Boston Slang, Deep Cuts

We stumbled across the Glossary Of Boston Slang on Wikipedia a few moons ago, and we thought we'd rifle through it and draw some items to your attention.

A few things need to be addressed before we start.

1) The glossary, which by name implies that Noah Webster pored over it, instead has that edited-by-teens look.

2) Your author, although born in Boston and a former resident of Dorchester and Quincy, is very very Irish Riviera. I moved inland once, and went back to the shore in 5 years. This geographic isolation will show in the slang that I recognize.

3) Many terms mean one thing in the city and another thing in the suburbs. Both forms are generally and technically correct.

4) We intend to treat several terms as either Retired or Redundant, both by Prominence rather than Obsolescence. They have been beaten to death in many a meme, and someone who assumes that a Massachusetts audience is just learning these words is most likely a Californian.

Among these terms are:

Wicked
Pissa
Wicked Pissa
Dunkin'
ZooMass
Jimmies
Fenway Frank
Packie
The Cape
Bubbler
Statie
Fluffernutter
Tonic (which may have died out here anyhow)
The Pru
The Pike
Lobstah
Marsh Vegas
The Hub
Gobbler
Regular Coffee
The T
The Irish Riviera
The Dot (We almost included "Dot Rat" below, but it got the chopping block)
Masshole
The City Of Sin
The Vineyard
Bang a U-ey
The People's Republic
Hoodsie
Beantown
The Green Monster
Frappe

The elimination of these overused terms means that my own list below will be of the Deep Cuts, Junior Varsity, 200-level class... and I'm OK with that.

5) We may or may not tangle with where-is-it-prevalent questions regarding sub/hero/grinder and other linguistic mysteries... kinda depends on how much filler I need, to be frank. (Ed: Frank is actually the author's brother)

6) I may come across as a rube to some of you, especially if you are older or more urban than I am. It's all good, and I will take enlightenment in the comments.

7) While we may use a town nickname or two to get a laugh, we already did a Local Town Nickname article.

8) I'm not working with Boston Accent versions of regular words. I'm looking more for local patois.

Let's look over some terms, shall we?

Swamp Yankee

The word "Yankee" means different things to different people. Our French editor tells me that the term is used in Europe (the French spell it "yanqui," which makes us sound like a Sasquatch type creature) to describe all Americans. The people of the American South use "Yankee" to describe anyone northern, even someone from New York. Northerners ascribe it to New Englanders. New Englanders ascribe it to northern New Englanders, and Maine/Vermont/New Hampshire will all just point at each other when you say it.

There is less wiggle room as to what a Swamp Yankee is.

Basically, it is a rural Yankee, although it goes deeper than that. Depending on who you ask, it can mean "old country family that is no longer elite or monied," "anyone from SE Massachusetts or Rhode Island," or "a term that Irish and Italian newcomers to a rural Massachusetts town use to describe the long-term residents."

"Four or five old country guys, sitting around a general store, having a lying contest" is a good description of the Swamp Yankee. Since even the rural towns are growing and becoming more diversified, the term describes an older and older man every year that passes. The term may even fall out of use, and pretty much has for a lot of people.

Although pejorative ("Yankee" implies industriousness, while "Swamp Yankee" aims more towards a bumpkin), it is very much like like the racial slur "ni**er," in that Swamp Yankees can call each other that name with love, but a city guy might get stomped if he says it in the wrong crowd.

This very magazine was almost named something with Swamp Yankee in it, but many definitions of the term stress a connection to English ancestry, and I'm as Irish as an 11 AM third beer.


Irish Battleship

Speaking of the Irish, this term has nothing to do with the Navy.

An Irish Battleship is simply a triple-decker house in the Irish parts of Boston.

There are some fun stereotypes to work with. Irish families tend to be large, so a triple-decker could spill out 30-50 people if they have bunk beds and so forth. These houses tend to be tall and thin, so as to allow the developer to fit more of them on a street. This gives the appearance of a warship when viewed from the front.

There's a reason that they call it an Irish Battleship instead of an Irish Freighter and so forth. The Irish like a good battle as much as they like a good bottle. I don't have the actual quote in front of me, but I heard something once along the lines of "your average Irish criminal has little use for things like Fraud, Embezzlement and Price-Gouging... but if there is some Fighting to be done, he is apt to have a hand in it."

With 40 people who may quite likely be inter-related in each house... if you mess with someone in their own yard, the whole battleship may come out after you.

The triple-decker is how housing was constructed in Irish neighborhoods during that time PJ O'Rourke described as "before city planners discovered that you can't stack poor people who drink."


Tuxedo

The term "tuxedo" has no distinct connection to New England, and is in wide use everywhere. However, our little part of New England has very distinct uses of the term.

The term "Portuguese Tuxedo" or "New Bedford Tuxedo" refers to the practice of wearing a sport coat over a "premium soccer warm-up suit."

