Wicked Good Guide to Boston English

I grew up in Dedham during the late 40s and 50s. I now live in the midwest (Illinois and Iowa) and have done so for the last 45 years. A couple of nights ago I was out with some friends and I offered to treat the group to some ice cream. As I did so a phrase my father used under similar circumstances popped into my head, "I'll shout" meaning he would buy. None of my friends, all native Iowans, had ever heard the word shout used in that way. It occurred to me that this usage may have been unique to the Boston area. He was raised in East Boston.

Tom Gartland
West Branch, Iowa

Do Bostonians pronounce Squirrel Skwerl or Skwirl?

Thanks,

RB

I remember hearing my first completely unrecognizable example of Bostonese. During a break in a business meeting we were told the bathrooms were to the right and the "Waddahbubblah" was to the left. Not a clue. Later it was explained to me that the word was "water bubbler" or drinking fountain to the other 99.99% of Americans. Later that same day I was told to "bang a youey at the packy" which deciphers to "make a U turn at the liquor store" when driving around Boston. It didn't get any better as I was told to make sure "Mock knows about the potty!" and was too confused to invite "Mark to the party".

I have lived in AZ for the last 12 years. I say things like:
-"So don't I"... "So Aren't you"
-I pronounce Didn't...like "Did-dnt"
-I sometimes find myself saying Wada. (Is this an accent or speech problem?)
-Use bullshit, Jacked up (messed up), JImmies,

I grew up in South MA where the accent is even stronger, but moved to Milford and Watertown in my teens. I don't feel like I have an accent anymore, but my husband will constantly correct my language as if I have a speech problem. I would like to be able to explain that this is normal Mass talk!

Interestingly, there an very large lexical overlap between USMC dialecticalisms and Bostonian English. This probably has in large part to do with the fact that for quite some time, South Boston had the highest per-capita recruitment rate for the Marines of anywhere in the country.

I remember one time I was coming out of the old Harvard Square kiosk. As I was going up the steps, a citizen, an outlander, asked me for the time. I looked at my watch and told him, "Huppass foah." (4:30) He looked at me as if I'd started babbling in Swahili.
Half past, quarter til/to/of and quarter past/after don't seem to be used much in the USA.

I love this site. I grew up in St. Louis, my Faathe was from Baastin. Last year I re-connected with a girlfriend I knew since 6th grade. I said something about my dad being from Boston. She replied, All these years I thought your dad was from a different country. LOL. My sister and I LOVE the accent he introduced us to. To all you Bostonians, don't change a thing!

I think I was the only child raised in Missouri that had a Boston accent. My speech teachers were puzzled along with my English teachers.My father tot me well.
1.) we have a tahlit( toilet)

2) we drive a hautomoblile

3) we shop at a Stah

4.)ooooo and my favorite "Go ask your Mummer"

5.) on a Christmas tree you have to put on the oudamints
6.) in the moning you eat bref fast lol

Thanks Dad I love you.

I've lived in Dedham foah ovah foah-ty yea-ahs. When I get together with my family, who now live in New Hampshire, they can't undastand me haf the time -- my accent is wicked bad.

What happened to the word boggus.
I remember using that a lot growin up.

My friend from Brookline, married a man from Oakland, CA. In the 80's she asked for a birthday present:

"A wawhn leatha bomma jacket."

He told her he had no idea what she was saying.

A worn leather bomber jacket! Of course.

Hot having been born or raised in Massachusetts, my parents who are now in their 70's were from the Jersey suburbs of NYC. They recently recalled that when they were in school, ALL students were taught to speak clear and concise English. This included African-American students. Slang was not accepted and in order to graduate, a student had to speak and read at an acceptable level. As I was growing up in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts, I do remember being corrected at home MANY times for grammar and pronunciations I had picked up from other classmates, as well as teachers! I am extremely grateful to my parents for insisting on proper speech!! Sometimes I struggle when conversing with life long natives...It's actually embarassing. There is nothing amusing or attractive about poor speech.

I would just like to say the most annoying accent in the world is a Boston accent, sorry , but I think it makes people sound unintelligent. I grew up here and I pronounce my "r's" all of them , all the time.

Let's get a spukie and a tonic. Didja eat yet?

I left Massachusetts in 1956 and soon learned how to speak English as it is written [no wonder the kids in Mass. can't spell.] but when I'm tired and not alert I'll revert and pronounce a word incorrectly and my wife will say to me. "What did you say?"

I remember Jack Parr saying that the Brittish don't talk that way when the first get up in the morning.

Last night at the CVS on Mass Ave by Symphony Hall, I was shopping for some razors. The store is under renovations, and a very kind, female CVS employee walked up to me and said:

"If yuah lookin' foah rayzah cahtrahges, they'ah byack behind the registah."

I've been living in Boston for over a year, and the accent never gets old. I love it!

Accents are great! They make our world colorful! It's interesting to figure out where people come from by listening to their pronunciation. You just shouldn't sound like you've never been anywhere else (not only a matter of the accent!)
So we Bostonians don't pronounce our "r"s. But elsewhere they don't say short "o"s, they say "ah", or why would anyone confuse a party and a potty?!

