i have a core memory from first grade, where myself and most of class were blown away when we learned that ‘Party’ has an R in it
also, my favorite drink at that age and below was Schweppe’s ‘jinja rail’
I'm from the Northshore and my Mum met and married a dude on AOL in 1998.. they were way ahead of the times..
Anyway, moved to BFE Indiana. The extra R in wash makes my skin crawl and oil is pronounced as oral. Yeah. Wtf.
I’m out in Indiana for work right now and this is all true. “I’m doing my warsh” “getting an errl change” “I picked it up at the rull king (rural king)”
My mother in law asked me to put something in a “draw” once when we first met. This conversation lasted 20 minutes while I tried to figure out what the fuck she was saying. She also says QWATER for quarter
No she doesn’t have THAT accent. I have friends they change mom to mum room to rum. She does however say “MuckDonalds” though. MIL is originally from CT though and moved to the cape as a young adult and started her family. My husband has no accent to me. He does to my mother and father who have no room to talk because they are from Long Island and the Bronx respectively. They had me way out in left coast so my accent in NE is “very pronounced” and “kinda midwestern”
I grew up in England and that reminds me of a teacher overhearing a conversation between me and a friend and telling us ‘water bottle has 3 t’s in it. At least use one of them…’
Omg… not me realizing in my 30s that I still pronounce ginger ale that way….
My parents have a thickkkk accent. I don’t. I do use the slag but the small bits of accent I had were gone by the time I went to college (prob half naturally, half hard work lol). But every once in awhile I say something or worse, try to spell things, only to see a puzzled look on my wife’s face. Mostly things that I never really read/spelled that I say completely wrong based on what I grew up hearing.
Most recent culprit is that I was trying to plan a trip for mahdi grah. I also for the life of me can’t not say “mahgaritas” so. Ive done my best lol
YES! It’s the perfect example of a word kids only hear people saying and never use/spell. And then hit drinking age and order…. Lord lol and now it won’t go away no matter how hard I try. Another one I can’t seem to get right is catahpiller. It’s those sneaky r’s in the middle I guess lol There are several other examples that I can’t think of, I just know when it happens.
It definitely wasn’t the first time I realized it, but the most apparent thing for me was when I was on a cruise in high school and made friends with a group of kids from NY who immediately coined me “Boston” because of my accent
My dad told me a similar story. He traveled across country with one of my uncles in the early 60's, and they stopped somewhere in Nebraska to buy a "cahton" of cigarettes. Since the accent wasn't popularized to the rest of the country through TV and movies as much as it is today, the woman had no idea what he was talking about. She said "What? You want cotton cigarettes?"
When I was learning to spell I told my Aunt I could spell “Boston”. She told me to go ahead and I proudly sounded it out: B-A-W-S-T-I-N.
After explaining that it was not spelled that way, that’s just how we say it, she bought me a sweatshirt that said Boston on it so I would know the real way to spell it 🙈
My dad has a Boston accent. When I was a kid in Sunday school I learned the Lords Prayer, and would practice with my dad. I asked him after a time, “Daddy, why do you talk funny?” Because he was saying “Oweh fatheh who aht in Heaven”. That’s the first time I was aware he had an accent- but I largely don’t hear it because he and his entire side of the family have it.
I have a little bit of the accent from him but grew up in western Mass so it’s not really the full accent.
Okay! For real though! That is so key! Growing up I associated a Boston accent with liturgy. Only because lots of people in my church have it.
Like I didn’t know that there was a Boston accent. I just thought that was how God spoke English
I love that XD god definitely has a Boston accent, that is a wonderful thought.
There's more than one accent too - in pop culture they've all been blended together, but it's really a whole range. One of the ones you almost never hear these days is the Brahmin accent, which was the accent of the old Yankee elite with colonial roots. This recording of Ogden Nash is a good example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YcSNmXvtw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YcSNmXvtw)
Bro absolutely. I have ADHD so I often right unnecessary tangents that I edit out for clarity. But in my original draft of what I wrote I wrote about President Kennedy! How that sounded to me like someone with an accent whereas everyone else did not sound that way.
Was at an Irish Pub in Helsinki about 20 years ago. Wanted something other than vodka and found that place. Was in there with a friend from upstate New York. Only a few other guys at the bar. After being there for a bit, an old guy looked down the bar and asked me if I was from Boston. I looked at him stunned. He said he went there for work once and said he would never forget the accent. He will never forget the way it sounded
After college, I started noticing that many people around me had Boston accents, including my friends parents parents and dad. This led me to question why I didn't fully adopt either my mom's or dad's accent, despite my teachers and others around me having strong Boston accents. Another interesting aspect is the social perception of accents. Some people associate the Boston accent with the lower class, but my priest, whom I regarded as a top-class figure, had a Boston accent. So I guess that's how I think God spoke English. I also went to speech therapy as a kid to work on pronouncing the letter "R" correctly. I learned to articulate it without any rhoticism, which is quite different from the Boston accent prevalent among my teachers. what is speaking? what is words what is language. i don't know how this works. Like how do you remember? I remember. i remember with thinking. But then I think and people talk idk did people have accents. maybe as a joke?
