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Our wicked unique way of talking
By adamg on Thu, 06/06/2013 - 7:43am
Joshua Katz of the North Carolina State University Department of Statistics has put together some maps of American linguistic diversity, based on the typical answers to 120 questions about particular words. Take a look at this map, select Boston and then see if anything stands out.
His methodology has one flaw: It doesn't include tonic as a possibility for soft drinks.
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Comments
accents
Recently it was discussed here how many of the "townies" moved out of Boston to places like Saugus, Lynnfield to the north or Quincy to the south (lots of Townies - like Charlestown townies - in Billerica, etc.), which results in people in the burbs having more of a Boston accent than people in Boston. These maps sort of illustrate this (I think).
If you look at Boston, Cambridge, Brookline and Somerville - they are in orange colors radiating out to cooler colors. Lynn, Brockton, Malden, others start out in hotter red colors and the grade out -- which I would interpret as meaning more unique or dissimilar accents to those surrounding.
Egads! Our accents are being gentrified! Strewth!
Tonic
"Tonic" is there in the original survey data he used, and Boston shines as it should, but the maps are not nearly as nice. Also, apparently a few people call it "dope" or "lemonade."
According to the survey used to create the maps...
According to the survey used to create the maps, tonic is not so common in Massachusetts.
105. What is your generic term for a sweetened carbonated beverage?
a. soda (75.60%)
j. other (1.92%)
b. pop (1.68%)
c. coke (2.76%)
d. tonic (14.78%)
e. soft drink (3.12%)
i. dope (0.12%)
Tonic is a stereotype long gone
I've always felt that tonic is something my grandparents might call it on occassion, and less so as time went on.
Agreed
Yes - I certainly called it "tonic" when I was a child - I remember my brother, 6 years younger than me, called it "ton-git" as a toddler - but I and even my parents changed to "soda" at some point, I'm thinking in the late 60s or the 70s.
(Nowadays I often call it "pop" just for the hell of it.)
Pop? I worked with someone
Pop? I worked with someone from Indiana who called soda 'pop.' To me that'd be like calling sneakers 'tennis shoes!' She also referred to mini-golf as putt-putt. That drove me crazy! My grandparents always said tonic as do my cousins who live just south of Boston. Family who live in NH say soda.
"Pop" was the standard term
"Pop" was the standard term for soda in the midwest when I was in college in the 80s, and still is, as far as I know.
Mini-golf
When I was a kid we'd drive to the Jersey shore every summer to visit relatives and along the way we'd pass dozens of "putt-putt" courses. That's actually what it said on the sign. I always found it hilarious. There was one course in Ocean City that I loved - it was jungle-themed and most of the obstacles involved hitting the ball through some animal's legs. In my family, this quickly devolved into extra points for anyone who could hit the gorilla in the nuts, etc.
Nutt-nutt?
.
Wow
I can't believe we never thought of that. BRB, telling my father how disappointed I am in my upbringing.
I bet I could get most of my cousins to the shore this summer for a Nutt-nutt family reunion. Hmm.
tennis shoes
I work with kids, and when I tell them to go get their tennis shoes (pronounced more like ten-i-shoes), I love the WTF responses...I didn't know until I moved to Boston that this was a dialect thing.
Bostonians and Nooyawkas have a few things in common
Besides their mutual hatred of each other's teams, that is.
Women in both places carry pockabooks instead of purses. And our computers only wear tennis shoes if they're actually playing tennis.
whither tonic?
I don't know. I still use 'tonic' more or less, as does my family. I wonder if these words, like the accent, have migrated to the nearby burbs and are more prevalent there than in the city core (where so many of the dreaded and scary "new people" have moved in)? 'Soda' gets used a lot too -- more so than 'pop' which sounds so "Leave It To Beaver" that I can't bring myself to say it (aww gee whiz!).
I remember seeing lots of hand-written signs for tonic (like at Little League concession stands and the like), but as things get more corporate there is more standardization (like Dunks' goddamned shitty mass-produced cardboard turd-donuts - to link back to another conversation). It reminds me of going into a Wendy's/Texaco Star Mart combo in Central America with big signs on the walls of the happy faces of white and african-american children and English text of what they're munching on. No effort to adapt the marketing detritus to the cultural context. "MAINTAIN BRAND! STAY ON TARGET!"
Then again, there's Moxie!
Now THAT is tonic!
Although it is really what swing kids of the 1920s used instead of RedBull.
tonic
My Dad still says tonic. He'll be 89 this month. He also says Holy Mackerel! and calls the MBTA the streetcars
Streetcars
Well, I call the streetcars streetcars as well. "The MBTA" is made up of several connected systems: subway, streetcars (the Green Line and the Mattapan line out of Ashmont), and buses.
Streetcars vs. Trolleys
Agree that the streetcars (BC, Cleveland Circle, etc.) are called streetcars, but when I lived in Dorchester Lower Mills, everybody I knew called the Mattapan-Ashmont a trolley, never a streetcar. I think there's a distinction. Streetcars actually run on a street at some point, whether mixed with traffic or in a dedicated railway within the street, whereas what we in Dorchester and Mattapan termed a "trolley" never does (although the Mattapan-Ashmont does have two grade-crossings.)
It may just be a neighborhood terminology. I suppose what folks call the Riverside line might make a difference, as it doesn't travel streets, either.
