"Connecticut accent" in the Times

[Laurence Horn]

Sorry, forgot to post this article from the Sunday Times regional
Connecticut section for those who may be interested.  God forbid that
any linguists or dialectologists might have been consulted here, Mr.
Santaniello evidently preferring to check with speech therapists,
"communication specialists" and TV and radio news staffers.  A lot of
this is pretty silly or sloppy, but the glottal stop (in e.g. "New
Britain") is certainly a real feature (albeit with a social variable
attached, and I'm sure not a shibboleth of Connecticut speech, if
anything is); I was struck a while back with the curiosity that my
daughter definitely adopted it in her earlier years (she turns 20
today and has long since given it up), while my son, a couple of
years older, never did.

larry
==================

The New York Times
September 5, 2004 Sunday

  SECTION: Section 14CN; Column 1; Connecticut Weekly Desk; Pg. 1

  HEADLINE: Accent? What Accent?

  BYLINE: By GARY SANTANIELLO

  IT isn't as recognizable as the soft drawl of the Deep South, the
twang of Texas or the sing-song cadences of Minnesota, but, yes,
there is a Connecticut accent.

  Or, more precisely, there are several accents.

  Connecticut, as it is so often reminded, is between New York City
and Boston, geography that does more than create confusion for which
baseball team to cheer. Over the centuries, both cities have
influenced the way Connecticut residents talk, although no one in the
state pahks the cahr in Hahvahd Yahd or goes to Noo Yawk. The
Connecticut accent is subtler and further influenced by regional
differences.

  New Britain residents have a distinct way of speaking that can be
traced to the Polish immigrants who settled there beginning mostly in
the late 19th century. In Bridgeport and Middletown, the Italians had
an influence. And in Fairfield County, there's a little New York in
there, but no one sounds like Thurston Howell III, the oh-so-rich
character from the 1960's TV show ''Gilligan's Island,'' or William
F. Buckley Jr., who was raised in Sharon.

  ''In my household growing up we watched William F. Buckley Jr. on
'Firing Line,' and to me, that was the Connecticut accent,'' said
Kirk Varner, the news director at Channel 8 in New Haven, who grew up
in South Carolina. ''The sense was that people in Connecticut spoke
in a much more precise kind of way, almost like they were trying to
sound erudite, even if they were not.''

  So, how do we sound?

  Vicki MacKenzie, a communication improvement specialist with Accent
on Communication in Stamford, said residents have a neutral-sounding
accent that can be heard in how they pronounce certain letters.

  ''In the Connecticut accent, the 'r' is pronounced much more
frequently than in New York or Boston,'' she said. Bostonians and New
Yorkers tend to drop their final ''r's,'' heard in the words mother
or doctor.

  Bostonians and New Yorkers also pronounce their ''o's'' and ''a's''
differently from each other and from Connecticut.

  Ms. MacKenzie said ''forest'' and ''orange'' are pronounced FORE-ist
and OR-inge in Connecticut, but as FAR-ist and ARE-inge in New York.
And unlike in Connecticut, the letter ''o'' in Boston is pronounced
with an ''aw'' sound, as in Bawb for Bob and frawg for frog.

  Then come the regional differences.

  In the Hartford area, its accent is distinctly different from
Boston's, particularly the sound of the letter 'a,' said Nancy
Morgenstern, a communications coach who owns Speakbest in Avon. While
most residents use the standard American English pronunciation of the
letter ''a,'' which she likens to the ''ai'' sound in the word
''air,'' it's different in Hartford.

  ''The 'a' used in Hartford sounds like the 'ea' in ear,'' she said.
''You can hear the accent in words like Gary (GEAR-ee), craft
(CRAY-ift), ferry (FEAR-ee) and class (CLAY-is),'' she said. In
Boston, the ''a'' in bath sounds like ''ah.''

  The New Britain accent is much more distinctive, even in the way
residents pronounce the name of their city: ''New Breh-EN.''

  ''It's called a glottal stop,'' said Pat Gomola, a speech
pathologist at the Speech and Language Institute in Middletown.
''It's not a 't' sound. You say it in the back of your throat. It's
the same thing when they say double-t words like cattle or bottle.''
In New Britain, such words come out as ''CAH-uhl'' or ''BAH-uhl.''

