We went into Massachusetts next. A few people were quite camera shy there, so we don’t have as much footage speaking to people as in most places. We found a shop for British expats in Newburyport, MA. We chatted to a local and a Scottish woman who said the north side of Boston was their favorite side and that most of the non-rhotic accents were on the south side. We both wanted to hear one since Chris was keen to hear American accents more similar to his and I actually did my master thesis on the topic of non-rhoticity in the context of listening comprehension for adult learners of English as a second language. Here’s link for the long version of what non-rhoticity is; the short version is that the English and various other parts of the English speaking world like Australia and parts of Boston ‘drop’ the letter r in words like car or fair. If you are really crazy and want to know significantly more more about this, click here for a phf of my MA thesis. 🙂
We did actually find someone non-rhotic. We found him in a way that I felt told us quite a lot about Boston. At first we were a bit put off because everyone was just honking their cars madly as we drove through. We actually met someone through getting honked at though. We were both parking and he thought Chris was going to back into him or something and Chris got out and talked to him. He actually managed to make friends through this as can be seen in the video:
Unfortunately, being quite expensive, we decided not to stay in Boston, but we did stop into a bar for a bit since Chris had seen lots of films like the Departed. The one we went to wasn’t quite as hardcore, but still, it had amusing glasses:
Check out the video: