A Little Gem from Jeremy (A Guest Post by Jeremy Crow)

Jeremy Crow is the nom de plume of Jeremy Fink, who has been writing blog entries for almost a decade now. He has had varying degrees of success along the way, several nervous breakdowns, a few “I quit and I’ll never do this again!” moments, and so many get rich quick ideas that you couldn’t count them on two hands. None of any of this has been a failure it’s just been a trial run, for what, he does not know, yet. His brain doesn’t turn off, and he loves to see his own words.
We all need to understand that we are all in this together.

Well I am pleased to be guest posting on Adele Archer’s blog today, but I am actually here to teach the fine people of Old England how to speak when they are in New England. My name is Jeremy but please feel free to call me Professor Fink or Mr. Crow. You can find all of my certified credentials to speak on behalf of America by going to TheWhacko.Com and while you are there click a bunch of ads and stuff if you don’t mind.

Ok, ahem, aherm, ahem .. True linguistic-diversity is lost, and I just want to make sure that when people come to visit us up here in New England that you can actually understand us. You see, everyone seems to think that they know how to speak New England, and I see hideous examples of this all over television and movies, but to gain a real education on the matter, you need to go to a source.

This is where I come in since I have lived a majority of my life in the city of Portsmouth in the state of New Hampshire. You see how this works? On that side of the pond you have a Portsmouth in the county of Hampshire, so we need to teach you the new ways of butchering the English language to keep the fair and honest exchange of information flowing.

Most people seem to have the whole R = H thing down, but that gets pretty old quickly. Yes we say cah, fah, neah etc. but there are certain adverbs and pronouns that need to be included along the way, or it isn’t authentic. For example, a true New Englander will use the word “wickid” (yes it is the normal English term “wicked” only pronounced in proper New Englandish) so much that it would become nauseating to those outside the northeastern states, but is VERY important when explaining things.

Common New England phrases like “pissah” sound just plain stupid if you don’t use the adjective “wickid” along with it. “That’s wickid pissah,” not only explains something so completely excellent that other description is unnecessary, but “wickid pissah” usually ends a conversation of whatever is “wickid pissah” with everyone involved in the conversation just nodding in agreement. This pertains to everyone even if they didn’t actually experience what was “wickid pissah.”

You may wonder why you would never see a clever child in New England write a 500 word essay for school that would be nothing more than “I walked to the store and it was *insert however many verys in here to equal 500 words* far” but there is a simple explanation for that. You see at a very young age we learn that “wickid” is the definition of “infinite verys” and the teacher would cross out all your verys and use a red pen to write “wickid” above it and then grade it a F, for fail, flunk, phooey and then your parents will be wickid spanking your behind.

Something you would hear quite often in a bar (like say Cheers, that’s New England!) is “I pahked the cah wickid fah,” and that would be New England slang for, “I walked here from New Zealand,” and this too would be accepted unless another New England word “Pfft” was used afterward. The person who makes the “Pfft” noise is trying to say that they actually walked here from New Zealand and saw your car along the way. It means BS and the only thing THAT can’t trump is “wickid pissah,” which is the official conversation trump suit.

Now as I had said before, I want everyone to visit us up here in New England but I don’t want to beguile you with too many language lessons before you get here. They don’t seem to have a Rosetta Stone class for the lost art of speaking New Englandish, but I definitely want everyone to understand the worst of all offenses when trying to blend in. I blame Stephen King for this, and he knows better, but I think he might be trying to pull a fast one on all of the tourists.

There is no such word as “ayup” and every time I see it being used as a New England term it makes me want to gag. The correct word is “AYUH” and the way to truly say it is to pull it from the back of your throat. If you truly understand what someone is trying to say to you, you would say “AYUH” and the person explaining whatever it is to you would fully understand your camaraderie with them in the moment. Sometimes it can mean “Yes” or “Sure” but that is the problem with the youth today. They just don’t speak proper New Englandish, and before too long they are going to run off and form their own country, and good riddance to all of em!