Laborious Telling Not Figuring out every week tries to reply your burning questions on why issues are the way in which they’re in Maine — particularly about Maine tradition and historical past, each way back and up to date, massive and small, necessary and foolish. Ship your inquiries to eburnham@bangordailynews.com.

This query involves us from Bangor Each day Information managing editor Dan MacLeod, who observed that whereas his grandfather had an awesome Maine accent, neither of his mother and father do, and neither does he.

Why do some folks have Maine accents, and others don’t?

In case you believed some motion pictures and TV exhibits, you’d assume that as quickly as you crossed the state line into Maine, you’d be met by legions of no-nonsense, plainspoken women and men who converse with the thickest Maine accents conceivable. In line with popular culture, lobsters virtually leap out of the ocean right here, however there’s nary a pronounced onerous “r” to be discovered.

The fact, after all, is way completely different. In actual fact, as of late, you actually have to search around to discover a correct Maine accent, typically exterior of bigger cities like Portland or Bangor, or vacationer locations like Ogunquit, Camden or Bar Harbor. Drive north into Piscataquis or Aroostook counties, or east to Washington County, and also you’ll discover an accent, by gorry.

However the Maine accent actually shouldn’t be as widespread because it was, say, a century in the past, and even 30 or 40 years in the past. There are a number of causes for that, based on beloved Maine humorist and professional on the Maine accent, Tim Pattern. Language is at all times evolving.

“Maine dialect circa 2022 may be very completely different from what you’d have heard in Maine in 1922 or 1822,” Pattern stated. “All facets of language, together with dialect, pronunciation and colloquial phrases, are always shifting and evolving.”

In Maine, our accent has its roots within the Yankee accent of our neighbors in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, a method of talking that linguists say may be traced again all the way in which to the Colonial period. Maine, which up till 1820 was the northern territory of the Massachusetts commonwealth, shared similarities with the way in which people in Boston pronounced issues.

However because the many years handed, Mainers developed their very own dialect with a special taste from what our neighbors to the south had — partly attributable to pure evolution, and partly attributable to what Pattern stated is a want to obviously differentiate between the locals and other people “from away.”

“Some communities, whether or not they comprehend it or not, expertise a better ‘felt want’ for a easy, correct methodology of checking out ‘us’ and ‘them’ than others,” Pattern stated. “So that you’ll sometimes encounter extra pronounced accents in remoted areas equivalent to Beals Island, Eastport and South Bristol than in additional cosmopolitan areas.”

By the twentieth century, the Maine accent was well-established all through the state. However as with regional dialects everywhere in the nation, the arrival of mass media like tv and, later, the web, would begin to change that. Individuals on TV tended to talk with the “common American” accent, and the creeping affect of that has had a flattening impact on some regional accents across the nation.

In some ways, the notion of the Maine accent by folks from Maine and from elsewhere has additionally been stored alive by popular culture. From the “Bert & I” tales by Marshall Dodge to the work of Pattern and the characters featured in Stephen King motion pictures to modern Maine accents just like the over-the-top one employed by comic Bob Marley, it’s stored the accent within the nationwide — and Maine — consciousness.

Larger mobility additionally helps to alter the way in which folks converse, as folks transfer into Maine from elsewhere, or are uncovered to a greater variety of cultures and colloquialisms the extra they transfer across the nation and the world. Although Maine is the whitest state within the nation, it’s nonetheless a way more various place than it was even simply 20 years in the past, each ethnically and economically.

There’s additionally a generational aspect to it. Each my grandparents had Maine accents, having been raised in coastal Maine within the Twenties and ’30s. However my mom doesn’t have an accent, regardless of being a Belfast native with two mother and father who spoke that means. I don’t actually have one — besides when my friggin’ automotive gained’t begin on a chilly January day, or I’m caught on maintain with the cable firm. Then, wouldn’t you already know it, a Maine accent comes out.

Phrases and phrases change as effectively. Pattern stated that when he was rising up in Tenants Harbor within the Fifties, grownup working males would name one another “pricey” and “darling,” a utilization that’s all however disappeared right now. On the identical time, the phrase “flatlander” (an individual from away, or extra particularly, metropolis folks) has come into utilization, regardless of it initially stemming from the southern Appalachian mountain areas of the nation.

Some issues have stayed the identical, nevertheless. You continue to depart your snow shovel within the dooryard. Your youngsters and grandkids are nonetheless depraved crafty. These vacationers driving on Route 1 can nonetheless be fairly numb generally. And even when our means of talking evolves proper alongside our way of life, for some Mainers, “pricey” will at all times have two syllables, and jeezum crow, ain’t that one thing.

“I’m happy to report that the Maine accent remains to be alive and effectively, if you already know the place to pay attention for it,” Pattern stated. “I’ll be lengthy passed by then, however it might be fascinating to listen to what the Maine accent seems like circa 2122. All I can say for certain is that there will probably be one.”

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