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- Опубликовано: 23 окт 2019
- A rare and declining upper-class American accent belonging to the legendary Boston Brahmins, recorded Summer 1985. Visit cnam.com for more great clips! Unedited video capture of this unique dialect, suitable for actors and students of linguistics. From The AMERICAN TONGUES Archive.
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Thank you for posting this. Tom Adams the man in the blue blazer is my grandfather who I never got to meet and I just got to sit in on a conversation with him.
Was he the last one in the family to speak “Brahmin”? He says here that his son (John) at least spoke in a similar enough way to be recognized as his son.
What a fascinating comment. How is it that you never got to meet him?
God bless you, that is awesome :-)
@@giovanna722
Probably because he passed away before the commentator was born...
This video was posted a few years ago, but recorded in 1985, per the video description.
Does his line trace down to The Adams Presidents?? John Adams and John Quincy Adams
"Smithers, release the hounds."
Watching the Simpsons as a kid. I always thought Burns *was* English? 🤔😁🤭. Since he tended to use our vernaculars.
It's clearly not the same accent.
Excellent!!!
Thank you so much for this laugh :-)
😄, thanks.
The fella on the right is Mr. Thomas Boylston Adams. He was the great-great-great-grandson of John Adams and the great-great-grandson of John Quincy Adams. He was also a Harvard man. He was a gunnery officer -- a captain - in the Army Air Force during WWII. He loved his country and ran for political office (Senate) in 1966 but was defeated by Endicott Peabody.
They’re both descendants of the Adams family.
Thank you for adding that! These gentlemen are therefore my cousins 🙏
@@bradleyscarton3931 The man one the right is George C. Homansn who studied in Harvard and Cambridge, England. He went on to become a life-long member of the faculty at Harvard. Teaching sociology.
During WWII he served in the navy. He commanded many small ships, engaged in antisubmarine warfare and the escort of convoy operations. He later expressed his _"impatience with the constraints of the naval hierarchy and his disdain for staff desk officers, especially those in bureaucratic branches such as the Supply Corps"._
Both are dead for quite some time, but despite their accents, it doesn't feel like witnessing some ancient footage.
_Edit: Yes, they were both descendants of president Adams._
I feel quite privileged to have seen this video.
So cool thanks for telling us. Massachusetts was such a unique place back then.
My husband's grandmother had the Brahman accent. She was an amazing woman, and lived in 3 centuries. Born 1898, died in 2001.
My mother's family has elements of this accent, and I have elements of it, and I never understood why I said certain words differently than even other Bostonians until I came across this video and the term Brahmin. My grandmother was a very self consciously elegant lady, even though they weren't rich, and it explains somewhat how my (now elderly) aunts speak
The Frasier reboot went to a weird place.
Ha!
Frasier's character speak with a Transatlantic accent. This isn't it.
I’m fucking dying
I CANT
The best comment I've seen in a long time! I actually laughed out loud when I read it!
"They don't play bridge and they don't drink."
"Well what else have they got to live for? Sex, I suppose."
This whole clip is amazing.
Their names are george casper homans and tom boylston adams
Damn, can't get more Beacon Hill than that
I love how they’re in the Athenaeum. It suits them and their conversation so well
Thank you so much for adding the location detail 🙏
In the members only floor, so apropos.
I feel ashamed of being so uncultured while these two fine men give a glimpse of their literaturic knowledge
if you didn't have to work all day, you'd probably be pretty cultured too
@@jon6288 Everyones got enought time to read. The majority of the working population spend quiet alot of time doing pointless shit like watching football and netflix. Just replace your old hobbies with new ones.
@@thirdpath2259 fash trash have no right to speak
It's because you don't drink or play bridge or sail and all you care about is tennis.
Literary, not literaturic.
wish these guys had a podcast
These men are incredible conversationalists. They remind me of my grandfather, who comes from an old Boston family. Its tragic to know his days are coming to an end and we’ll lose this culture.
Surname of your good grandfather?
This is a bit forward, but does your grandfather speak with an accent akin to this?
Reminds me of my maternal grandmothers family... surname Sheridan
North shore.
@@majorclassics2512 Perkins.
