Rhode Island, Missouri & Oklahoma

[Frank Abate]

I expect Don Lance could do what's needed for MO and maybe OK, too, as a consultant, or could point to some of his published work.

For RI dialect, there was a humorous (though with much fact) piece on this some years back in Verbatim (which issue Erin?).  It is a strange little subpocket of r-less New England dialect, not quite the same as Boston.  My wife and her family are from Attleboro, Mass. and the area near Providence, which share the dialect, and I've encountered a lot of it.

Aside from distinctive r-lessness and some funny vowels (to a Midwesterner), RI speakers (and S Mass., though not incl. the Cape, I suspect) also pronounce the word loam 'rich soil' to rhyme with LOOM.  'Downstairs' (when standing on the ground floor of a house with a cellar (that'd be "basement" in my dialect)) is "downcellar" (one word, it seems).  If other tidbits come to mind, I'll pass them on.

It is a strange experience to be in a gathering of RI/S. Mass. speakers and be (apparently) the only one who is not from the area.  It hurts not to laugh sometimes.  But I learned long ago not to (try to) make fun of anyone's dialect.  They can't help it, nor can any of us, unless we try to consciously change what we picked up as kids.

Frank Abate