The "Fall River Tuxedo," on the other hand, is when you wear a sport coat over a hooded sweatshirt.

The "Irish Tuxedo" is when you're wearing shorts and a winter coat at the same time.



Pukwudgie

This sounds like a racial slur, but it actually refers to little goblins who supposedly haunt the swamps of the Bridgewater Triangle.

The term is from the  Wampanoag language, and Pukwudgies play a role in their folklore.

They primarily haunt the Hockomock Swamp, and have turned up in references as far east as Silver Lake in Kingston.



Whoopie Pie

A chocolate cake sandwich with creme filling. It was invented in Massachusetts, and has since spread nationally.

Whoever invented the Devil Dog pretty much just looked at a Whoopie Pie and figured out how to slim it down and make it mass-profitable. Devil Dogs were trademarked in the 1920s, as were Whoopie Pies. Both has been around for almost a century before they were trademarked, and they were known informally by their current names.

Also known as a BFO, aka Big Fat Oreo or Big F*cking Oreo. The Oreo, however, is a cookie, not a cake.

Southerners in northern bakeries will often mistake this for a Moon Pie, and are disappointed when they discover that there is no marshmallow or graham crackers in it.


Relievio

This game is actually a Massachusetts variant of Ringolevio, a Brooklyn street kid game that evolved from a British game called Bedlam. "Relievio" is a spelling distinct to Massachusetts, however.

It is a much extended form of Tag, involving teams and jails. It is thought to have migrated into Massachusetts from Brooklyn, with minor name and rule changes as it bled into the former resort communities that now form Boston's suburbia.

This was the sh*t back when I was a kid on Duxbury Beach. You have two teams, and each has a jail at an opposite end of the neighborhood. The teams would chase each other around, capture each other, and jail each other. You could spring your team from jail by barging into the jail without being caught.

The Notorious B.I.G. referenced the game in Things Done Changed, calling it "Coco-levio" and referencing the "Coco-levio one two three, one two tree" capture line. He was from Brooklyn, and the same game was called Relievio (with a "one two three RELIEVIO" capture line) around the same time in Duxbury. George Carlin (a bit older than Biggie and I, and a Manhattan kid) referenced "ring-a-levio" in his act several times.

Biggie points to the decline of the game's prevalence as accompanying a period of social decay, but it fell out by mere demographics in Duxbury. Once the 40 kid neighborhood mobs of the Baby Boomer 1960s and 1970s fell off to the bare dozen kids of a Generation X neighborhood in the late 1980s, you didn't have enough manpower for Relievio. Most kids would just default and play the needs-less-kids Flashlight Tag. The same demographic fate is what basically killed baseball for white kids.



White Man

I doubt that this term is in widespread use at all, and I only included it because it made me chuckle.

It's a term for the very Caucasian town of Whitman, Massachusetts.

Wokka Wokka Wokka...



Triple Eagle

This is a term for someone who went to:

1) Boston College High School

and then

2) Boston College

and finally

3) Boston College Law School.

Dee Wee

A variant of DUI, with the last two letters being pronounced as a French website editor might pronounce "yes."

I like Dee Wee because:

A) Massachusetts drinks hard enough that a Driving Under The Influence term needs not only a nickname but an acronym,

and

B) Someone, somewhere was too lazy for the three letter acronym, had to shorten it... and it caught on.

C) It rhymes.


Townie

"Townie" belongs in the Retired category, and I only mention it here because it means different things to different people

Ideally, it refers to someone from Charlestown. However, you can lay the term on someone from Southie or even parts of Dorchester without losing any effectiveness.

Once you get out into the sticks, far enough that the urban connotation is no longer necessary, it means "the locals from that town." It is often used in college towns to differentiate between the local punks and the ones who are in the dorms.

I dated a girl from Charlestown (she ruled... she had 5 kids from 4 men, all of whom were in jail for robbing armored cars, and the principal of the school that I taught at- who grew up in the neighborhood-  told me "She's a wonderful girl, sweet, never misses Mass... but if you just even take her out to dinner, she'll be pregnant before the check comes.") once. When I brought her to Duxbury Beach for a bit of ucking,  we crossed some unknown line between Charlestown and Duxbury where she stopped being the Townie and where I became the Townie. Offhand, I'd draw that line at about where the Route 128 Split is.



From The "U" When It Was Only A "C"

Many people from Massachusetts- myself included- went somewhere like Salem State, Framingham State, Worcester State, or Bridgewater State. Shoot, I went to a pair of 'em.

At some point, the state switched those schools, formerly known as Bridgewater State College and so forth, into universities. Thusly, Salem State College became Salem State University.

Universities are more prestigious than colleges. Someone like me, who has a Bridgewater State College diploma up on the wall, can front like I was smart enough to get into a University just by saying "I went to Bridgewater State." This works even if, say,  I was a moron, who BSC only let in the door because I was an orphan with a Pell Grant in each hand.