@@JuanSanchezGuerra No not really, at least not to the degree these men do. I doubt there are very many people left alive with an accent like this
Anthony Hopkins nailed this very accent perfectly for "Silence Of The Lambs". Lecter was a Bostonian psychologist as I remember.
Thank you! I was driving myself crazy trying to figure out who the fella on the left especially sounded like.
Lecter is Lithuanian American and was part of the Baltimore elite. Anthony Hopkins' accent is similar to these men's, but slightly European too.
Of course. It's Baltimore, not Boston. How could I forget?@@al1665
So apparently the guy in the blue is a direct descendant of John Adams and John Quincy Adams (founding father and 2nd president, and 6th president respectively. His name is Thomas Boylston Adams. The Adams famliy arrived in the Massachusets from England in 1632. So they're one of the original anglo-american families that settled here. Very interesting.
They’re both descendants of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. These gentlemen are cousins.
@@bradleyscarton3931 Ah I see. Thanks for telling me! What's the other chap's name?
@@terminalarray1047 His name is George Casper Homans
@@bradleyscarton3931 The man one the right is George C. Homansn who studied in Harvard and Cambridge, England. He went on to become a life-long member of the faculty at Harvard. Teaching sociology.
During WWII he served in the navy. He commanded many small ships, engaged in antisubmarine warfare and the escort of convoy operations. He later expressed his _"impatience with the constraints of the naval hierarchy and his disdain for staff desk officers, especially those in bureaucratic branches such as the Supply Corps"._
Both are dead for quite some time, but despite their accents, it doesn't feel like witnessing some ancient footage.
_Edit: Yes, they were both descendants of president Adams._
I like how you just smudged out the fact that they were slave owners 😊
As a Dickens aficionado myself, I consider _Great Expectations_ his finest novel. To each their own. I do love the gentleman's comment that a great book is one you can open anywhere & become so engrossed in that you feel compelled to start at the beginning & read the whole thing.
I like “ David Copperfield” the best of Dickens’es books.
Their laugh is even distinguished
This is easily one of the most fascinating videos I have ever seen in my life. Never in my life have I ever been so baffled by an accent. More particularly, one that belongs to a metropolitan area that is very near and familiar to me.
It was the sociolect of the Brahmins. That's a very exclusive club that you cannot join without the right last name.
Are you nine years old?
25:35 "I speak PURE English." What a flex lol
Except English itself isn't pure.
Really amazing the class divide here, back when the rest of Boston sounded like The Departed.
Sociolects differ. Black Bostonians definitely didn't talk like the guys in _"The Departed"._
Neither did the Italian-Americans...
@@yannick245 Uh,, not sure where you got your info,,,,,,,, but untrue........ Italian-Americans in Boston grew up with Boston accents, im Italian from Boston... we have the same lack of 'r''s.
@@JustMe-gs9xi But you definitely don't have the same accent as an African-American.
If I had you on the phone, I would definitely know if I talk to a White or Black person!
@@yannick245 that true,,, black people have their own style,. alot of em are double-kids too. They have to speak one way at work,, let loose on a weekend,,,,,,, curious where you live. for me: i just prefer down to earth, cool/good people....... common sense over Hahvid
@@JustMe-gs9xi I'm from Heidelberg, Germany.
It's not just the accent, it's the respectful conversation, which has become a lost art itself. Being able to discuss topics with differing opinions and yet respect is rarely seen today.
I haven't had a long drawn out conversation with someone in a long time even with family. Especially in the post pandemic world, we tend to rush by each other as quickly as possible.
they are rich well-educated academics. not the norm then or now
They're talking about books. It's pretty easy to have a conversation about differing opinions on books (while you know you're being filmed) and have 'respectful conversation'.
AMEN to this!
Whatever bro. Maybe just go outside and stop complaining online about “these days”
When they speak of 'Ed Purcell,' they're referring to Edward Mills Purcell, who was a Harvard man and later became a professor there. He was a brilliant and curious physicist. He won a Noble Prize in Physics for the discovery of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance among other prestigious awards. During WWII, he went to MIT to assist other physists on perfecting radar and contributed to the discoveries concerning the atomic nucleus. He was a science advisor to Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. He believed in the possibility of life on other planets / galaxies.
i know Bill Parcells,,, sports dude.
