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You love Boston English, right? So don't I!

By adamg on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 12:40pm

Sure, sure, Boston English has different pronunciations and vocabulary than English as it is spoken elsewhere, but it also has some unique grammar as well.

A few years back (but just now reaching us here in the UHub cave high up on a ridge on the Roslindale/Hyde Park frontier), the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project took a detailed, scholarly look at our unique negative positives, such as "So don't I!" Or what linguists apparently call "implicature canceling:"

[W]hen speaker A explicitly states that he/she plays basketball, he/she also implies that speaker B does not play basketball. Then, by saying, "So don't I," speaker B asserts that he/she actually does play basketball, contrary to A's implicature. Thus, although So don't I is affirmative, it also has a negative function in that it negates an unspoken assertion.

That seems to be a rather dour view of the Boston psyche, but maybe those scholars had just returned to their office after having gotten cut off on I-84 by a Masshole.

Apparently, the northern and southern boundaries of the usage go from York, ME to New Haven; a western boundary isn't set, but presumably it's somewhere east of Stockbridge. Still, like "bubbla" in Wisconsin, there are some exceptions, but there's a good explanation:

Lawler (1974) reports the phenomenon in DeKalb County, Illinois. In a posting on Linguist List, Lawler states that many "many early settlers of DeKalb County originated" in New England.

Free tagging: 
Boston English


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Comments

By mseskin on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 12:47pm.

Was about the high school.

By dmcboston on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 1:38pm.

"[W]hen speaker A explicitly states that he/she plays basketball, he/she also implies that speaker B does not play basketball. Then, by saying, "So don't I," speaker B asserts that he/she actually does play basketball, contrary to A's implicature. Thus, although So don't I is affirmative, it also has a negative function in that it negates an unspoken assertion."

An affirmative that is also negating something. That's linguistical subltetyness. Boston...our English is better than yours. Even if it's another language, like say...Latin.

By adamg on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 4:29pm.

No, that was across the street from English.

By cybah on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 12:50pm.

right?

(isnt this a boston thing.. although thanks to internets its everywhere but I remember it starting here)

By Turalura Lipschitz on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 1:09pm.

Is Boston the only place where 'comfortable' is a 2-½ syllable word (COMF-tahbl), rather than 4 syllables?

By L'il Peapod on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 1:23pm.

My deceased faathah felt strongly about this, as well as despising "Bostin" without the second O.

By anon on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 1:45pm.

...old time Bostonians are also famous for making one syllable words into two syllable words. An example being "foe-wah" for "four".

By anon on Tue, 12/01/2020 - 4:47pm.

Or the second grade teacher with eyes on the back of her head snappped out “Dontchu Dayah!”

By aegtx on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 1:56pm.

No, I grew up saying it like that in Texas. Well, "comf-ter-bl."

By Irma la Douce on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 2:39pm.

South Dakota and Michigan.

By adamg on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 4:31pm.

I love this list of fake Massachusetts place names in part because it includes Unstable (pronounced the Massachusetts way, of course).

By eeka on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 11:56am.

My family members and I have started referring to behavior as "UNstable."

By JonT on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 11:54am.

I thought BBC announcer types were the only ones who pronounced "comfortable" with four syllables. Or "temperature" for that matter. I grew up with its three syllables being "tem-pra-choor", though these days it seems like most weather forecasters say "tem-pih-choor".

By Daan on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 10:45pm.

Boston and New York pigeons are apparently quite distinct from each other. Something to do with a non-urban gap in CT that neither side can broach.

If there is any relationship between regional language and regional pigeons, it raises the question of whether this is a matter for scholars of pidgin (corrected) talk.

By anon on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 4:01pm.

I've noticed that Connecticut natives do not pronounce the letter "t" if it falls in the middle of a word. For example "mountain" becomes "mow-in" with a sort of glottal stop throat thing in the middle.

By Berit on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 5:16pm.

CT born and raise, I worked a long time to say mit-ten, not mit-en.

By Mr. T. on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 10:42am.

Some people insist on pronouncing it "Mih-in". with no t sound at all.

By eeka on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 11:56am.

Brigh-in.

By eeka on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 11:57am.

Like New Bri-in?

By Charles Bahne on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 5:07pm.

I think you meant pidgin. Funny how the letters transpose themselves sometimes.

By Don't Panic on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 4:05pm.

New Haven Connecticut @adamg?

By adamg on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 4:32pm.

Um, they said ...

By Bob Leponge on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 4:26pm.

... and “so don’t I” sounds every bit as illiterate and moronic to me now as it did when I was a kid. I wince every time I hear it. Like fingernails on chalkboard.

By perruptor on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 6:34pm.

Me, I could care less.

By eeka on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 11:59am.

But came here as a young adult 20ish years ago.

Isn't it a feature of certain working-class dialects specifically? It definitely doesn't occur in all "Boston" accents. I'm sure it sounds strange if it isn't part of your dialect.

By Scratchie on Tue, 12/01/2020 - 9:18am.

... and “so don’t I” sounds every bit as illiterate and moronic to me now as it did when I was a kid. I wince every time I hear it. Like fingernails on chalkboard.

You must be wicked smart.

By Lee on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 6:39pm.

Jabberwocky talk.

I love language quirks and as long as I understand what someone is saying I’m okay with any way they say it.

By uhub-fan on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 8:43pm.

...but I have always found the "plural singular" to be quite amusing: i.e. "These ones"

By eeka on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 11:59am.

These ones are mines? ;-)

By Bob Leponge on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 8:00pm.

It’s plural all the way through: “we have 2 kinds of sweaters; these ones over here are all $50 and those ones over there are $25” I suppose you could drop the “ones”....

By Cutter on Sat, 11/28/2020 - 11:31pm.

... is my favorite Massachusetts idiom, because it's what you say/yell when someone took too long to agree with you.

By anon on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 3:31am.

I'm totally confused by the meaning of 'so don't I' still!

Isn't 'neither do I' the simple solution here?

By perruptor on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 12:42pm.

So don't I means exactly the opposite of neither do I. You want I do, too.

By Michael Kerpan on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 5:44pm.

"I do too, you friggin' moron" (Right?)

By Bob Leponge on Sun, 11/29/2020 - 8:02pm.

Is the standard English “so do I”

By MC Slim JB on Mon, 11/30/2020 - 5:05pm.

used "So don't I" to mean "So do I." Another one that seems to have disappeared since my youth was, "Please?" for "Come again? I didn't quite catch what you said." We also drank from "bubblas" in the school hallway, and had to ask for permission to use "the sanitary" if we'd hit the bubbla too hahd. Visiting the basement was "going down cella". There are dozens of others, like the "tonic" aisle at the supermarket (which I still see around, like at the Stop & Shop in City Point.) Long sandwiches, cold or oven-toasted, are still mostly referred to as "grinders" in local pizza shops.