I resent that. I am not little. I come in at 6’1" 210. Many of my stories don’t have a point but, if you took away that you shouldn’t order milk in a bar, then I can say that accomplished at least something in my life.
I suppose I am very pretenious in my own way although I am not sure where it came from. I grew up in a very poor, rural area. Nevertheless I developed as a redneck Frasier Crane but don’t think I do this for anyone else’s benefit. I am certainly no social climber and never will be.
This afternoon I went to see some much older friends in Cambridge. They are putting in a giant raised garden and I need plants for mine so they gave me some. The husband has at least $100 million or at least that is what I saw him get when we cashed out our stock options. He is on the board of at least 5 companies and 1 university and he is one of the people that I respect the most. However, both he and his wife still talk like bad Boston movie. I cringe when I hear them say some things. This isn’t a class based opinion.
More seriously, my FIL is a multi-millionaire as well but he sounds like he just saved up enough money to take a bus out of Revere for the first time. He has often heard in all honestly how much he could of accomplished if he had a better education and more refined demeanour even though he has seen and done more all over the world than anyone I know. He always kept that lower-class Boston something and can’t seem to shake it.
Some people seem to be offended by this story but the implications are almost universal. That is why families spend a great deal of money to end up in the “right” school districts and segregate themselves whenever possible in lots of ways. If you say that Massachusetts-isms, I am not sure where you are hanging out. It happens all the time especially within the region itself. Some of that stuff can make you go sterile if you listen too long.
At the risk of offending people here with a southern accent, because I don’t mean this as an insult. Explain to me where a southern accent is considered ‘refined’ as opposed to a Boston accent?
I’m not making class distinctions as you appear to be, because I find them both equally pleasing to the ear. But where in Boston is ‘lower class Boston’ in case that’s where my family is from. I’ll make sure to tell them not to speak in polite company so they won’t offend anyone.
I read your post last night and thought it was funny and sort of cute. I even clicked on your profile and saw what an adorable family you have, and thought the story was even more sweet picturing your daughter.
But seriously, the more you explain what you meant the ruder it sounds. Did you re-read what you posted? Not to make a big deal out of a little story about your family, but I found it to be a little insulting. Surely you can see that, can’t you?
I didn’t get “shouldn’t” from your story. What I took away from that thread was other people’s comments, most notably these:
So what I got is that there’s no hard and fast rule about drink orders re: social acceptance.
Yeah, but you judge people all over the place, for the most trivial things. Sounds to me like you’re carrying a lot of baggage from the past. People dissed you, or you thought they were dissing you, and you’re still bitter about it, and thinking that if you elevate yourself enough, and point out other people’s supposed shortcomings, you can justify your worth.
Is your daughter a pleasant person? Is she considerate of others? Does she say please and thank you and may I? Does she wait her turn to speak instead of interrupting? Does she sit up straight at table? That kind of thing is what makes a refined person, not speech patterns or drink orders.
Even at the best schools, kids will pick up and use inappropriate language. At a certain age, they will especially pick up inappropriate language that is known to cheese off their parents.
I don’t agree with you and don’t think the implications are universal. I can only speak for myself, but I might not appreciate my daughter picking up slang that I don’t approve of because oif it’s meaning. Not because it was said with that ‘horrible, unrefined, bad part of town Boston accent’ if that’s where I live.
When we moved to the Providence area from Queens, that use of “wicked” was something we embraced right away. My son says thinks are "wicked hicked " nice or bad or gross or hard or awesome when he really means it.
P.S. he also really thinks the drinking fountain is a bubblah. Mr. Caricci and I think that’s wicked hicked cute.
Shagnasty is pulling our collective legs. He is too good a writer not to see the joys of regionalisms. We’ve been had!
On both of our trips to New England, we quickly adopted “wicked” and used it at every opportunity. We have missed being able to use it (and still be understood) upon our return to Tennessee.
No offense taken. In the South, a Southern accent is often considered “refined” while a Boston accent sounds funny and sometimes uneducated to our ears. As much as we loved President Kennedy, we used to grimace when he pronounced Cuba as if it ended with an er instead of an uh (swah) sound. And his pronunciation of words that did have an r sounded very countrified to the Southern ear: Park your car in the barnyard became Pock ya ca in the bonyod. I’m sure this sounds exaggerated to you, but that’s how it sounded to us.
