Culture
Some Rhode Islanders speak with a non-rhotic accent that many compare to a "Brooklyn" or a cross between a New York and Boston accent ("water" becomes "wata"). Many Rhode Islanders distinguish the aw sound, as one might hear in New Jersey; e.g., the word coffee is pronounced KAW-fee. This type of accent was brought to the region by early settlers from eastern England in the Puritan migration to New England in the mid-seventeenth century.
Rhode Islanders refer to drinking fountains as "bubblers," (pronounced bub-luhs.)
Nicknamed "The Ocean State", the nautical nature of Rhode Island's geography pervades its culture. Newport Harbor, in particular, holds many pleasure boats. In the lobby of the state's main airport, T. F. Green, is a large life size sailboat, and the state's license plates depict an ocean wave or a sailboat.
Additionally, the large number of beaches in Washington County lures many Rhode Islanders south for summer vacation.
The state was notorious for organized crime activity from the 1950s into the 1990s when the Patriarca crime family held sway over most of New England from its Providence headquarters.
Rhode Islanders developed a unique style of architecture in the 17th century, called the stone-ender.
Rhode Island is the only state to still celebrate Victory over Japan Day. It is known locally as "VJ Day", or simply "Victory Day".
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Rhode Island
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to save his board.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)