Regional speech patterns or just laziness?

[merrily]

43. You might want to wander into the Massachusetts forum for a minute.

Coincidentally, before I saw this thread, Manny and I were talking about Paul Revere's accent, the Maine accent, etc. on the Boston clean water thread there.

In Boston, accents can differ from one Boston neighborhood to another--and the city is not huge. I think it may depend on whether an area got yuppified enough, or whether it remains mostly Irish or Italian or Chinese or whatever.

Another thing. Baba Wawa's r issue. It is not unique to her. When I first moved to Boston, I heard others with that same speech issue, including African Americans.

Where else you hear that r --besides in the speech of some toddlers--is in the speech of the British upper classes, including the royals. In some French people speaking English, too. In England, apparently, it's at home and not at all a problem. Apparently, it was once at home in parts of Massachusetts, though I don't hear it anymore. But, in US broadcasting, it was a speech defect and her network sent her to speech therapy and more than one female SNLer mocked her mercilessly for it.