Some Notes on Maryland and Baltimore

The data on the pronunciation of Maryland and Baltimore are derived from the 1216 field records made between 1933 and 1974 for the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (Kurath et al. 1980-). That project extends the investigation of the Eastern Seaboard begun for the Linguistic Atlas of New England (Kurath et al. 1939-43) into 518 communities between the St. Lawrence River valley and northeastern Florida.1 As in New England, the informants represent three distinct cultural levels: 603 are Type I, or users of folk speech; 473 are Type II, or users of common or popular speech; and 140 are Type III, or users of cultured or cultivated speech.2 The responses of each informant were taken down in a finely graded phonetic notation (Kurath et al. 1939, ch. 4). Only ten field records represent transcriptions other than those of Guy S. Lowman, Jr., who made 836 field records in 1933-41, or McDavid, who made 310 field records himself in 1941, 1945-56, and 1964 and transcribed from tapes sixty interviews made by others in 1965 -74. No two fieldworkers hear or transcribe exactly alike, nor do they conduct interviews in the same way.3 Accordingly, the following brief review of the practices of Lowman and McDavid may throw some light on the interpretation of the evidence. Lowman, a student of Daniel Jones, participated in the training sessions for the New England fieldworkers held in conjunction with the 1931 Linguistic Institute. He did the largest share of records in New England and was in the field almost continuously from the beginning of operations for the New England atlas until his death in 1941. McDavid received his training in field methods from Bernard Bloch, who did the second largest share of the New England records and who worked for ten more years with Kurath in editing the records. Both Lowman and McDavid made careful notes on their transcription practices. They routinely indicated their relative certainty about particular transcriptions in individual records, especially near dialect bound

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