It can backfire, as there is a Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane (it once housed the Boston Strangler) in the same town which is also called "Bridgewater State," but the right man can work that to his advantage in most social situations.

However, if you catch someone fronting on their Framingham State College education like they went to a University, you can shut them down by going "You went to the 'U' when it was only a 'C.'"


Rotary

This is another one that should be retired. However, the author lives near a bunch of these, has written about them at length, and knows that someone reading this article as a prep guide prior to a Massachusetts visit may need to know some things. The centre does not hold.

What everyone else in the world calls a "traffic circle" or a roundabout" is called a "rotary" in Massachusetts. There is actually something called a "rotary" in real life, but it isn't what we have in Massachusetts. We use the term incorrectly, and great and potentially lethal differences exist between how one drives in a rotary, a roundabout and a traffic circle.

The funny part is that rotaries/traffic circles/roundabouts fell out of favor in the US, and were gradually phased out to the extent that they are now nearly extinct... except in Massachusetts, where they are still prevalent. That's right... the people who don't know the rules now define the rules.

The even funnier part is that, as far as I can tell, there are no rules in a rotary other than No Left Turn. The best way to deal with it is to treat it like stealing a base.... get a lead, pick your spot, explode full-speed, slide through the base...

Stacey, our French writer, uses a sudden zero-to-seventy snap of her wrist to illustrate the same method, and it looks very much like the motion one would use to start an outboard motor.


Brazillion

An indiscriminate number used on Cape Cod to answer the "How many dishwashers/painters/movers/laborers/whatever are on Cape Cod?" questions that sometimes arise during regional planning discussions.

Much like other intangible terms like "the code of the West" or "la plume de ma tante," it is a term that, as Hunter Thompson once said, "can mean just about whatever you need it to mean, in a pinch."


Mooncusser

We tend to assign Piracy to places like Somalia these days, and perhaps rightfully so.

However, there was once a time when America was more like Somalia than Somalia was. Cape Cod, which is a mess of little islands, hidden coves and known-only-to-locals currents, was prime ground for piracy, privateering and smuggling.

Smugglers like darkness, as they often depend on rowing ashore without anyone noticing. When the moon was shining, it increased the chances of being seen. Hence, they would "curse" at it.

"Curse" becomes "Cuss" very quickly on the lips of people who are famous for not pronouncing their R sounds.

"Mooncusser" was a prominent enough term on Cape Cod that it was in solid contention when newly-formed Monomoy High School was kicking the mascot idea around a few years back.


Peking Ravioli

This one snuck up on me. I had no idea that this term was not used outside of Massachusetts. The rest of the world calls them pot-stickers, dumplings or- properly- Jiaozi or Guotie

The term arose from Joyce Chen's restaurant in Cambridge, and it was named "ravioli" in an effort to lure in Italian customers. Attempts by Chinese restaurants to lure in Italians and Irish-who don't consider a meal to be a meal without bread- are also why the Hung Lo Kitchen in Yourtown, Massachusetts still throws some bread in with your order.

The meal itself dates back to the Song Dynasty, and versions of it have been found even further back.

New Bedford

New Bedford rules, and one of the reasons she rules is because she has about 10 nicknames. Even your author, who studies and writes about junk like this for a living, doesn't know all of them.

Nicknames include New Beddy, New Beige, Beige, New Beffuh (born of the same mom as Meffuh/Medford, I'd bet), New Betty, Baby Lisbon, New B and even The Whaling City.

You have to wave these around very carefully, as what might get you a laugh in one bar might get you a chain-whipping in another. With the exception of Baby Lisbon, you never know which is which.


Greenie

This is a term for a worker of Irish descent who is in Massachusetts illegally.

There is a layered meaning to the term, with "green" working along the lines of "new, naive, inexperienced" as well as the green of the "green card"... which a true Greenie wouldn't have, anyhow.

However, the main thrust of this term is the Irish reference. I'd recommend knowing but not using this one, as it could get you stomped by a roofer in many a pub across our reading area.

Mike Greenwell patrolled left field in Fenway Park for many a season with this nickname, and I have no idea if he knew about the meaning.


Shanty Irish

While we're on the subject, this term falls into the same pejorative region.

It is not a term in itself, as it needs something to modify. It is very much like how "wicked" is used in Massachusetts.- no one ever says "wicked" in a stand-alone sense. The heading should technically be "Shanty Irish ____," and only isn't because I needed an extra paragraph.

You can use it in front of "house," "town," "family," and whatever else you might want. A guy who I used to work with, who no doubt had a grouchy wife, used to bemoan the "shanty Irish bone" that the Good Lord in all his wisdom had cursed him with. He used to volunteer for extra shifts a lot.


