers in Eastern Massachusetts, the directional signals themselves are only rarely used in Eastern Massachusetts, generally to signal, "I am about to cut you off and there is nothing short of teleportation that you can physically do to prevent this." When I read this bullet item, the parenthetical expression immediately jumped out at me as possibly misleading the reader into believing that directional signals are commonly used in Eastern Massachusetts. Rtameo (talk) 02:18, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Please do not remove material being worked on

Someone unkindly removed my many edits without extending the courtesy of speaking to me first. Had he done so I would have explained that I have a lot more work to do and plan on adding sources to support all of my edits. I would like to add that it is unfair to delete work currently being worked on due to the cites not be added in yet, while the main text of the article has been grossly devoid of adequate citations for quite a while. So, as we say in Boston: "Keep your shirt on!" ( meaning: no need to be so impatient) As for DC's claim that the accent/dialect has only a dozen or so unique word usages, that is not correct. There are a great many special word usages. Some have lessened over time, as the old Boston neighborhoods have changed a lot from the old Irish Catholic, Italian, Jewish, and other ethnic neighborhoods of the past. But if he keeps deleting my work, he won't ever learn about that! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.215.27.57 (talk) 05:43, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no "sources will be added later". Add the sources when you add the information or anyone has the right to delete. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 13:09, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I removed some things because even if you had a source to prove that they exist, they are not unique or part of the specific lexicon of Boston. "The Cape" and "the town" are short ways of referring to a place, that is nothing special nor unique to the Boston area; not sure where you got the description of a clambake, never heard of it being on a beach nor it requiring seaweed; cobble and cobblestones are the name for the stones, there is no difference here; commons can be found everywhere, "the town common"; "cupboard" is not needed because it's definition is just the same word using the Boston accent; most old homes have a pantry. I am prepared to further discuss any of the above or any that I missed if necessary. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 13:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

grinder/sub

Changed "grinder" to "sub", because that's how it is. When I came to Western Mass, I found people were often confused by the word "sub," as they use "grinder." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.162.121.192 (talk) 19:05, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I was going to say something similar. They are always subs in the Boston area, but called grinders out in the Berkshires. Grk1011 (talk) 23:14, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Frappe

Does anyone care where these words came from? It would have been nice to have either originated in Boston, or come from Boston from England and were distorted or maintained locally. Frappe is neither. It clearly came from Quebec during the French migration and spread throughout most of New England except possibly for Connecticut. It is frivolous to claim it as a "unique" Boston word, though it may be the only place it is still commonly used. Student7 13:20, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

The list is for current words heard only in the Boston area. Regardless of where it came from, you admit yourself that it is the only place it is still commonly used. Right now it is unique to Boston, no? Grk1011 (talk) 14:47, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Probably. The problem is that the people that are constructing these lists are all amateurs (us!). There is no honesty (scholarship) in reporting them. Roots, etc. Each should have some small history with it, or maybe under a different subtitle so we are not pretending that Bostonians "invented" them all from scratch. Borrowed. From French. Whatever. Student7 (talk) 21:26, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Lexicon

I'm not the first to think of this (see above), but it seems to me that we should either rename this article (I have no ideas) or move the lexicon to it's own article (probably with a different name). It's really not germane to "Boston accent" per se. Boston dialect maybe, but that loses the thrust of the "accent" in the article. Student7 (talk) 20:20, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Note that the Southern equivalent is named Southern English, not "Southern Accent," but perhaps there is a redirect from there. This is proper for an article which includes a lexicon and misnamed here for one which does. Student7 (talk) 12:07, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

IMO, we should move this to "Boston dialect." This would result in a redirect from here to that article. The material is currently incorrectly named because it includes more than mere "accent". Student7 (talk) 14:18, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Unnecessary reference to Australian English.

The sub-section on non-rhoticity states,"Note that the r in car would sometimes be pronounced in this case, because the following word begins with a vowel (see linking R below). This is also present in the Australian English." I don't see how this is helpful to the article and might confuse readers unfamiliar with either by comparing a less notable trait in unrelated accents. I would think further explanation or examples of the linking r should replace the reference. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.63.193.55 (talk) 06:09, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

 Done. Agree. Also not referenced. It could be in some other article on speech, just not in one on Boston. Thanks for pointing that out. Student7 (talk) 20:24, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

More than one Boston accent; apparent racial bias

Does anyone else feel that this article tends to privilege the archetypal "Boston accent" of predominately white areas and white speakers? That there are a multitude of accents within Boston itself rather than just one accent which is cast as "Bostonian", and that these accents often reflect location within the city and the attendant racial segregation? I realize that the accent reflected in this article is that most associated with the idea of a "Boston accent", but I think those of us who live in the area can easily discern between the accent of someone from Charlestown or South Boston and that of a person from Lower Roxbury, Grove Hall, Franklin Hill, et cetera, which are unique accents in their own right. On the academic side I know next to nothing about linguistics or accents/dialects so I'm definitely not the person to add content reflecting other Boston accents, but I'd like to see at least a subsection summarizing some of the other accents of the city. Better than that, I think, would be to re-word the bulk of the article (though not removing or really changing the content) after adding such a section so that the article itself reflects that there isn't simply one accent in the city. Please bear in mind that I'm in no way insinuating that all white people in Boston speak a certain way while all black people in the city speak another way -- I've met black, Latino, and Vietnamese people that speak with the accent reflected in this article, white people who speak with an accent typically heard in predominately black parts of the city, Latinos who speak with an accent wholly different from the two, and so forth. I'm just saying that I think this article as it stands now would give the wrong impression to someone coming here for the first time, expecting a relative uniformity in manner of speech among the city's inhabitants and being subsequently surprised when he or she found that wasn't at all the case. Feel free to disagree with any or all of what I've written :) BostonFenian (talk) 08:46, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment from newbie

