- [Tulley] You know, a classic Maine accent when you hear one.

- Good afternoon.

I'm Wayne Dorr, the voice of the great KenDucky Derby race.

(upbeat music) - Like Wayne Dorr, whose accent is a highlight of the annual duck race at the Celebrate Bodenham Festival.

During the race, Wayne really plays it up.

His turns of phrase are distinctly Maine.

- As they round the first turn, duck 72 and 314, who was one of the early leaders have swung to the eddy to catch the centrifugal force, to throw them toward the finish line at even greater speed.

Of course, if that works in reverse, they're going uphill.

- But what exactly makes the Maine accent distinct?

Where did it come from and is it here to stay?

I'm Tulley Hescock and these are the questions we are diving into today on "Maine Explained."

(gentle music) The Maine accent in a nutshell is distinguished by a long A sound and the lack of a hard R sound.

So instead of bar harbor, you've got bah hahbah.

More than just sounding different, the accent helps signify people's connection to the community.

Michael Erard has spent time talking to Mainers and understanding the Maine accent and dialect.

- Because it really is one of the ways that people do with each other, mark belongingness.

- Besides announcing duck races, Wayne Dorr has lived in Maine his whole life and been an educator for 58 years.

He has heard a variety of Maine accents and said that the way people talk is not only generational, but part of the main identity.

- Whatever accent I have probably picked up from my mom because she had a typical, what I felt was typical Maine accent where she dropped her Rs and made the may Hs.

Romania would say, "Yep, yep, yeah."

It's a short version of yeses.

"Yep, yep, yeah, yeah."

It's part of an accent, part of that Maine, piece of who we are.

I think Mainers don't think about it much because it's who we are, it's what we sound like.

- Wayne, like other Mainers inherited his accent from his family and the community around him and his parents learned it from their parents and so on.

But where did it all originate?

James Stanford is a socio linguist at Dartmouth College.

He says the Maine and New England accent we hear is called non-rhotic speech, which is a fancy way of saying the R sound is dropped at the end of words making the car you drive a cah.

He said the non-rhotic speech originated in England and sailed across the Atlantic to the central shipping port of Boston.

- So a non-rhotic speaker drops the R. But it's not just that because if I just drop my R, I would go from park to pahk.

That's like a classic New York dialect.

But the classic New England pronunciation is more like paak.

Because the vowel actually shifted.

And that was a change that happened in England around that time too.

- So basically the farther away from Boston you were the harder your Rs would get.

So that's why people from Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire have stronger non-rhotic accents.

While people farther west in Vermont have a more rhotic dialect.

But within Maine there are even finer regional differences.

Many people say they hear the accent stronger on the coast or in Western Maine, but hear less in Portland.

And technically Portland is closer to Boston.

So wouldn't people in Portland have stronger accents?

Stanford said people in rural Maine have often lived there longer, so they may have grown up around the Maine accent and carried it into adulthood.

In a more urban place like Portland, there's a higher flow of people from outside of Maine who are not surrounded by the accent on a daily basis.

So their accent is weaker or not present at all.

A lot of Mainers deny that they have an accent or even that it exists.

And as far as what the accent means to people.

- It doesn't mean anything at all to me.

It's not really something to think about.

It's like thinking about one of your hands or your foot is just something that's there.

- [Tulley] What does it mean to have a Maine accent?

- No idea.

- I don't know because I get made fun of all the times for the way I talk.

- I don't think we have the accent.

I think everybody else has the accent.

- But tourists and out of staters have a lot to say about the accent.

- Some of the words around it, like lobster, they're a little bit longer, more emphasis on syllables and vowels that we normally don't do at home.

- I have heard like that kind of northerner less draw more ah kind of thing, harbor, khakis.

- I heard from a lot of people that they are hearing the Maine accent less and less across the state, especially among young people.

- It's going away.

I mean, a lot of people, I mean that I went to school with there and stuff, no longer around.

I mean, they've moved or a lot of them have passed away.

So the Maine accent is disappearing.

- According to James Stanford, there is an easy explanation for this.

Lifestyles are changing.

People are leaving home earlier to work or go to college, moving out of state.

All of which means they're leaving their home environment impacting how they talk.

This might feel like a shift since 100 years ago, people were much more likely to grow up and live in the same town.

But now with easier access to education and transportation, people are more likely to leave home earlier.

Sometimes even leaving and coming back can have an impact on the way you sound.

- I lost my accent when I was in the military, I didn't have one at all.

Everybody said I had a southern drawl.

But then after a year back in Maine, suddenly I'm talking like I used to talk, you know, I have that Maine silent A or the AH, or the added syllables.

- Although we may hear it less, the Maine accent is unlikely to disappear entirely.

- Lobster, Manna, shock, bar harbor, and wicked.

- Lobster, Manna, shock, morning, bar harbor, wicked.

- For many people, both in and out of the state, our accent is a central part of the Maine identity.

Even if Mainers don't even think they have one.

For now, that's the Maine accent explained.

(gentle music)