The audio on the web site I’m writing about sounded normal to me, but I suppose it might be a bit peculiar for some folks. The site includes audio recordings and explanatory text about the accents of people from Maine. If you have ever been to Maine, you probably know what the accent is like. If you haven't been to Maine... well, it's time that you learned.
Mainer Tara Taylor did a bunch of research on the subject for her thesis project. She has captured much of the research in the form of a huge Flash file. If you visit the site and load the file, you'll have to sit back and wait for a long time for it to load. However, it is worth the wait.
You can listen to and read about "The Dialect," "The Words" (including a vocabulary list), and "The People" who use them. You should also click on "The Place."
As stated on the web site, “The tongue spoken here in Maine is as different from the tongue spoken in New York as Dutch is from German.”
"Hahd Tellin' Not Knowin'" can be found at http://mainetalks.com/
I grew up in central Maine, and by the time I graduated high school, I had that accent. In fact, I have an old tape recording I made, and it sounds about the same as the people on this web site. Unfortunately, I deliberately lost the accent. I worked as a radio announcer for a few years at WKTJ Radio in Farmington, Maine, and later at WAGM Radio and TV in Presque Isle, Maine. The thick accent was an impediment for a radio announcer, even for someone employed at a station in Maine. After much coaching from my boss, a former staff announcer for NBC, I lost most of the accent.
After adding in a few more years of knocking around the world in the military and then many more years as a traveling civilian, my accent never came back. However, even today, if I spend a day or two back in the state amongst folks with a true Maine accent, I catch myself dropping the R's on the end of words and moving them around to unexpected places in the middle of different words.
I enjoyed "Hahd Tellin' Not Knowin.'" You might enjoy it also. Check it out at http://mainetalks.com/ and wait for it to load.
Have a good one!
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For an introduction to the topic of the Maine dialect, watch the humor videos by popular Maine comedian Tim Sample below or at http://youtu.be/YSwAfBq8-Zw and another by Gary Crocker at http://youtu.be/cy8Fmbizea4
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