Upper/Lower/Mid//Outer/Up/Down/Out/On/Off Cape

Cape Cod is easy to get around on. Two roads cut right through it. If you get lost, it's a husband's dream... if you just keep driving and your wife doesn't yell out the window for directions, you'll hit Route 6 or Route 28 again soon enough.

So, to make it more confusing, locals have a dozen different terms for navigation that make perfect sense to them and will drive a New Yorker insane. This is before we get to the rotaries (see above).

Upper/Lower/Mid/Outer Cape Cod is easy to explain. Trains used to run out here from Boston, and the terms are born from the towns' relative placement on the list of train stations.

Upper Cape = Bourne, Falmouth, Mashpee, Sandwich

Mid Cape = Barnstable, Yarmouth and Dennis

Lower Cape = Brewster, Harwich, Chatham

Outer Cape = Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, Provincetown

Parts of the Lower Cape appear higher on a map than parts of the Upper Cape do, but try not to worry about that right now.

Other navigational aids on Cape Cod:

"Off Cape" means everything on Earth once you cross the bridges (Sagamore and Bourne). It is used how "Outside The Asylum" is used in Douglas Adams novels.

"On Cape" speaks not of a region, but of a direction. You might tell someone asking for your ETA that you "just got on Cape," or you someone in Dartmouth may tell a tourist to "just take Route 6 to the bridge, and follow it on Cape."

"Out on the Cape" is how Cape Codders speak of people further out (east, sometimes north, sometimes even south... as long as it correlates with Route 6 or Route 28) on Cape Cod than they are.

"Down the Cape" is a) how someone from the mainland refers to someone from the mainland who moved to Cape Cod, i.e. "Steve moved down the Cape," or b) how Cape Codders move along a directions-seeking tourist once they determine that they will find either Route 6 or Route 28 soon enough, i.e. "Get on Route 6 and just keep heading down the Cape." Option B only works west-to-east, except when it is working south-to-north.


South Shore vs South Coast

These two terms should mean the same thing, but. uhm, welcome to Massachusetts! Remember, this is where a single road is concurrently 95 North, 93 South, 128 North and Route 1 South.

The South Shore is considered to be Boston's southern coastal suburbia, and it runs roughly Quincy to Plymouth.

The South Coast is the Greater New Bedford area, and was called so until a weatherman invented "South Coast." It runs from Wareham to Fall River or so.

The town of Bourne's mainland area forms the hinge on the imaginary door between these two, and is the only town that touches both regions. Bourne sort of serves the same Latvia/buffer zone purpose with Cape Cod and the rest of the world.

Regional Accents In Massachusetts

Shot from the cah, not fah from the bahn, in Cahvah.... OK, it's Ryegate Farm in Plympton, but I didn't feel like driving up to Harvard for one stupid cah-in-yahd picture....

Massachusetts is known world-wide for her brutal accents. I don't need to tell you that, you live it.

Our job today will be to examine what makes up the Boston Accent, how far it spreads, where it stops, what stops/changes it, and what it then becomes. We also wish to define lesser-researched terms like "South Shore Accent" and "Cape Cod Accent."

I want to state right here that, although I have Historian credentials, I got into Journalism as a sportswriter, and anything beyond sports-writing greatly involves the chance of my intellect running into a wall. As the causal agent in the intellect/wall encounter, I might not be aware when it happens. If you read an article on quantum physics that Neil DeGrasse Tyson wrote and you disagree with it, he's probably right and you're probably wrong. That might not be the case today when you and I speak about Linguistics.

I should also add that the author is fiercely parochial. I firmly believe that Plymouth, America's longest-running settlement for white people, is home to the true American accent. Once you start heading West and South, this true American accent gets corrupted.

Massachusetts was English territory, and English is the main language here. However, Massachusetts also was an ocean away from England, and we sort of got our own thing going on eventually. Massachusetts has had a lot of immigration, so we now have a lot of English being spoken by non-English people who are taking an earnest crack at it. Throw in the great mixtape of Time, and here we are discussing different local accents.

Remember, if you go by Years, our main dialect is Algonquian. If I remember, I'll call the Wampanoag Language Research people and ask if the more eastern Wampanoag speakers drop their Rs.

Any accent flexed in Massachusetts falls under the broad umbrella of New England English. This is a grouping of 3-10 local accents, depending on who you count. Two super-dialects exist within this grouping:

-Western New England English is spoken in Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, Vermont and northern New Hampshire.

- Eastern New England English (which encompasses the Boston Accent), which was the language of most of New England for much of her White Guy history, is utilized in eastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and coastal Maine.

We'll draw a map for those who got confused by that.

Western New England English, which you might know as Hick Speak or How They Talk In Places With Mountains or Those People Who Use Rs, is first up to bat. It seems to run along the Connecticut River, and was spread by trade.

While grouped in the same general accent, Connecticut and Vermont speak differently, but they are more like each other than they are ("ah") like Boston. The same goes for Western Massachusetts.

