I turned on the television as I was eating breakfast this morning and one of favorites, the Departed, was on. I had been listening to a Providence accent all week and I might thought, when I first arrived, that their accents (Providence and Boston) were pretty much identical.

They’re definitely not. I had been listening to people talk like Peter Griffen, calling their neighbors ‘Mass-holes’ and ‘Connecti-dicks’. The smallest state in the Union has to has its distinction.

But there are peculiar similarities. Not in the way they chop the end of words, drop R’s, or either speak so fast you thought there were inventing German-like composites or so slow it sounds like they’re about to break out in tears.

While on the shuttle to the airport, i overheard a conversation on driver’s radioband between a speed talker and slow talker:

Driver1 (Jack): Gah, I have ta pick up [unintelliglble].
Driver2: Whassa mattah wit thah?
Driver1: Yahwell… She juss gabs n gabs thah hole time. 45 minutes, thah hole ride.
Driver2: Jack, you call me every three minutes. Juss tah talk.
Driver1: Eh, whatevah.

Driver3: I couldn’t get in [on the radio]. I gotta ride tah Bristol.