A comment from a newbie was correctly reverted for lack of citation and general language. It read:

"Massachusetts Born and Bred. Still live here. Spend lots of time in Boston. Where did you come up with some of these words???

spa - A convenience store that (usually) sells sandwiches This is wrong. No one says that. A spa is a place to get a facial and a massage

piazza - a porch, typically on the back of a three-decker house

NO ONE uses that word ... haven't heard it since my grandparents were around, they passed in the 70's

parlor - living room No ... we say living room

guzzle - a small inlet on a beach creating a tidal pool. Also a term used to describe drinking beer or an alcoholic drink quickly.

Never heard of the small inlet definition. We use it to describe fast drinking

grinder - pronounced "grinda"; a baked submarine sandwich, but not the equivalent of a toasted sub

NO ... not used here. We say sub.

frappe (pronounced /fræp/) – 'a blend of ice cream, milk, and syrup'[39] (In Boston milkshake refers to a concoction without ice cream, but merely with milk blended with flavored syrup by shaking.[40][41])

gonzo - crazy, bizarre; the term originated in South Boston but is now used nationally

We don't use either frappe or gonzo

banger - a wicked bad headache Never heard anyone say this

bubbler or water bubbler – drinking fountain When was this written? I haven't seen a working, usable bubbler since the early 60's

bundles - full bags of groceries from the supermarket I guess so. This is regional? I never use bundles"

I'm not sure that I agree totally with the remarks but we are eventually going to have to take some reality into the article sooner or later. Some of his remarks do reflect current reality. Some of the article reflects older usage - or current rural New England usage but not in Boston. Student7 (talk) 12:55, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

You do realize this is correct though right? Pug6666 (talk) 15:45, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Also who the hell collected the data on how wide spread the accent is? They have no idea hat they are talking about as a person that lives close to Boston I can say that the accent is most likely a minority even in Boston and definitively is one outside of the city. People usually have something closer to a western New England accent missing the glotal T. Not sure other features of the western New England accent being excluded as I'm no expert. Pug6666☼☯, 17:45, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

What we have here is two articles merged together. The "Boston Accent" which should be here, can be discussed fairly objectively with WP:RS. There may be a history associated with it which suggests that it is dying out.

The second topic which has intruded and should be moved to its own article is "Lexicon of Boston words," which has nothing in particular to do with accent though one might link to the other. Each word needs its own WP:RS and is harder to write for that reason. Mixing the two together arbitrarily creates unnecessary hardship and confusion for editors attempting to address errors. Student7 (talk) 14:42, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I do live near Boston but almost nobody has it where I live. But I know people with this accent most of them only sometimes delete R in the word car for example. The r is weaker than a Rhotic accent but is has r enough that car is not caah. Alas it is impossible to source your own observation. Pug6666 00:35, 13 April 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pug6666 (talk • contribs)

Understand.

It may be dying out. I once had a roommate who sincerely, with concentration, could not pronounce interior (rhotic?) "r"s. He was from nearby NH. Maybe would be hard to find such a person nowdays. Student7 (talk) 17:58, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The Letter A

I was born in Boston and have lived most of my life in Lynn. For 10 years I lived in the Midwest, where they pick up out r's. my daughter has was you would call a country accent so when we can to Lynn, MA she was overwhelmed with hearing the accent. She met her older sister who talked do fast I do believe there were flames coming out of her mouth.

I took a little test to see where I was from, Niston, w00t w00t and I think one of the things that can make people sound more like us is 3 words: Mary, marry, merry. To a Bostonion or New Englander all 3 words should sound different. I was discussing this with my daughter and she said to try and make all3 different then the way we form our mouths when pronounce a is a large part of the Boston Accent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.110.162.13 (talk) 22:15, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Boston isn't in Northeast New England last I checked....

