Daily Dose of English 139
The Boston Accent
Daily Dose of English 139
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to, well, every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about the Boston accent. It's time for another one of those accent episodes where we talk a little bit about an accent of English to learn a little bit more about how English sounds and that sort of thing. And today we're talking about the accent that is pretty typical to Boston, which is a part of New England. It's a city and it's relatively large, but it's also pretty old in the U.S. at least, which is why it has a relatively specific accent. There's a whole area of New England that has similar things. It's like Northeastern New England English has this whole sound to it, but there's a more typical sound that you'll hear from somebody with what you'd think of as a Boston accent. I believe it has, a lot of influence from like Irish Americans from a long time ago, but I don't actually know really why or where it came from or whatever it is, but it's pretty, uh, it's pretty characteristic, I guess you could say. Um, characteristic is something that is, is pretty clear, right? Lots of people know the Boston accent in the U S it's like something that's a little bit famous, um, because it has a very specific sound. Um, so let's talk a bit about it. So the sounds that we find in it, the traditional Boston accent sounds are things like a, e, a, a, a, a, a, a, oo, Oh, um, there's often the big difference. There is a tighter. Oh, um, rather than, Oh, which you might hear in my accent. Um, and then there's normal. I or, um, boy, ow, ear or air and or those are the different ones. Those are the sort of, uh, big differences. We'll talk about that in a second. Um, there is a short ass sound that you definitely get. that sort of sounds typical, right? This like ah in trap. Um, and that gets a really tensed, right? And so before an end, so man, a planet, planet, planet. Um, that's very similar to what I do, but it's, it's, it's, it's a little bit different. I don't actually know the exact difference, but I don't really say planet. I would say more like planet. Um, and so it, it just does sound a tiny bit different to me. Um, you, but, In some places where there's a different ah sound are in things like half and bath, bath and half and glass instead of bath, half and glass. And so this is one of the sounds that is a little bit more Obvious, I guess I don't know if that's what you want to say, but like it's very clear when you hear that There's also a couple of other just different pronunciation with our words because the Rostant the Rostant the Boston accent is non rhotic Typically, which means that they don't have this the er sound in our words So like words like square become square and we'll talk about that again in a second but this does happen like in words that often have double r's in them um instead of becoming like losing that they get this different like feeling to it instead of saying hurry like i would say you might hear hurry or a furry um instead of instead of furry like it has this different like um almost rhythm to it instead of um mirror you get mirror mirror it just has a different like separation of the sounds in a way Um, and, and that's something that is, uh, that, that I think is more common in like older people just in the entire us. But yeah. Um, there's the other thing of the, of the O and O sounds is that they are a little bit further back. Right. Instead of being, um, like, Oh, Oh, Uh, yeah. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, ghosts. Um, I'm not very good at it, but they, they do sound just a touch different. You can probably ignore that one though. I don't think that's that important to think about. Um, What else, what else is there? Okay, yeah, let's get into the non-rhoticity thing. So that's this lack of an R sound after a word. And this is what Boston is most famous for specifically. And so when you hear words like color become color, or weird becoming weird, weird, square, and you get this sort of, it sounds a lot like the New York accent like we talked about last time. Um, nurse nurse can also become like that. I think they, you can even sometimes get it as something else, but I'm not really exactly sure. Um, but the famous one is the app is the ass sound. Right, so the Pak, the Ka, Pak, the Ka is the most famous one. This sound in start becomes Stat. Stat or in the famous phrase is Pak Ya Ka in Havad Yad. Pak Ya Ka in Havad Yad is a I don't even know where it originally comes from, but it's... Harvard Yard is a part of Cambridge in Massachusetts, close to Boston. And I don't... What is it from? What is that? Phrase from, let me Google it. Let's see, let's figure out where this is from. Park, pack, ya, ca, in Harvard Yard. There, it came up right away. Where did it come from? Origin, maybe? Do I search that? Origin. What comes up is that actually only a few people are able to park their car in Harvard Yard. It's not an easy thing to do. This is not helpful, this article that I found. It's an old... I don't know. I'm not finding easily on this from my searching of where the phrase comes from. But I don't know. But the point is that it has a bunch of this aah sound in it, right? You say instead of saying aah, they say aah. And that's a very well-known phrase and it does uh, show off this accent specifically right there. The main thing of the, of the feature, the cheese, the main feature of the Boston accent is this ass sound. Um, and so if somebody is pretending to do a Boston accent, they're mostly going to do this thing. They're not really going to do anything else. There's also a funny ad that I remember seeing where there's a couple of actors from Boston. I believe Mark Wahlberg is from Boston. And there's a couple of actors and they basically got a bunch of people to talk about parking their car in Boston. Because it's also famous for being a difficult place to park the city because it's a pretty old city that was built before cars And so cars don't really fit there Which is how it should be. Maybe we'll talk about that. I think I've talked about this before but I don't like cars and so Uh, yeah. And so the, the thing is like, Oh, he's parking the car. He's got smart park. That's what it is. It was some ad for, I don't even remember the company, but they had a feature called smart park that helps you park your car. And so then there was like a bunch of neighbors saying like, Oh, he's using smart pack, just park his car. Oh, he's got smart pack. It's like, Oh, you can't park there. That's too difficult. Oh, but I got smart park or something like that. Right. That's, that's the whole joke. Um, it stuck in my mind. I definitely remember it, but I don't know what, what the company's for. So. Maybe a win, a marketing win, not really sure. But yeah, that is the core thing that you're going to hear in a Boston accent is that sound. Um, Oh, here's a, I'm on the Wikipedia page for the Boston accent and there's a notable lifelong native speakers list of people who use this accent natively and are at least somewhat famous. Let's see. Do I know anybody on this list? Do I know anybody on this list? I don't recognize any names. That's funny. Um, Huh. Oh, Bill Burr. Oh, Bill Burr. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good, um, Boston accent. Um, but yeah, you can hear some, uh, actual versions of the accent if you go onto the Wikipedia page. Uh, the last thing that I want to say about the Boston accent is that if you want to hear some more of it, like in, in some, in like a movie form, the only real movie that I can think of set sort of in Boston, um, that's like the accent like comes up as sort of thing is goodwill hunting. Um, and that's a fantastic movie with, uh, Robin Williams and. Matt Damon. Robin Williams and Matt Damon. And it has Ben Affleck in it as well. And there's several different Boston accents that come up. And it's a very good movie. Definitely recommend it. for anybody who hasn't seen it, Good Will Hunting. And I've also just looked up the 13 best movies set in Boston. So maybe I'll find another one on here to give you a recommendation. It says that The Departed is also set in Boston and that has what looks like to be Leonardo DiCaprio and also Matt Damon. Then it says Good Will Hunting, of course. Oh, Shutter Island is also fantastic. I just watched that recently. Um, and then a bunch of movies that I haven't seen. Um, but yeah, you can also Google this if you want. Uh, the, what did I search? Hang on now. Movie set in Boston. There you go. Easy. So that's all that I got for the Boston episode. I hope that you enjoyed and let me know what you thought, what you learned maybe. And are there any accents that you'd like to hear me talk about? But that's everything for me today. I'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.
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