Western Massachusetts is sort of a merger zone for the CT and VT versions of the accent, and Merger Zones are a subject we'll revisit soon enough.

As with most things New England, I doubt Connecticut's loyalty. However, the consensus among linguists is that the Mountain Speak hasn't been overridden by the powerful Noo Yawk influence coming from the big city to the SW.

Anyhow, the Syrup States are some other website's problem. My area of concern is east of Connecticut through Cape Cod, and then up the coast to Maine.

BOSTON

Boston is the hahhtland of the Boston Accent, and- by proxy- the North East New England English accent. They are most frequently associated with dropping their R sounds, a habit known as non-rhotic speech. We also use Broad A sounds, which is where my own powerful Boston accent screws up the narrative... I can't imagine in my head what the non-Boston version of the trap-bath split is.

You've heard a zillion actors take a crack at the Boston accent. Cheers was famous for it. Norm made a weak effort at the accent. Sam didn't try at all. Fraser and Diane sort of flex a Brahmin accent, and Carla sounds like she's from the Bronx. Cliff (the actor who played him was from Connecticut) tried hard, overdid it, and sounded very much like a non-drawling Mainer.

Johnny Depp, who can do anything, couldn't do the Boston accent. Jack Nicholson, with a shelf full of Oscars, never even tried to fake one in The Departed. Ben Affleck did the very rare "had the Boston accent, sort of had it altered in acting school, and then had to re-learn it when Boston movies came into vogue" movement. Chief Brody can't do one, even with his Islander wife helping him.

I know from how we market this page that, if you're reading this, you don't need me to explain to you what the Boston accent is.

The most powerful and natural usage of a Boston Accent that I ever heard was when I was installing office furniture in the 1980s with the V Crew, a bunch of Southie guys who took a lot of Valium. While I can't repeat it here, it involved the meanest V Crew guy loudly encouraging a man who he thought might be a black homosexual to go through the crosswalk more quickly. While the racial slur was textbook non-rhoticism, he managed to stretch "queer" out to three syllables without even thinking about using an R sound. I'd write it, but I have no idea how to. It would need an A, a Y and a perhaps several Hs.

There is at least one Facebook page where you have to even SPELL in a Boston Accent.

As far as "where does the accent start to change" part, it may be easier to look at the borders. We already looked at the WNEE accent out west. The Boston accent slams into that once you get out of Worcester.

We'll get to the South Shore and the Cape in a moment, but we first need to do some of that Merger Zone work.

MAINE 

There are two Maine accents. The main Maine accent is the inland one, where you ask a guy a question and he answers with an "ayup." That old dude from the Pepperidge Farm commercials rocked this sort of Maine accent. Stephen King, when he speaks instead of writes, also has a strong Maine accent.

They say that the Pepperidge Farm guy (Parker Fennelly, born in the 19th Century) has pretty much what would be a textbook Yankee accent. All of New England sounded like him before the Industrial Revolution. Boston accents, imitating England-English dialects of the 1800s, sprung up 200 years after the Yankee accent. It was all Ahhhhhhhhhhh after that.

When you get too close to Boston, the accent shifts heavily to Massachusetts. Boston-influenced Mainer is the other Maine accent. The Boston accent follows the coast, through parts of New Hampshire, from Cape Cod to southern and central Maine. Maine is where it merges with the other Maine accent.

Inland Maine is heavily influenced by the Vermont accent and even the French accent dropping down from the Great White North.

There's a touch of Maine to the Cape Cod accent, but we'll get to that in a minute.

RHODE ISLAND AND THE SOUTH COAST

Rhodey is an itty-bitty state with a unique position in this discussion. They are the home of the Southeast New England English Accent accent.

In short, Rhode Island has a very New York tinge to their accent. They are non-rhotic, but very distinct from Boston. The second word of "Rhode Island" starts with a "D" when a true Rhode (Island) Scholar is speaking, and is closely related to her neighbor, Lon-Guy-Land.

It is notable in that they are not connected to New York other than through Connecticut, and Connecticut isn't as Noo Yawk-sounding. That's not easy to pull off.

It might have to do with tourists, and definitely is related to Rhodey's healthy Italian population. Italians are able to resist the Boston accent somewhat, but they go under in a second for a Rhode Island accent. Rhode Island is also the top location in America for another Romance language bunch, the Portuguese.

It pushes out of Rhodey onto the South Coast somewhat, but it hits a wall once you get out of her cities. "New Beffuh" was coined by someone having fun with this accent.

Probably the best representative is Peter from The Family Guy, a show that is very up-in-your-face Rhode Island. He sounds like he's from New York, which is OK in Rhode Island. "Plunderdome" Buddy Cianci is was also a known heavyweight among Rhodey accent users.