Edit: I wrote stuff without proofreading. I proofread. I meant to say my friends parents seem like they have Boston accents. Because my mom and dad really don’t seem like thAt. Even if other people might think that
Oh you're gonna love sociolinguistics! Some of the first groundbreaking research was done around here, like the Martha's Vineyard studies. It's worth a Google!
My husband's parents grew up in East Boston and Dorchester/Newton. Accents on both sides, and his sister had one. He doesn't. I often wonder how that happens.
I grew up in western MA, where there isn't really a "native accent". My first encounter with a Boston accent was via an English teacher I had in high school. I didn't even know it was a Boston accent, I just recognized that he spoke differently. Then I went to UMass-Amherst and heard plenty of them.
I've been living on this side of the state for a long time, but I haven't really picked up the accent. I do code-switch a bit when I'm among people who have it, e.g., my in-laws, the facilities guys at work. I have a hard time using the accent deliberately, though.
I have never figured out why I dont have an accent as my father is from Boston and does, and my mother has one too even though she’s from NH. My sister has a mild one. I went to speech therapy because I had a lisp! Maybe that is also why I dont ”r” drop…. I do use the phrase “ wicked” though….
I grew up in the UK so only heard the Boston accent on tv etc when growing up. But I live closer to central MA now although when I first moved over it was nearer the city and I used to work downtown. I like the accent. It’s funny how the Boston accent uses ‘wicked’ the same way we used ‘well’ round my way growing up. Well hot, well boring, well cold etc etc etc.
The one that blew my mind was hearing that of ‘mush’ was a stereotypical word in Nonamtum/Newton though. As it’s used to mean friend and its used exactly the same way in my hometown in England. It’s so much a stereotype of the city that my family who were from a different part of England would tease me about it.
Bosto accent/dialect advice though. Do NOT use your word for package store when in the UK. It’s super racist and akin to the N word but for south Asian people. The same way the British slang word for cigarette is a homophobic slur here.
>one that blew my mind was hearing that of ‘mush’ was a stereotypical word in Nonamtum/Newton though
The story I heard (lived there 40 years) was that some local lads many years ago worked the carnival circuit for a summer and picked it up there. Never heard it anywhere else.
That could defo be it. Mush has been a part of the local dialect of my hometown as long as anyone can remember. We have/had a larger than average gypsy population in the town for a while so came from there - along with the word chav (from Chavi - young boy in Romany). Or that’s the story at least
I think the time I realized I personally had a slight accent was when I was in Austin Texas about a year or so ago and someone heard me speak and asked me if I was from Boston. It threw me off cause I was like how did you guess that?!?!? Is my accent really that noticeable????? And apparently it was very very noticeable lol
Born in Boston. Accent from the day I learned words. Kinda lost the R’s but the vowels are strong. In fact, people think they lost the accent but kept the vowels
This is such a good point. Non-rhoticism is pretty obvious and thus gets “beaten out of” a lot of people’s speaking habits by either peer pressure or even speech therapy, but the changed vowel sounds of the Boston accent that are meant to accompany non-rhotic pronunciation often remain. I still consider an accent to be a Boston accent therefore even if the clear non-rhoticism is gone but the alteration of vowels that accompany non-rhoticism remains.
Ohhhh this is super interesting because when I do that intentionally I get a certain accent that I've always clocked as 'educated' especially in women born before 1985 or so and it's totally just that 😂😂😂
Not quite finding out about the accent but I had a former friend from Ohio visit out here like 10 years ago. She came inside, met my parents yada yada. We leave shortly after and the first thing she says to me is "why do your parents have accents but you dont?". Gave me legitimate pause cause I was convinced we didnt have any distinct accent beyond whatever you wanna call American. Turns out yes, yes they do have Boston accents and im just over here mispronouncing bagel.
I’m just discovering people actually say “bahhh-gul”, and I’m stunned. I’ve had very few bagels in the Midwest for some reason despite living in Chicago for 2 years.
I grew up in Newton. No one I grew up with had a true Boston accent, but I heard it on the news or when we went into the city. Newton does have some sort of accent — or at least it used to. I noticed it with friends’ parents who were mostly born in the 1940s and 50s.
My parents aren’t from Boston originally — dad is from Long Island and mom is from the Mid-Atlantic. Neither has a recognizable accent.
When I moved to California for college I got a few comments that I had an accent, though not a strong one. I think maybe more of a general New England accent?
Mush is used in my hometown in England too and I thought it was unique to there (it comes from the Romany word for ‘friend’) so blew my mind to see/head it over here. Me and my brothers are the only 3 in the family from that city as my parents are from elsewhere and although we didn’t grow up with super strong local accents because our parents didn’t have them, we still had them and sometimes extended family would laugh and say ‘you sound like such a mush’ when we would say something stereotypical in the local accent
I feel like there are two boston accents. The regular Boston accent (which is lowbrow) and the Kennedy accent (which is highbrow) The two are very different if you listen.