More info on them: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Boylston_Adams_(1910-1997) and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Homans
“…They don’t play Bridge and they don’t drink…”
“Well, what else have they got to live for?”
Boston Brahmin-ism summed up
31:34 “I can’t understand my grandchildren when they speak!”
Sounds like my Texan grandpa who says I need to talk “Texan” and slower so he can understand me. Gah I love old people, they are truly fascinating
Love how both of them recite the same prayer from their boarding school (35:20)
It's an interesting combination of sounds. The man on the right sounds quite a lot like a refined, fairly posh, Englishman (actually, quite a lot like my grandfather), EXCEPT he pronounces some of his 'r's a little more, (closer to the rest of the US or old English countryside way) and a lot of his vowels have a hint of an old countryside sound, like an old home counties English rural accent. This clashes strangely with the educated 'posh' elements which sounds tend to be mutually exclusive in England(at least these days). He also bears traces of Yankee. Fascinating.
And of course it sounds like the old movies.
I think the left man has a noticeably fronter PALM-START-BATH vowel than the other man, has a fronter starting point for the MOUTH diphthong, and doesn’t round his LOT vowel quite as consistently.
The right man is closer to the codified form of Eastern Standard (the actual contemporary prescriptivist name for ”Transatlantic”), though he too has a PALM-START-BATH merger rather than the intermediary BATH [a] vowel that codified ES primarily recommends, and often monophthongizes his NEAR vowel in non-closing contexts.
Thank you for posting this, we are down to very few people left with the Brahmin accent.
Almost Transatlantic...a sort of cross between an American and an English accent, contrived by theatre actors, I believe! It bacame very popular and was used by actors well into the second half of the 20th century!
The UK/US mixture thing is a myth, as such a concept is never mentioned in any of the prescriptivist guides of the time, nor do such guides ever refer to it as ”Transatlantic” or ”Mid-Atlantic”, but rather ”Eastern Standard” or ”Standard American”. Nor does it even remotely work as such ”mixture” in terms of its features, resembling conservative RP far more than conservative General American.
Those guides are also quite clear on their intention to codify an existing ”speech of an educated American” into phonetically teachable form, rather than claiming to invent some new Special Acting Accent of their own invention. Codified Eastern Standard is ”contrived” only in the sense that there was some natural variety within the near-RP speech patterns of the Northeastern old money aristocrats (you may even have noticed the two men in the video have slightly different accents), and thus certain certain (opinionated) compromises had to be made when codifying it.
Spoken like a true sesquipedalion !
These gentlemen long since gone, (I’d assume) speak of things universal from sensibilities long since past.
This is my grandfather and his cousin. My grandfather died in 97
@@jada90 Wow! How old was he when he died?
@@user-td4do3op2d He was about 87
@@jada90 Anymore videos or anything about this whole social group? Its interesting.
Just think, these types of people will never and can never exist again. And they still exist within our generation, yet differ so much
"Well, she's a great novelist, but not THE greatest."
Nancy telling George's business...let him enjoy his potato chips lolol
Why is the cameraman moving around as if it's a hockey game. Stay still!
More entertaining than hockey.
Stabilization was bad back then for handhelds.
Not gonna lie, secretly I kept waiting for the moment where they leap at each other over the table, exchange a couple of punches to the face and then go for a beer together.
This is likely how many of our ForeFathers spoke.
A Bostonian would say "far fahthers."
Early modern american english was still rhotic. Even, astoundingly, in Boston.
@@lordgronk1596 I don't believe it was, I believe Boston's accent is East Anglian derived, particularly in it's earlier days and thus inherited some non-rhoticism in it's early days.
The Boston Brahmin were a small, upper class group. It's highly unlikely that many people's ancestors sounded like them.
@@riro1024 Many of the Boston Brahmin were descendants of important figures in US history, like John Eliot, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, etc.
There are still a few around who talk this way, but not many. I would classify it as a New England accent more than a Boston Brahmin accent. If you listen you can hear some of the Maine and New Hampshire accents mixed in and all of those, Maine, NH, and Boston Brahmin, come from the English accent the early colonist brought over.
