i was raised and born in ny? but what does it mean when someone tellsme i have a boston accent?

Question

what is a boston accent and what does it sound like?

Answer 1

It means they're ignoramuses.

Answer 2

It probably means that they just aren't familiar enough with the accents of New York and Boston to make an appropriate judgment.

Anyone who lives in either New York or Boston knows that there are many different accents used in their home city. So there is no one "New York" or "Boston" accent. Although some of these accents have some things in common, they are different.

My guess is that people who say this are perhaps responding to what linguists call "r-lessness", which is a feature found in many places including the South, England, and New York and Boston. But it's not found in all dialects in all those places. In fact, one of the most famous experiments in sociolinguistics (the "fourth floor" experiment by Labov) showed that the amount of r-lessness New Yorkers have in their dialects depends on their social class. It's the same in Boston.

Don't worry about it.

Answer 3

It probably means that they know you have an accent and they cannot tell a Boston accent from a New York accent from a New Jersey accent -- all sounds the same to them. Just like you might hear someone from the south and you would just say they have a southern drawl, but could you tell if they were from Texas or Georgia.

Answer 4

pretty much....there really isn't that much of a difference, but if you are from new york, you have a new york accent.
Unless you have a Jewish accent, then that sounds a little more Boston.

Answer 5

I think what it really means is that they don't know the difference and they're trying to make conversation with you.

Answer 6

They don't know how we" New Yorkas tawk", that's probably how we sound to them

Answer 7

It means that you sound/speak like you are retarded.