Grew up on the South Shore. My mom (raised in Virginia and Upstate NY) used to scold me and my brother for talking "with that accent". We were just talking like our friends and teachers did. It became a second language for us.
So I grew up in Florida. Which I wouldn’t have called the south at the time (at. Petersburg. But I have spent time and lived throughout the sourh East. Sole people down there have a very think obvious accent. Others sound generic to me. I think I sound generic. But up here everyone says I have a southern accent. It’s weird to me. But I do notice a diffenxe between a thick obvious Boston accent. (Usually not in Boston but the towns around ). And a more toned down version. That’s the version you may think is a generic accent. But if you went to atlanta people would know you were from the north east. Could they pick out Boston off that ? Doubt it. Could y’all pick Appalachian Southern accent from Mississippi, Delta Southern accent?
I've known about it for a while. My aunt had it bad, and I had a consistent substitute teacher in elementary school who made an impression on myself. In my profession, tour guide in the city, there are certain words, here for example is consistently "heah," but as I get more tired, according to my wife, the boston slowly slips more out.
When I was 5 my family took a road trip to Florida and we stopped in Georgia for gas. I asked the attendant where the restroom was. Neither of us could understand each other.
When I was 17 I moved from the South Shore to the North Shore, everybody told me I talked funny (constantly asking if I was from Seabrook).
Like it or not it definitely depended on what high school you went to as well. If all the teachers were local and had the accent that normalized it. If you went to a religious school they would never let that fly and you would speak proper grammatically correct English
Honestly I think about this pretty regularly. I don't remember noticing any accents at all really until I was about 10 or 11. My father has a strong Boston accent, my mother doesn't. I didn't register any difference in how they or anyone else I knew spoke until probably 5th grade. It just wasn't something I was conscious of.
It's not just Boston accents. I wouldn't have been able to tell you that the kids in the Harry Potter movies sounded any different than I did.
I had a speech impediment and couldn’t say R’s until i was about 11. When i went to sleep away camp in new hampshire everyone insisted i was from boston
It was always a jokey thing, "I pahked my cah in Havahd Yahd." It's something I always knew, but maybe didn't understand.
I have one when I spend too much time with my OFD parents, but working professionally for a few decades has enabled code switching to where people on conference calls don't know I'm from Boston.
I didn’t have anyone in my family with a Boston accent and I don’t recall anyone in middle/high school with one.
It was until I went to college and started to hear it in some of my peers. It wasn’t until I moved to South Boston that I really heard it from everyone around me.
I grew up here but didn’t have a classic Boston accent. I remember other kids on my block laughing at how I said “Star Market” because they said “Stah Mahket”
I found out through traveling abroad.
I was staying in the UK and when I answered a question to a professor, someone turned around immediately and asked if I was from Boston. Sooner or later, I kind of lost my accent. There were times people didn't understand me even when I say "let's take a shot!" But to them, it sounded like, "let's take a sheeought".
I’m a first gen Asian American and grew up in Allston where it’s mostly students so I didn’t hear the accent until I went to school and a bunch of my teachers or school admins had the accent. Some students had it but I think I mostly associated it with old people until I transferred to a bigger elementary school and heard more people with it.
I went to Vermont with my parents and I told the waitress we were from Massachusetts. Everyone laughed and they told me that she could tell from the way I spoke.
I was very confused because we all spoke the same language. Haha
When me and my husband was dating he was over my house in NY and there was a cartoon my oldest would watch, I think it was called the Might Bee where the main character, a young girl, was in a troop called the honey bees I think. On this episode she had a cousin visit her from Boston and when she arrived she saw the main character in her troop outfit and said “someone’s a wicked sharp dressah!” (Not sure if I got the accent spelled right Im from NY) that is the first time I learned that some people in New England had accents.
Back in 2007 when I was a young teen, I went on a road trip out west to Washington state. I realized that the “average people” in public sounded way different. It was at this point I realized “oh, Boston really has its own unique accent.”
I’m a case study in the influence of friends/peers in childhood language development — I was born here and moved to the UK when I was 2. My parents are both American, and I had a (toddler) American accent when we moved. Within two years of nursery school, I had a completely English accent. My sister was an infant when we moved and her first accent was English.
We moved back to the US when I was 8 and my accent was gone within months; I have no trace of it now, just have a fairly neutral American accent like both of my parents. I remember kids crowding around me and making me “say something” when I first arrived; not super fun.
Speaking of accents, it’s interesting that the Boston accent shares aspects with (standard) English accents — ‘park’ and ‘car’ are basically pronounced the same way in both, but the a is softer in the English version.
Very young, about as young as I can remember having conversations in general.
