Yo, Marco,
How difficult it is for me to remember back to dialects spoken
in the place of my birth. Usually regional maps include Haverhillian
as New England,
Eastern (one of the most distinctive
of all the
American
dialects. R's are often dropped, but an extra R is added
to words that
end with a vowel. A is pronounced AH so that we get
"Pahk the
cah in Hahvahd yahd" and "Pepperidge Fahm
remembuhs.").
Haverhill, like similar areas both large and small, related to
other cities
in the Merrimack Valley such as Lawrence and Lowell, both of which
had accents that were distinctive from that of Haverhill. In order
to
assess accent similarities and differences, one needs first of all to
draw
an ethnic map. Then upon this map one needs to allow for social
distinction as well as economic differences.
Within Haverhill itself, we have a regional distribution of accents
reflecting both social and economic factors as well as urban and
rural (rural being farmers who raised a few dairy cows and chickens
for their livelihood) as well as ethnicity. The urban Haverhillians
were a gain differentiated
by whether or not they lived in the "old" area of town or had moved
to Upper Main Street, an area that stretched from Kenoza Lake to
Bradley's Brook. This "new area" of town was again subdivided
by
occupation, economics and ethnicity.
To study accents in America, especially in New England is an
unproductive task since the more micro one tries to become, the
end result is that even amongst identical twins, no two sisters
use the same phonetic soundcard.
Language origins like origins of species must be viewed on both
a micro as well as a macro level to include all social, religious,
economic, ethnic and even ecological niches.
Gerry