query about dialect marker

[galey modan]

In my experience, this seems to be a feature of the idiolect of certain
people *not* from Massachusetts who went to Harvard as undergrads.
Seriously, I've met a number of people with this background who have no
other eastern Mass features and in fact have features of other dialects
(like, for example, the dialect where they're actually from) but say
rahther and cahn't. All academics, for what it's worth. (It *is* a feature
of older versions of a Boston dialect, perhaps eastern New England in
general, but I'll leave that detail to the dialectologists.)

Galey Modan

2012/9/13 Harriet Ottenheimer <mahafan at ksu.edu>

> On a different matter, I am trying to pin down the most likely
> geographical provenance of the "rather/rahther" distinction in American
> English (apologies for the "spelling").
>
> Specifically, I am trying to find out where in the U.S. a person might
> hail from if he/she regularly pronounces "rather" the same way most
> Americans pronounce "father" or "bother," with a low central [a] and not
> with a front mid [ae].
>
> Can anyone help? The person in question exhibits no other evidence of
> having any regional accent AT ALL.
>
> Harriet Ottenheimer
>
>
>
> On 9/13/2012 2:01 PM, Leila Monaghan wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> A colleague has an interesting language related project on Kickstarter.
>>   What is the consensus of the list about people mentioning these projects
>> on the list?  Is this considered spam, useful sharing of information,
>> something else entirely?
>>
>> all best,
>>
>> Leila
>>
>>
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