CAPE COD

You'd be tempted to say "Ted Kennedy" here, but remember that he was born in Dorchester. Cape Cod won him over, but- as a Dorchester kid myself- I can tell you that the Dot never leaves the Rat.

Cape Codders have several factors at work when they speak. This is a key merger zone, and you'll notice that whoever I stole that Accents Map from didn't even try to score Cape Cod.

Whether the Cape Cod accent exists as a distinct entity is subject to some debate. It's a little bit of Maine, a smidgen of New York, a touch of Connecticut, a whiff of Rhode Island, a hint of Florida and a heaping dollop of Boston.

They are at the tail end of the Boston Accent, and it is the main influence on year-round residents. Ask someone from the Cape to say "Yarmouth" or "Barnstable" if you need an example, although I'd recommend doing so once the Summer People leave.

Summer People come from all points of the globe, bringing their accents with them and sometimes staying for 1/3 of the year. This can be very influential, as most Cape towns double in population in the summer. Families in cottage neighborhoods tend to spread out among that neighborhood when the kids get older, meaning that a Brewster neighborhood may have a rather large bloc of people who speak with the same sub-species of a Noo Yawk accent.

Many other Cape Codders are snowbirds, meaning that they have some other strong influence on their speech for 6-10 months a year. This effect is compounded by the fact that so many of our Snowbirds do their thing in Florida. Fortunately, a lot of Florida's snowbird population comes from Massachusetts, so the tinge is weakened somewhat.

In short.. although "cosmopolitan" is not a term normally ascribed to Mashpee, it does technically fit. This is the best explanation I can give you for the differences between Boston and Cape Cod's accents.

The Kennedy clan wield the most famous version of the accent, although there is a heavy Boston influence. People under 40 may or may not know that "Diamond" Joe Quimby, the eternal mayor of Homer Simpson's Springfield, is doing a Kennedy impression. Between Quimby and the Kennedys, the Boston accent is sort of the American Politician accent.

THE SOUTH SHORE

Time changes many things. I sure look worse now than when I was a kid... and I wasn't a good-looking kid, believe me. Time also changes accents.

If you ever read "Cape Cod Folks," which was written about 1860s Southern Plymouth, you'll be amazed at the dialogue. People who live where my Hahvahd Yahd ass does used to talk like drawling ("Becky was mad, and wouldn't speak to teacher, along o' teacher's goin' with Beck's beau.") Maine people. I saw not one dropped R, and the author, a socialite English teacher from New York, would have noticed such a thing.

Like we said earlier, most of New England spoke with the Maine accent right up until it became fashionable in Boston to drop Rs after vowels. It took some time to drift out into the deep suburbs and rural areas.

I'm not old enough to do anything but guess at this, but I'd say that the South Shore started changing when Going To The Beach became a major American leisure activity. The changes accelerated when Route 3 was built, opening up the South Shore as a home for Boston workers.

When busing hit in the 1970s, anyone with money fled Boston. Much of the South Shore was undeveloped, or existed in cottage/cabin form. This changed, and most towns on the South Shore saw their population double from 1950 to 1980... some even doubled from 1970 to 1980.

This influx of Southie/Dorchester/Roxbury/Hyde Park people changed the phonic character of the South Shore. By the 1980s and perhaps long, long before, the South Shore was the second home for the Boston Accent.

There is a possibility that the South Shore may soon out-Boston Accent the actual people from Boston. Boston always has and will continue to draw immigrants, both from America and abroad. They will do so at a rate much, much higher than somewhere insular like Pembroke will. Southie is only 80% white, and is 8% black. Duxbury is 99.4% white. Southie is rapidly gentrifying, while Cohasset doesn't look that much different demographically than it did in 1986. This will change the Boston accent... in Boston.

That's right, folks.... we're really not that far from a day when a mob movie is being shot in Massachusetts, and people from Southie get turned down in casting because they don't sound "Southie"enough for the mob movie. This actually happened once (visually) with Dawson's Creek, a show about Cape Cod that was shot in North Carolina because Cape Cod didn't look Cape Cod enough for the producers). When that day comes, don't be shocked if the set of the gritty urban mob movie looks a lot like a Marshfield High School reunion.

I hunted for the South Shore accent all over those there Internets. I may eventually find what I'm looking for, but the best line I saw came in a so-bad-I-won't-link-to-it "People from California Try To Pronounce New England Town Names" video. Looking at "Scituate," some gnarly dude said "It looks like the degree you get if you study Science Fiction in college."

You may also enjoy this forum where someone moving to the South Shore posted a query as to "Which South Shore Town Do I Move To If I Don't Want My Kids To Get The Boston Accent?" Unfortunately for her, the answer is "Plymouth, 1835."

There are some differences between the coastal South Shore accent and the interior Plymouth County one, but they are minor enough that we won't bother with them unless a fight starts in the comments.

