So don't I

Transplanted New Yorker here. We have our own problems with our 'Cawfee Tawk' down in NYC. And "here," "hair" and "hear" sound exactly alike in the Bronx.But being here in Boston for eight years and being a counselor for five, I had to learn to coat-change. Sometimes I forget to take off the coat, though. I went home for a picnic at a park named after a former President and told my New York sisters to meet me at the 'Eff Dee Ah State Pak'?!?! They laughed at me for days!I listen to rap music regularly so I dont lose my native tongue.I had to learn:"All Set""The T""The Pru""Mass-ave""MassPike""Comm-ave""The Garden" (the one that isnt on 33rd between 7th and 8th Avenues)Go Pats!

I am from South Africa, and spent a yer in Bostin, when i first got ther, and my natrual pronousiation would have been something like "Hraved Yrad", even after a while I could not tell the diffence for certain words, esp something like work/walk/rock.

i grew up and have lived all my life in los angeles, ca. and have been to boston to visit relatives several times (nahthend, to be exact). whenever i would go out in public i could talk to people because they could tell i wasn't from the area and so they would tone it down for me. when i would pass people talking to each other, however, i practically needed subtitles to get it. here in l.a. we have a very definite accent ourselves that i get teased for alot in other states (not eve dude!, whaddup wit tha' shit, ya don' godda bail jess yet, bitchin', wherezat fool goin', todally gnarly, fuckin' a, perdy frickin' gay etc.) i must agree that in addition to all the cool historical stuff one of the best parts about visiting boston is the accent. they say the media and tv are starting to erode local dialects and i only pray it ain't true.

Ok.. just had to post this. I am originally from Ohio and went to college in Eastern KY (yes there are colleges there) I came up here before moving here and I had to go to the church where my uncle preaches (baptist believe it or not) The congregation was having a testomony session and this guy was talking about how his "cow" came up missing and he was searching all over and it was finally found in an inpound lot.(it was a really long testomony) but it took me at least five minutes after to realize he was talking about CARS not cows... (i was thinking it was a strange to do to a cow... but this is way up north so who would know)By the way... I will never never quit saying y'all.. nothing else sounds right. My son who has not the boston accent but new england...(he's 10 thus knows everything thing) said to me that when I am really angry I get really twangy...Jane (in SO NH) btw.. i came here to finally figure out what the hell was the difference between a frappe and a milkshake.Jane

haha all you people that are from a diff part of the country think you know how we talk or how to talk like us. nice try!to the rest of ya who are new englanders or moved away from this area be proud, were so good at what we do they cant even get our accent right in the movies!Joe from Salem

I knew this hahd core partying dude named "Razor" (pronounced "Rayza") and we'd be at the beach watching the girls in bikinis walk by and he'd say, "look at the toilie (toilet, a.k.a ass) on that one! What a shitta!

Jane, A milk shake is milk with flavoring. A frappe is a mike shake with ice cream.

Hey, You forget my favorite -"Goin' down the Cape!' I grew up south of Boston, and lived on the Cape while I was in school. I live in Vermont with my family and still say that when we visit family "down the Cape". Hee-hee!!

Going down to Mary's house or over Mary's house, tonic (never soda,) no sah and yessuh, jimmies, how 'bout down sellah (down cellar,)or up country?This forum is wicked awesome! ;0)

"Pam from Boston Dec 30" asks if the Boston accent is working class. It is.The Old Yankees (as opposed to us ethnics)trained their kids not to have that singular Boston accent, so that they'd say "Mother, may I have twenty-five cents?" rather than "Ma, yagodda quadda?"I grew up in Chelsea and Revere and remember expressions like "Will I do as I am?" meaning, do I look all right or should I change clothes?I also moved to Virginia (people must be disguising the accent--I should be meeting more Bostonians!) and we had a joke at work. When co-workers heard that somebody was having a baby, the parent-to-be had to come down and tell me the name. After s/he heard me repeat it with my Boston accent, they'd usually decide not to name the kid Garth.The R at the end of words is pronounced if the following word begins with a vowel. "You'll need a lawyer if..." is pronounced "Ya'll need a lawya rif..."Here in Virginia, I learned that the plural of "y'all" is "all y'all". Back home, I remember "yiz" as a plural, as in, "Are yizall goin', or just summaya?"This is a great site, and I agree: It's Medfid, not Meffa.

