It’s not more refined, it just doesn’t make anybody want to throw themselves out of a window to make it stop. 
Seriously, I don’t mean to offend anybody here, of course it’s a matter of taste, but I find accents like the Boston one (also the Jersey one, etc.) to be amazingly ugly. The Southern accent carries a certain stigma but is generally considered, I believe, to be far more euphonious.
I’m not the person that first used the term refined. Personally I’ve lived in a lot of states and don’t have an accent. I wasn’t making judgements about people based on their accent, the OP was.
You certainly have a right to that opinion, but I don’t happen to agree with you. At the risk of being as outspoken and a little rude as some of you have no problem being by calling someone’s accent ugly, I think some southern accents sound hickish and uneducated.
And of course I don’t want to insult anyone either.
Pepper Mill and I are both from New Jersey, now living in Massachusetts, and raising MilliCal, who’s nine.
I have to admit, it wouldn’t bother me at all if she used “wicked” as slang. (which is general New England slang, not just Massachusetts. It’s big in Maine) She doesn’t, and doesn’t have a Boston accent, either. (But I think you have to be hard-core Boston for that. We’re a little too far out)
But then again, maybe if she were using it all the time, I’d feel a little different.
Bless your hearts.
That’s fine; if you want a good belly laugh in your life I suggest a trip to the South Carolina State Fair, where you’ll find that it’s just not our accents that are hickish and uneducated. Bonus points if you come in an election year and check out the booths! 
There are, of course, probably hundreds of “Southern accents”, and I’m aware that the Yankee kind comes in similar variety. I can’t stand the upper class Massachusetts ones, either.
Well, I didn’t find Shag’s OP all that funny, but I have some sympathy for his motives. I see nothing wrong with 'wicked" in the least, but we fight our own bugaboos here in “Chicagoland”. I loathe the way my MIL speaks-her Chicago-ese: “melk” for “milk” is one example. I was born and lived in Florida, mostly brought up here, but spent summer in New England and visited family in the south–I mostly have a Midwest speech,but it’s more generic American (whatever that may be). I don’t mind the Boston accent, or the Southern one(s) for that matter-until they are lauded as being somehow better than one another or more cultured etc. It’s a matter of opinion.
What I don’t like to hear my kids say is more the rap and hip hop slang. Thank god they only do it as part of goofing around.
We all have our lines in the sand. I will say that if the OP is determined to draw a line about stuff like this, I can easily predict a long and contentious childhood and adolescence for his offspring.
This is completely different from the Boston accent. It’s a slang term and I’ve never heard anyone consider it offensive evah. My co-workers in Wichita use it constantly. I feel positively wicked when I say it naked.
You won’t be hearing any belly laughs from me, I’ve lived in the south and and liked it, accents and all. Sorry, but I wasn’t the person belittling people based on their accent, that was the OP.
When I first read his post I thought he was trying to be funny. I have a friend who went through a similiar situation. She moved to Mississippi, and her son told her he wanted a ‘dawg’. We thought it was sort of funny. She was more of the opinion that he son was fitting and glad rather than pack their bags a hightail it back east.
Maybe I got a bit sensitive because of my Dad. He was born in Mass but lived most of his life in Ct and NJ. He accent was only noticeable when we visited members of his family who lived in the Boston area. Thinking about Boston accents reminds me of my dad whom I miss terribly so I might be overly sensitive, but I don’t think so.
Actually we’ve had a little fun with this thead. My husband read Shag’s post and said 'Wow, this guy actually wants his daughter to sound like one of the Bush twins.
I told my mother (born in England but grew up and spent her life in Princeton, NJ)
that Zsofia would rather jump out of a window than listen to someone from NJ speak. My mother who sounds a little like Martha Stewart (not always a good thing) reminded me that her friend ‘saw someone’ to get rid of her accent Mom never says a bad word about anyone so she quickly added that she had a ‘lovely’ speaking voice before, but it cracked me up.
I just thought it was interesting that someone who was so concerned about appearances would be so oblivious to the fact that some people could be a bit offended by his remarks.
Sure sounds like belittling to me.
Oh, good lord, isn’t anybody else smiling in this thread? Nobody here is serious except the people who’re getting offended, right? (Right?)
It’s like the Lardass scene in Stand by Me.
I smiled a lot at the OP. I must be among the select that get Shagnasty. Since then, however, not so much. It offends me when people lie about what they have said. I’m sensitive that way.
I am not familiar with this reference, can you help me out?
This thread wasn’t supposed to turn out that way but it reminded me of it in retrospect.
In the story Stand By Me by Steven King, there is a cutaway to a story one of the kids tells around a camp fire. In the story, there is this kid everyone calls Lardass. He is made fun of relentlessly and quietly decides to seek revenge. There is a pie eating contest every year at a small town fair. He enters it and people hound him even more just before the contest and threaten him not to win. What they don’t know is that he drank a whole bottle of Castor oil right before the start time. The contest starts and Lardass downs one pie after another easily leaving the competition in the dust. After many pies, his stomach rumbles so loudly that the crowd can here it. He stands up, everyone stops, and he projectile vomits all over the front row of the crowd. From there, a domino effect starts and husbands are barfing on wives and mothers are barfing on children. Lardass just sits there and watches the mayhem. The end.
Blame it on the Hyboid gland, Shagnasty. 
Brownie, I don’t appreciate being called a liar. I think I’d rather have root canal than post again in this thread, but if you want to continue, I’ll point it out what was said. If you read all of my posts leading up to that statement including the posts made previous to mine you’ll see I wasn’t trying to belittle anyone. Quite the contrary.
My little snark came from Zsofina’s post to me, and I regret that I made it.
I took that as a sort of cheap shot at me, considering I’m from NJ, posted for all to see. That’s where the remark came from.
Shagnasty, I’ll assume your intent was good natured and all in fun. And the same for the rest of the posts.
The end for me too.
Eh, don’t bother with a foreign land, either, or your perfectly American kid will start asking you if he can go play with “me mates” and start calling you “Mum”.
It’s all silly anyway. Kids will sound like their friends when you’re not around, regardless.
Cheers,
G
I first heard it on the Disney/ABC cartoon “Teamo Supremo”, as in “hecka-cool”.
Later on “The Proud Family”, someone referred to someone else as a “Wi-atch”.
:eek:
You know, I didn’t even look at your location? It wasn’t personal at all, except that in a thread where people are talking about accents and regional slang it’s going to be personal to somebody.
I wrote and rewrote about twenty different attempts at jabbing wit until I realized that all I could come up with was :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: . I knew it would only be a matter of time before we got a steaming dose of eleanorigby’s typical reactionary ignorance.