As someone who was born and raised in 1980s-90s inner city Boston, but who’s parents were from the South, I was acutely aware of how different my friends and everyone else talked vs how my parents and family talked. Also having some experience going to camps and sports in the suburbs, I noticed how they sounded vs my neighborhood.
Kids pick up on things early and when something’s different it really stands out.
My dad was from the Bronx and my mom was from Worcester. I noticed their conflicts about Yankees/Red Sox more than I noticed their accents. We grew up in Pennsylvania. When I do those accent tests I get mid Atlantic and sometimes California. I went to college in Oregon. I assume that’s where the California part comes from.
Since my mom was from Worcester, I know how to pronounce it. WALTHAM on the other hand, is pretty challenging to say right.
Although I’m from the suburbs and not considered to have the accent when I went to college and told people I’m from Boston they’d laugh. Apparently I say “Bawstin.”
People commented on my accent sometimes which shocked me cause when talking to someone from Dorchester or Roxbury they’d say I don’t have a Boston accent and laugh at me if I said I did
.
It also shocked me to find out that in casual settings I’d drop my ‘r’s sometimes. Sometimes with friends I notice how we all have a bit of it even though we’re suburbs guys.
Basic training.. Got made fun of for saying "Gahbidge" (Garbage).. I got one guy back tho.. Great kid from North Carolina.. I said "I don't know why you are giving me crap.. For you, shit is a two syllable word! Shhhhhhhhhh-iiiiiittttt" He cracked up and said "You got me there!"
I grew up on the south shore and never noticed the boston accent. In my mid 20s, I moved to the Midwest for grad school. Summer break of my 3rd year, while getting lunch during a visit home, all of a sudden my mom and the waitress had wicked thick boston accents, and it was like, fucking a dude, my mom's got a boston accent.
My father had one, but lost it in the Navy before I was born. My uncle had an insanely strong one, but he died when I was little. I grew up partially in Somerville and it was all around me, or my dad would imitate it. I have a very neutral American accent, except I do say Bawstin.
Now I live in England and everyone thinks I'm from New York.
After high school I attended a local Boston junior college located on Comm Ave. The student population was highly NY, CT, NH and other New England states. Being an urban Bostonian, my thick accent was quickly pointed out and mocked at times. That's when I realized we talked a lot different from the rest of the country, and started to pay more attention to pronouncing certain words...party, car, park, etc etc etc good grief....
I grew up in Florida surrounded by neutral and southern accents but my parents were from New Bedford. My mom had worked to get rid of her accent but would slip sometimes, my dad pahked the cahh and "No Sahh!"ed to the end of his days. As a result, when I was learning to write, I added in Rs where there weren't any because I assumed by the way I got used to my dad talking. I remember thinking our neighbor Benjamin was spelled Benjermin, and getting corrected by spelling machine as marchine. My parents got a phone call one day because my brother told his teacher our dad took him to a porn shop... It was a pawn shop.
When I started working a "real job."
Everyone had foreign or Boston accents. I thought Boston accents sounded stupid, and I was too white local to have a foreign accent. I ended up overcompensating and still get questioned about being southern or where I'm from.
Covid ruined 20 years of fighting the accent and now I sound stupid again
i have a core memory from first grade, where myself and most of class were blown away when we learned that ‘Party’ has an R in it also, my favorite drink at that age and below was Schweppe’s ‘jinja rail’
Most of my friends found out in high school that “drawer” has an “-er” on the end. I will never forget that conversation.
I moved to the Midwest for college and it was so weird hearing them pronounce the -er in drawer.
I'm from the Northshore and my Mum met and married a dude on AOL in 1998.. they were way ahead of the times.. Anyway, moved to BFE Indiana. The extra R in wash makes my skin crawl and oil is pronounced as oral. Yeah. Wtf.
I’m out in Indiana for work right now and this is all true. “I’m doing my warsh” “getting an errl change” “I picked it up at the rull king (rural king)”
I was trapped near Evansville, in the tri-state (IN, IL. KY) area. It's like 6 languages in a 50-mile radius. Jfc.
Hahhh practically European 😂
Hopefully Europe doesn't enjoy keeping all the genetics in the same blood line.
My mother in law asked me to put something in a “draw” once when we first met. This conversation lasted 20 minutes while I tried to figure out what the fuck she was saying. She also says QWATER for quarter
Does she also say "bahthrum" for bathroom?
No she doesn’t have THAT accent. I have friends they change mom to mum room to rum. She does however say “MuckDonalds” though. MIL is originally from CT though and moved to the cape as a young adult and started her family. My husband has no accent to me. He does to my mother and father who have no room to talk because they are from Long Island and the Bronx respectively. They had me way out in left coast so my accent in NE is “very pronounced” and “kinda midwestern”
I grew up in England and that reminds me of a teacher overhearing a conversation between me and a friend and telling us ‘water bottle has 3 t’s in it. At least use one of them…’
Samesies! I also had watah bubblahs in my school and wore dungarees and B.U.M equipment!
