From your comments, I can see the conversation has begun on local accents. Outside the state, it’s known as “the Boston accent”, but closer to home and to Boston, this most turf-conscious city in America, we know them and call them the accents of Medford, Revere, South Boston, Dorchester, and East Boston. And we’re counting on you, our listeners to call on Friday to offer the taste of your town.
A little history is in order, both linguistic and personal…
Scholars tell us that the first person to drop an “‘r” was an Englishman in the middle of the 15th century.
So you can’t blame my relatives. My family didn’t start speaking English until a couple generations ago. Growing up noth of Boston, my brotha and sistas and I were as comfortable speaking the local tongue as a cob of cawhn beside a tail of lobsta with drawn buttah. When some kids from Texas moved in to our neighbahood, we laaaffed ourselves silly because we thought everyone was supposta speak like we did.
Trouble came when I went to college, a small- Ivy League school where people’s first and last names were interchangeable. Walking across the street one day, I warned my classmate: “Look out for the cahhh!” He had no idea what I was talking about. The car missed him, but I got hit with months of abuse from my classmates because my alphabet was one letter short of 26.
By the next summer, when I returned home and met up with my old friends in the neighborhood, I was showing off my letter sweater. The letter was R. I put it in everything. (I also made sure I pronounced the suffix “ing”, even when I was swearing.) My friends weren’t impressed. Drinking a can of beer on the corner, my best friend Billy looked at me and delivered the group’s conclusion. “You’re weaaahd.”
But by then, I knew which side my bread was going to be buttered on. I went with the “r”s. I also moved away to the Northwest, where “r”s are as numerous as trees. Even now that I’ve been back home for over close to twenty five years now, I occasionally hear myself slip into the old accent. It reminds me I have to be vigilant. When you’re born without an “r” you got to hold on to every one you make.
Join in with your stories this week as we look for the inner “r” on Radio Boston.
