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You can take the girl out of eastern Mass., but ...
By adamg on Fri, 01/13/2023 - 12:29pm
Ellen Fleming is a reporter at WWLP in Springfield, where most people don't have a Boston accent, but she grew in Braintree, daughter of a couple of Dot rats, and used to work at Chronicle on Channel 5 here. So the other day, she was doing a report from Beacon Hill:
Sometimes that Boston accent slips out when you least expect it pic.twitter.com/urXO2xrQ6E
— Ellen Fleming (@EllenFlem) January 12, 2023
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Comments
Being a Bostonian...
I didn't hear anything wrong with her first reading.
boston accent
She had it right the first time.
When in Boston ...
When in Boston ...
Reminds me of my college bud Joe, a Somerville
native with a broad Boston honk. His accent slowly ebbed under the constant pressure of low-level teasing, but would slip back out after a couple of beers.
Similar for me
Went to school out of state and it definitely softened my accent out of a need to be comprehended, but I had a couple of friends who were also from here. One night at the bar when beers had loosened the tongue another local and I were swapping tales and after a few minutes our mutual friend who was from Baltimore put his hands on our shoulders and said, "I haven't understood a thing you guys have said for five minutes." and walked away to converse with other friends who were there and speaking in a way he understood.
As if a Balmur accent is
As if a Balmur accent is comprehensible. Where toilet is taulit and oil is ool
Right. We pronounce it
Right. We pronounce it correctly (along with "water"), it's everyone else who has the problem. Also in general y'all use too many syllables for things. Like, I sometimes hear people using all of four syllables to name the capital of Maryland. That's twice as many as you need!
Going to school
My son went to UMass Amherst and his accent got stronger.
He's a Meffid boy and he has always sounded like it, but I have a couple of GIFs of him just talking like he talks and my high school friends from Oregon think he sounds hilarious.
His brotha has a non-local accent. Go figya.
Reminds me of my college bud from NH
Who also had a very broad accent. This was back in the 1970s, and when Star Wars came out he got really tired of us constantly asking him "What's the name of that new movie?" and started answering "StarRRR WarRRRs".
Joe was a weakling
,
N'Hamsha
There's an even more extreme Boston accent version than this woman's, which I used to hear growing up. "NaHamsha" which I always visualized being written as N'Hamsha.
Congrats, lady.
Congrats, lady.
You did it! You went viral. This is so transparently phony. Shame on everyone who is falling for this stunt. She speaks with a featureless broadcasting accent just fine except for the word Hampshire. Yeah, okay.
If you have always lived in one place
You may not understand how accents work.
Must be a joke as the accent
Must be a joke as the accent is obviously totally fake, she pronounces the phrase "executive order" with a clear enunciation of both or the "r"s in the word "order" (right before she says NH), if she had said "executive ohdahh" I would have gone with it more easily ahaha!
Not necessarily
If she wants to advance in TV journalism, it's kind of vital she not have an accent, so she's probably worked hard to enunciate her words in that sort of blandish way reporters have, but every once in awhile, she might just blank out and revert back to the old ways, with a single word.
I can speak from experience, not as a TV reporter, but as a former Newyawka living north of the Bronx. I long ago mostly lost my New York accent but sometimes it just comes out with a single word, whether it's "cawfee" or saying or writing "on line" when I mean "in line" (OK, that's not an accent but word usage, but same basic idea).
Well, there is one way I instantly mark myself as a New Yorker, but fortunately, it just doesn't come up much: I cannot, for the life of me, aspirate Hs like people born here, so I'm glad I just don't have much call to say "Good Humor" ("Good Yuma") or discuss wheat prices - and luckily, I never had any interest in TV or radio news.
sure, as you say, standing
sure, as you say, standing "on line" instead of "in line", saying "coooahhfee", good "yumah", even saying the word "Boooahstin" (as opposed to "Baustin"), all dead NYer givaways. But in this case this young woman's performance is obvious parody, the least she could do is crack a smile!!
Magic ears
I truly admire folk who can really hear and nail accents. When we moved to Boston decades ago, in the times before ATMs, an encounter with a teller at what was then the Bank of Boston out the back of City Hall struck me. As I was, she was in her late 20s and for what it's worth she was Black.
She interrupted my cashing one check and depositing another to ask, "You spent a lot of time in Southern Virginia, didn't you?" You could have tipped me over with a Dunkies stir stick. She was right; from 8 through 12, I lived in Danville, middle of the state and three miles above NC.
She said that was a talent she had and she didn't hear Southside Virginia accents, well, ever.
Most folk say I have no discernible accent. At least one person knew better.
But yet
But yet, as I replied to her.. Bob Ward has had his accent for over 3 decades and its not slowing him down. Then again Bob's pretty much a fixture in local news these days.
Here's Bob on WMUR in New Hampshah in 1986. (Funny even when I tweeted this to Bob a few years ago he was like "WHERE DID YOU GET THIS)