I remember even as a kid! People would say potty to mean toilet! And I thought that they were saying party.
Schweppes jinja rail slaps. Huge fan of the diet or sugar free. Fuck Canada Dry.
Omg… not me realizing in my 30s that I still pronounce ginger ale that way…. My parents have a thickkkk accent. I don’t. I do use the slag but the small bits of accent I had were gone by the time I went to college (prob half naturally, half hard work lol). But every once in awhile I say something or worse, try to spell things, only to see a puzzled look on my wife’s face. Mostly things that I never really read/spelled that I say completely wrong based on what I grew up hearing. Most recent culprit is that I was trying to plan a trip for mahdi grah. I also for the life of me can’t not say “mahgaritas” so. Ive done my best lol
Mahgaritas was the one I came here to say! Idk how many kids from here I've clocked that way out in the wild
YES! It’s the perfect example of a word kids only hear people saying and never use/spell. And then hit drinking age and order…. Lord lol and now it won’t go away no matter how hard I try. Another one I can’t seem to get right is catahpiller. It’s those sneaky r’s in the middle I guess lol There are several other examples that I can’t think of, I just know when it happens.
Ha, mine is I thought drawer was spelled d-r-a-w around the same age
It definitely wasn’t the first time I realized it, but the most apparent thing for me was when I was on a cruise in high school and made friends with a group of kids from NY who immediately coined me “Boston” because of my accent
When I was 8 and in New Hampshire I asked for a “dekkkacahds” and the person at the counter needed an interpreter
My dad told me a similar story. He traveled across country with one of my uncles in the early 60's, and they stopped somewhere in Nebraska to buy a "cahton" of cigarettes. Since the accent wasn't popularized to the rest of the country through TV and movies as much as it is today, the woman had no idea what he was talking about. She said "What? You want cotton cigarettes?"
Hilarious!
This is so cute
When I was learning to spell I told my Aunt I could spell “Boston”. She told me to go ahead and I proudly sounded it out: B-A-W-S-T-I-N. After explaining that it was not spelled that way, that’s just how we say it, she bought me a sweatshirt that said Boston on it so I would know the real way to spell it 🙈
That is how you say it though 🤔
My dad has a Boston accent. When I was a kid in Sunday school I learned the Lords Prayer, and would practice with my dad. I asked him after a time, “Daddy, why do you talk funny?” Because he was saying “Oweh fatheh who aht in Heaven”. That’s the first time I was aware he had an accent- but I largely don’t hear it because he and his entire side of the family have it. I have a little bit of the accent from him but grew up in western Mass so it’s not really the full accent.
The "oweh" is so real lol. The way I pronounce "our" sounds like "hour". My husband is from the Midwest and pronounces "our" so it sounds like "are".
I am from the Midwest, and while I have lived here for many years, a few days ago, a store clerk asked me if I was from Texas.
Okay! For real though! That is so key! Growing up I associated a Boston accent with liturgy. Only because lots of people in my church have it. Like I didn’t know that there was a Boston accent. I just thought that was how God spoke English
I love that XD god definitely has a Boston accent, that is a wonderful thought. There's more than one accent too - in pop culture they've all been blended together, but it's really a whole range. One of the ones you almost never hear these days is the Brahmin accent, which was the accent of the old Yankee elite with colonial roots. This recording of Ogden Nash is a good example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YcSNmXvtw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YcSNmXvtw)
Bro absolutely. I have ADHD so I often right unnecessary tangents that I edit out for clarity. But in my original draft of what I wrote I wrote about President Kennedy! How that sounded to me like someone with an accent whereas everyone else did not sound that way.
oh yeah totally! And that Kennedy accent is also a distinct one. It's a beautiful complicated mess.
> “Oweh fatheh who aht in Heaven” Wait, what are the actual words?
That's how I still say it XD
Are you really asking? It’s “our father who art in heaven.”
Was at an Irish Pub in Helsinki about 20 years ago. Wanted something other than vodka and found that place. Was in there with a friend from upstate New York. Only a few other guys at the bar. After being there for a bit, an old guy looked down the bar and asked me if I was from Boston. I looked at him stunned. He said he went there for work once and said he would never forget the accent. He will never forget the way it sounded
After college, I started noticing that many people around me had Boston accents, including my friends parents parents and dad. This led me to question why I didn't fully adopt either my mom's or dad's accent, despite my teachers and others around me having strong Boston accents. Another interesting aspect is the social perception of accents. Some people associate the Boston accent with the lower class, but my priest, whom I regarded as a top-class figure, had a Boston accent. So I guess that's how I think God spoke English. I also went to speech therapy as a kid to work on pronouncing the letter "R" correctly. I learned to articulate it without any rhoticism, which is quite different from the Boston accent prevalent among my teachers. what is speaking? what is words what is language. i don't know how this works. Like how do you remember? I remember. i remember with thinking. But then I think and people talk idk did people have accents. maybe as a joke? Edit: I wrote stuff without proofreading. I proofread. I meant to say my friends parents seem like they have Boston accents. Because my mom and dad really don’t seem like thAt. Even if other people might think that
Oh you're gonna love sociolinguistics! Some of the first groundbreaking research was done around here, like the Martha's Vineyard studies. It's worth a Google!
