The American Spectator

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Watch Your Tongue

9.6.05 @ 12:01AM

"R" YOU READY?
Re: Lawrence Henry's In the Matter of the Boston "R":

Lawrence Henry's article on the Boston "r" reminded me of my three years' residence in Cambridge as a Harvard Law student from 1969-72. Accents in the Boston area (as they do in NYC), vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, and I suppose reflect the various patterns of immigration that have occurred in the region.

On the last day of constitutional law class in May 1971, the late professor Paul Freund brought in an old 78 rpm phonograph and played for us a transcript of an NBC red network broadcast made in 1931 on the occasion of the 90th birthday of Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Holmes was interviewed by Charles Clark, who went on to become dean of the Yale Law School and later a judge on the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. I was surprised to discover that Holmes spoke with what sounded to me as a decidedly upper class British accent. Here was a man born in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston in 1841, before the great waves of Irish and Italian immigration, who probably had a similar accent to the colonial citizens of 70 years earlier.
-- Stuart W. Settle, Jr.
Richmond, Virginia

Loved your article today. I once asked my buddy from Boston to read aloud two words that I had written on a piece of paper: drawer and draw. He pronounced the first one "draw," and the second "drawer!"
-- unsigned

I just finished reading Lawrence Henry's amusing article. I enjoyed it very much.

While he captured most of the issues regarding the Boston "r" he left one out: The Law of Conservation of R's.

In Boston, R's are neither created nor destroyed. R's are conserved. Thus for every R dropped "Your socks are in the draw", one must be created, "I want a tuner fish sandwich."
-- Gregg Germain

ALRIGHT! Finally someone has the guts to make fun of a New Englander accent (me being from New York). Since I was a child, I have heard the standard put-downs on the Southern drawl -- which to me has always been the more beautiful dialect of our country.

But being that it is politically okay to ridicule anything southern and not politically correct to draw attention to northern peculiarities -- well, this is exactly why I read the American Spectator.

You all have a good day!
-- Joellen M. Arrabito

Enjoyed your piece on the eccentric Boston 'r.' It was wicked hahd co-ah.

As a Southerner who has spent many a happy hour in Fenway Pahk, I understand Boston (Bahstun?), and can even speak a little. (Though at Sawks ticket prices today, I probably won't be returning very often -- for today's price, back in the eighties I could have sat anywhere I wanted to and Carl Yastrzemski would have driven me home after the game.)

As to your question on where to go -- go south, where the accents and the weather are softer (with some dramatic exceptions during hurricane season, so avoid the coasts). But don't come to Florida. We're overrun by Yankees and Midwesterners, so it's a real accent soup around here. The second wave of carpetbaggers has been a lot bigger than the first.

Chee-ahs,
-- Larry Thornberry
Tampa, Florida

Many years ago I overheard two girls from Cranston, Rhode Island, talking about a new purchase:

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