It's still a mahk of distinction: The accent sets Bostonians apart
The Boston Globe, September 23, 1999
By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Correspondent
When Richard Sepe moved to Seattle after spending the first "25 ye-ahs" of his life in the Boston area, he was surprised to find that his regional accent made all the difference in his life on the West Coast. "All of a sudden it became a source of identity for me," Sepe said. "It was always a conversation piece, and I made a lawt of friends and professional contacts because of it." Sepe, who lived in Seattle for eight years before returning to Boston, even believes that his hard-to-miss Littleton-bred accent helped his newborn son receive extra care in a Washington hospital. "A lawt of the doctahs in the hospital went to school in Boston, so we could tahk about the Red Sox, and they always knew who we were," said Sepe, 33, who works in marketing and now lives in Westford. "People would say that my accent was chahmin'." Sepe is not alone. In an increasingly mobile society where many Bostonians migrate to other parts of the country, the famed "Boston dialect," as linguists call it, acts as a marker of identity. And as thousands of "New Bostonians" move into the city every month, accents are a point of separation between those who were born here and those who came later.
    Despite the dispersion and dilution of the local population, linguists say the Boston accent is still thriving, defying longstanding fears that homogenization would send r-dropping, "wicked"-exclaiming, frappe-drinking locals the way of the dinosauhs.
    The local vernacular continues to evolve, fading away in suburban towns and the more transient pockets of the city even as young children are sure to carry it into the 21st century in much of the Boston area. Though out-of-town transplants often ridicule the accent, the majority of those who exhibit it are bursting with pride and want their children to speak it, too, whether it's at the dinah table or to the teachah.
    WEEI sports commentator Eddie Andelman says he has been asked by bosses to tone down his accent his entire career, but he has always refused. "It signifies wheah you're from," said Andelman, who started in radio in 1969. "It means you're an individualist, you're street smaht, you save money, you read litteratchah and you're a passionate sports fan. "Special people live heah," Andelman said of Boston.
    No recent statistics are available to reflect how much of the current Boston population is non-native, but previous studies and a trove of anecdotal evidence indicate the number of transplants is growing every day.
    In 1987, a Boston Redevelopment Authority study showed that almost one-third of heads of households in Boston had moved to the city within five years, and nearly a half had arrived within 10 years. That trend has continued in the 1990s, said John Avault, research manager at the agency.
    From July 1998 to June 1999, 78,000 people converted their out-of-state driver's licenses to Massachusetts licenses, compared to 47,000 people in a corresponding period in 1995 and 1996, the Registry of Motor Vehicles said.
    Increasingly, Boston is dominated by young, well-educated people who were born elsewhere, arrived for college or graduate school, and then stayed on, said Paul Harrington of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "The traditional population is becoming much less important, and it's much less a city of families," Harrington said.
    As born-and-bred Bostonians elbow through bigger crowds of newcomers, the accent means more than ever. Of course, there is no single Boston accent, but rather many accents - Kennedy-speak, the dying Brahmin version, and the neighborhood variations that feature a bit of Irish brogue here or a hint of Italian cadence there.
    Whether an insider or an outsider in any given neighborhood, whether a jetsetter or a local, a person's speech lays all his or her cards on the table. And, in the minds of Bostonians new and old, South Boston is a lot farther from the Back Bay than a map might suggest.
    "I nevah say I'm from Boston, I say I'm from Southie," said Jean Willey, 76, on her way to a lunch at St. Augustine's Church. "Boston belongs to the yuppies and the big-business people. I'm South Boston bohn and raised, and I hope to die heah."
    To Bill Dillon, 65, also of South Boston, his accent pays respect to his parents who emigrated from Ireland to the house his family has owned since the 1930s, to his late wife - a "Southie girl," and to his six children and 13 grandchildren. "I'm quite proud of the way I speak," Dillon said at Sullivan's Pub in South Boston.
    In the past decade, some specialists have predicted that the dominance of national advertising and entertainment, combined with population shifts, would put an end to local dialects. But that hasn't proved true, according to University of Pennsylvania linguist William Labov. "Our work is surprising. It shows that the mass media has very little influence on the way people behave in everyday life. They watch [ television] but they don't copy it," Labov said. "The Boston accent is very solid."
    The Boston dialect, descended from the affectations of the British, benefits from centuries-old local pride and love for the City on the Hill, say linguists and locals alike. "Bostonians are generally prouder of their accent than people in other cities," said John McCarthy, a professor of linguistics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    Boston-speak, however, is "highly, highly stigmatized," said Harvard linguist Bert Vaux, who notes that he has never seen a Harvard student's Boston accent last for more than a semester. [Note: this quote was taken out of context. The dialect is indeed stigmatized, but it shouldn't be!--BV]
    One Boston transplant, Newbury Street art dealer Sarah Ryan Chandler, 31, is typical of newcomers in her reaction to the Boston dialect. "It's an unfortunate bias, but I tend to think it's not very polished, and it doesn't speak very well of the education of the person," said Chandler.
    With the homogenization of American culture, some words and expressions - such as "tonic" as a synonym for soda - seem to be disappearing from speech, at least among young people, said Vaux. But new words enter the local vocabulary at the same time, attesting to the vitality of the dialect. For example, Boston schoolchildren eat "potato puffs" at lunch, rather than the "tater tots" served to their peers around the nation.
    Unavoidably, the reach of the dialect has shrunk. McCarthy notes that in many towns surrounding Boston, people in their 40s and 50s use the misplaced "r" and the broad "a," while their children tend to speak standard English.
    College is the time that many Bostonians must choose whether they want to identify with - and be identified by - their way of speaking. While some tame their r's into place, few give up phrases such as "wicked awesome" and "so don't I" - or abandon their pride of place, said Adam Gaffin, who maintains the "Wicked Good Guide to Boston English" on his Boston Online Web page.
    Boston College sophomore Nick Egirous, of Waltham, finds himself "tortured" even on his home turf. "A lot of people at BC are from out of state, and they make fun of me," Egirous said. "But the reality is that they-ah in my territory." Egirous admits that the teasing has led him, unconsciously, to "speak a little more propah around professahs." But around his friends, he "could cay-ah less."