  Ms. Morgenstern attributed this sound to New Britain's large
Polish-American population. ''They don't enunciate their consonants
as much,'' she said.

  ''The funny thing is, you go into the next town, and you don't hear
it,'' Ms. Gomola said.

  Although New Britain and Bristol are neighboring cities, speech
patterns in Bristol are different, traceable to half a century ago,
when an automobile manufacturing company, New Departures, recruited
many workers from Quebec.

  ''There ended up being a lot of French-speaking Canadians who stayed
in the area,'' Ms. Gomola said. ''Their influence infiltrated into
the language. Each language has its own pronunciations and
intonations, and the French tend to end a sentence with an upward
tone, even though it is not a question,'' citing the example: ''You
are going to the store.''

  Likewise, she said, Middletown and Bridgeport have the influence of
its large Italian-American population, many of whose relatives
emigrated from Sicily. The distinctive sound is heard in the
pronunciation ''idear'' for ''idea.'' ''It's mostly the Sicilians in
Middletown who put the 'r' at the end of some words Italians who
aren't from 'off the boot' don't do it.''

  Part of Mr. Varner's job as news director of Channel 8 is deciding
which voices and accents will be acceptable to Connecticut listeners,
so he counsels new hires in the proper pronunciation of Connecticut
names. ''Wuhl-cut'' for Wolcott and ''HEE-brun'' for Hebron, for
example.

  ''There are a lot of 'o's that sound like 'u's in Connecticut,'' he
said. ''We want people who know the correct way to say town names.
You don't have to be from New Britain to say New Britain correctly.''

  Whereas Connecticut's sound has been influenced by the influx of
people from Boston, who bring along their broad vowels, and people
New York, who bring their hard consonants, it has also been
influenced by mobility.

  ''People are so much more worldly now,'' Ms. Gomola said. ''There
are people in the Bronx and Queens who've never been to Manhattan, so
their accents remain strong. But you're not going to find someone
from Greenwich who hasn't been all over the world. The upper class
tends to lose its accent because they're more likely to travel. And
because they want to lose it.''

  Ms. Gomola calls the perception of an upper-class way of speaking
''the Auntie Mame accent,'' after the blue-blooded character
portrayed by Rosalind Russell in the 1950's play and film. ''That
really doesn't exist anymore,'' she said. ''It's more a stereotype of
the upper-upper-upper class in Fairfield County from days gone by.''

  Another strong influence on speech patterns is education, Ms.
Morgenstern said. ''You won't find such accents as much with an
educated population,'' she said. ''They're more cognizant of the way
they speak.''

  Consequently, the New York accent doesn't extend too far into
Connecticut before losing its influence.

  ''It doesn't usually extend into wealthy pockets like Greenwich,
Darien or New Canaan,'' Ms. Gomola said. ''It can wiggle around the
tracks, because that's where the poorer pockets are, even as far as
Bridgeport.''

  Speech patterns in the eastern half of the state, particularly
farther up the I-395 corridor, resemble those of Boston. On the
Sunday morning ''Radio Flea Market'' on Norwich station WCTY (97.7
FM), listeners can hear callers seeking buyers for ''camp-uhs,''
''trail-uhs'' and ''Nov-ah Supe-ah Sports.''

  ''I'm from Wisconsin originally, so it's been kind of challenging
for me,'' said Jimmy Lane, the station's program director. ''One time
I asked someone to spell their name for me and he said it was Martin.
It sounded like MAH-tin. I'd have never guessed that's what it was.''

  Speech patterns develop early in life. Most people acquire the
accent of their peers in adolescence, typically from ages 3 through
7, Ms. MacKenzie said. Once children reach puberty, ''your
hard-wiring becomes more permanent.''

  After that age, retaining an accent often depends on the desire to do so.

  ''Some people hold on to their accents, but if they're motivated to
change it, they can,'' Ms. Morgenstern said. ''But some people don't
want to lose their accent because it defines who they are. It depends
on how important it is to someone.''

  Although Mr. Varner is attuned to accents, particularly those in
Connecticut, he finds categorizing his own accent confounding.

  ''People up here say I have a southern accent,'' he said, ''but when
I go home to South Carolina, I hear 'Where are you from?' So who the
heck knows.''