I agree. For a time I mixed with some or I should say I was on their fringes way back in the late 60's
The early colonists largely spoken rhotic versions of English and would have a had a much stronger R
Even to this day? Do old New England folks still speak with this lovely accent?
@@JuanSanchezGuerra Not unless they're old and grew up wealthy. This accent was not very common even back then. The thicker Boston accent was common in the working class. My grandparent have wicked strong accents. My mom accent isn't as strong but def there. It comes out very very strong if I'm in trouble or she has had too many cape codders lol. My dad only with his buddies/ family or when the pats are losing....
@@savannahblanch1991 Thank you for the information. Does your family use the Brahmin accent or the standard Eastern New England accent?
This is incredible video quality for 1985.
It all depends on how the film is digitized.
Not really
Standard quality for 1985.
I want to hear the guy on the right say “damn you, damn you all”
Charming fellows. Reminds me of a dear friend from around there.
Their style of dress and manner of speaking makes me miss my grandfather.
Working in the sailing industry in my youth in New England (RI/Mass), I used to encounter men of this stature quite frequently. They have a tendency to be a bit more reserved and standoffish with encounters. However, when the opportunity arrises, conversations are often quite interesting. I never used to think too much of it. Lots of the old families come from Cohasset or Truro. Cabots and Winslow families come to mind. I often will have people from around the country question me about Boston Blue Blood and gravitate toward the Kennedys. I usually laugh and tell them the Kennedys (Joe, Sr.) were notorious bootleggers from Canadian whisky trade and were considered nouveau riche and unsophisticated, by actual standards they weren't well appreciated until Joe Sr. got into politics.
Sounds better then these pricks
@@l21n18 What’s wrong with these guys?
Yeah the Kennedys were Irish troublemakers. Not well respected by the WASP intellectuals at the time who called the Kennedy family "mobsters". As Ted Kennedy referred to them as he went up against Republican George C. Lodge (son of Henry Cabot Lodge ), "egg heads". During the ’62 campaign, a group called Independent Citizens Committee placed an advertisement in newspapers declaring their feelings. The signatures included 84 professors of the academic community at Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Boston College, Wellesley and Williams disavowing Kennedy as a serious contender, stating “they would do anything either publicly or privately that would keep a Kennedy from winning.”
When they having something to share, they speak.
@@benkleschinsky "WASP intellectuals" lol and how did those WASPS get their money? what made them better than anybody else?
This is how one can discuss literature after a long life of enjoying it. No one at 30 or 45 would be as relaxed
in their comments
No one in the upper class talks like this anymore (from what I can see). This is interesting, you always hear the stereotypical upper class talk in sitcoms, though the rich today don't reflect that.
I think it's more of a case of old money vs new money.
@@doesnt_exist_ I think so too, old money is almost never as rich as they are generational wealth as opposed to the most relevant forms of the modern world. Crazy thing is a lot of the old money world aren't even really billionaire, some not millionaire. Its literally a subculture. A way of acting, heritage, tradition etc. and a culture that has increasingly lost its emphasis on actual wealth.
Its crazy how one time an upper class of Boston society spoke like this, these men are of old WASP wealth. Like pre-independence families.
Found this so interesting! My ears pricked up when Mr Adams said his mother was from Topeka KS and he was born in Kansas City MO....well here I sit in Kansas and found that interesting because my heritage is English and my family came over in late 1630’s to Massachusetts and our family name is Worcester. My branch homesteaded in Hill City Kansas in the mid 1800’s.
Do you pronounce it “Wooster?”
I like these men.
Well I thoroughly enjoyed this discussion between these two courtly gentlemen!
I enjoy their refined, dignified conversation.
My father-in-law's family, his siblings, and their friends all speak/spoke like this. Sadly - its mostly the past tense of "spoke" as they have all passed away.
I can recall family gatherings where everyone of their generation spoke with these accents, and conversations were wonderfully interesting and stimulating to a young upstart from the west like me.
I mean. Let's not get carried away over an accent.
Methinks the character of Charles Emmerson Winchester III (from MASH, the TV show) was borne of this accent/culture, but his accent sounded more British to me. Just the same, I'm fascinated.