Ha ha I got a great laugh reading through this. I used to live in the Belmont/Watertown (Belmont St district) area and Lowell (Highlands) for a while back in the late '90s when I was married to a women studies prof from a boston liberal arts college. Her and her daughter always thought that my Adelaide accent sounded a bit like a Boston accent, especially when I said "car" or "saw" ... actually I liked the Boston accent and picked a bit of it up, more so than her, she had been fighting picking it up for the 20 years or so she had been living there. I think it's the coolest accent in the USA, and really my fave accent in the world ... I'm back in Adelaide wishing I could meet another Boston girl (a real one this time!) and move back to Boston ... wearing my Red Sawx St Paddy's hat right now, ha ha

found this site and am lovin' it! I wondered if anyone ever heard Ireland pronounced island. a bostonian i know told a "transplant" that he was going to island. the transplant asked -which one? also the word Japan pronounced with emphasis on the first syllable JA-pan I've always said japan,accent at the end of the word.

You can actually get this construction in varieties of New England English with modal verbs:

So can't I
So shouldn't I

Although I think some are more common than others bc I don't think I have heard "So mightn't I"

At least in my dialect (Hartford) you don't need to use first person either:

I'm going to buy ice cream and so shouldn't you.

I'm pretty sure this structure which actually has positive meaning (as opposed to negation) is restricted to New England. In fact, I am from CT and once you get to Southern CT where things get more New Yorky people are less likely to accept the form as grammatical. I've read that you can find it in Hawaiian English, and that in certain parts of Illinois it can't be used but you get an ironic meaning that you don't get in New England. It's been written on even recently by Larry Horn, a linguist that does pragmatics and semantics at Yale:
http://www.yale.edu/linguist/faculty/horn.html

In any case, it's a marker of New England identity and for that reason it rocks!!!!

A lot of sayings and pronounciations of the region are now fading away, sadly.

Liquor stores are known as "package stores" because back during the years of Prohibition, people used to wrap liquor in plain brown paper to disguise the contents, hence, they appeared to be 'packages'...I wish I could make a packy run right now.

We don't pronounce our (ah) "r's" around areas of New England because the original English settlers to the region came from the East Anglia area of England and they didn't pronounce their "r's", either. That's perhaps how many Aussies drop several of their "r's" in their pronounciations, too?

Subs were "grinders", soda was "tonic" (more common in Boston rather than the outer suburbs, though), margerine was "oleo"(at least in my Medford relatives homes), "frappes" have ice cream in them, but they're 'cabinets'in R.I. I think that name is probably extinct now there.

I didn't know that 'bang a left' and 'do (or pull) a U'ey' were local phrases! Are directionals called 'blinkers' in other places, what other words useages are different?

"Jimmies" were, and are, any kind of candy sprinkles in my family.

We used to use the phrase "that rots!" rather than "sucks" when I was young because "sucks" was considered a swear word.

How things change. NO SUH!
"wicked" is still a stand alone sentence which, depending on the context, can mean anything!!!

K.

I was born in Boston to Boston-born and raised parents who would put most of your phonetically-retarded accents to shame. I think the reason I'm now so good at English spelling and grammar is because of the keen eye I had to develop for the difference between the written and spoken word.

I grew up on the Cape in Yarmouth Port. To this day, despite my Connecticut education, I cannot say that town correctly. It is and will always be "Yahmith Pou-it" (always said wicked fast of course). People say Cape Codders don't have the Boston accent but despite the 2 hour trek it takes to get there, we still have it. We say "wicked" and "so don't I." I've banged many a U-y in my day and prefer jimmies to sprinkles (the brown ones to the rainbow ones). I think it's definitely dependent on your parents, though, in this generation (I'm in my 20s). My friends from NY and CT can't even understand my parents (or me after a few drinks sometimes!).

But I'm proud to "leave the clickah r-in my rum while I get a soda r-and talk to my mum."

There's nothing wrong with the term 'jimmies'! Perfectly normal (and NON-RACIST) term I learned as a kid at the Brigham's ice cream shops. Never heard 'sprinkles' until I moved to Arizona at 16.

Read "The jimmies story - Can an ice cream topping be racist?"
By Jan Freeman in the Boston Globe, March 13, 2011
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2...

Never heard that--but I moved here at age 10 56 years ago, from Southwestern Pennsylvania wherein all ancestors once in the US gravitated slowly to Pittsburgh. Up here about 30 years ago I got work that required me to go into local neighborhoods so talking like an outsider meant I wasn't taking sides between Chaastown and Southie; I now live in Meffa. Squeeze, squoze, squozen sounds normal; these words need noted down, etc.. Similar effect. Here the people have local accents. Writers tend to not follow syntax, instead worrying about words. But that depends on whom you associate with, maybe even whether you took Latin or French in junior high--the only choices in Belmont in the 1960's--that affects writing style.
Every so often I stumble on Universal Hub. Keep it coming.

I am doing a project on this construction and I am looking for audio clips. It could be youtube video or clips from a TV show or podcast. Even a reel would be great! Has anyone seen any clips where this is used?