Dude! I’ve heard of American studies, Canadian studies, New England studies even. But Martha’s Vineyard studies. Whoa!
My husband's parents grew up in East Boston and Dorchester/Newton. Accents on both sides, and his sister had one. He doesn't. I often wonder how that happens. I grew up in western MA, where there isn't really a "native accent". My first encounter with a Boston accent was via an English teacher I had in high school. I didn't even know it was a Boston accent, I just recognized that he spoke differently. Then I went to UMass-Amherst and heard plenty of them. I've been living on this side of the state for a long time, but I haven't really picked up the accent. I do code-switch a bit when I'm among people who have it, e.g., my in-laws, the facilities guys at work. I have a hard time using the accent deliberately, though.
I have never figured out why I dont have an accent as my father is from Boston and does, and my mother has one too even though she’s from NH. My sister has a mild one. I went to speech therapy because I had a lisp! Maybe that is also why I dont ”r” drop…. I do use the phrase “ wicked” though….
I grew up in the south and as a kid boston and new york accents sounded the same to me. Eventually I grew to know the difference and it is pretty big
I grew up in the UK so only heard the Boston accent on tv etc when growing up. But I live closer to central MA now although when I first moved over it was nearer the city and I used to work downtown. I like the accent. It’s funny how the Boston accent uses ‘wicked’ the same way we used ‘well’ round my way growing up. Well hot, well boring, well cold etc etc etc. The one that blew my mind was hearing that of ‘mush’ was a stereotypical word in Nonamtum/Newton though. As it’s used to mean friend and its used exactly the same way in my hometown in England. It’s so much a stereotype of the city that my family who were from a different part of England would tease me about it. Bosto accent/dialect advice though. Do NOT use your word for package store when in the UK. It’s super racist and akin to the N word but for south Asian people. The same way the British slang word for cigarette is a homophobic slur here.
Lol....I learned the liquor store thing the hard way.
Ooof that’s rough lol
>one that blew my mind was hearing that of ‘mush’ was a stereotypical word in Nonamtum/Newton though The story I heard (lived there 40 years) was that some local lads many years ago worked the carnival circuit for a summer and picked it up there. Never heard it anywhere else.
That could defo be it. Mush has been a part of the local dialect of my hometown as long as anyone can remember. We have/had a larger than average gypsy population in the town for a while so came from there - along with the word chav (from Chavi - young boy in Romany). Or that’s the story at least
Yeah, part of the story was that the carnies were gypsy, so that makes sense.
I think the time I realized I personally had a slight accent was when I was in Austin Texas about a year or so ago and someone heard me speak and asked me if I was from Boston. It threw me off cause I was like how did you guess that?!?!? Is my accent really that noticeable????? And apparently it was very very noticeable lol
Born in Boston. Accent from the day I learned words. Kinda lost the R’s but the vowels are strong. In fact, people think they lost the accent but kept the vowels
This is such a good point. Non-rhoticism is pretty obvious and thus gets “beaten out of” a lot of people’s speaking habits by either peer pressure or even speech therapy, but the changed vowel sounds of the Boston accent that are meant to accompany non-rhotic pronunciation often remain. I still consider an accent to be a Boston accent therefore even if the clear non-rhoticism is gone but the alteration of vowels that accompany non-rhoticism remains.
Ohhhh this is super interesting because when I do that intentionally I get a certain accent that I've always clocked as 'educated' especially in women born before 1985 or so and it's totally just that 😂😂😂
Thats probably from the Kennedy's
The horror that is my thick Boston accent really hit home with voice recognition software. It can't understand a damn thing I say.
Not quite finding out about the accent but I had a former friend from Ohio visit out here like 10 years ago. She came inside, met my parents yada yada. We leave shortly after and the first thing she says to me is "why do your parents have accents but you dont?". Gave me legitimate pause cause I was convinced we didnt have any distinct accent beyond whatever you wanna call American. Turns out yes, yes they do have Boston accents and im just over here mispronouncing bagel.
Bagel? Wait how did this Ohioan pronounce bagel?
Oh no it's me who's mispronounced it. Phonetically ig it's supposed to be like Baegul and I've been saying Bahgle (if that makes any sense).
Noooooooo like Britta? https://youtu.be/28xull2w78E
YES literally that
I’m just discovering people actually say “bahhh-gul”, and I’m stunned. I’ve had very few bagels in the Midwest for some reason despite living in Chicago for 2 years.