The best simple explanation is that the South Shore Accent is similar to the tourist-altered Cape Cod accent, but every tourist on the South Shore is from Hyde Pahhhhhk.

We Need The Reader's Help: Boston and Cape Cod Accents

We're fishing for help with an article we're doing on the range of the Boston Accent. Since all of America isn't using the Boston Accent, one must assume that the Boston Accent stops somewhere. If so, where does it happen, and what does it then become?

The Boston Accent is a tricky thing to explain, as is the cutoff point. Sometimes, when I can't word the preamble properly, I just transcribe Cranberry County Magazine staff conversations...

Stephen Bowden: "I moved from Dorchester to Quincy to Duxbury in a span covering about 5 years. When I went to school in Duxbury, I was almost immediately pulled from class and inserted into Speech Therapy, where they attempted to exorcise my Boston accent like it was demonic possession. I spent hours saying words like 'farther' and 'Jimmy Carter' over and over."

Stacey Monponsett: "I moved to Massachusetts from France as a child. I was initially disappointed that I hadn't landed in one of the cowboy regions. When I settled in Boston, I assumed that everyone in the city spoke like The Godfather, and that, once you drove out of the city a few miles, everyone spoke like Andy Griffith. I can recall being very frustrated when I moved into the suburbs and everyone still sounded like the Boston people. I then, having kept my disappointment to myself and not getting the opportunity to be corrected, assumed that you had to go to Western Massachusetts to get a cowboy accent. This delusion lasted until I went to Smith."

Cranberry Jones: "Why don't we stop in Fairhaven for lunch?"
Jessica Allen: "I grew up there, You're saying it wrong. It's not 'Fair-haven," it's 'Fuh-haven.'"
CJ: "'Fah-haven?'"
Jessica: "No, Fuh-haven."
CJ: "I grew up 20 miles from you. I can't believe that we differ this much phonetically."
Jessica: "Why don't we stop in New Bedford for lunch?"
CJ: "New Beffuh!"
Jessica: "Never mind. I'm no longer hungry."

Girl From Rural Kentucky At A Bourne Hotel: "Excuse me, Sir... would you talk to my friend for a moment?"
Stephen: "What do you want me to say?"
Kentucky: (laughs) "Whatever you want..."
Stephen: (taking phone) "Hey, how you doin'?"
Girl On Phone: "Are you an actor?"
Stephen: "No, I'm a reporter."
Girl On Phone: "Say 'Harvard isn't that far from Boston Harbor,' please"
Stephen: "'Harvard isn't that far from Boston Harbor.'"
Girl On Phone: "Well, I'll be dipped..."
Girl From Rural Kentucky: (grabbing phone from Stephen) "See? I told you it was real. Y'all owe me twenty dollars, bitch!"
Girl On Phone: (heard faintly) "I thought they just made that accent up for movies."

Stacey: "Being a French immigrant to Boston had one benefit.... I was the only one at AOL Sports who was able to say 'Brett Favre' effortlessly. His last name is sort of like how Americans say 'five,' but not really."
Abdullah: "Southerners add a syllable, I bet."
Stacey: (performs the worst Southern accent ever) "Fav-ruh."
Abdullah "All of those 'R' sounds that Boston people drop? They are sent to Texas, and put into words like 'wash.'"

America is a land of great diversity. You can have a Cape Verdean girl hand you Mexican food on the Irish Riviera, or you could French-kiss a Russian escort girl at a Swedish massage parlor... all in Massachusetts. This diversity ranges into Accents, and America must have thousands of them.

Several of these accents stand out. California, holding a coast that is about Georgia to Boston, probably has a thousand other regional accents aside from the Valley Girl one... but not if I just shut my mind to the possibility. Southerners have their own thing going on. Anyone with a TV has probably heard the Noo Yawk accent, and perhaps can even differentiate between it and the Lon-Guy-Land accent.

This differentiation leads into today's theme... Is there a difference between the Boston accent and the Cape Cod accent? If there is, where does it begin to assert itself? Does the South Coast favor one or the other, or do they have their own thing? Where do places like Maine and Rhode Island fit into this?

We're seeking your feedback on the matter. We'd like informed opinions, wild guesses, "I've lived in all three" sort of observations, lines of demarcation, bad jokes/puns, "I'm from here and my wife is from there" Mars/Venus tangents, "I'm from Connecticut and you're all goofy-sounding" disses and whatever else might pop into your head.

Feel free to take advantage of this page's COMMENTS feature, or you can drop some knowledge in the comments section of whatever Facebook group you saw this article in. We won't quote anyone directly, unless they get off a good line. I'll try to chase down a linguistic expert while you're doing that, and we'll see what sort of non-rhotic fun we can have later this week. We thank you in advance for your help.

It just occurred to me that there are 6 billion or so people on the planet, and I am most likely the only one thinking "Where do you find a Boston linguistics expert on an August weekend?"

