4 Speech ways in Massachusetts and East Anglia were dynamic in their nature. Patterns of pronunciation recorded in the 20th century are only an echo of earlier practices. The best guides to the Yankee twang in its classical form are not the speech maps of scholars in the 20th century, but more casual descriptions, rhyming patterns and orthography in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. See John Pickering, A Vocabulary or Collection of Words and Phrases … Peculiar to the United States (Boson, 1816), 42; John Lambert, Travels through Canada and the United States (3 vols., London, 1814), II, 505; see also Noah Webster, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language (Hartford, 1783), I, 6; Groton Records, 130; New Haven Records, 97; Mass Bay Records, I, 238, 241; J. F. Cooper, Pioneers, ed. J. F. Beard (Albany, 1980), chap. xv.
In East Anglia similar pronunciations in “the eastern dialect” were recorded by Alexander Gil in his Logonomia Anglica in 1916; for a general discussion see Dobson, English Pronunciation, 1500-1700 1, 147-52.
5 A New England word list compiled in the 19th century by J. B. Moore may be taken as representative of many such lists. He compared the speech of the “typical Yankee” or “country Jonathan” with standard English, as follows:
“Aimest for earnest; Actilly, actually; Ax, ask; Arter, after; Airly, early; Ain’t, is not; Bellowses, bellows; Better, bellow; Bin, been; Bile, boil; Bimeby, by and by; Blurt out, to speak bluntly; Bust, burst; Caird, carried; Chunk, a piece; Cuss, curse, [also] a mean fellow; Close, clothes, Darsn’t, dare not; Darned, a polite way of saying damned; Desput, desperate; Du, do; Dunno, don’t know; Dror, draw; Eend, end; Tamal, eternal; Etamily, eternity; Ef if; Emptins, yeast; Es, as; Fur, far; Forrard, forehead, or forward; Ferfle, fearful; Ferrel, ferrule; Feller, fellow; Fust, first; Foller, follow; Furrer, furrow; Git, get; Gret, great; Gal, girl; Grouty, sulky; Gut, got; Gump, a foolish or full fellow; Gum, to impose upon; Hed, had; Housen, houses; Het, heated; Hull, whole; Hum, home; Hev, have; Ideno, I don’t know; Inimy, enemy; Idees, ideas; Insine, ensign; Inter, into; Jedge, judge; Jest, just; Jine, join; Jint, joint; Keer, care; Ketch, catch; Kinder, similar; Kittle, kettle; Let daylight into him, to shoot or destroy him; Lick, to beat or whip; Lights, lungs; Mash, marsh; Mean, stingy; Offen, often; Ole, old; Peek, peep; Pint, a point; Popler, popular; Popple, poplar; Put out, troubled, or vexed; Riled, angry; Riz, rose or risen; Sass, sauce; Sassy, impertinent; Sartin, certain; Set by or sot by, admired; Sich, such; Slarter, slaughter; No great shakes, not much account; Meetin’ heouse, meeting house; Nower’s, nowhere; Pooty, pretty; Pizen, poison; Scaly, mean; Scrouging, hard labor; Soi, sat; Picter, picture; Snaked out, pulled out; Streaked, mean; Scoot, to run away; Sogerin, shirking; ‘Somers, somewhere, Suthin, something; Take on, to mourn; Taters, potatoes; Tetch, touch; Sost, so as to; Darter, daughter; Wal, well; Wuz, was; Puddn, Pudding; Winder, window; Hins, hens; Ter rites, presently; Harrer, harrow; Harrer up yer feelins, to excite your feelings; Put out, offended; Straddle over, step over; Grouty, cross or angry; Terbarker or Barker, tobacco; Pester, annoy; Sharder, shadow; Pesky, offensive; Larnin, learning; Turkle, turtle; Tootin, blowing on an instrument; Sho, an exclamation of surprise; Duds, clothes; Nuther, neither; Natur, nature; Yaller, yellow; I swow, or I swan, another way of saying I swear; Edicated, educated; This ere, this here; That are, that there; Seed, saw; Hist, hoist; T’other, the other. Words ending with the syllable ing were pronounced as though the final consonant, g, was silent.”
Moore commented that “for many years after the settlement of New England, the majority of the people who were not well educated were in the habit of pronouncing many of the common words in use in a very peculiar manner. … The typical Yankee or country Jonathan always talked in this dialect.” History of the Town of Candia (Manchester, N.H., 1893), 324; other early New England word lists and records of pronunciation appear in Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, ed. Barbara Miller Solomon (3 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1969); John Drayton, Letters Written during a Tour through the Northern and Eastern States of America (Charleston, S.C., 1794), 58; and Andrew Beers, Beers’ Almanack for the Year 1808 (New Haven, 1807), 23.
The pattern of orthography in town and colony records also contains many clues which have been studied systematically by Anders Orbeck, with results summarized in Early New England Pronunciation.