Wow what tipped you off, was it the constant references everyone on the fucking show made to him being an old-money Bostonian
@@orbitalbutt6757 really? You'd think I'd notice that.
Thanks, Captain Obvious.
Love the old dude who absolutely stans Jane Austen
Lol came here to say this
Old _"dude"?_
Both men were born in 1910.
Aww I love these guys
i say and listened to this whole thing without even realizing lol this conversation and the accents were so captivating haha
Like two ghosts out of a Wallace Stevens poem! Fabulous.
The gentleman on the right's accent reminds me a lot more of Downeast Maine a la "Bert and I"
The precise and beautiful pronunciation of the English language displayed by these men is a contrast to the slovenly speech of Americans nowadays.
take a linguistics class if you ever get the chance, or read a linguistics book, please. Speech is neither beautiful nor slovenly, it’s just speech.
The most Boston thing at 7:36. Upscale, posh Brahmin talking in virtually a British accent about sailing but then refers to his son as Dougy.
Tasha Tudor came from Brahmins as well, I believe. If you can find the few videos out there you can hear her accent. (Sounds almost like a Katherine Hepburn?) Very different from the common Boston accent everyone knows.
How could people dislike this
Uncultured folk.
My friend spoke just like this and it brings back memories. He was a Harvard Professor before Harvard had gone to pot.
My favorite teaching deities.
These guys are hilarious.
This is delightful. Two wonderful gentlemen, surrounded by books, having a civil conversation.
Lovely
I'm a Filipino and I enjoyed watching these two gentlemen. I wonder if they're still around as of June 2022.
They're most likely dead, this video is almost 40 years old.
All those people are dead I been living Boston all my life bro
You could drop the guy on the right could into an Oxford or Cambridge lecture theatre (theater for you Americans) and I doubt anybody would think he wasn't English. Most would assume that he once lived in the US for 6 months and picked up a slight accent.
I'm an American who spells it "theatre." People make fun of me for putting on airs!
@@kelkabot I always thought that theatre is the building while theater is the activity. "I love theater. I go to the theatre downtown."
As an English person he definitely sounds American to me, but I could believe he had been English and had lived in the US for many years
Sorry, but he would never sound British to a Brit.
In the 1989 movie "Glory" both Matthew Broderick and Cary Elwes used the Brahmin accent for their characters because their characters were men of the same class as these two. Upper tier Boston, Harvard educated, and very, very WASP.
Like european aristocracy, they look very simple people. Bet they are the kind of people that buy a good suit that will last 30 years.
25:35 I think it’s definitely something he is proud of, which would explain him noticeably sounding like an Englishman.
Wow family guy is pretty accurate for once
Lucky there’s a family guy, lucky there’s man who... positively can do... all the things that make us... laugh and cry!
John Adams great grandsons
Reminds me of the two old guys in the balcony at The Muppets.
"My wife, of course, speaks exactly the way I do." I would enjoy sitting down for a chat with these fellows.
Maybe if you summon the dead you can. Good Luck.
@@STMARTIN009 Must you be so confrontive? Does it accomplish anything?
@@STMARTIN009l
l
@@gregdaweson4657l l
These two educated fellows speak in an accent I have never heard. It sounds 60% American and 40% "upper class" British. How fascinating. You can see our shared roots here.
its a “Transatlantic accent”. they used it in American TV shows way back in the day. Modern Americans don’t talk this way in real life or TV except for “Fraser” lol
@@mattdubya1037 It’s not really transatlantic, it’s uniquely Boston Brahmin.
The one guy on the right sounds completely British it’s very strange
@@mattdubya1037 no it is not
Down south you can hear Accents somewhat similar. It's the old plantation drawl and you can hear it amongst old families. Truly a treasure when you come across it.
Wow I grew up 10 minutes out of Boston in Somerville and I have neva heard anyone speak like these two guys.
bow tie - "Well, Tom, you just got two friends in this world, yourself, and your dollar."
(both chuckle richly)
necktie - "Father used to say, 'in good times we're ruined by the bankers, and bad times by the politicians' was his doctrine.
