Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Learning to speak "Boston"

People not born in or near Boston often get confused by a native's accent and although I've successfully tamed my Boston accent (for the most part) my word choices are a dead give-away for anyone familiar with what I like to refer to as "Boston SLANGuage".

In a previous post I explained why the correct phrase is "bubbler" often pronounced as "bubblah" when referring to a fountain or water fountain... Feel free to revisit this language lesson here.

Normally, I focus on one word per blog entry, because I know how hard it can be to learn to speak proper English, but this image which was from the Boston Globe originally was just too tempting to pass up. I also find it fascinating that it includes what other parts of the country use similar language.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Elastic' is used by some people as far away as India. The Boston dialect truly is very influential. :)

wcs said...

We used "jimmies" all the time when I was a kid growing up in Albany. Even though we're 150 miles from Boston, Albany's accent is strikingly different. Probably the Berkshires getting in the way. ;)