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When advertisers try too hard to reach the local market
By adamg on Tue, 01/10/2017 - 8:08pm
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Comments
Way too many spelling errors
But if for some reason they were trying a phonetic Boston accent, they failed with "your apahtment". It would be "ya apahtment."
Nope
Gotta be an "R" in there.
Yar Apaht-mint
LOL.
Oh.... we've lived here too long. LOL!
agree
even if it's altered and softened slightly, a consonant sound between vowel sounds is usually maintained, which is why it's "ya neighbah", but "your (probably more like "yar") apahtment"
I'll meet you halfway
The anon makes a good point, but it would still be "ya rapahtment." The rhotic sound goes to the beginning of the next word if there is a glotal stop. To give a phonetic example of this, "Da fahma ris in the field wit da cows."
This is an ad for what company?
So we can make fun of the company not just the ad
More like New Hampshire accent
...or weymouth or braintree.
no one in boston speaks like that anymore.
- the original sobo yuppie
Right, because the regional
Right, because the regional accent was phased out by idiots like yourself who give yourselves way too much credit for your special snowflake presence.
*three-decker
*three-decker
Three vs. Triple
That's seems to be neighborhood/city dependent. Calling them a "three flat" would be clearly wrong, but my Boston-born MIL (and her Boston-born mother who was a child when many of them were built) always call/called them "triple deckahs".
I guess. My Dot born mother
I guess. My Dot born mother and immigrant to Dot Grandmother always called 'em three deckers. Same with aunts/uncles/etc.
Growing up in Old Colony
Growing up in Old Colony everybody called them three family houses or three families.
THIS
As a child in the 80s, and into the 90s as a teenager, we all called them three family houses. The adults around me also called them that; I rarely heard the term triple decker. This was in Jamaica Plain and Allston/Brighton.
I'm from JP and we always
I'm from JP and we always called them Triple Deckahs kid. :)
Have only ever -
- heard of them called a Triple Deckah. Family from Hyde Park, Dorchester and Southie.
TomAto tomahto....
TomAto tomahto....
A five or a fin.
A five or a fin.
Long-Time Dorchester Resident
Lived there 37 years and we always called them triple-deckers. Could vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, too, I guess. We were Lower Mills.
Also (not trying to just jump on you, believe me) we NEVER referred to the neighborhood as "Dot". Yes, it was Dot Ave and Dot Park, but the neighborhood itself was always Dorchester. Guys from Southie called it "Dot", but not us.
On your side, I haven't been living there for 20+ years now, so I do realize that things may have changed.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Ashmont near Lower Mills
Yep - that's where MIL/GMIL were from. Funny how the variations shift in short areas of space!
sauce vs gravy
same diff
RE: sauce vs. gravy
Only (or mostly) Italian-Americans are going to understand that reference.
Triple Deckers here
Mum was born in one in Dorchester, though the longtime family homestead around the corner was a two family. I swear that both in the St. Margaret's section of Dorchester and in Roslindale it's been Triple Deckers.
Three flat is a good one, but not a Boston one.
They were invented in Woosta
They were invented in Woosta & we call them triple deckers.
I live in Dorchester now & family is originally from here
And i've never said "three decker". Always triple decker. And the term Dirty Dot used to be said by Southie kids but became common in Dorchester in the last decade or so to just refer to it as Dot.
This is the kind of edginess
This is the kind of edginess and "too true" wit that an authentic Bostonian not only can truly appreciate, but, when confronted with, is so compelled by jubilation as to make a purchase.
:/
Adorable!
I'm in the wrong business
Who gets paid to repeatedly come up with this crap? How many hackneyed campaigns have gone accent reference in a Boston campaign? What product or service is even being sold here? Why don't I see references to local dialect or slang in ad campaigns targeting any other market? Would it be such a funny sideshow if an ad campaign tried to mimic the speaking manner of people living in Miami or the Bronx?
The midwestern "sh"
Another speech pattern that no one makes fun of is the Midwestern habit of pronouncing the letter "s" as "sh". In fact, this trait is seriously aped by newscasters and sportscasters everywhere, as in "thish shtory ish coming up nexsht". Obviously they are trained to speak this way. It's grating.
