Crystal Sargent's Top Five Ways to Detect a Rhode Island Accent

Crystal Sargent and Jacqueline Gorman are Middletown speech pathologists. They operate “Accent Your Options,” part of a speech and language therapy practice. Most of their accent clients are non-native English speakers seeking to advance professionally, but some are natives hoping to refine their Rhody pronunciation.

1. Reduction of the “r”: “Work” becomes “wuhk,” and “lobster” becomes “lobstah.”
   
   
2. Addition of an “r”: “Pasta” becomes “pastur,” and “idea” becomes “idear.”
   
   
3. Elongation of vowels: “Cranston” becomes “Creeeanston,” and “that” becomes “theeat.”
   
   
4. Syllable reduction: “Saturday” becomes “Satdee.”
   
   
5. Glottal stop: “Lit-tle” becomes “li-uh,” and “but-ton” becomes “but-un.”