We go back to 1908, right off the boat into Boston...I moved to California for college and was shopping at the Coop, I told the checkah' about getting padadahs and cohn form the cella etc. she called over to the the supervisor and said she needed someone to interpret for her she had a foreigner from someplace in Europe or Canada! I laughed until I almost peed my pants...she was dead serious, later I explained and she stil had a tin ear for the most colorful dialect of English outside of Aberdeen Scotland...

I grew up in a small town about 25 miles from Boston,495, Route 1 and 2 go straight through it and Route 3 is about 10 minutes away, I worked as a waitress in my teen years. Many people from Boston came through, I got used to Boston slang growing up as well as working, but I have learned a true New Engander will always say jimmies and/or get irritated when people say sprinkles.

A friend of mine (not from Boston) was teaching her Dorchester middle schoolers about words we use in English that derive from native American words. After defining a number of words, she wrote "toboggan" on the board and said "does anyone know what toboggan means?" A boy raised his hand and said, "sure, it's when you're buying something and you argue to get the price down."

Thank you for your works regarding our peculiar ways of speaking. I love reading about observations of the Boston accent and it's variations. I wear mine proudly.

Some others are.....

POCK•A•BOOK is a woman's pocketbook.

PITCHA- it can be anything from the guy on the mound at Fenway or a movie (motion picture) as in "Did you see the Depahted? That was a swell Pitcha" to something you put lemonade in (a pitcher.

ORAN•JADE or orangeade is orange soda (which is tonic.) Funny thing is when in Washington DC one time I asked for tonic and they thought I meant some kind of medicine or hair tonic.

And other places we add R's where they shouldn't be are Lisa= leeser, pasta is pahster, and idea is idear.

We "werk" at our jobs.

And you don't have a heart attack, you take one. As in Sully took a haht attack at his job on the T.
Of course then he got bettah so we had a time for him when he retired (re•tie•yed)

and if you get a job with the state you "got on the state" or with the MBTA you "got on the T"

We eat "pah•day•duhs" mashed or boiled.

We drink Boddled Wodda now since bubbelahs are rare.

Filene's was pronounced Fill•eans

We shopped at the Quinzee bahgin centah.

And Quincy was Quinzee and Worcester was Wista but Medford was not Meffa unless you lived on the north shore.

And if you were a narcissist you were "con•seeded".

And typing this on an iPhone with auto correct on has been quite a chore.

Thanks,

From a Dot Rat now living on the northern part of the Irish Riviera (Nantasket Beach)

Others I remember from Dorchester were.....

You i•yun your pants when they are wrinkled.
An almond was an armand
A hoss race was something you bet on.
The Red Line was called The Rattler.
The nuns called the bathroom the lavratory which we thought was laboratory.
We had a swill bucket in the ground next to the back porch.

Fei-ah...what my mother, from Dorchester, used to call a fire.

getcha sweatah. Weer gonnah go down the baah and havah couplah Perl Hahbahs."

I travel a lot for work and of necessity attempt to moderate some of the most audible aspects of my local accent. A couplah pops, though, and it all comes back.

There are worse accents, though. On a street in London, I was once asked for directions by a young man whom I eventually learned was from Perth, Scotland. I had to ask him to repeat himself, twice, before saying, "One more time, please, and slowly. I'm sorry. I know you're speaking English, but I don't have a clue what you're saying."

Place names are a problem for those of us not raised here as well. As above, it's "Situit" which is pretty close to the original Massasoit pronunciation of "Satuit." And it's not "Nep-on-set" as he thought it sounded the first time a friend from Texas saw it written on an offramp sign on the Expressway. Nor "Wistah" or "Lemmonstah."

No one, though, comes close to Mefford resident Kim whose rant against, among things, Tufts students, Tevas, recycling, and "intalopahs" - which so help me God I first thought must have been small animals - brings me to tears of joy:

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2014/09/10/kim-costa-medford-res...

I get that Bostonians drop final r's, but how do you pronounce middle ones, as in "parrot."

(I actually need this for a play, and this word trips me up every time ...)

Thanks!

I am an associate professor of historical linguistics in Japan but was born in England.

I am researching special words for “yes” and “no” in Boston. Colonists from the East of England, where I grew up, may have brought "jess" and "dow" to New England in the seventeenth century. Four hundred years later, these special words still survive.

In the East of England, we still use dow and jearse today. However, these words for “no” and “yes” are not recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary or the Survey of English Dialects. Nor were they recorded by the Linguistic Atlas of New England; but the Dictionary of American Regional English cites daow, daowd, dow, doh or day-oh in Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island as well as New York State. There is also daow in New Hampshire. For “jearse or jess,” informants in my survey cited jass in Upstate New York and possibly Vermont, jearse in New Hampshire, jyes or djess in Maine and Massachusetts.

A couple of people have told me of a possible "jess" in Boston. So I'd like to ask your readers: do you say "jess" for "yes" or "dow" for "no" in Boston?

I have more information about my research plus a survey that readers can complete online at http://yesandno.info/

As a kid growing up in Arlington we used to play "bombardment" all the time, it was only when I got older and moved out of town that I learned that the rest of the world refers to the game as dodgeball.