I really have two basic issues with this article - Boston isn't in northeast New England, and a Boston accent isn't found in Maine unless it's a person who grew up in Boston. I grew up in Vermont, but lived for years in and around Boston. Living there you could clearly distinguish where a person was from by their accent. A Boston accent is distinctly from Boston and only Boston. A Maine accent is different from a New Hampshire accent which is different from a Vermont accent, etc. The Boston accent may seem to extend to all of metropolitan Boston, but if you live there, you can tell north shore from south shore by their accent. And a person from New Hampshire would be offended to be told they had a Boston accent, just like a person from Boston wouldn't like it if they were told they sounded like they were told they were from Maine - which is in North East New England, unlike Boston which is actually SOUTH of the geographic center of New England. The geographic center of New England is Dunbarton, NH which is an hour north of Boston. If you look at a map of New England it's clear that Boston isn't anywhere near northeast New England. Just saying.MWMcCoy1 (talk) 17:13, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

According to this article, Boston is in southern Canada. Viriditas (talk) 21:13, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Boston accent/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

This entry is full of opinion and stereotype

Substituted at 05:05, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

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Loyd Grossman

Who keeps removing Loyd Grossman? I know there is an irony in saying that an article on the Boston accent is biased towards the USA, but Grossman is extremely well known in the UK as a presenter as opposed to some of the minor US figures who are listed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.30.200.232 (talk) 14:55, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Grossman's accent is his own, not a good example of someone from Marblehead. Anmccaff (talk) 15:57, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Mary–marry–merry merger

No mention of the Mary–marry–merry merger! --Espoo (talk) 02:50, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Damn straight; that goes with the lesser tribes without. Anmccaff (talk) 03:13, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Huh??? Wolfdog (talk) 13:40, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Most Boston dialects do not merge these, nor do most (inland) rhotic NewEnglander dialects. Only the Lesser Tribes without the Law do this. Yes, there are folk found in New England who do, but they speak some bastard version of General Merkin, i.e. Radio English. Anmccaff (talk) 15:50, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Notable lifelong native speakers

I notice this section is often vulnerable to large and arbitrary changes. My hope is that we can use this discussion space to establish any larger changes that may come up in the future before enacting them. I personally find no need for changes now and like how the section currently stands: a list of people with required sources and a short quote from the sources to give an impression about the nature of the accent. There is also a warning note at the bottom of the section for editors, the gist being that inaccurate stereotypes/perceptions of Boston accents abound, so not just any Boston-area native should be listed without real certainty or strong sources. A section called "Notable lifelong native speakers" should only include speakers who fit that criteria exactly... the "lifelong" and "native" criteria I think being key. My problem is that, too often, we have editors assuming that someone has a strong Boston accent when in fact they merely imitated it in a Hollywood or TV role (e.g. Matt Damon or Rachel Dratch), has only marginal features of the accent and therefore is not the strongest of examples (e.g. Norm Abram), has an entirely different New England accent that is mistaken for a Boston one (e.g. JFK), or had a Boston accent growing up but shifted away from it later in life (e.g. Michael Bloomberg). Such public figures do not meet the "lifelong", "native", or even "notable" criteria. We need to be careful about this. Thanks. Wolfdog (talk) 18:40, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

References

Symbols for PALM/START and NORTH/LOT/THOUGHT

@Ajd and Nardog: I agree with Nardog that the open central vowel is better transcribed with ⟨ɑ⟩. I'd also add that the open back vowel is better transcribed with ⟨ɔ⟩.

In General American, what is transcribed with ⟨ɑ⟩ is often central, as in Modern Standard Danish. Yet, the usual transcription in both dialects is ⟨ɑ⟩. There's no separate symbol for the open central unrounded vowel in IPA - some write it ⟨ɑ⟩, many write it ⟨a⟩. Both can be found in North American English dialectology, but ⟨ɑ⟩ is what we typically use on Wikipedia. The argument that ⟨ɑ⟩ can be mistaken for LOT is, IMO, invalid. It's not the role of phonemic transcription to alert you to the various mergers and splits present in any given dialect. That needs to be explained in prose.

The symbol ⟨ɒ⟩ is (AFAIK) hardly ever used in NAE dialectology (apart from Canadian English, where LOT merges with both THOUGHT and PALM), where ⟨ɔ⟩ is used instead. In GA, it's used for what can be an open vowel. Wells also uses it for Welsh English [ɒː] (with the length mark: ⟨ɔː⟩), which is the same as the Bostonian vowel.

When we transcribe LOT/THOUGHT with ⟨ɒ⟩, there's still ambiguity as to what the THOUGHT vowel is. Is it at all distinct from LOT and/or PALM? Perhaps it is the /oə/ of FORCE? Is LOT a checked vowel, as in RP and AuE, distinct from both PALM and THOUGHT? Such questions can all arise in the mind of someone who reads this article, especially if they're completely unfamiliar with the accent.

Also, we should consider transcribing FACE and GOAT with ⟨e o⟩ - see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#Phonemic representation of FACE, GOAT and NORTH-FORCE in North American English. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:00, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Canadian raising

This effect is known usually as (one of the two phenomena of) Canadian raising, though it is less extreme in New England than in most of Canada.

I was surprised to find this in the article. Prior to Covid-19, I personally dealt with large groups of people from Canada and Boston. They sound nothing alike. Viriditas (talk) 08:40, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

What made you think the article was saying they sounded alike? It's just saying the two accents happen to share this particular feature that exhibits in very specific environments. For example, most American and Australian accents realize /t/ in butter etc. the same way, namely with flapping, but that doesn't mean the two sound remotely alike; it just means they do the same thing in this very specific context. Nardog (talk) 10:37, 25 June 2020 (UTC)