In college I read a study that indicated that Southern men who moved to the North tended to lose their Southern accents while Southern women retained theirs. For Northerners, the reverse was true. Northern men who moved South kept their accents and Northern women tended to lose theirs.
Linguists will tell you that accents and dialects don’t reflect how “refined” one is. That’s a fairly vague term anyway.
Did any of you Southerners grow up eating Arsh potatoes? I thought I had imagined this until I saw it confirmed in a book recently. The memoir was set 29 miles from the small rural West Tennessee community where I grew up.
Zoe, having read his previous nonsense about how uncouth it is to order milk in a bar (where he states, if you MUST not drink, you HAVE to request something that has a lime wedge, so you’ll be “sophistocated”), I doubt he’s pulling our legs.
Man, the quality control of the nation’s panty manufacturers must be slipping. A lot of pairs seem to be in a bunch in this thread.
Shag, I feel for you. Just be thankful that “pissah” went out as a synonym for “cool” a couple decades back.
Imagine my impression as a Bostonian (or Needhamite if that means anything to you) when I got out here 9 years ago and the going adjective among the kiddies for something great was “tight”. The implications for just the etymology of that one had me reeling.
You could have it so much worse. I’m sure a southern gentleman of your distinction might could realize that if he tried.
P.S.: You wanted to keep her from coarse, uncosmopolitan regional language and you moved to Holliston?!?
To add in my $.02:
Neither of my parents use much slang. I used very little until I went off to college and realized I didn’t fit in. Too proper language tends to put barriers inbetween people. My senior year I knew a girl who not only used very little slang, she also flat out refused to try to understand euphemisms (especially sexual ones). The result was that no one really talked to her unless they had to - we didn’t have a common language (and she would say things that could be taken in quite another way and then be very annoyed and confused when the other person would laugh. And since she never wanted to know the why of the laughter, this happened constantly).
(For the sake of clarity - if she just didn’t use slang or euphemisms but was otherwise a pleasant person we likely would have all gotten along. She was just not pleasant to be around and the above traits were some of the more prickly ones.)
Unless you live in a really blue-collar town it’s unlikely your daughter will ever develop the dreaded Boston accent in terms of day-to-day pronounciation. A lot of people use it as an adjective just to be cute. Note, “Newbury Comics: Wicked Awesome.” (which is actually their tagline as far as I remember). I see wicked as the New England “hella” which people are just going to use ironically once in a while. I lived in Mass for a hell of a lot longer than you have and have yet to develop even the faintest trace of a Boston accent even though most of the surrounding communities to the town I grew up in (Lexington)…like Billerica, Somerville, Burlington, Waltham, were boston-accented bastions. Then again, while I find the sound of the Boston accent unpleasant I don’t quite have the same…classist distaste for it.
I don’t really know what Holliston is like because it seems super farout from the city, but if you want to raise your kid to be a proper snob you’re better off in the wealth belt communities of Sudbury-Wellesley-Lexington-Lincoln-Concord etc…
I feel your pain. My six year old thinks nifty things are “vet cool” and calls his brother a “suffe knor”.
This is what happens when you live in Holland.
Worse, my four year old says “beetje” and “soeven” and “meiske”. He refers to my elder child as his “bruur”.
This is what happens when you live in the south of Holland.
Their English however is fairly formal and correct.
This is what happens when the only English you hear is from one parent and occasional television.
Having had some experience with fighting the dominant culture I can only suggest that you consider a move. To a cave, possibly. Or a foreign land. Whichever is closer.
Shag, if I’d gotten married to any of the guys who’ve ever proposed to me, my kids would have been American. They would have spoken Spanish as a second language and only because I’m stubborn that way. Excuse me if I think your preocupation is silly at best (joke or no joke).
My mother speaks Spanish with a Northern-neutral accent, slightly colored by occasional weird phrases that are direct translations from Catalan. Dad spoke Northern-neutral, slightly colored by Pamplona. You could recognize their regions of origin only if you’d spent time in them. Us kids speak Northern-neutral, slightly colored by Ribero; people mistake the coloring for the very-similar Aragonese because that’s one accent that’s common on TV. If we’d been raised in the South we probably would be unable to pronounce a proper Z; I’ve seen families like that in the train, where the parents were evidently North and the kids Andalusian accents were solid enough to be cut with a knife. I’ve also seen the opposite, Northern children born of Southern parents.
Your kid’s genotype comes from you and the wife. The phenotype… sorry, that comes from you, the wife, whatever she eats and every single person she contacts through her life. Scary, uh?
