>Americans say pawsta? I have not heard that. Sounds like it could be Boston maybe, but they pronounce a lot of words funny <g>.

When I first heard the name of the city the way the, ahem, natives pronounce it, it sounded "bwastun"... very similar to my local dialect back home. Which makes this a very small world indeed - you get two very different languages having a shared (sound of a) dialect.