Welcome to Boston, Home of the Gahden

Students learn to speak Bay State


Watch this video on YouTube

You may have already tried to pahk your cah on Comm Ave, but have you been to Woostah yet? What about Bill-rick-a, or Hay-vrull? When students come to Boston University, they get a little extra education when it comes to pronouncing some of the state’s archaic city and town names, many dating back to the 1600s.

BU Today called the cops for help — specifically, lifelong Bostonian and BUPD Captain Robert Molloy — to set the record straight. Think you’re a pro? Try tackling Leominster.

Alan Wong can be reached at alanwong@bu.edu.

Explore Related Topics:

  • Share this story
  • 9 Comments Add

Share

Welcome to Boston, Home of the Gahden

Share

  • Alan Wong

    Executive Producer

    Alan Wong oversees a team of video producers who create video content for BU's online editorial publications and social media channels. He has produced more than 300 videos for Boston University, shuffling through a number of countries in the process: Australia, Argentina, Peru, Ireland, China, and Cambodia. He has also bored audiences in Atlanta and Boston giving talks on video for higher ed. Profile

Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 9 comments on Welcome to Boston, Home of the Gahden

  1. A lot of towns in New England–if not all of them–are named after English ones, so I’m kind of surprised that these only date back to the 1600s.

    Where does a person get that extra “i” in Leominster?

    Reply
    Link

  3. Haha, our silly names. There could also be a very effective video on translating everyday sentences like “theah’s a bubblah in the next rum” into normal English. That made my day!

    Reply
    Link

  9. This video made me think back to my freshman year some 20 years ago… I was laughing until I heard the comment about Worcester being “a crappy place to live.” This is not the message the university should be endorsing. It is presumptuous of newcomers to be making blanket statements about places they have likely never visited (I am basing this generalization on the name-butchering we’ve just seen). Worcester has many of the same urban problems Boston faces, and we should do more to introduce these new “neighbors” to the realities of urban communities in Boston and beyond. BU is only a microcosm of this city. As a matter of fact, Massachusetts has learned a lot from Worcester, including huge successes in their work to end homelessness.

    Reply
    Link

Post a comment.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Latest from BU Today