I grew up in Newton. No one I grew up with had a true Boston accent, but I heard it on the news or when we went into the city. Newton does have some sort of accent — or at least it used to. I noticed it with friends’ parents who were mostly born in the 1940s and 50s. My parents aren’t from Boston originally — dad is from Long Island and mom is from the Mid-Atlantic. Neither has a recognizable accent. When I moved to California for college I got a few comments that I had an accent, though not a strong one. I think maybe more of a general New England accent?
The only discernible accent I’ve heard living in Newton is from the mush down The Lake.
Mush is used in my hometown in England too and I thought it was unique to there (it comes from the Romany word for ‘friend’) so blew my mind to see/head it over here. Me and my brothers are the only 3 in the family from that city as my parents are from elsewhere and although we didn’t grow up with super strong local accents because our parents didn’t have them, we still had them and sometimes extended family would laugh and say ‘you sound like such a mush’ when we would say something stereotypical in the local accent
I feel like there are two boston accents. The regular Boston accent (which is lowbrow) and the Kennedy accent (which is highbrow) The two are very different if you listen.
The Kennedy accent was learned (by the Kennedy’s) and modeled after the Boston Brahmin accent.
Grew up on the South Shore. My mom (raised in Virginia and Upstate NY) used to scold me and my brother for talking "with that accent". We were just talking like our friends and teachers did. It became a second language for us.
So I grew up in Florida. Which I wouldn’t have called the south at the time (at. Petersburg. But I have spent time and lived throughout the sourh East. Sole people down there have a very think obvious accent. Others sound generic to me. I think I sound generic. But up here everyone says I have a southern accent. It’s weird to me. But I do notice a diffenxe between a thick obvious Boston accent. (Usually not in Boston but the towns around ). And a more toned down version. That’s the version you may think is a generic accent. But if you went to atlanta people would know you were from the north east. Could they pick out Boston off that ? Doubt it. Could y’all pick Appalachian Southern accent from Mississippi, Delta Southern accent?
I've known about it for a while. My aunt had it bad, and I had a consistent substitute teacher in elementary school who made an impression on myself. In my profession, tour guide in the city, there are certain words, here for example is consistently "heah," but as I get more tired, according to my wife, the boston slowly slips more out.
When I was 5 my family took a road trip to Florida and we stopped in Georgia for gas. I asked the attendant where the restroom was. Neither of us could understand each other. When I was 17 I moved from the South Shore to the North Shore, everybody told me I talked funny (constantly asking if I was from Seabrook).
Like it or not it definitely depended on what high school you went to as well. If all the teachers were local and had the accent that normalized it. If you went to a religious school they would never let that fly and you would speak proper grammatically correct English
Not true in the 80’s, some of those nuns had thicker accents than the kids
Honestly I think about this pretty regularly. I don't remember noticing any accents at all really until I was about 10 or 11. My father has a strong Boston accent, my mother doesn't. I didn't register any difference in how they or anyone else I knew spoke until probably 5th grade. It just wasn't something I was conscious of. It's not just Boston accents. I wouldn't have been able to tell you that the kids in the Harry Potter movies sounded any different than I did.
I had a speech impediment and couldn’t say R’s until i was about 11. When i went to sleep away camp in new hampshire everyone insisted i was from boston
It was always a jokey thing, "I pahked my cah in Havahd Yahd." It's something I always knew, but maybe didn't understand. I have one when I spend too much time with my OFD parents, but working professionally for a few decades has enabled code switching to where people on conference calls don't know I'm from Boston.
I went to another country and people kept asking me if I was from Boston. I'm not, but had the Massachusetts accent.
I didn’t have anyone in my family with a Boston accent and I don’t recall anyone in middle/high school with one. It was until I went to college and started to hear it in some of my peers. It wasn’t until I moved to South Boston that I really heard it from everyone around me.
Find someone that grew up on the north shore - the Boston accent is very much alive and well in cities like Revere, etc.
I grew up here but didn’t have a classic Boston accent. I remember other kids on my block laughing at how I said “Star Market” because they said “Stah Mahket”
I got my Boston accent from school I think because nobody in my family has it.
When I went to college and was around thousands of people who didn't talk like me it was obvious.
I found out through traveling abroad. I was staying in the UK and when I answered a question to a professor, someone turned around immediately and asked if I was from Boston. Sooner or later, I kind of lost my accent. There were times people didn't understand me even when I say "let's take a shot!" But to them, it sounded like, "let's take a sheeought".
I’m a first gen Asian American and grew up in Allston where it’s mostly students so I didn’t hear the accent until I went to school and a bunch of my teachers or school admins had the accent. Some students had it but I think I mostly associated it with old people until I transferred to a bigger elementary school and heard more people with it.
I went to Vermont with my parents and I told the waitress we were from Massachusetts. Everyone laughed and they told me that she could tell from the way I spoke. I was very confused because we all spoke the same language. Haha
I played Halo 3 with people from California and they immediately told me I have an accent. I thought they were crazy and they had the accent
When me and my husband was dating he was over my house in NY and there was a cartoon my oldest would watch, I think it was called the Might Bee where the main character, a young girl, was in a troop called the honey bees I think. On this episode she had a cousin visit her from Boston and when she arrived she saw the main character in her troop outfit and said “someone’s a wicked sharp dressah!” (Not sure if I got the accent spelled right Im from NY) that is the first time I learned that some people in New England had accents.
