The Rhode Island Accent

The week I moved to Boston there appeared in the soon-to-be dearly departed Boston Globe an article on the Boston accent. The author described the various forms this accent takes, the metro-regional variations. Those wandering R's, fleeing their native words, only to awkwardly attach themselves to foreign bodies, like rebound sex: "lawyer" becomes "lawyah" while "Pedroia" turns to "Pedroier". Like many people, when faced with this bizarre and homely creature, I fell in love.

But the Boston Accent is a slippery thing. Easy to broadly imitate, it's hard to pin down. Even people from the town of Medford can't agree on how it's properly pronounced. Is it "Medfud" or "Mehfud" or even "Medfid"? I needed a Rosetta stone. And that classic catchphrase, "Park the car in Harvard Yard" (which, BTW, you would never be able to do--there is exactly zero parking at, in, or around Harvard) even this old chestnut is riddled with incongruity. While most non-Bostonians would probably give all those A's looong "ah" sounds ("paaaak the caaaaah") it would overlook the fact that most Bostonians would more likely say "aa" as in "cat" for "park", "car", and "yard" but a long "ah" for "Harvard". Getting all this? Or, really, the A's end up being something in between an "ah" and an "aa". My old vocal coach called this vowel migration, and there's a cubic ass-ton of it going around the Hub. I spent eight years in Boston working on that accent, but never was able to nail it down. It was sort of like living in a foreign country, after a few months in the city I started thinking in the accent. I could hear how to pronounce something even if I couldn't quite wrap my mouth around it. I think if I'd stayed for eight more years I'd have it.

So you can imagine the eagerness with which I have approached learning about the Rhode Island accent. Although it's only an hour away from Boston (less than the distance from one end of Memphis to the other), the accents are cousins at best. Maybe even second cousins. There are similarities, sure, the basic structure is the same, but in the RI accent there lies a strong vein of what can only be described as Long Island. Those liminal A's from Boston are often replaced with a harsher, more nasal sound. And the R's are often rendered as I's. It is still very much a work in process, and I plan to report to you, gentle readers, as I uncover more. For one thing, I've learned the best place in Providence to hear the Rhode Island accent in its natural habitat: Ocean State Job Lot (an entire blog post in itself). I overheard some amazing specimens there.

I had a moment of clarity the other day while riding up Reservoir Ave and passed a restaurant called Scramblers. Instantly I heard two voices in my head say that word. The Boston voice said "Scrambluhs". And another voice, a voice I'd never heard before, whispered... "Scramblizz".

I smiled. Oh I've got you now.