Agree~
I didn't know this is a "Midwestern" thing but I'm annoyed by newsreaders/reporters who constantly use the term "shtreet" instead of "street" and wonder why it's acceptable to their supervisors. There is no "sh" in the word!
My other pet peeve are the same newsreaders/reporters who are unable to pronounce the letter "t" in the middle of words like "Newton" and "Milton" - they become "New-un" and Mil-un".
Oh well - not the end of the world, just pet peeves.....
The missing "t" sound in
The missing "t" sound in Milton, Newton etc. is a documented feature of New England accents. I grew up in Southern Connecticut and that's how we pronounced anything with a central "t" like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_English#Commonalities
The article also notes that this phenomenon is found in General English, which, as you pointed out, is functionally newscaster speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American#General_American_in_the_m...
"suh-in"
The worst is people who take that missing central "t" glottal stop thing to the extreme and pronounce the word "something" as "suh-in". And seeing it in print doesn't do it justice. It has to be heard to be believed.
What about Mayor White?
"I am the mayah of the shiddy of Boshton!" as a comedian used to intone (forget which one now).
Well, there was that Geico ad
The one with the gecko putting on some kind of NYC accent, as if the faux-Australian one weren't annoying enough. The NY one had me scrambling for the remote every time it came on.
But yeah, I don't think Southerners get that kind of treatment of their accents, or Californians are sold stuff by using Valley-speak.
As demonstrated in this thread, there is no way to put on a Boston accent that is not going to grate on a lot of the natives. Even the DOT's highway signs sometimes miss with it.
You really don't get out much
You need to travel more.
Not really
I've been in CA some, and somewhat less in the South. Didn't watch TV in those places, but I didn't see any signs or billboards trying to exploit local accents. If you've got examples, trot them out.
I'd go so far to say
That the MassDOT signs egged on the accents. When the city/state does it, it makes it seem fair enough for everyone else to do it too.
I assume its an ad for a
I assume its an ad for a terrible movie starring Marky Mark.
Wow...
They forgot to mention Beantown, would have made it complete!
If You're Going To Do It...
... do it all the way. It should be "inta", not "into".
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
I think we can all agree....
.....that "Criminal Minds" does the absolute worst impersonation of a "Boston Accent"
My biggest issue with this is..
Even if I talked exactly like the stereotype, that doesn't mean I read/write it that way. That's relatively hard to read quickly which makes it a bad advertisement. Imagine a whole book written like that? It wouldn't be, they would just say, "....Jimmy said, in a thick Boston accent."
Were the people who thought
Were the people who thought of this marketing from Hollywood? Mark Wahlberg's team?
Local dialect in ads
This reminds me of some ads on the T a while back with local dialect and place references. One sentence said something like: "Have a picnic in the Common!" which I suppose was meant as a knowing reference to the tendency of outsiders to pluralize "Common." But the whole effect was belied by the preposition "in" instead of "on," which I think would grate the ears of most New Englanders.
What is this an ad for?
Google failed me
"No results found for "you live in a triple-decka""
Any good ad...
...Gets people talking. Thats what this did. But they were asking for problems by making it so easy to.pick apart. "Your" HAS to be accounted for somehow be it "yaw", "yuh", or "yew-ah."
True, But...
We're talking, but nobody seems to know what product or service is being advertised. Without that, it's a bad ad.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
The photo crops out the advertiser's name
whoever it is.
Have to Correct This...
Or this will aggravate me for the rest of my life.
The worst part about a movie with an actor from outside of Boston butchering the Boston accent is that they miss ALL of the nuances. This is how a third generation family with a Boston accent says this:
Yah live in ah triple deckah
n tha elastic holdin
yah naybah's fridge
tagetha broke n
watah leaked inta
ya rapahtment
There is also a fundamental issue with the conceptual language here. This statement is far too passive to come from someone truly from Boston. Try this instead:
Yah live in ah triple deckah
n tha kid upstayahs
couldn't tie his way
out of ah papah bag
so baby einstein decided tah use ah shoelace
insteaduva rope (like a nowhmal person)
n then watah exploded all ovah yah rapahtment
ya gatta be kiddin me kid. I mean, COME ON, ya know? Shoelaces... That's what weah callinim frum now on.
Triple Deckers
The original triple decker design came not from an architect but was developed by French Canadian carpenters.