Massachusetts Town Names That No One Else Can Pronounce

Scituate

Sort of like "sit chew it," but not really.


Leicester

"Molester" without the first name of the slap-happy Stooge. Remember, the "r" is non-rhotic.


Billerica

Silent "e," and "rica" is pronounced like My Friend Flicka.


Gloucester

The people who make the Gorton's Of Gloucester commercials pronounce it wrong. It's actually sort of like "Gloss Stir"... if you pronounce that last R, that is.


Worcester

I was a security guard at the Worcester Centrum one year, and I saw Kenny Rogers botch this one. "Me and the boys travel across the land, but we always love it when we come back to War Chester." Someone up front shouted the proper word, causing Rogers to make a confused face and say, a bit more properly, something that sounds a bit like Rooster. The town is sometimes pronounced like the steak sauce, and vice-versa.


Somerville

The best way I can explain this without maxing out the syllable-syllable-syllable thing is to say that the Beach Boys or the Heat Miser should live here. Ironically, this is where Winter Hill is.


Leominster

Lemon-stir, quite possibly named so that people with a jar of water and some sugar would never forget how to make lemonade. Bree Sisson, the WBZ newsie from Jacksonville, always stumbles over this one. I forgive her.


Chicopee

Sort of like "chicory," but not really. This mostly just fools foreigners, but it fools them badly.

Sandwich

One thing that I discovered when I moved to Cape Cod is that about 20% of the people I know pronounce this as "Sammich." It goes up to 35% if the town name is dropped mid-sentence.


Tyngsborough

"Ting," not "Tying." Also, note the over-lettering of what should be "boro." Many towns, including Middleboro and Foxboro, refuse to use the ugh ending. No, none of these town names end in a way that rhymes with "cough."


Rehoboth

People who write dictionaries- who may just have one guy who specializes in the little ruh-hoe-buth parts of dictionaries- know how to tell you how to pronounce this. I can't do it, at least not in print.


Cataumet, Waqouit, Weqauquet, etc...

Cape Cod's town names are easy, but they make up for it by having impossible village names.


Woburn

The "o" is pronounced exactly like the "u" is pronounced in "tuba," because... well, f*ck you.


Haverhill

More "shave" than "have." A rare pronounced R sound in a Massachusetts town name.


Cotuit

"O" as "uh," then the last part of "Do it to it." Yes, the "o" is a "u" sound and the "u" is an "o" sound. We may one day be invaded by a foreign power, but they will not sneak up on us if they have to talk at all.


Fairhaven

You'd think that "fair" is in this word, but you'd be wrong. The "ir" was put in that word just to fool the British. The remainder of the prefix is pronounced like a longer way to run... provided that The Sound Of Music is set in Mission Hill.

Duxbury

Childe Stephen made a relatively quick leap from Dorchester to Quincy to Duxbury in the 1970s. Duxbury is about where, after Busing, the Boston accent runs into the more clipped Cape Cod accent. I spent 4th and 5th grade being removed from regular class for Speech Therapy, and all of it was me, over and over, having to say words like "farther" and "carnivore" as they exorcised my Southie accent like I was Regan MacNeil. As for pronouncing Duxbury, some people pronounce the end like Miss Sisson's first name, some say it sort of like "berry," and some say it sort of like the last part of Kitty Purry. The first part is like "Ducks," and not at all like Frank Dux from Bloodsport.


Tyringham

"Tier," not Tie."


Cochituate

Next....


Hyannis

More "Buy Ann this" than "Uranus."


Nahant

Just as confusing backwards as forwards.


Eastham

Looks easy enough. The end can be a deal-breaker. I threw this article up on the Eastham FB page, and there is some debate ongoing. 'Ham or 'Hum, choose your side wisely. It is tied very heavily into how one pronounces "Chatham." I'm an Upper Cape guy, this is Outer Cape stuff, and I can't be the one who makes the call.


Housatonic

Should be in Texas, and used as an adverb.


Wellesley

Also should be used as an adverb.


Mattapoisett

This isn't that hard to pronounce, but you have to stare at it for a second before you do so.

Quincy

Your favorite TV coroner pronounces his own name wrong, there's a Z in this.


Assinnippi

A little bit of Mississippi, in Norwell.


Assonet

Sounds like a crude name for pantyhose.


Cambridge

More "I came, I saw..." rather than Cam Neely's first name.


Padanaram

The nice part of Dartmouth, but it sounds like a level of Hell.


Truro

A rare Massachusetts word that pronounces both "r" sounds. It fools people who try to fake a Boston accent by dropping every "r." The actor who portrayed Cliff Clavin would have Jacksonian seizure if "Truro" came up mid-sentence on the teleprompter.


Amherst

No "H."


Acushnet

"A cushy net," minus the "y." The town seems to be named after a hammock.


Groton

Rhymes with "cotton," I think. I don't get there much.


Athol