(On the other hand, I now live in Watertown where they have what are referred to as "trackless trolleys". I say it's a bus, but I'm from Dorchester, so what do I know?)
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Trolleys, trams, streetcars, oh my
Trolleys "troll" wires with trolley-poles. Other than the Mattapan line, trolley-poles are out of vogue, replaced by pantographs. You could call them "trams", or "light rail" I suppose. "Streetcar" is fairly generic too. The Mattapan line could still accurately be called a "trolley" although I believe, IIRC, that the original pole design was modified during rebuilding. The Riverside line might have been called an "interurban" if this were back in the old days.
The trackless trolleys still have trolley-poles (two, since rubber tyres cannot return current to complete the circuit). So they are still trolleys (elsewhere they are called "trolleybuses") and, in addition, are not technically considered to be motor vehicles regulated under MGL Chapter 90.
Subways?
I was originally going to write "My Dad calls the trolleys the streetcars" which I suddenly realized also means that I call them "trolleys"
I felt wicked old and wanted a tonic, but I walked to the bubblah instead.
Here's a link to the 1954 MTA
Here's a link to the 1954 MTA system map
http://www.wardmaps.com/viewasset.php?aid=15679
In the legend, the streetcars or trolleys are just called "car lines"
There were still plenty of trackless trolleys in Dorchester in 1954. On these maps, a route number in a circle was a car line, a number in a triangle was a trackless trolley, and a number in a box was a bus. What are now called the Red, Orange, and Blue lines, as well as the underground portion of what is now the Green Line, were called "Rapid Transit Lines".
definitely a generational thing
My mom called it tonic and I used tonic and soda alternately but had pretty well settled on soda by high school. My mom went back to work and eventually started calling it soda because all the girls in the office did and she didn't want to sound like the old lady of the office (which she was, but more like a beloved mother figure).
When I was in grade school in Braintree it was still bubbler and teeter-totter for the most part too (in the 70s).
Teeter-Totter
Wait, there's a name for it other than teeter-totter? Well other than lever of doom?
Nevermind
I used teh google and got seesaw (duh).
I remember the great
I remember the great Zarex/Kool-Aid debates of my childhood. It always ended with a glass of tonic.
Ask Star Market...
when did they stop putting "Tonic" on the aisle signs? I seem to remember seeing that in some stores within the last 10 years.
He also didn't include
He also didn't include "youse" (which I've heard from western MA residents, usually "youse guys") or "yiz" (which I've heard from CT residents) as options for second-person plural.
One thing to keep in mind is
One thing to keep in mind is that a geographical map of the US will tend to distort population. That's because no one lives in a lot of those huge states out west. The Mount West, for example, has a lower population than New England IIRC. So you see some of these places agree with huge swaths of territory but really their linguistics aren't more widespread than those of Boston which covers a relatively small territory
I grew up in Holbrook and
I grew up in Holbrook and almost everyone I went to school with in the 80s was born in St. Mary's in Dorchester. The South Shore is full of formerly from Dorchester people.
Yes, that was the great
Yes, that was the great migration of the 50's or so. Most of Dorchester Irish moved to Quincy/Braintree. Many in my family did. My immediate family did the opposite and had the scorn of many that "there was no good over that bridge".
"What do you call it when...
rain falls when the sun is shining?"
Sun shower, obviously. But in the Deep South, they say, "The devil is beating his wife."
Really? That's messed up, man.
I see "trolley" didn't make the top few answers for shopping cart.
I've heard "The Devil is
I've heard "The Devil is beating his wife" before. Can't remember where or when but it wasn't in the deep south.
According to the Wikipedia
According to the Wikipedia page on "sunshower", the expression is also used in Hungary and in oh-so-sophisticated-and-urbane France.
Most people I know from
Most people I know from around here call it a shopping carriage. I'll never give up bubbler. I thought teeter-totter was standard... that's a local thing? My grandmother lived on Hyde Park and Roslindale and said bug juice and belly wash instead of kool-aid.
Bug Juice
We called it bug juice everywhere I went to Girl Scout camp. (LA, MD, NH).
Boston -> Jackson, MS differences
I'm from here, moved to Jackson, MS for work. Boston is Jackson's "least similar" city... Now I know there's quasi-scientific evidence to backup what I've been experiencing every day.
Funny Story
My Dad went to grad school at the University of Toronto in the late 40's/early 50's. At one point, he got a job as a waiter in a hotel bar to earn extra money. He was never a big drinker (mostly beer & wine, plus the occasional Scotch) & certainly not a bar fly, but since he wasn't mixing the drinks it didn't matter. So one night, someone came in & ordered a gin & tonic. Like a good Bostonian, Dad asked, "What kind of tonic would you like?" This totally befuddled the customer who thought for a minute & then said, "Schweppes". Thinking this was some Canadian "tonic" unfamiliar to him, Dad asked how to spell it, then took the order to the bartender, who soon enlightened him to what tonic was in question here & to the identity of Schweppes.
As for street cars vs. the T, his mother always referred to the trolley system simply as "the cars" (as in, "Take the cars from Cleveland Circle to Park St.") The subway was always "the train".
A friend of mine came to
A friend of mine came to Boston in the 80s for college. One night, he didn't have enough money for a soda, and one of his friends said "You can have one of my tonics", which sounded like a less-than-overwhelming offer until he figured out what he meant.
Map doesn't open for me
But the Dictionary of American Regional English has been around for years; published by Harvard: http://dare.wisc.edu/