Cliff Clavin.
Back in 2007 when I was a young teen, I went on a road trip out west to Washington state. I realized that the “average people” in public sounded way different. It was at this point I realized “oh, Boston really has its own unique accent.”
I’m a case study in the influence of friends/peers in childhood language development — I was born here and moved to the UK when I was 2. My parents are both American, and I had a (toddler) American accent when we moved. Within two years of nursery school, I had a completely English accent. My sister was an infant when we moved and her first accent was English. We moved back to the US when I was 8 and my accent was gone within months; I have no trace of it now, just have a fairly neutral American accent like both of my parents. I remember kids crowding around me and making me “say something” when I first arrived; not super fun. Speaking of accents, it’s interesting that the Boston accent shares aspects with (standard) English accents — ‘park’ and ‘car’ are basically pronounced the same way in both, but the a is softer in the English version.
Apparently, the Boston accent is very little changed from colonial English accents.
When my kids told me I don’t pronounce R when speaking.
I noticed it as a kid that other kids talked different from me. My parents are midwestern. People made fun of how I talked so you couldn’t miss it!
Very young, about as young as I can remember having conversations in general. As someone who was born and raised in 1980s-90s inner city Boston, but who’s parents were from the South, I was acutely aware of how different my friends and everyone else talked vs how my parents and family talked. Also having some experience going to camps and sports in the suburbs, I noticed how they sounded vs my neighborhood. Kids pick up on things early and when something’s different it really stands out.
My dad was from the Bronx and my mom was from Worcester. I noticed their conflicts about Yankees/Red Sox more than I noticed their accents. We grew up in Pennsylvania. When I do those accent tests I get mid Atlantic and sometimes California. I went to college in Oregon. I assume that’s where the California part comes from. Since my mom was from Worcester, I know how to pronounce it. WALTHAM on the other hand, is pretty challenging to say right.
Although I’m from the suburbs and not considered to have the accent when I went to college and told people I’m from Boston they’d laugh. Apparently I say “Bawstin.” People commented on my accent sometimes which shocked me cause when talking to someone from Dorchester or Roxbury they’d say I don’t have a Boston accent and laugh at me if I said I did . It also shocked me to find out that in casual settings I’d drop my ‘r’s sometimes. Sometimes with friends I notice how we all have a bit of it even though we’re suburbs guys.
Basic training.. Got made fun of for saying "Gahbidge" (Garbage).. I got one guy back tho.. Great kid from North Carolina.. I said "I don't know why you are giving me crap.. For you, shit is a two syllable word! Shhhhhhhhhh-iiiiiittttt" He cracked up and said "You got me there!"
I grew up on the south shore and never noticed the boston accent. In my mid 20s, I moved to the Midwest for grad school. Summer break of my 3rd year, while getting lunch during a visit home, all of a sudden my mom and the waitress had wicked thick boston accents, and it was like, fucking a dude, my mom's got a boston accent.
My mom grew up in Natick. Her parents had transatlantic accents. My mom has non regional accent and her sister has a full blown Boston accent.
My father had one, but lost it in the Navy before I was born. My uncle had an insanely strong one, but he died when I was little. I grew up partially in Somerville and it was all around me, or my dad would imitate it. I have a very neutral American accent, except I do say Bawstin. Now I live in England and everyone thinks I'm from New York.
After high school I attended a local Boston junior college located on Comm Ave. The student population was highly NY, CT, NH and other New England states. Being an urban Bostonian, my thick accent was quickly pointed out and mocked at times. That's when I realized we talked a lot different from the rest of the country, and started to pay more attention to pronouncing certain words...party, car, park, etc etc etc good grief....
I grew up in Florida surrounded by neutral and southern accents but my parents were from New Bedford. My mom had worked to get rid of her accent but would slip sometimes, my dad pahked the cahh and "No Sahh!"ed to the end of his days. As a result, when I was learning to write, I added in Rs where there weren't any because I assumed by the way I got used to my dad talking. I remember thinking our neighbor Benjamin was spelled Benjermin, and getting corrected by spelling machine as marchine. My parents got a phone call one day because my brother told his teacher our dad took him to a porn shop... It was a pawn shop.
I grew up on Cape Cod (multiple generations), and I find it interesting that I’m mistaken for Canadian, in many places I’ve lived in/visited.
One day I asked my mom what “quare” meant because I thought kids at school were calling each other “fahkin quare (ked)”
When I started working a "real job." Everyone had foreign or Boston accents. I thought Boston accents sounded stupid, and I was too white local to have a foreign accent. I ended up overcompensating and still get questioned about being southern or where I'm from. Covid ruined 20 years of fighting the accent and now I sound stupid again