I love the Boston accent.
There’s something strangely satisfying about the characteristic “r’s” – pronounced like “ah” as in “Caah” (for “car”) – which vanish after certain vowels and at the ends of words (“Ah you cahlin’ me wee-id?”) and reappear if the next word starts with a vowel (“I have no idear if the cah is pahked”).
Combine this rhotic speech pattern (basically, how people pronounce their “r’s”) with the stretched-out “a’s”, as in “fah-thah (for “father”), and the widened “o’s” (“taw-nic” instead of “tonic”) and you get what many out-of-staters know as the Boston accent – and what most everyone else knows as the New England accent.
Walking into the SS Farms in West Boylston last year and hearing the owner’s Massachusetts drawl, I fell in love with the accent at once.
A fresh-off-the-tractor Vermonter, I’d moved to West Boylston just a few days before, and was feeling like a fish out of water. There were a lot of things to get used to here in Mass. – the traffic, the noise, the anonymity (nearly all of my friends were back in Vermont), and I was starting to feel like I’d never feel at home here. I missed my old, small town, where everyone knew everyone else, and old friends were never far away.
But as I hovered awkwardly in line with my nectarines and bananas and waited for my turn at the register, I overheard the woman behind the counter laughing with the customer before me, chatting in that loud, broad Massachusetts drawl that seems to fill the air with warmth. The accent and easygoing, jovial conversation reminded me of my neighbors in Vermont – and for the first time, I felt at home in this new place.
Being a huge language nerd, too, my curiosity was piqued. Naturally, I had to find out where the heck this accent came from. I mean, what if there is a town on another continent that drops their “r’s” and speaks with a Scottish brogue? How cool would that be?
So, later that night, I did my research.
It turns out that that the accent itself is a mixture of Irish and British influence. When Massachusetts was first colonized back in the 1700s, the colonists continued to speak with the accent of their home country, but with a twist.
As the social structure in England changed, more people from lower social positions adopted the elite’s habits of speech, which included dropping “r’s” at the end of their sentences. Massachusetts colonists, who kept close ties to their home country, also began to adopt this speech pattern. This accent was influenced later by the arrival of Irish, Italian, and other immigrants starting in the 1800s, which created the unique speech patterns peculiar to Massachusetts.
It is believed that this trend did not catch on with the other colonies, who were not as concerned with adopting the “elite” manner (or “mannah”) of speech, which might be why it’s rare to hear Minnesotans talking about “petatah chips” or Ohio natives “pah-king their ahnt’s cah.”
Today, Massachusetts (particularly Bostonians) are renowned for their accents – it’s part of what makes the cultural fabric of the state so unique. And, for those who are trying to acclimate to local culture, it’s a good reminder of how it’s possible to find comfort and humanity in the unfamiliar.
Ayla Yersel is a student at the University of Vermont, where she double majors in public communications and global studies. Her family has lived in West Boylston for one year. She is interning this summer at The Banner.