"
bow tie - "Your father was a very wise man."
can't believe this is real lol
Why not?
The guy with the bow tie IS Tom, and to be fair it was another watch salesman who coined the phrase and Tom DID say right after “you can’t get much cynical than that” or something along those lines…
These are cool accents ay
"They were wicked, wicked" Proof that they are from Boston.
Was the guy on the left used as the model for Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter voice? Sounds just like him.
The part about purity of blood in families… I’m glad that’s a hopefully lost idea😟
I agree with the sentiment regarding Dickens' liveliness
Dickens.
So this is what the Adams family would sound like.Is there any videos of old upper class Virginians ?
Would sound like? Did sound like! One is an Adams. Sorry, wasn't clear if you knew this
@@jada90 Which one? I didn't know from the video lol
coeenc123 must be the one on the left you can hear a slight drawl at times
I could only have said, to my ear, New Englanders. "Hardy," as in "Hahdee," is very New England, particularly in Maine. "Boat", as in "bowt," almost tips Canadian. A very interesting dialect. I like it!
they speak differently from each other but now i get why (his explanation)
closer to old english accent than modern english accent
Old English was a long time ago and was nothing like modern English. Modern English is from the 1700s and after.
@@illestofdemall13 i think what he meant was that their accents are closer to British accents from colonial times than modern British accents. Old English obviously didn't sound much like modern English at all
@@WoWplayer527 Yeah that's what he meant but it isn't Old English.
I still talk like this.
These accents are so similar to FDR's.
If you are curious to read more about the accent, its called a Mid-Atlantic. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent
They do have some difference. Most notably, both of these men merge the lexical set BATH with PALM/START, as in British RP. FDR had instead the "intermediary A" system where BATH was a front vowel that's slightly more open than TRAP. The speech guides by Margaret McLean and Edith Skinner (the former codified the upper crust East Coast accent into teachable, phonemically described form) allowed both systems, though primarily recommended the one FDR had. The right man could *perhaps* still pass as someone speaking Eastern Standard in a "proper" Skinner/McLean approved way, but its hard to say for sure since he is a much more conversational mode than someone like FDR was in his recordings
The left guy goes further with his differences: His BATH-PALM-START is in the [a:] range; he leaves his LOT-CLOTH unrounded in many cases (though its backer than his BATH-PALM-START, so the father-bother distinction is retained); he has a front rather than back starting point for the MOUTH diphthong.
These men also have some monophthongisation of SQUARE and NEAR in non-closing positions. Also not in the FDR accent or taught in codified Eastern Standard.
Well President Roosevelt was an American Aristocrat.He was raised in this class
@AC FDR had a mid-Atlantic, which is the post I replied to.
Really interesting to watch as an immigrant. Wonder how the rich forefathers back home spoke, to see if they had the same sort of air about them
“As they say, I have nothing but cash” 🧐
12:55
Almost sounding like the fabled transatlantic.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if my grandmother knew both of these men.
Edit: 12:04 "we lived in Mahbulhead" okay she almost DEFINITELY knew these men.
Was your grandmother a socialite !? Because that's the only way
Most everyone who lives on the Neck knows everyone else. I should imagine they knew my great gran Beatrice who also lived in "Mahb'lhead"
Is this the real manifestation of the Duke Brothers in Trading Places movie???
LoL, Thought the same exact thing
"Mortimer, Mortimer"
I don't care much for literature, but I'd rather be in this conversation than any conversation I've had in a decade, only exceptions are the ones I have with my 4 year old
This makes Boston, the most British city of USA.
Of course, the original colonial city of the country.
As an Englishman, I find it a bizarre mix of RP and Deep South. Easy enough on the ear, though.
Definitely. The tidewater dialect is closer to this New England dialect than it is to the upper south dialect.
The Oldest Money.
I would describe it as Thurston Howell mixed with Bennett Cerf.
wtf I never knew they made a live-action Statler & Waldorf.
Yacht rock radio!
Nile’s and Frasier having a chat
2 trillion eh?
2019: Hold my 🍺...
I'd like to know their names. Is the one on the left George Crowninshield?
George C. Homans is in the left, who is on the right?